ALINA
The house was empty. We walked in, guns out, ready to fire but there was nobody there. Loki was the first to spot the pictures though. He took one off the wall, a photo of Roara in her garden and looked at it.
"I'd known they knew where she lived, but this?" Loki nodded to the pictures, "This is..."
"This is insane." Tony took a photo off the wall as well and looked at it.
Thor almost smiled as he gazed at a photo of Roara. "I remember this day." He said in a low voice. "She'd had a good day that day."
Loki snapped his attention away from the photo in his hands. "What do you mean that day?"
Tony put his photo on the side table next to the door. "So they were long-term stalking her through the centuries. What else is new?"
We walked down the hallway. Thor and I Steve went into the living room. Loki and I continued down the hall, with Tony going upstairs.
"It's blocked off." I muttered. "There should be more corridors, it's a big house." I pushed open the kitchen door.
It took both of us a minute to take in the scene we were looking at. The two cups of cold tea, the seats facing each other that were pushed back from the table, and the gun on the side counter. I could see the used bullets on the floor, four of them all in the same place.
"Can you sense anything?" Loki asked me. "Any blood?"
I closed my eyes and looked around. No blood. There was sweat on the gun handle, saline on the floor, saliva on the rims of the cups. I turned around slowly. I opened my eyes.
"No signs of a physical altercation. Whatever those bullets hit was... well it was pretty bulletproof. More than bulletproof I'd say." I bent down and picked one up, passing it to Loki. "That's not just a normal impact. That's the way bullets look after hitting something like Cap's shield."
The bullet clinked as Loki placed it on the table to examine the tea. He took a sniff.
"This one was hers." He told me.
"How the hell do you know that?" I asked. "Can you like sense her presence?"
He gave me a look which told me that was definitely not the case before explaining, "Her lipstick is on the inside of the rim."
"Oh."
He sniffed the cup again. "But..." He reached for the other one and sniffed it as well. I crossed my arms.
"Do you have like heightened Asgardian smell senses?"
He gave me another cold and annoyed look."No. Just the nose of a trickster." He opened the teapot and sniffed ad Tony came in.
"What the hell is he doing?" Tony stood beside me and whispered as we watched the strange ritual Loki was performing, going through every object on the table and sniffing it.
"He's using his special trickster nose." I informed Tony sarcastically. "It's a very clever technique used only by the most highly advanced tricksters."
Tony raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms."Oh yeah, what level is he, because I too am a high level trickster."
"I believe he is level egotistical God."
"Well I'm playboy billionaire. He'll get to learn how to evade the US tax system in the next module."
Loki looked up at us, the sugar bowl in his hands, and said, "Could you two perhaps shut up? You are so very annoying."
"No can do snake man." I told him. "You just keep sniffing stuff, we'll keep making fun of you."
"Well I don't need to keep sniffing anything." He set the bowl down on the table. "Stark you'll want to get this sugar checked over at your lab."
"Why? What is it?" Tony asked, going round to inspect the sugar.
"Vrotranade." Loki informed us. "It's sometimes used in Asgard, as a joke at feasts usually, but it can be found elsewhere. It's a poison, it doesn't kill you, it just drains and disorientates you, makes it very easy to take you down. It has a light smell of lilies."
Tony sniffed and then passed it to me. I took a long inhale and realised Loki was right. There was a soft fragrant smell to it, unnoticeable if you weren't looking for it. Mostly it just smelled of sugar.
"Does Roara have sugar in her tea?" Tony asked.
"Yes." Loki replied, looking at her cup. "Three sugars."
"Damn." Tony muttered. "So who shot the gun?"
"Roara by my guess." I replied, showing him a bullet. "She couldn't have withstood this and we heard four shots. Whatever she was shooting at was really really strong. Inhumanly strong."
We stood together in silence, taking it in.
"It was a set-up?" Tony asked us. "Again?"
"I don't know." I sighed. "Find anything upstairs?"
"Nada."
"Great." I muttered.
Thor and Steve walked in. "We've found something." Steve held up a roll of paper.
Loki looked up. "Yes?"
Thor took the paper from Steve and rolled it out on the table. "Roara was right. The names of the agents, they are titles." It was a list of names in a pyramid. At the top was gate. Below it was Lock and Key. Below that was Gunn, Cog, and Wheel. In the layer under that was Axel.
"We know who Axel is." Steve pointed. "And we know that they call Roara 'the Key'."
"Who're the others?" I asked.
"We know as much as you kid." Steve shrugged. "My best guess is that one of these people in the second two tiers, one of them was one of the people Loki and Roara overheard in the Avengers tower when they went into Maria's office. You said one of them seemed to know the master plan?" Steve looked at Loki.
