Started: April 15, 2026
Last Updated: June 10,2026
A/N: Hey Y'all! I will try to update this often, but that will depend on how much I end up writing. Hope you enjoy, and please let me know if you have any issues with using this masterlist. Thank you! :)
This list is organized by movie, even if there is no relation to the movie itself. It's more like when it would take place, if that makes sense.
Marvel
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: Before the Avenger - 4k, Intro To Bea Rogers
Captain America: The First Avenger - 25.1k, The Movie
Part 1 - 14.7k, Creation of a Hero
Part 2 - 10.4k, Makings of an Avenger
Captain Marvel
Lady Liberty: Lost in Time and Space- 3.5k, Bea finds herself in a new time and place
When an alien army descends on New York, the fractured team aboard the Helicarrier is forced to become something more. As the Avengers make their stand against Loki's invasion, Bea finds herself drawn to the Tesseract once again—and face to face with a stranger who looks disturbingly familiar.
Word Count: 6.5k
Masterlist | Part 1 | Part 2
—
The medical bay had transformed into organized chaos by the time we got there.
Agents rushed everywhere while medics patched injuries on the fly.
Natasha sat on one of the benches tightening the straps on her gauntlets while Clint leaned against the wall nearby, newly cleared and looking deeply annoyed about the whole mind-control situation.
Steve walked in first, “Time to go.”
Natasha looked up immediately. “Go where?”
“I’ll tell you on the way. Can you fly one of those jets?”
Before Natasha answered, Clint pushed off the wall.
“I can.”
Steve looked toward Natasha for confirmation. She nodded once.
“Good,” Steve said. “Suit up.”
Everyone moved immediately after that.
Purpose settled over the room like a switch flipping back on.
Tony disappeared toward his armor station.
And I stayed exactly where I was.
Because unlike the rest of them, I didn’t have a suit.
Natasha noticed almost immediately.
“You’re not moving.”
I looked down awkwardly at my SHIELD uniform. ““That’s because I’m still just a person with a gun.”
Natasha arched a brow. “So am I.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No,” she said plainly, standing. “I don’t.”
Before I could answer, she reached behind one of the lockers nearby and pulled out a folded bundle of dark blue fabric.
“I was saving this for later,” she admitted. “But Coulson would probably haunt me if I didn’t give it to you now.”
Confused, I took it from her carefully.
Then unfolded it.
My breath caught.
It was tactical armor — streamlined and reinforced like Natasha’s suit, except emerald green and silver accents had been worked subtly into the seams. A small star rested near the shoulder.
Somebody had designed it carefully.
Specifically for me.
“What…”
“Coulson designed it,” Natasha said softly. “Or helped design it, anyway.”
I swallowed hard.
“He said they used to call you Lady Liberty,” Clint muttered from the corner.
I looked horrified. “Absolutely not. That was the press doing what they do.”
Natasha actually laughed quietly for the first time all day.
“He was very proud of himself.”
My fingers brushed across the material carefully.
“I can’t wear this.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I’m not—” I looked around helplessly. “Look at all of you. Thor’s a god, Steve’s Captain America, Tony flies in a metal death suit—”
“And you walked into a room full of enhanced egomaniacs and figured out Loki’s plan before the rest of us,” Natasha interrupted.
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
She stepped closer, expression gentler now.
“Bea,” she said quietly, “you keep thinking your value has to look like theirs.”
I looked down.
“You’re useful to this team,” Natasha continued. “You’re smart. You stay calm under pressure. You see things other people miss.”
Then, softer, “And after today? I’d be happy to fight beside you.”
Something in my chest tightened painfully.
Because Natasha Romanoff didn’t say things she didn’t mean.
Slowly, I looked back down at the suit in my hands.
Then nodded once.
“Okay.”
---
The hangar buzzed with controlled urgency by the time I arrived suited up.
Steve stood near the quinjet adjusting his gloves. He saw me in my uniform and did a double take. I sent him a glare.
“Not a word Steven.” I said sternly.
Steve raised his hands in surrender. “I wasn’t gonna—”
He paused, “Lady Liberty.”
I punch him in the arm.
Clint checked arrows methodically.
Tony walked toward us carrying the Iron Man helmet under one arm before stopping dead when he saw me.
“Well, look at that.”
I crossed my arms. “If you say Lady Liberty, I’m pushing you out of the jet.”
Tony grinned immediately. “So you have heard the name.”
“Clint told her,” Natasha said flatly.
“Wow. Betrayal everywhere today.” Tony muttered.
Steve looked me over once, then smiled softly.
Not teasing. Proud.
And somehow that meant more than I expected.
The ramp began lowering.
Beyond it, clouds stretched endlessly beneath the damaged Helicarrier.
New York waited somewhere ahead of us.
Loki too.
Steve stepped toward the quinjet first.
“All right,” he said firmly. “Let’s go to work.”
---
New York, 2012
The second the portal tears open above Stark Tower, my stomach drops.
Not because of the army.
Not because of the impossible blue light splitting the sky in half.
Because of the woman who comes through first.
For one horrible second, I think I’m seeing things. Recognition hits me hard enough to make my stomach twist — except I know I’ve never seen her before in my life.
Then the Chitauri pour out behind her.
The mothership lurking beyond the portal makes my blood run cold.
“Holy shit,” Clint mutters.
The Quinjet rocks violently as a blast clips the wing.
“Hang on!” Natasha shouts.
The floor tilts hard enough that I slam against the side of the jet. I grab the nearest strap with one hand and Steve’s arm with the other before he can lose his footing entirely.
The city spins outside the window.
Cars below look microscopic.
The portal keeps growing.
And the army just keeps coming.
Not soldiers.
A swarm.
My brain starts cataloguing immediately.
Patterns. Formations. Weaknesses.
“They’re coordinated,” I say fast, forcing myself to focus. “Hive structure maybe. Look at the flight patterns — they’re moving in packs around larger carriers.”
Steve looks over sharply.
“If we take out the carriers?”
“They may lose direction or support.” I point upward through the windshield. ““Those leviathans are armored everywhere except the underside joints. See where the plating separates?””
Tony’s voice crackles through the comms.
“Please tell me one of you has good news.”
“They bank left slower than right,” I fire back instantly. “Infantry’s driving civilians into open streets. They want panic.””
A beat.
“See? This is why we keep Bea around.”
The Quinjet shudders again.
Clint swears under his breath.
Outside, the woman disappears toward Stark Tower.
Toward Loki.
Toward the center of all of this.
And I can’t even think about that right now.
The ramp drops open the second we crash-land hard enough to throw all of us forward.
Smoke pours into the cabin.
I grab whatever weapon I can carry and sprint after Steve down the ramp.
Then I stop dead in the middle of the street.
I’ve seen bombed cities before. I’ve seen war. But nothing like this.
The portal stretches across the sky like a wound.
The mothership hangs above Manhattan like death itself.
Chitauri stream endlessly from the opening.
Explosions ripple through nearby buildings.
People are screaming everywhere.
Even Steve looks stunned for half a second.
“Stark,” he says into the comms, staring upward, “are you seeing this?”
“I’m seeing, still working on believing,” Tony answers.
My eyes keep moving.
Counting.
Tracking.
Analyzing.
“The flyers are herding civilians into open streets,” I say quickly. “They want panic density. Easier targets.”
Steve turns immediately, “Those people need assistance down there.”
Natasha nods once. “We got this. It’s good. Go.”
Steve looks at me. I’m already moving.
“On your left,” I tell him automatically.
That finally gets the smallest ghost of a smile out of him.
We sprint straight into chaos.
---
New York, 2012
The air inside Stark Tower feels wrong the moment I step through the penthouse doors.
Too loud with intent.
Below me, Manhattan is already burning.
The sky is split open like something has been torn out of reality itself, and through it pours the Chitauri—endless, obedient, perfect in their destruction.
This is not chaos to me.
It is order finally arriving.
I move past shattered glass and overturned furniture until I find him.
Loki stands at the edge of the balcony like he owns the city beneath him.
Like it has already accepted him.
“You’re early,” he says without turning.
“I’m efficient,” I reply.
He finally looks at me.
There’s satisfaction in his eyes. Not surprise. Not doubt. He already assumed I would succeed in getting here.
Behind him, the portal pulses again as another wave of ships spills through.
The ground shakes with distant explosions.
I step closer to the balcony, watching the Leviathans drift like living engines through the skyline.
“They’re arriving faster than projected,” I say.
“Yes,” Loki replies calmly. “Earth resists more than I anticipated.”
I glance at him.
“That wasn’t part of the plan.”
He smiles faintly. “Plans evolve.”
Below us, a Chitauri strike hits a building and the shockwave rolls upward like heat.
I don’t flinch.
“I’ve seen resistance structures before,” I say. “This isn’t structured resistance. It’s coordinated chaos. You’re overwhelming them too quickly for fear to stabilize into compliance.”
Loki’s gaze stays on the city.
“They will break.”
A pause.
Then I ask the question that actually matters.
“What do you want from this?”
That finally earns me his full attention.
Not anger.
Interest.
“I want them to kneel,” he says. “I want them to understand what they are beneath something greater.”
I follow his gaze down to the street where tiny figures scatter like insects.
“And after that?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer immediately.
Somewhere far below, Iron Man streaks through the air like a flare.
Thor’s lightning splits another wave of attackers in half. Something shifts beneath Loki’s composure at the sight of him.
“Your brother is here,” I say carefully.
A flicker.
There it is. Not fear. Not hesitation. Something more complicated.
“I am aware,” Loki replies.
“You’re still watching him,” I say.
His jaw tightens. “Do not mistake observation for sentiment.”
I don’t push further. Instead, I step beside him.
“You’ll need to accelerate the ground forces,” I say, shifting back to strategy. “The Avengers are adapting faster than expected. If they establish coordination—”
“They will not.”
I look at him.
He is certain. That is the problem.
“You underestimate them,” I say quietly.
“I understand them,” Loki corrects.
Another explosion flashes across the city, lighting his face in gold and fire.
And for a moment, I see it.
Not doubt. But calculation adjusting around something unpredictable.
He turns slightly toward me.
“Remain here,” he says. “Observe. Report anything that deviates from expectation.”
“And if they do?”
His smile returns.
“Then we adjust again.”
Below us, the world keeps breaking open.
And I realize Loki isn’t watching the invasion unfold.
He’s watching for the point where it stops being his.
---
New York, 2012
A police barricade is barely holding together when we arrive.
Officers are firing uselessly upward while civilians scream behind them.
One young cop looks about ready to bolt.