"Yes. Roara couldn't recall what they looked like but at the time they both sounded American." Loki explained.
"Okay." Tony rubbed his temples. "We get back to New York, we go over all our information, and then we find where she might be held. Wherever it is, Bucky might be there too."
The ride back was silent, all of us contemplating how the Ascendency was always a step ahead, how everything was a set up. We always seemed to get beaten. This wasn't something we could win with the information we had right now, and it wasn't something we could use our fists to fix. Steve was the one who told Fury what had happened, and he came to meet us when we landed.
"So there was no sign of her at all?" He asked as we walked through the building.
"None." I sighed. "Unless you count her lipstick and her gun."
Fury nodded and peeled off from our group in silence.
I groaned. "When even Fury shuts up you know we fucked it."
Wanda placed a hand on my arm. "We will get them back." She looked at Steve. "Both of them."
Steve nodded in silent gratitude.
Dinner that night was awkward and empty without Loki and Roara's bickering. We ate our food in muted half-conversations. There were two seats around the communal table that were horribly empty.
"I think I'm going to head to bed early." I told the others. "It's been a long day."
Tony glanced at me as he poured himself some more wine. "I'll text you the details of what we find in the sugar."
I left and walked slowly to my room, my fingers stroking the smooth wooden circle around my neck. I sat heavily on my bed and opened my phone, the bright white light making me squint at first. I opened my photos app and skipped through to find the photo of Roara and myself after a training session, all sweaty and smiling. It must have been taken about two days after the battle in New York, when she was using her fire powers and I was trying to get better at manipulating darkness. We'd taken to working together finding we could fight and train in sync.
There was a knock on my door. I looked up to see Steve come in, carrying a mug of something in his hands.
"Happy asked me to bring you this." Steve handed me the mug. Hot chocolate.
I took a sip. "That's very kind of him."
Steve sat heavily beside me on the bed. "He's a nice guy. Is this of you and Ro?"
I nodded. "Only took it a few days ago. I feel..."
"Unsteady without her? Like there's a small part of you missing?" Steve finished for me. I nodded and switched off my phone with a click. "Yeah. I feels like that now Buck's not here."
"We are going to get them back." I promised him.
"I know."
"And we're going to-" I wiped my eyes and nose quickly, hoping he hadn't seen the tears begin to fall, "we're going to make them pay."
Steve wrapped his arms around me. "I know."
I hugged him back, realising I'd needed this. Needed someone in the exact same pain and position as I was in to let me know I wasn't alone. That the pain was there, and that we would get through this. Together.
"Steve." My voice sounded muffled against his shoulder. "Can you stay here tonight? Like in my room?"
He pulled back and looked at me, scanning my face. "If you'd like me to."
"I just." I sighed, shaking my head and looking away from him. "It sounds stupid but... I don't feel safe. They took me once as well. While I was sleeping."
"I didn't know that." Steve placed a hand on my shoulder. "I'll stay."
"Thank you."
"I can find a sleeping bag for the floor-"
"Don't be stupid." I shook out the sentimentality and straightened my back. "This bed is absolutely huge. I can sleep on one side and you can just sleep on the other." I shrugged. "I'm going to get ready for bed."
I got up and grabbed my sleeping shorts and oversized T-shirt from under my pillow. The shower was hot and a welcome relief. When I looked in the mirror to brush my teeth I saw that my hair was growing back a little bit more, now a fuzzy layer all over my head. At least one good thing was happening, I decided. If Steve and his annoying optimism taught me anything it was that.
When I came out Steve was already in bed, fast asleep. I guessed it had been a long day for all of us. I slipped under the covers.
I tried to hold it in at first, but since Steve was asleep and nobody else was around I guessed it didn't matter. I let myself cry into my pillow, forcing out all the hurt and shame. If only I'd got some answers out of Axel, if I'd been able to get into the stupid house quicker, maybe, just maybe Roara would still be with us now. I knew what they did to prisoners, what she must be going through right now. The shuddering motion of my crying made my stitches across my neck sting but I didn't care.
I felt Steve shift beside me and two strong arms pulled me in, cradling me. He didn't have to say anything, he understood. It felt good to cry, and to cry without feeling ashamed of it. I fell asleep like that, Steve's warm arms around me, my tears salty in my mouth.
We were woken early the next morning.
"C'mon guys." Tony's voice came from the door. "You two have got to get up."
I lifted my head groggily and rubbed sleep out of my eyes. "What is it?" I croaked, my voice still thick from sleep.
Steve lifted his head beside me, giving Tony a questioning look.
"They've sent us something." Tony said grimly. "A video. And you two are not gonna like it."