“We need to get out! They gotta bring in the National Guard!”
“National Guard?” the sergeant snaps back. “Does the army even know what’s happening here?”
Steve lands between them like a missile.
“I need men in these buildings,” he orders immediately. “There are people inside that can run into the line of fire. You take them through the basement or subway tunnels. Keep them off the streets.”
I step beside him, already pointing.
“You,” I tell another officer, “start redirecting southbound traffic away from the avenue. Create medical triage two blocks over. Keep intersections clear for emergency vehicles.”
The sergeant stares at us.
“Why the hell should I take orders from you?”
An energy blast screams toward us from behind.
Steve pivots instantly, shield coming up just as two Chitauri dive the barricade.
I move with him automatically.
One alien lunges.
I duck beneath the rifle swing and fire point blank into its chest while Steve takes the second one down hard with the shield.
The cops stare in shock.
Steve catches the shield on the rebound.
I reload without looking up.
The sergeant immediately turns.
“You heard them! Move!”
Steve glances sideways at me as civilians start flooding toward safer routes.
“Nice authority voice.”
“Spent years dealing with bureaucrats,” I mutter, firing at another incoming Chitauri. “Scarier than aliens.”
He snorts despite everything.
We move street by street after that.
Evacuating civilians. Clearing buildings. Taking down stragglers.
I stay on comms constantly.
“Nat, you’ve got civilians trapped on forty-first.”
“Copy.”
“Clint, flyer incoming at your six.”
“Seen it.”
At one point, something massive crashes through the upper floors of a nearby building.
Chunks of concrete rain down everywhere.
I barely throw myself behind a flipped taxi in time.
Over the comms Tony says, way too casually, “Heads up.”
“A little heads up about the falling building would be nice, guys!”
“That was the little heads up!”
I hear Clint laughing in the background.
Jerk.
---
The city looked like the end of the world.
Smoke rolled between buildings while Chitauri swarmed overhead in endless waves pouring from the portal above Stark Tower. Every explosion rattled the ground beneath my feet.
“Call it, Cap,” Tony said over the comms.
Steve turned in a slow circle, taking in the chaos around us before pointing upward toward the portal.
“Alright, listen up. Until we can close that portal up there, we’re gonna use containment.”
Orders started flying immediately.
“Barton, I want you on that roof, eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays.”
Hawkeye gave a mock salute. “Wanna give me a lift?”
“Right,” Tony replied. “Better clench up, Legolas.”
Even in the middle of an alien invasion, somehow he still had jokes.
“Thor, you’ve gotta try and bottleneck that portal. Slow them down. You got the lightning. Light the bastards up.”
Thor launched into the sky without another word.
Then Steve looked at me.
“And Bea—you know the most about the Tesseract. Get to the tower and figure out how to close that thing.”
My stomach tightened.
“Got it.”
Steve turns to Natasha, “You and me, we stay here on the ground, keep the fighting here.”
Natasha nods and checks her weapon.
“And Hulk.” Steve starts.
The Hulk looks at Steve,” Smash.”
The Hulk smiles then launches himself.
“Tony? Mind giving me a lift?”
Tony landed beside me a second later.
“Alright, Tesseract whisperer,” he said, holding an arm out. “Up we go.”
Before I could argue, he wrapped an arm around my waist and blasted into the air.
The city dropped away beneath us instantly.
Chitauri ships darted between skyscrapers while fires burned across entire blocks below. We banked hard around incoming fire, Tony swearing as something exploded too close to us.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No!”
“Good. Rational response.”
Stark Tower rushed toward us.
And the second my boots touched the platform—
I felt it.
The Tesseract.
The power hit me so hard I physically staggered.
Blue energy pulsed through the machine overhead, through the air, through me.
For one terrifying second, I couldn’t tell where the cube ended and I began.
The cube felt alive. Like it recognized me. Then I saw movement near the console.
Dr. Selvig.
“Doctor!”
He looked disoriented, exhausted, but lucid.
“The portal,” I said quickly. “How do we shut it down?”
“The scepter,” he said weakly. “I built in a safety to cut the power source.”
“The scepter can close the portal?”
He nodded once.
Then another voice spoke behind me, “That seems inconvenient.”
I turned and froze.
For a second, I genuinely thought I was looking in a mirror.
Something deep in my chest reacted before my brain could catch up.
Same face.
Same eyes.
But her energy was wrong.
Mine glowed blue beneath my skin, pulled toward the Tesseract beside us.
Hers burned gold.
Sharp. Violent. Controlled.
The scepter.
We both stared at each other in complete shock.
“What…” I breathed.
Her expression mirrored mine almost exactly.
For one impossible second, it felt like the world had split in half.
Something must have dropped her on a lower platform because suddenly boots hit metal behind me.
Natasha landed nearby and immediately stopped short.
“…Okay,” she said slowly. “Either I hit my head harder than I thought or there are two of you now.”
For a second, none of us moved.
The battle still raged below the tower. Explosions echoed through Manhattan. Chitauri ships screamed past overhead.
But all I could focus on was her.
She looked just as shocked as I felt.
Not just because we looked alike.
Because of the energy.
I could feel it radiating off her now that she was closer. It tugged strangely against my own power, almost magnetic but wrong at the same time.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
“You feel that too,” she said quietly.
I swallowed hard. “Who are you?”
Her expression shifted almost imperceptibly, like the question had landed somewhere unexpected.
Then Natasha raised her pistol.
“Maybe we do introductions after the alien apocalypse.”
The woman’s attention flicked toward her briefly before returning to me.
Then her expression hardened, “I can’t let you close the portal.”
The wind around the platform suddenly intensified as the Tesseract surged overhead.
I stepped in front of Selvig automatically. “And I can’t let you keep it open.”
She moved before I fully registered the decision.
Gold energy flashed toward me in a sharp burst. I barely got my hands up in time, blue light erupting instinctively from my palms as I blocked it.
The woman lunged forward, like she already knew where I would move. We hit the platform floor hard, sliding across metal while a knife was thrown past my shoulder.
Up close, it was worse.
The resemblance was identical.
But where my power felt endless and consuming like the Tesseract itself, hers felt refined. Directed.
A weapon. The scepter.
She realized the difference at the same moment I did.
“You’re connected to the Tesseract,” she said, sounding genuinely stunned.
“And you’re connected to the scepter.”
Her hesitation lasted less than a second before she attacked again.
I blocked another blast and shoved energy back at her, blue and gold colliding violently between us.
The force sent both of us stumbling backward.
Natasha took the opening immediately.
She grabbed Loki’s scepter from beside the console and spun toward the woman.
“Let’s test a theory.”
She drove the blade end toward her and nothing happened.
No blast.
No reaction.
The scepter simply fizzled harmlessly against the woman’s energy.
All three of us froze.
The woman blinked once in surprise.
Then laughed softly.
“Well,” she muttered. “You tried.”
Nat stared down at the weapon in disbelief. “You have got to be kidding me.”
The woman kicked Natasha backward before I tackled her sideways into the platform railing.
We crashed hard enough to dent the metal.
For several chaotic seconds the fight became close and brutal.
She fought like someone trained for war from birth. Precise movements. No wasted energy. Every movement felt calculated three steps ahead.
But I could feel the Tesseract feeding power into me the longer I stayed near it.
Every pulse overhead made me stronger.
Blue light sparked violently across my skin as I shoved her backward again.
Her eyes widened slightly at the sight.
Below us, thunder cracked across Manhattan.
Thor’s lightning ripped through the sky while Chitauri ships exploded one after another.
The invasion was starting to fail.
I saw her notice it too.
Her gaze flicked upward toward the portal.
Then toward the streets below.
The hesitation was small.
But it was there.
The woman backed toward the edge of the platform slowly, breathing hard.
I frowned. “Wait—”
For the first time since the fight started, uncertainty crossed her face.
Not fear. Calculation.
Like she was deciding something.
Then her eyes met mine again.
“Now I know what you are.” she said quietly.
Before either of us could react, she jumped backward off the tower.
“Jesus—” Nat rushed to the edge.
Far below us, a passing Chitauri cruiser swept underneath the tower. The woman landed on it effortlessly, barely even stumbling before the ship banked sharply upward toward the portal.
Toward space.
Nat blinked. “Well. That was dramatic.”
I stared upward as the cruiser disappeared through the portal.
Something twisted uncomfortably in my chest.
I didn’t even know who she was.
But somehow watching her disappear through the portal felt like losing something I hadn’t even found yet.
Like something important had just slipped out of reach before I understood what it was.
Selvig’s voice snapped me back to reality.
“The scepter!” he shouted frantically from the console. “It can close the portal!”
Right.
The portal.
The end of the world currently hanging over Manhattan.
I grabbed the scepter from Natasha.
The second my hand wrapped around it, energy surged violently through my body.
Blue from the Tesseract.
Gold from the scepter.
Opposing forces slammed together so hard my vision blurred for a second.
“You okay?” Nat asked carefully.
“No,” I admitted again.
Above us, the portal roared louder.
The comms crackled in my ear.
“I can close it,” I said quickly. “Steve, I can shut the portal down.”
“Do it,” Steve answered immediately.
Then Tony’s voice cut in sharply, “No, wait!”
I looked up instantly.
High above Manhattan, Tony streaked through the sky after something moving impossibly fast.
A missile.
My stomach dropped.
“I got a nuke coming in,” Tony said. “And I know exactly where to put it.”
“No.” I stepped toward the edge instinctively. “Tony, don’t—”
But even as I said it, I already knew he would.
Because there wasn’t another choice.
Static crackled over the comms as he flew higher.
“Stark,” Steve said tightly, “you know that’s a one-way trip?”
Tony didn’t answer right away.
Then quietly, “Save the rest for the return trip, J.”
Something painful twisted in my chest.
Howard.
All I could think about was Howard Stark smiling proudly when he talked about his future son.
Tony disappeared into the portal and the comms went dead.
Silence. Absolute, horrifying silence.
The kind where your brain starts preparing you for grief before your heart can catch up.
I stared upward, gripping the scepter so tightly my hands shook.
“Tony?” I whispered into the comms.
Nothing.
Below us, every Chitauri suddenly froze. Then collapsed. The invasion stopped all at once.
The missile worked. But Tony still wasn’t coming back.
Nat stepped beside me slowly, staring upward too.
“Come on, Stark…”
Seconds dragged by painfully.
Too long. Way too long.
My breathing started quickening.
No.
No, he was supposed to come back.
Then suddenly—
“There!” Nat shouted.
A figure dropped from the portal high above us.
Tony.
Relief hit me so hard my knees almost buckled.
Steve’s voice came through the comms immediately, “Close it!”
But I waited.
I waited until I saw Tony fully clear the portal. Until I knew he was back on our side of it.
Then I drove the scepter into the beam.
The portal collapsed instantly in a violent explosion of blue light.
And Tony started falling. Fast.
“He’s not slowing down,” Thor shouted somewhere below.
Panic slammed into me again immediately.
“Tony!” I yelled into the comms desperately. “Tony, answer me!”
Nothing.
Then Hulk launched upward like a missile himself and caught Tony out of the air before both of them crashed violently into the side of a building.
“Tony?” I asked again frantically as Natasha and I sprinted towards the elevator doors. “Tony, are you alright? Tony!”
Hulk slammed into the street below hard enough to crack the pavement.
Natasha and I barely waited for the elevator doors to fully open before running out onto the street. Thor and Steve were already there beside Hulk, Tony’s armor scorched and frozen over from space.
For one horrible second, he wasn’t moving.
Thor ripped the faceplate off.
Tony’s eyes were closed.
My chest tightened so painfully I could barely breathe.
No, no, no—
Hulk suddenly roared directly in Tony’s face.
Tony jolted violently awake with a gasp.
“What the hell?” he croaked. “What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me.”
The relief that hit me was so intense it almost made me dizzy.
Steve let out a breath beside him. “We won.”
“Alright,” Tony mumbled weakly. “Alright. Good job, guys. Let’s just not come in tomorrow. Let’s just take a day.”
I let out something between a laugh and a shaky breath, my hands still trembling from adrenaline.
Of course.
Of course the first thing Howard Stark’s son did after nearly dying in space was make jokes.
Tony slowly looked around at all of us staring at him.
“…Why are you all looking at me like that?”
I crossed my arms tightly, mostly to hide how badly my hands were shaking.
“You disappeared through a portal carrying a nuclear missile,” I snapped, voice cracking despite my attempt to sound angry. “You don’t get to act confused about why everyone’s staring.”
Tony blinked at me for a second.
Then grinned weakly, “Aw. You were worried about me.”
“I was considering throwing you back through the portal myself.”
“See? That’s friendship.”
Natasha snorted quietly nearby.
Tony pointed vaguely down the street. “Also, have you ever tried shawarma? There’s a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don’t know what it is, but I wanna try it.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
“You almost died.”
“And now I’m hungry. Near-death experiences really work up an appetite.”
I shook my head, unable to stop the small laugh escaping anyway.
For a moment, standing there in the wreckage of Manhattan with smoke filling the air and alien debris scattered across the street, everything felt strangely light.
We were alive.
Tony was alive.
And somehow, against every impossible odd, we had actually won.
---
New York, 2012
By the time we made it back up to Stark Tower, emergency crews were already flooding the streets below.
Smoke still curled through Manhattan, but the screaming had stopped.
The silence afterward somehow felt stranger.
I followed the others into the destroyed penthouse, stepping over shattered glass and broken concrete. Loki was dragging himself weakly up the stairs when he sensed us.
He turned and immediately froze when he saw me.
Not fear. Shock.
A genuine double take.
His eyes narrowed slightly like he was trying to understand something impossible. For a second, I thought he might actually say something about it.
Instead, his expression smoothed back into that familiar arrogance.
“If it’s all the same to you,” Loki drawled tiredly, “I’ll have that drink.”
Loki’s gaze flicked toward me one last time, lingering for just a second too long before Thor hauled him upright.
I noticed it.
But before I could think too hard about it, exhaustion finally started catching up to everyone.
Including me.
---
SHIELD Helicarrier, 2012
The next few days blurred together.
Medical checks. SHIELD debriefings. Cleanup reports. Media coverage.
I spent most of my time moving between exhausted Avengers and overly curious SHIELD agents while trying not to think too much about the portal.
Or that woman.
Or the way the Tesseract had reacted to me.
The analytical room aboard the Helicarrier was quieter than usual when I slipped inside one afternoon. News clips played across half a dozen monitors.
“…these so-called heroes have to be held responsible—”
The screen switched.
“Captain America saved my life…”
Another clip.
“Superheroes? In New York? Give me a break!”
I leaned back in my chair, watching the endless stream of opinions cycle across the screens.
Some people blamed the Avengers.
Some worshipped them already.
Some were terrified.
Honestly… it could’ve gone worse.
A lot worse.
“You look disappointed,” Tony said from behind me.
I glanced back to find him carrying two coffees.
“I was expecting at least one headline calling us the apocalypse.”
“Oh, give it time,” he replied, handing me a cup. “The internet’s still buffering.”
I snorted softly.
The reports scattered across the table in front of me were half-finished summaries of the battle. Damage assessments. Civilian casualty estimates. Chitauri analysis.
And one very long section labeled:
AVENGERS INITIATIVE — FIELD OBSERVATIONS.
Tony glanced down at it.
“Are you writing our performance reviews? ”
“Yes.”
“And?”
I took a sip of coffee dramatically while pretending to think.
“Banner gets excellent marks.”
“Fair.”
“Thor causes property damage on a concerning scale.”
“Also fair.”
“Hawkeye needs supervision and a bigger quiver.”
“Absolutely.”
“And Steve Rogers has no regard whatsoever for his own safety.”
Tony grinned immediately. “Oh, this I gotta hear.”
Almost like he sensed us talking about him, Steve walked into the room at that exact moment.
“You needed me?”
I pointed at the bruising still visible along his jaw.
“Yes. To explain why you thought launching yourself through a bank window was a good idea.”
Steve blinked once.
“…There were civilians inside.”
“That is not the point.”
Tony leaned casually against the table. “No, no, keep going. This is the best thing I’ve seen all week. I needed this.”
I stood up fully now, slipping into the same tone I used on agents after reckless missions.
“You had a concussion, three cracked—”
“I was fine.”
“You were bleeding.”
“I’ve been bleeding before.”
“That sentence is the problem.”
Natasha walked in halfway through my lecture, “Oh good. Someone else finally said it.”
Clint pointed at me. “This is why she sounds like everyone’s mom.”
“Okay, mom,” Tony added instantly.
“She does have strong disappointed-parent energy,” Bruce murmured.
“I hate all of you.”
I stared at all of them in disbelief.
“Yet you love us,” Tony replied.
“Debatable.”
---
Later that night, Steve found me sitting alone near one of the Helicarrier observation windows.
The city lights below reflected faintly across the glass.
For a while neither of us spoke.
Then quietly, Steve asked, “You okay?”
I let out a slow breath.
“I think so.”
He nodded like he understood that answer perfectly.
There was still so much neither of us had talked about.
Everything after I disappeared.
Everything after the ice.
I looked over at him finally.
“When I heard what happened to you…” My voice faltered slightly. “I thought you were dead.”
Steve’s expression softened immediately.
“Bea—”
“No, listen.” I shook my head. “Howard searched for you for years. Peggy too. Nobody stopped hoping you’d be found.”
Steve looked down at his hands quietly.
“And then when I surfaced in 1995, they told me you were gone.” I swallowed hard. “I remember thinking it wasn’t fair. You survived everything else and then the world just… lost you.”
For a long moment, the only sound was the distant hum of the Helicarrier.
Steve rubbed his thumb against the edge of the railing thoughtfully.
“I didn’t know anyone still remembered me like that.”
I laughed quietly under my breath.
“Steve, people spent decades hoping you’d come home.”
“That’s not really what I meant.”
I looked over at him again then.
Not Captain America.
Just Steve.
The same stubborn kid from Brooklyn who wouldn't back down from a fight.
“You mattered to us,” I said quietly. “You still do.”
Steve smiled faintly at that.
“Some days this century still feels wrong.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of us said the obvious part out loud.
That somehow we’d both been dropped into a future we didn’t belong in.
---
New York, 2012
A few days later, we stood together in Central Park beneath a gray sky.
Thor held the Tesseract securely inside its casing while Loki stood beside him in restraints, looking deeply unimpressed by all of existence.
Everything felt strangely peaceful after the chaos of New York.
Thor stepped toward the portal device.
“We will meet again, my friends.”
“Try not to bring another alien army next time,” Tony called back.
“I make no promises.”
Loki glanced toward me briefly.
Again there was that strange flicker of recognition.
Like he knew something I didn’t.
Then Thor activated the Tesseract.
The air pressure changed instantly. Every instinct in my body screamed.
The energy pouring off the Tesseract felt familiar now in the worst possible way — endless and ancient and far too powerful to belong in anyone’s hands.
Blue light crawled across my skin before I even realized it was happening.
Steve noticed first.
“Bea?”
Tony’s expression changed instantly.
Recognition.
Fear.
He’d seen this before.
“Uh,” I managed weakly, panic rising fast, “guys—”
The energy around me intensified violently.
Steve stepped toward me instantly. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know—”
But I did know.
The Tesseract.
“No… no, not again—”
The pull became unbearable.
Tony’s eyes widened. “Everybody back!”
“What’s going on?” Clint demanded.
Nobody had time to answer.
I looked at Steve helplessly just as the energy completely engulfed me.
The world vanished in blue light.
Steve lunged toward me.
And then I was gone.
---
Sanctuary, 2012
The Other bows his head low, armored hands clenched tightly behind his back as the throne room falls silent.
“The humans are not what we anticipated,” he says carefully. “They are unruly. Dangerous. The Asgardian fought beside them. The Tesseract has been lost.”
I stand at the base of the throne beside Thanos, staring out across the cold darkness of Sanctuary. The bruises from New York are already fading, but the ache under my ribs hasn’t. I can still feel the strange pulse from the girl on Stark Tower.
Bea.
Even now, I can feel traces of her energy in my mind. Familiar. Opposite. Wrong.
The Chitauri leader swallows before continuing. “And the woman—”
“I know,” Thanos says quietly.
The entire room freezes.
His voice is calm, but somehow that is worse.
“The one connected to the Tesseract.”
I lower my gaze slightly. “She was unexpected.”
“The girl looked at you as though she’d seen a ghost,” Ebony Maw muses from somewhere in the shadows. “And you did the same.”
I ignore him.
“She interfered,” I say instead. “The Avengers would not have succeeded without her.”
The Other Guy shifts nervously. “The human called Stark carried a nuclear weapon through the portal. The fleet was destroyed before we could recover.”
Silence settled across the throne room like pressure against bone.
Then Thanos slowly rises from his throne.
The movement alone makes the Chitauri leader visibly panic.
“You assured me Earth would fall quickly,” Thanos says.
“My lord—”
“You assured me Loki could control the humans.”
The Other Guy drops to one knee immediately.
“My lord, we underestimated—”
“Yes,” Thanos interrupts. “You did.”
His voice never rises.
It doesn’t need to.
I keep my expression neutral as Thanos steps down from the throne platform, golden armor glinting beneath the dim blue light of Sanctuary. He stops beside me.
“Do you believe the mission failed because of the Avengers?” he asks.
“No,” I answer honestly.
His eyes shift toward me.
“It failed because of her.”
For the first time since returning from Earth, the corner of Thanos’ mouth twitches slightly.
“Interesting.”
I force myself not to react.
“I can do better,” I say carefully. “I won’t fail again.”
Ebony Maw studies me from the shadows. “You sound invested.”
“I am correcting a mistake.”
The room goes quiet again.
Thanos studies me for a long moment, weighing every word, every breath.
“You felt it too,” he says finally.
Not a question.
I hesitate.
“Yes.”
That strange pull. That impossible resonance between the Tesseract and the scepter. Between me and Bea.
Two energies that should never have existed together.
Thanos folds his hands behind his back.
“The girl is tied to the Space Stone,” he says. “You are tied to the Mind Stone. Two fragments reaching for one another across existence itself.”
The words settle uncomfortably beneath my ribs.
“She is inexperienced,” I say quickly. “Emotional. Attached already. Stark and Rogers both protect her.”
I turn sharply toward him, energy flickering faintly beneath my skin.
“I survived.”
Thanos lifts a hand slightly.
The room stills immediately.
His gaze settles back on me.
“One final chance.”
My breath catches.
“If you fail again,” he says evenly, “I will consider the experiment concluded.”
Cold settles into my stomach.
Experiment.
Not daughter. Not warrior.
Experiment.
I lower myself to one knee anyway.
“I understand, my lord.”
Thanos steps closer, placing two fingers beneath my chin and forcing me to look up at him.
“Do not disappoint me again.”
His presence presses against my thoughts like gravity.
“Yes, my lord.”
He releases me.
Behind us, Sanctuary stretches endlessly into darkness while the shattered remains of the Chitauri fleet drift through space beyond the windows.
Earth survived.
The Avengers survived.
Somewhere out there, the other half of that impossible signal was still alive.
I can still feel her energy.
Faint.
Distant.
Waiting.
---
New York, 2012
The tiny shawarma place is almost completely destroyed.
Half the lights flicker overhead. One of the windows is cracked. Dust still drifts faintly from the ceiling every time something rumbles somewhere outside.
And yet somehow, Tony had still insisted on coming.
So now the six Avengers — plus me — sit silently around two pushed-together tables in exhausted defeat.
No one talks.
Not Bruce.
Not Thor.
Not even Tony.
We all just sit there covered in dirt, ash, blood, and exhaustion while the workers slowly clean around us.
I sit beside Steve in the far corner booth, absently pulling apart a piece of pita bread while staring at the untouched pile of shawarma in front of him.
“You gonna eat that?” I ask quietly.
Steve blinks slowly like he didn’t hear me the first time.
“Hm?”
I point at his plate.
He looks down at it like he forgot it existed.
“Oh. Yeah. Right.”
He picks up the wrap, takes one bite, chews twice and his eyes nearly close immediately afterward.
I snort softly, “You look awful.”
Steve barely opens one eye at me.
“Thanks.”
“No, seriously. You’ve got soot on your face, your suit’s ripped, and I think there’s alien slime on your boot.”
“You’re one to talk.”
I glance down at myself.
My jacket is burned at one sleeve. There’s dried blood near my collar. My hair is an absolute disaster.
“…fair.”
Across the table, Tony slowly raises one finger without opening his eyes.
“For the record,” he mutters, “we all look terrible.”
“Speak for yourself,” Thor says around a mouthful of shawarma.
Everyone looks at him.
Thor pauses mid-chew.
“…Perhaps a little terrible.”
Bruce lets out a tired laugh into his drink.
Beside me, Steve’s shoulder suddenly bumps against mine.
I glance over.
His eyes are half closed now.
“You falling asleep?” I ask.
“No.”
A beat.
Then his head tilts slightly forward.
“…maybe.”
I laugh quietly under my breath before reaching over and stealing the rest of the shawarma from his plate.
Steve barely reacts.
“You are the worst,” he murmurs sleepily.
“You weren’t eating it.”
“M’thinking about it.”
“You’ve been thinking about it for ten minutes.”
Another long pause.
Then Steve mutters, barely awake, “Pretty sure this counts as theft.”
I take another bite.
“Pretty sure saving New York earned me a free pass.”
Steve huffs out the faintest laugh beside me, eyes finally slipping shut for a second.
Across the table, Tony is half asleep upright.
Bruce looks seconds away from faceplanting into his food.
Clint quietly steals fries off Natasha’s plate while she pretends not to notice.
For just a moment, the city outside is quiet.
No explosions.
No screaming.
No portals.
Just exhausted heroes crammed into a tiny restaurant after an alien invasion, trying very hard not to fall asleep in their food.
Loki is finally captured, but keeping him contained proves far more dangerous than catching him. As tensions rise aboard the Helicarrier and the cracks within the team begin to show, Bea discovers that the greatest threat may not be the god in the cell—but what he's bringing out in everyone around him.
Word Count: 8.5k
Masterlist | Part 1 | Part 3
---
I stayed on the Helicarrier.
Part of me wanted to go. Every instinct I had as an SSR agent screamed at me to grab a gun and jump into the field beside Steve, but someone had to stay behind and keep working the problem, and apparently the giant flying fortress full of spies had decided I was more useful alive and researching than getting thrown through a building by a god.
Fair enough.
Still, I watched.
One of the side monitors in Banner’s lab showed the exterior feed from the Quinjet. Grainy night vision flickered across the screen as the aircraft cut through dark storm clouds over Germany. Every few minutes, I glanced up from the scattered SHIELD files and Tesseract reports spread across the table.
The rest of my attention was buried in eighty years of classified history.
Turns out the SSR had eventually evolved into SHIELD. Same paranoia. Better funding.
I sat cross-legged in one of the lab chairs, scrolling through file after file on a sleek tablet that still felt too thin to be real. Peggy Carter’s name appeared everywhere.
Founding Director.
Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
I stared at the screen a little longer than necessary.
“She really built all this,” I murmured.
Banner glanced up from where he was calibrating spectrometer data. “You knew Peggy Carter?”
I barked out a quiet laugh. “Knew her? She used to threaten to shoot me when I stole her paperwork.”
Banner paused. “I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking.”
“She usually missed on purpose.”
A tiny smile tugged at Banner’s mouth before he returned to his work.
I kept reading.
Peggy’s records had notes attached under my own file. Agent Beatrice Rogers: Active Status Maintained. Clearance Level Seven Authorization Retained Pending Recovery.
My chest tightened unexpectedly.
“She kept me active,” I said softly.
Banner looked over again. “What?”
I turned the screen toward him. “Most missing agents get declared dead eventually.” I swallowed once. “Peggy never did.”
For a second, neither of us spoke.
Then Banner nodded once, quiet understanding settling between us.
The monitor feed crackled, pulling my attention back to Germany.
Loki appeared on screen like something out of an old myth dragged violently into modern day.
Gold armor. Horns. Entire crowd kneeling before him.
I leaned back in my chair slowly.
“Well,” I muttered, “Red Skull would be having the worst ‘I told you so’ moment in history.”
Banner snorted softly.
The feed flickered as Loki’s duplicates surrounded civilians.
Then Steve dropped from the sky.
I straightened immediately.
“There he is.”
On screen, Steve’s shield caught the blast from Loki’s scepter in a burst of blue light. The impact rattled the camera feed hard enough to distort the image.
Banner looked over. “You worried?”
“About Steve?” I scoffed lightly. “No.”
A beat.
“About everyone around Steve? Constantly.”
Banner smiled despite himself.
While the fight unfolded onscreen, I went back to researching.
SHIELD databases had entire files dedicated to Thor and Loki now. Not mythology. Actual documented extraterrestrials.
Asgardian civilization. Einstein-Rosen bridge travel. Energy manipulation. Unknown lifespan. A Dr. Jane Foster.
I rubbed my temples.
“So there’s just gods now.”
Banner didn’t even look up from his equations. “Apparently.”
“Hm.” I scrolled farther. “Honestly, that explains a weird amount of human history.”
“Careful,” Banner warned dryly. “Give SHIELD another week and they’ll start funding archaeology departments.”
I laughed quietly before opening another file.
Norse mythology comparisons filled the screen beside modern encounter reports.
Thor. Loki. Odin. The Nine Realms.
I frowned thoughtfully. “You know, if half of this is accurate, ancient civilizations probably weren’t worshipping gods.”
Banner glanced up.
“They were documenting aliens.”
That got his attention.
I pointed at the files. “Think about it. Advanced beings arrive with impossible technology, absurd strength, near immortality—”
“Primitive civilizations interpret them through religion,” Banner finished.
“Exactly.”
Banner leaned back slightly, considering it. “Arthur C. Clarke would love you.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Science fiction writer.”
“Oh.” I shrugged. “Then he’d probably hate me for proving him right.”
Banner laughed under his breath.
The monitor suddenly blasted AC/DC through the speakers.
I looked up just as Tony Stark crashed dramatically into the middle of the fight.
Even through the grainy feed, the entrance somehow felt smug.
I sighed.
“Yeah. That tracks.”
Banner looked confused. “What does?”
“That Howard Stark somehow raised a son with all his ego and none of his restraint.”
On screen, Tony landed in front of Loki.
Make your move, Reindeer Games.
I barked out a laugh before I could stop myself.
“Oh, Howard would’ve adored him.”
The footage shifted as Loki surrendered far too easily.
I narrowed my eyes.
“No way that’s genuine.”
Banner nodded absentmindedly while typing. “Agreed.”
I turned back toward the equipment laid out across the lab tables.
“What exactly are we looking for with the gamma tracking?”
Banner perked up slightly at the question. Scientists loved when someone actually understood what they were saying.
“The Tesseract emits low-level gamma fluctuations when active,” he explained, pulling up a holographic model. “Most people focus on the energy output, but the radiation signature underneath it is more consistent.”
I leaned closer to the display. “Background interference?”
“Exactly.” He pointed toward a cluster map. “If we isolate recurring gamma anomalies and remove known radiation sources—nuclear plants, satellites, military testing—we can narrow possible locations.”
I studied the algorithm scrolling beside it.
“You’re using cluster recognition to predict movement patterns.”
Banner blinked at me. “Most people just nod politely when I explain this.”
“I worked with Howard Stark and Abraham Erskine. You think I survived that by being pretty?”
Banner actually laughed, “That explains a lot.”
I grabbed a stylus and adjusted one of the equations on the side panel.
“You’re weighting population density too heavily,” I said. “If Loki knows we’re tracking energy signatures, he’d avoid concentrated infrastructure. Less noise in rural areas.”
Banner stared at the revised calculations.
“…That’s actually better.”
“Thank you.”
“No, I mean significantly better.”
I grinned a little. “See? Pretty and useful.”
Banner stared at the revised projections a second longer before slowly entering them into the system.
Then thunder cracked through the monitor speakers.
My stomach dropped slightly, “What now?”
Then Thor appeared.
The room went quiet except for the storm pounding through the feed.
I watched Steve jump out after Tony and Thor without hesitation.
Of course he did.
“Your brother has absolutely no survival instincts,” Banner commented.
“He does,” I replied. “He just never backs down from a fight.”
Banner huffed a laugh.
The feed dissolved into absolute chaos after that. Forest. Lightning. Explosions. Iron Man getting thrown through approximately every tree in Europe.
I rubbed a hand over my face.
“I leave him alone for one mission and he starts fistfighting gods.”
“You say that like this isn’t normal.”
“For Steve?” I pointed at the screen. “Honestly? Kinda.”
The camera stabilized just in time to catch Steve stepping between Thor and Tony, shield raised.
Then Thor brought the hammer down.
The shockwave burst across the monitor hard enough to distort the feed entirely.
Banner stared.
I blinked slowly.
“…Okay,” I admitted quietly. “That one surprised me.”
Somewhere overhead, the Helicarrier engines hummed steadily through the night while the future kept getting stranger around me.
And somehow, against all logic, I was starting to settle into it.
---
The briefing room was quieter than it should have been for a flying fortress full of armed agents and world-ending problems.
Bruce sat closest to the monitor feed, absently rubbing at his wrist while readings from the scepter scrolled across the nearby screens. Natasha leaned against the far wall with her arms crossed. Steve stood near the table, posture rigid in the way that meant he was thinking too hard about something. Thor stood apart from everyone else, staring at the black screen with a tension in his shoulders that hadn’t eased since Loki’s capture.
I sat sideways in one of the chairs, boots hooked against the table leg as I watched the live feed from the detention corridor.
Dozens of SHIELD agents escorted Loki through the helicarrier halls in handcuffs.
And he was smiling.
Of course he was.
The camera angle shifted as they passed the briefing room. Loki’s gaze flicked lazily across the room.
Then stopped. Right on me.
His expression changed for barely a fraction of a second.
Confusion.
Not fear. Not recognition exactly.
Something more unsettled.
Like for half a second, he thought he was looking at someone else entirely.
Interesting.
Bruce glanced up from the monitor. “He’s staring at you.”
“I noticed.”
Loki kept looking even as the agents pushed him forward again. His brow furrowed slightly before he smoothed the expression away beneath another grin.
Thor finally looked over at me then.
And froze.
Not because he recognized me.
Because he recognized something.
His eyes flicked briefly between Steve and me before something softened unexpectedly across his face.
Not recognition exactly.
Something older.
Grief wrapped tightly around affection.
I tilted my head slightly.
Thor looked away first.
Steve noticed none of it.
Typical.
He was too busy muttering at the damage reports on one of Hill’s tablets.
I leaned over to glance at the screen. “Did you really have to level a forest in your fight?”
Steve looked offended immediately. “I didn’t level anything.”
“You literally knocked down a forest with the blast from the shield.”
“He swung first.”
“That is not an excuse you can use after the age of twelve.”
Natasha snorted quietly from the corner.
Thor’s mouth twitched slightly.
The detention feed crackled back to full audio as Fury entered the containment section.
Loki stood inside the massive glass cell, finally freed from the cuffs. Hydraulic restraints hummed beneath the floor. One button from Fury would drop the entire prison thirty thousand feet into the ocean.
“In case it’s unclear,” Fury said evenly, “you try to escape. You so much as scratch that glass—”
The hatch beneath Loki’s feet opened.
The roar of wind filled the speakers.
“Thirty thousand feet straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?”
Loki glanced downward without concern.
Then back up.
“It’s an impressive cage,” he said smoothly. “Not built, I think, for me.”
“Built for something a lot stronger than you.”
Loki smiled faintly at that.
“Oh, I’ve heard.”
His gaze shifted again.
Toward the camera.
A strange feeling crawled down my spine.
Not fear. Recognition.
Not from him. From the scepter.
Even through reinforced walls and multiple floors of a flying aircraft carrier, I could feel it faintly humming in the back of my mind.
The Tesseract had always felt cold and endless. Ancient space folded into itself.
The scepter felt different. Closer somehow.
Like standing near distant family you’d never met but somehow knew belonged to you.
Related the way lightning was related to stars. Dangerous in completely different ways.
Fury eventually left Loki in the cell. The monitor switched back to the briefing room feed.
Silence settled for a beat before Bruce sighed.
“He really grows on you, doesn’t he?”
Steve crossed his arms. “Loki’s gonna drag this out. So, Thor—what’s his play?”
Thor pulled himself back into the conversation slowly. “He has an army called the Chitauri. They are not of Asgard or any known world. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth in return for the Tesseract.”
“An army?” Steve asked. “From outer space?”
Bruce shrugged slightly. “At this point that barely cracks the top five weirdest things this week.”
Thor continued, “Loki needs Selvig. He means to build another portal.”
“Exactly,” Bruce said. “That’s why they needed the iridium.”
The doors slid open behind us.
Tony walked in with Coulson beside him.
“I’ll fly you there,” Tony was saying to Coulson. “Keep the love alive.”
Tony barely paused before jumping into the conversation.
“It’s a stabilizing agent,” he said, grabbing a tablet from the table. “Means the portal won’t collapse on itself like it did at SHIELD.”
He pointed casually toward Thor.
“No hard feelings, Point Break. You’ve got a mean swing.”
Thor looked deeply unimpressed.
Tony continued anyway. “It also means the portal can stay open as long as Loki wants.”
As Tony wandered around the room talking, my attention drifted toward the scepter readings still running on the side monitor.
The energy signatures bothered me.
Not because they were unfamiliar.
Because they weren’t.
I stood and crossed toward the monitor Bruce had left running earlier.
“You’re still looking at that thing?” Tony asked.
“Yes.”
“You find religion?”
I ignored him, staring at the fluctuating readings.
“It feels wrong,” I admitted quietly.
Bruce looked over immediately. “Wrong how?”
I struggled for the words. “The Tesseract has a very specific energy pattern. This…” I frowned. “This feels similar. Not identical. Related.”
Bruce’s expression sharpened with scientific interest instantly.
“Related how?”
“Like…” I rubbed at my temple. “Like the same language written in a different dialect.”
Tony blinked once.
“That is either deeply concerning or the coolest sentence anyone’s said all week.”
“Both,” Bruce muttered.
Steve looked between us. “You can actually sense a difference?”
I nodded slowly. “The cube feels massive. Endless. This feels sharper.” I looked toward the scepter. “More invasive.”
Thor finally spoke again, quieter this time. “Infinity Stones.”
The room stilled.
I looked at him sharply.
“You know what these are?”
Thor’s jaw tightened. “There are ancient forces in the universe older than Asgard itself. Objects of immense power.” His gaze shifted briefly toward the scepter readings. “If what you say is true… then the scepter may contain one.”
Before I could ask more, Tony clapped his hands once.
“Well. That’s horrifying. Banner, Bea—you two should keep studying the murder stick.”
“I agree,” I said immediately.
Bruce nodded. “We need more data.”
“See?” Tony pointed at me. “She likes my plans.”
“I tolerate your plans.”
“That’s basically friendship.”
Steve rolled his eyes.
—
The lab already felt more familiar now. Less like borrowed space and more like a temporary command center.
Bruce resumed scanning the scepter while I sat beside one of the monitors comparing energy fluctuations against the residual Tesseract readings SHIELD had recovered from New Mexico.
Tony bounced between screens fast enough to make my eyes hurt.
“The gamma readings are consistent with Selvig’s reports,” Bruce muttered. “But the energy spikes aren’t matching expected decay.”
“Because it isn’t decaying,” I said quietly.
Bruce looked over.
I pointed at the screen. “It’s responding.”
Tony turned immediately. “To what?”
I hesitated, “People.”
That earned silence.
The scepter sat motionless in the center of the lab, blue light pulsing faintly beneath the metal casing.
The readings showed peaks when we were nearby and valleys when we moved away.
Steve walked in not long after, arriving just in time to see Tony jabbing Bruce with a miniature electric prod.
Bruce jumped. “OW!”
I stared at Tony. “What is wrong with you?”
“Relax, I was testing a theory.”
Steve looked appalled. “Are you nuts?”
Tony ignored him entirely. “You really have got a lid on it, haven’t you? What’s your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums?”
“Maybe basic respect for other human beings,” I suggested.
Steve folded his arms. “Is everything a joke to you?”
“Funny things are.”
The atmosphere shifted after that.
Sharper.
More hostile.
The scepter’s glow reflected faintly across the lab screens while Tony and Steve started circling each other verbally like two men arguing over entirely different wars.
“You think Fury’s hiding something?” Steve asked.
“He’s a spy, Captain,” Tony replied. “His secrets have secrets.”
Bruce looked uncomfortable. I felt it too—that growing pressure in the room.
Like everyone’s worst instincts were getting amplified.
Steve defended Fury automatically, still clinging to the structure of SHIELD because Peggy had helped build it.
But SHIELD was still a government agency.
And I’d dealt with enough of those to know there were always shadows underneath.
Tony revealed he’d been hacking SHIELD’s files since arriving.
Steve looked horrified.
I muttered quietly under my breath before I could stop myself, “Since when do we follow directives without questioning the motive?”
Steve glanced at me.
I shrugged slightly. “Peggy didn’t.”
That hit him harder than Tony’s sarcasm had.
Steve didn’t say anything when he left the lab.
That was usually how I knew he was upset.
Not angry—Steve’s anger was loud. Sharp. Immediate.
This was worse.
Quiet disappointment settled over him like a second skin as he walked the helicarrier corridors with his jaw clenched and shoulders tight. Agents moved around us quickly, alarms and status updates crackling through overhead speakers, but Steve barely seemed to notice any of it.
I caught up beside him near one of the lower access corridors.
“You’re brooding again.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Dangerous hobby.”
That earned the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth before it disappeared again.
The corridor lights dimmed slightly as the carrier adjusted altitude. Metal groaned around us like the ship itself was tired.
Steve slowed near a secured blast door.
SECURE STORAGE 10-C.
“Well,” I muttered, “that sounds healthy and transparent.”
Steve reached for the wheel-lock but stopped halfway through the motion.
“You know,” he said without looking at me, “it would’ve been nice if you had my back in there.”
I blinked once. “What?”
“In the lab.” He finally looked over at me. “With Stark.”
Oh.
There it was.
Not anger. Hurt.
I leaned against the wall beside the door. “Steve—”
“You jumped in every time I said something.”
“Because you were escalating.”
“So was he.”
“Yes,” I agreed immediately. “He was.”
Steve crossed his arms tightly. “You made it sound like I was wrong.”
I stared at him for a second before sighing softly.
“You weren’t wrong.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“That doesn’t mean Tony was wrong either.”
Steve’s jaw tightened.
Of course that was the part he reacted to.
“You actually agree with him?”
“I think Fury’s hiding something,” I said plainly. “And I think Tony’s right to question it.”
Steve looked frustrated immediately. “He hacked classified SHIELD files.”
“And?”
“And you don’t see a problem with that?”
I gave him a look. “Steve. You grew up during wartime propaganda, punched Nazis, and broke into military compounds because you thought the government was making bad decisions. You do not get to suddenly become the poster child for respecting authority.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Steve opened his mouth. Then closed it again.
I folded my arms. “You don’t trust institutions either. You trust people.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No, the difference is you want to believe this SHIELD is still Peggy’s SHIELD.”
That hit harder than I intended.
His expression shifted immediately.
I softened a little, “Steve…”
“She built this,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
The hurt in his voice twisted something in my chest.
Because I understood it.
Peggy Carter had been one of the few things Steve had managed to hold onto after waking up in a future that had stolen almost everything else from him.
SHIELD was one of the last connections he had left to her.
And now cracks were starting to show.
I stepped closer, lowering my voice slightly.
“Loving what something used to stand for doesn’t mean you stop questioning what it became.”
Steve looked away.
For a second he looked less like Captain America and more like the skinny kid from Brooklyn sitting on our apartment fire escape after getting into another fight he couldn’t win.
“You still sided with Tony,” he muttered.
I sighed dramatically. “Oh my God, are you jealous of Tony Stark?”
That startled an actual laugh out of him despite himself.
“No.”
“You sounded jealous. You know that as your sister, it's my responsibility to give you shit, right?”
“I was not jealous.”
“You absolutely sounded jealous.”
Steve rubbed a hand over his face. “Bea.”
“I’m kidding,” I said, bumping my shoulder lightly against his. “Mostly.”
His expression softened slightly.
Then hardened again almost immediately as he looked toward the secured door.
“I just…” He exhaled quietly. “I don’t like the way Stark talks to people.”
“I know.”
“He pushes until people snap.”
“I know.”
“And he treats everything like a game.”
I tilted my head slightly. “You know why he does that, right?”
Steve frowned.
“Because if he stops joking,” I said quietly, “he has to admit how scared he is.”
That shut him up.
Tony hid fear behind arrogance the same way Steve hid grief behind duty.
Different armor.
Same purpose.
Steve glanced sideways at me. “Since when are you defending him?”
“I’m not defending him.” I shrugged lightly. “I just understand him.”
“And you think I’m wrong.”
“I think,” I said carefully, “that you’re trying so hard to hold onto structure right now that you’re ignoring the possibility SHIELD may not deserve that trust.”
Steve stared at the floor for a moment.
Then finally nodded once. Not agreement. Just acknowledgment.
That was enough.
I nudged the blast door with my boot. “Now are we breaking into the secret government warehouse or are we standing here having an emotional breakthroughs?”
Steve snorted softly.
“We’re definitely breaking in.”
“There’s the older brother I know.”
Steve rolled his eyes and finally forced the wheel-lock open.
The metal door groaned as freezing air spilled out from inside.
The storage bay beyond stretched endlessly into shadow, stacked high with reinforced crates and classified markings.
Neither of us spoke immediately.
Something about the room felt wrong.
Heavy.
Steve moved toward the nearest crate stack while I followed close behind.
“Jotunheim recovery,” he read from one label.
Another.
“Pegasus subdivision.”
Then—
“Phase Two.”
There it was again.
Steve crouched beside a sealed crate and ripped the latch open.
Blue light spilled across both our faces instantly.
Hydra weapons.
Rows of them.
Modernized rifles and heavy artillery powered by Tesseract energy.
For a moment neither of us moved.
Steve looked devastated.
Not shocked.
Not even angry yet.
Just deeply, personally disappointed.
His fingers brushed across the faded Hydra insignia hidden beneath fresh SHIELD inventory tags.
“They kept building them,” he said quietly.
I picked up one of the rifles carefully. The energy humming beneath the metal made my skin crawl immediately.
Same source as the cube.
Same unnatural feeling.
“They improved them,” I corrected softly.
Steve looked sick.
“We fought a war to stop this.”
“I know.”
“We lost Bucky because of people like this.”
The words hit like a punch.
I looked over at him carefully.
Steve rarely talked about Bucky directly unless something really hurt.
He stared down at the weapons like he could still see the ghosts attached to them.
Hydra factories. Burned cities. Train tracks in the snow.
All of it sitting here inside a SHIELD storage bay pretending to be protection instead of fear.
“Tony was right,” Steve muttered bitterly.
“Yeah,” I admitted quietly. “He was.”
Steve let out a humorless laugh. “He’s never letting me live that down.”
“Oh, absolutely not. You handed Tony Stark moral victory ammunition. He’s going to be unbearable.”
That earned a reluctant smile from him.
Small, but real.
Then he looked back at the weapons again and the smile vanished immediately.
---
The lab doors slammed open hard enough to rattle the glass walls.
Steve walked in first with a HYDRA rifle clenched in one hand, his jaw set so tightly I thought he might crack a tooth. I followed right behind him carrying an armful of files we’d pulled straight out of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s secure storage.
Tony looked up from the monitor.
“Uh oh,” he muttered. “That’s the we-found-war-crimes walk.”
Steve dropped the rifle onto the table with a metallic CLANG that made half the room jump.
“PHASE 2 is S.H.I.E.L.D. using the cube to build weapons.”
The room went still.
I dumped the files beside the rifle. Photographs and schematics spilled across the tabletop — Tesseract energy signatures, weapons prototypes, HYDRA designs modernized with S.H.I.E.L.D. clearance tags stamped across them.
“And not small ones,” I said sharply. “These are Tesseract-powered. Entire population centers could disappear with this kind of yield.”
Tony slowly rotated the monitor toward Fury. JARVIS had already decrypted the files.
“What were you lying for?”
Fury exhaled through his nose slowly.
“Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. That does not mean we’re—”
“Building weapons?” Steve cut in. “Because that’s exactly what it looks like.”
“I was wrong about you,” Steve said, voice hard. “The world really hasn’t changed all that much.”
The doors slid open again behind us.
Thor entered with Natasha beside him, Thor’s eyes flicked toward Steve and me automatically, and for half a second something strange crossed his expression again. Something distant. Familiar.
Then the tension in the room swallowed it whole.
Bruce looked toward Natasha immediately.
“Did you know about this?”
“You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?” Natasha asked carefully.
“I was in Calcutta,” Bruce snapped. “I was pretty well removed.”
I noticed his hands immediately.
Too tense.
Flexing too fast.
The scepter sitting on the workstation nearby pulsed faintly blue.
And I could feel it.
Not the same as the Tesseract. But connected somehow.
The cube felt endless. Vast. Ancient.
The scepter felt sharp. Personal.
Like standing too close to a live wire.
“Nobody else feels that?” I asked quietly.
Tony glanced over. “Feels what?”
“The scepter.”
Thor’s gaze shifted toward me immediately.
I frowned at the glowing stone.
“It’s connected to the cube somehow,” I said slowly. “Not directly. But… related.” I struggled for the words. “Like they’re speaking the same language.”
Bruce looked toward the scepter instinctively. The glow brightened.
Natasha stepped subtly closer to him.
“You didn’t come here because I bat my eyelashes at you,” she said.
Bruce barked out a humorless laugh.
“Yes, and I’m not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy.” He looked toward Fury again. “I’d like to know why S.H.I.E.L.D. is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction.”
“Because of him,” Fury shot back, pointing directly at Thor.
Thor looked genuinely stunned.
“Me?”
“Last year Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town,” Fury said. “We learned we are hopelessly, hilariously outgunned.”
“My people want nothing but peace with your planet.”
“But you’re not the only people out there, are you?” Fury countered immediately. “And you’re not the only threat. The world’s filling up with people who can’t be matched. They can’t be controlled.”
“Like you controlled the cube?” Steve fired back.
Thor stepped forward slightly, voice darkening.
“Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it. It is the signal to all realms that Earth is ready for a higher form of war.”
“A higher form?” Steve echoed.
“We had to come up with something,” Fury snapped.
Tony scoffed. “Nuclear deterrent. Because that always calms everything right down.”
“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?”
“Oh, now we’re doing that?” Tony shot back.
And there it was.
The turn.
The room suddenly felt sharper around the edges.
Voices overlapping.
Tempers rising too quickly.
I looked back toward the scepter.
The blue gem glowed brighter.
Almost feeding on the tension.
“Can we not do this right now?” I snapped. “Because everyone in this room suddenly sounds exactly like Loki wants them to.”
Nobody listened.
Of course they didn’t.
Thor and Fury kept arguing.
Natasha and Bruce started circling each other verbally.
Tony poked at Steve.
Steve pushed back harder.
The pressure in the room kept climbing until it felt physically difficult to breathe.
Thor looked disgusted, “You people speak of control, yet court chaos.”
Bruce laughed once under his breath.
“It’s his M.O., isn’t it?” he muttered. “What are we, a team? No. We’re a chemical mixture that makes chaos.”
Fury stepped toward him carefully.
“You need to step away.”
Tony slung an arm around Steve’s shoulders.
“Why shouldn’t the guy let off a little steam?”
Steve shoved him off immediately.
“You know damn well why. Back off.”
Tony stepped right back into his space.
“Oh, I’m starting to want you to make me.”
I moved between them before Steve could fully square up.
“Enough.”
Neither of them moved.
Which somehow made it worse.
Steve glared over my shoulder at Tony.
“Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?”
“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Tony.”
Steve pointed at him, “The only thing you fight for is yourself. You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play. To lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”
“I think I’d just cut the wire.”
Steve gave a short, humorless laugh.
“Always a way out.” His expression hardened. “You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”
That one landed.
Tony’s face changed instantly.
“A hero?” he shot back. “Like you?”
The room went dead quiet.
“You’re a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle.”
The words hit me like a slap.
“Hey,” I snapped immediately. “That’s not true.”
Steve went still behind me.
Not calm.
Still. Dangerously still.
“Put on the suit,” he said coldly. “Let’s go a few rounds.”
Thor laughed once under his breath.
“You people are so petty… and tiny.”
“Oh my God,” I groaned loudly. “Are you two seriously still doing this?”
Tony rubbed a hand over his face while Steve looked ready to swing at him on principle alone.
Then Tony looked at me.
Something sharp flashed behind his eyes.
“You know,” he said coldly, “for someone who disappears on people every few decades, you sure have a lot of opinions.”
Silence.
Absolute silence.
Steve’s head snapped toward Tony instantly.
Natasha looked horrified.
Even Fury blinked.
Thor frowned deeply despite clearly not understanding the history behind it.
I went completely still.
Tony realized it the second the words left his mouth.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Steve barked, stepping around me immediately.
Tony looked away, jaw tight.
Something cold settled in my stomach.
The scepter.
It was getting worse.
The glow had brightened again.
Feeding.
Not controlling us exactly.
Amplifying.
Every insecurity. Every fear. Every bad instinct in the room.
Fury turned toward Natasha.
“Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr. Banner back to his—”
“Where?” Bruce snapped. “You rented my room.”
“The cell was just in case—”
“In case you needed to kill me. But you can’t.”
The room quieted slightly.
Bruce laughed once without humor.
“I know. I tried.”
That stopped everyone.
“I got low,” Bruce continued quietly. “I didn’t see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth…”
Natasha went completely still.
“And the other guy spit it out.”
The words hit the room like a physical blow.
My chest tightened instantly.
Not pity. Understanding. Concern.
A quiet thought settled heavily into place somewhere in the back of my mind.
Talk to Banner later. If there was a later.
Bruce looked toward Natasha again, agitation building beneath his skin.
“So I moved on. I focused on helping people. I was good until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk.”
The scepter pulsed brighter.
And suddenly the realization slammed into place so hard it made my stomach drop.
“The scepter is messing with us,” I said sharply.
But the argument had already outrun me.
Steve suddenly looked toward Bruce.
“Doctor Banner…”
Bruce froze. Then slowly looked down.
The scepter was in his hand.
Bruce stared at it in horror before immediately setting it back onto the table.
The computer beside Tony beeped loudly. Tony turned instantly toward the screen.
“Got it.”
Bruce exhaled shakily.
“Sorry, kids,” he muttered. “You don’t get to see my little party trick after all.”
Thor stepped forward, “You located the Tesseract?”
“I can get there faster,” Tony said immediately, already moving for the door.
“You’re not going alone,” Steve snapped.
Tony turned back toward him.
“You gonna stop me?”
“Put on the suit. Let’s find out.”
“I’m not afraid to hit an old man.”
“Put on the suit.”
Then Bruce suddenly looked toward the monitor.
And all the color drained from his face.
“Oh my God.”
---
The explosion hit like the fist of a god.
One second I was standing beside Steve in the lab, tension crackling between everyone like a live wire, and the next the floor disappeared beneath my feet.
Metal screamed around us.
The world tilted violently.
“BEA!”
Steve’s voice echoed somewhere above me as I fell through smoke and sparks.
Then I hit hard.
Pain exploded through my shoulder.
Debris rained around me while emergency lights flickered overhead.
“Bea!” Steve shouted again from above, panic sharp in his voice.
I looked up through the twisted hole several floors overhead.
“We’re okay!” I yelled back immediately. “Go help!”
There was a split second hesitation.
Of course there was.
Then he disappeared from view.
Because Steve Rogers would always run toward the fire first and worry about himself later.
I shoved a bent piece of metal off my leg and finally took in the room around us.
Natasha was pinned beneath a collapsed beam, jaw tight against the pain.
And a few feet away—
Bruce was on his knees.
Oh no.
His breathing came in ragged gasps, fingers digging into the grated floor hard enough to bend steel.
“Doctor…” Natasha’s voice softened carefully. “Bruce, you gotta fight it. This is what Loki wants.”
I moved instantly toward the beam trapping Natasha and grabbed the edge of it.
It didn’t move.
I strained harder anyway.
Nothing.
“Dammit—”
The lights flickered.
When they came back, Bruce’s eyes were green.
Cold fear curled in my stomach.
“Bruce,” I said carefully, stepping closer despite every instinct screaming not to. “Hey. Look at me.”
He tried.
God, he really tried.
His entire body trembled with the effort of holding himself together.
“I’m trying,” he growled through clenched teeth.
Another explosion rocked the Helicarrier.
Natasha hissed as the beam shifted tighter against her leg.
I looked around frantically before spotting a broken pipe buried beneath rubble. I grabbed it and jammed it under the beam for leverage.
“Nat, on three.”
She nodded tightly.
“One—two—three!”
We shoved upward together.
The beam lifted just enough.
Natasha ripped her leg free and rolled clear as the metal slammed back down.
“Move,” she ordered immediately.
Neither of us took our eyes off Bruce as we backed away slowly.
“Bruce,” I tried again, softer this time. “You’re still here. Focus on my voice.”
For one terrible second, it almost looked like it worked.
He looked directly at me.
Fear. Exhaustion. Shame.
Then his face twisted in agony.
“Run.”
The transformation exploded out of him.
The Hulk roared.
The sound shook the entire room.
Natasha grabbed my arm and we ran.
The Hulk tore through the equipment room behind us like a missile, ripping apart pipes and catwalks like paper. I ducked beneath hanging wires while Natasha slid under a turbine assembly.
“Split!” she yelled.
“No!”
I ignored her and followed anyway.
Splitting up felt like a terrible strategy when the Hulk was involved.
The Hulk smashed through the catwalk overhead. Metal shrieked apart as massive hands reached for us through the smoke.
Natasha fired into a nitrogen pipe.
Freezing vapor burst across Hulk’s face.
It slowed him for maybe half a second.
Then he roared louder.
The corridor narrowed ahead of us.
Heavy footsteps thundered behind us.
Closer.
Natasha turned just in time for the Hulk’s massive hand to slam into both of us.
The impact launched me sideways into the wall hard enough to crack metal. Pain exploded through my ribs as I crumpled beside Natasha.
The Hulk advanced.
Huge.
Primal.
Terrifying.
Natasha shoved herself in front of me despite barely standing.
“Go,” she hissed.
“Not without you.”
The Hulk raised his arm and suddenly Thor crashed into him like a cannonball.
Both of them vanished through the adjoining wall in a deafening explosion of metal.
I stared after them breathlessly while the ship groaned around us.
Natasha slowly pushed herself upright beside me.
“You alright?”
I winced, rolling one shoulder carefully.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Still hate getting thrown into walls though. Never gets easier.”
That almost made her laugh.
Then the intercom erupted in chaos.
“—Engine Three is down—”
“—hostiles onboard—”
“—we’re losing altitude—”
Natasha’s expression sharpened instantly.
“Barton.”
I nodded, “Steve’s on the turbine.”
“Go,” she ordered. “I’ll handle Barton.”
I hesitated for half a second before sprinting for the nearest access corridor.
By the time I reached the turbine platform, gunfire was already echoing across the exposed port side.
Steve crouched behind damaged railing firing at incoming agents while Tony flew circles around the ruined engine in the Iron Man suit.
“Little busy here!” Tony shouted.
“You think?” Steve snapped back.
I slid into cover beside Steve and immediately fired at two advancing hostiles.
Steve glanced over sharply.
“You okay?”
“Hulk threw me into a wall.”
Steve grimaced. “You say that way too casually.”
Another burst of gunfire forced us both back down.
“I gotta get this super-conducting cooling system back online before I can access the rotors!” Tony shouted over comms.
Steve opened the exposed control panel and frowned immediately.
“It seems to run on some form of electricity.”
Tony snorted. “Well, you’re not wrong.”
I leaned over Steve’s shoulder, scanning the circuitry.
“Oh. Okay. No, I see it.”
Steve blinked at me.
“You understand this?”
“A little.”
“A little?”
“Howard liked teaching me things.”
Tony’s helmet tilted toward me.
“Finally. Someone else on this death trap speaks fluent Stark.”
I ignored him, already tracing damaged relays with my fingers.
“The overload’s cascading through the secondary conductors,” I said quickly. “If you reroute through the auxiliary relays, you might stabilize the rotation long enough to restart propulsion.”
Tony paused, “Why werent you here earlier?”
Tony started rattling off instructions while I translated them into something Steve could actually work with.
“Okay, that relay there—no, your other left—”
“I know my lefts!”
“You punched the console five seconds ago!”
“It was in my way!”
More hostiles stormed onto the platform firing wildly.
Steve and I fired back together automatically.
Perfect sync.
Like always.
Then Steve stepped backward onto unstable metal.
The railing snapped beneath him.
“STEVE!”
He dropped instantly, barely catching a loose cable one-handed.
My breath caught violently in my chest.
For one horrible flashing second—
Snow.
A train.
Bucky falling into endless white sky.
No.
Not again.
“Hold on!” I screamed, dropping beside the ledge and grabbing Steve’s wrist with both hands.
Steve looked up at me immediately.
“I got it—”
“No you don’t!”
Gunfire sparked around us.
“Cap!” Tony shouted. “I need that lever now!”
I planted one boot against the platform and hauled Steve upward with everything I had.
Steve grabbed the railing.
Together we dragged him back onto solid ground.
Neither of us acknowledged how close that had been.
Steve because he compartmentalized terror like breathing.
Me because if I thought about it for more than two seconds, I might actually fall apart.
Then Tony shouted again.
“NOW WOULD BE GREAT!”
Steve lunged for the red lever while I covered him, firing at advancing agents.
Steve slammed the lever down.
The turbine vents burst open.
Tony shot free from the spinning rotors, armor shredded and smoking as he crashed hard onto the platform beside us.
For one second—
Silence.
Then all three of us exhaled at once.
---
The briefing room was silent when we finally returned.
Not quiet.
Silent.
The kind that settles after disaster, when everyone is too exhausted to process what just happened.
I sat beside Steve at the table, an ice pack pressed against my shoulder where the Hulk had thrown me into the wall. Every pulse of pain reminded me I was lucky the arm still moved at all.
Across from us, Tony leaned against the table instead of sitting, arms braced beside him, helmet discarded somewhere along the way. Fury stood at the head of the room looking older than he had hours ago.
No one spoke.
No one really looked at each other either.
Then Fury reached into his coat.
“These were in Phil Coulson’s jacket,” he said quietly.
He tossed something onto the table.
Trading cards.
Captain America trading cards.
Steve froze beside me.
The cards slid across the metal tabletop and stopped near my hand first.
Blood stained the edges.
For a second I couldn’t move.
Then slowly, carefully, I picked one up.
The corners were bent from being handled too much. Coulson probably carried them around constantly, waiting for the right moment to ask Steve to sign them without sounding too excited about it.
My throat tightened painfully.
Steve took the stack from me like they might break apart in his hands.
“Guess he never did get you to sign them,” Fury said.
Steve stared down at them silently.
The room stayed heavy with grief.
Fury finally continued.
“We’re dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor.” His jaw tightened. “I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming.”
Tony looked away at that.
I stayed quiet.
Because underneath the exhaustion and pain and grief, my brain still wouldn’t stop working.
It never stopped working.
Fury admitted Phase Two.
Admitted the weapons.
Admitted he’d been trying to build something stronger because the world was changing faster than SHIELD could control.
And now Coulson was dead.
The irony sat bitter in my stomach.
“There was an idea,” Fury continued. “Stark and Bea knows this. Called the Avengers Initiative.”
Tony’s face hardened slightly at the name.
“The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people. See if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes.”
Tony gets up and walks off. The door slid shut behind Tony with a soft hiss.
“Well, it's an old-fashioned notion,” Nick says, looking at Steve and I.
I adjusted the ice pack against my shoulder with a wince, feeling the bruise underneath throbbing harder now that the adrenaline was gone. Across from me, Steve still stared at the trading cards in his hands like he couldn’t quite process them.
Blood stained the edges.
Coulson’s blood.
My stomach twisted.
Steve finally set the cards down carefully, almost reverently, but I could see the guilt sitting heavy on his face already. Steve carried responsibility like it was stitched into his skin.
I reached over quietly and straightened the top card where it sat crooked on the table.
None of us spoke.
Fury lingered another second before turning toward the door himself.
The room fell silent again except for the low hum of the Helicarrier engines.
Or what was left of them.
Steve leaned forward, elbows on his knees, rubbing a hand over his face.
“We should’ve seen it sooner.”
I stared at the blood still drying along the edge of Coulson’s trading cards.
Maybe we should have.
Maybe none of us were ever as in control as we thought we were.
Instead, I reached for the tablet still sitting abandoned near the center of the table and pulled up the surveillance footage from Loki’s containment cell.
Steve glanced at me.
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
The video flickered to life.
Loki paced inside the glass cell, hands folded neatly behind his back, calm as ever even in captivity.
I watched him carefully.
Not his words.
Him.
People always focused on what Loki said. They missed what he avoided saying.
The pauses.
The expressions.
The reactions he couldn’t fully control.
Beside me, Steve leaned back tiredly. “You’re profiling him.”
“Yes.”
“He’s a literal god.”
I paused the footage without looking away from the screen.
“No,” I said quietly. “He wants everyone to think he is.”
I replayed the scene between him and Thor again.
Thor standing outside the cell.
Loki pretending not to care.
Then—
“Your brother,” Thor had said.
Nothing.
Mocking smile. Deflection.
Then Thor mentioned home.
Their father.
Still nothing.
But when Thor spoke about their sister—
There.
Tiny.
Barely noticeable.
Loki hesitated.
Not physically at first.
Emotionally.
His expression softened for less than a second before he buried it again beneath sarcasm.
But it was there.
I rewound it again.
Steve frowned slightly. “What is it?”
“Thor mentioned a sister.”
“So?”
“So Loki didn’t react to Odin. Or Asgard. Or power.” I tapped the screen lightly. “But he reacted to her.”
Steve watched the footage more carefully this time.
“He paused.”
“Yeah.”
Not fear.
Not anger.
Something worse.
Grief.
My chest tightened unexpectedly.
Because I recognized that look.
Someone carrying around an open wound so long they forgot it was bleeding.
Loki didn’t want power because he enjoyed ruling.
He wanted it because he thought it would finally make him worthy of being loved.
I hated that I understood it.
“He’s lonely,” I realized quietly.
Steve looked at me strangely, “He’s homicidal.”
“Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”
I replayed the footage again, studying every movement.
Loki isolated people deliberately. Manipulated insecurities. Pressed on fractures until teams broke apart from the inside. He understood people frighteningly well.
Which meant he understood himself too.
And people who understood themselves usually had very specific wounds.
I leaned back slowly, ignoring the protest from my shoulder.
“He needs an audience,” I murmured. ““Everything he does is performative. Grand entrances. Speeches. The dramatics.” I glanced toward Steve briefly, “He wants people watching him.”
“Because he’s narcissistic?”
“Because he’s desperate.”
Steve stayed quiet at that.
I scrubbed backward through the footage again.
Another thing.
Loki never actually looked comfortable holding the scepter.
Not once.
Even when he used it.
My connection to the Tesseract stirred unpleasantly at the memory of standing near it earlier in the lab. The energy had felt familiar but wrong. Related in the way lightning and fire were related.
Same family. Different nature.
The scepter amplified things.
Fear. Anger. Resentment.
It pushed gently enough that people mistook the emotions for their own.
Which meant the fighting in the lab—
I sat up straighter suddenly.
“Steve.”
He looked over immediately.
“I don’t think all of that was us.”
His brows furrowed.
“The argument?”
“The scepter.” I rubbed my thumb absently against the edge of the tablet. “When I got near it earlier, it felt… connected to the cube somehow. Not the same, but close enough.” I searched for the right words. “Like cousins.”
“That’s your scientific explanation?”
“I’m working with alien magic rocks, Steve. You’re getting metaphors.”
Despite everything, the corner of his mouth twitched faintly.
Small. Exhausted. But there.
Then his expression sobered again.
“You think Loki planned all of this.”
I looked back at the frozen image of Loki smiling calmly through the glass.
“Yes,” I said quietly, “I think we’re still playing exactly where he wants us.”
---
I followed Steve down to the detention level mostly because I knew if he went alone, he and Tony were going to end up arguing again.
The Helicarrier still groaned around us, damaged metal creaking beneath our feet. Smoke lingered faintly in the air.
Everything felt bruised.
Including the three of us.
Tony stood in front of the empty glass cell with his hands braced against the railing, staring at the wreckage Loki left behind.
For once, he had nothing to say.
Steve slowed beside him.
“Was he married?”
Tony huffed quietly through his nose. “No. There was a… cellist, I think.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve said honestly. “He seemed like a good man.”
Tony finally looked over his shoulder.
“He was an idiot.”
I frowned immediately.
Steve crossed his arms. “Why? For believing?”
“For taking on Loki alone.”
There it was again.
Guilt.
Tony wore it differently than Steve did. Steve carried guilt inward, letting it settle heavy in his chest. Tony pushed it outward until it became irritation and sarcasm and anger.
“He was doing his job,” Steve said.
“He was out of his league,” Tony snapped. “He should have waited. He should have—”
“Sometimes there isn’t a way out, Tony.”
“Yeah?” Tony shot back quietly. “How’d that work out?”
The words echoed harshly in the empty corridor.
I saw the second Tony regretted it.
Steve stiffened but didn’t bite back.
Instead he asked quietly, “Is this the first time you’ve lost a soldier?”
Tony barked a humorless laugh.
“We are not soldiers.” He pointed between himself and the room. “I am not marching to Fury’s fife.”
“Neither am I,” Steve shot back. “He’s got the same blood on his hands as Loki does. Right now we put that aside and get this done.”
I stepped in before either of them could spiral again.
“Enough.”
Both looked at me.
Tony dragged a hand down his face tiredly while Steve exhaled slowly through his nose.
Steve continued more carefully this time. “Loki needs a power source. If we can figure out where he’s going—”
Tony wasn’t listening anymore.
He stared at the blood still smeared against the wall from Coulson’s death.
“He made it personal.”
“That’s not the point,” Steve argued.
“That is the point.” Tony pointed sharply. “That’s Loki’s point.”
And suddenly I understood where Tony’s brain was going.
I stepped closer. “He doesn’t just want victory.”
Tony looked at me instantly, catching on.
“Exactly.”
“He wants attention,” I continued. “An audience.”
Steve frowned slightly. “To tear us apart.”
“No,” Tony and I said together.
We looked at each other.
Tony pointed at me. “See? She gets it.”
I rolled my eyes a little. “Don’t sound so surprised.”
Tony ignored that entirely, pacing now as his thoughts accelerated. “Loki attacks emotionally first. He isolates people. Makes them unstable. Makes them reactive.”
“He needs spectacle,” I added, thinking back to Stuttgart. “Public fear. Public submission.”
“He wants people watching him kneel the world,” Tony said.
Steve’s expression shifted slowly as he followed the logic. “That’s why he was in Stuttgart.”
“Preview performance,” Tony agreed. “Opening act.”
“He’s building toward something bigger,” I said.
Tony snapped his fingers at me. “Exactly. Full-tilt diva behavior.”
Despite everything, I snorted softly.
Tony kept going, energy finally returning to him as he worked the problem instead of drowning in grief.
“He wants flowers, parades, worship—”
“A monument,” I said suddenly.
Tony froze. Our eyes met.
“Son of a bitch.”
“Stark Tower,” I said immediately.
“The arc reactor.”
“Unlimited power source.”
Steve looked between us. “You think Selvig’s there?”
“He has to be,” Tony said, already moving. “Loki needs enough energy to stabilize the portal.”
“And he’d absolutely choose somewhere symbolic,” I added. “Big skyline. Center of attention.”
“His name in the sky,” Tony muttered darkly.
Steve was already turning toward the exit. “Then we move now.”
When Loki's invasion brings Earth to the brink of destruction, Bea Rogers finds herself caught between old ghosts and a future she never expected to survive. As the newly assembled Avengers struggle to become a team, Bea must navigate impossible power, lingering grief, and a mystery tied to the Tesseract that threatens to change everything she thought she knew about herself.
Word Count: 8.8k
A/N: Tumblr made me split it into 3 parts. I guess the 3-part arc is a thing after all.
Masterlist | Part 2 | Part 3
---
Sanctuary, 2012
Darkness stretched endlessly around us, interrupted only by distant stars and the cold blue pulse of Sanctuary’s engines. Beneath the metal groaning of the ship, I could feel the Chitauri below shifting in formation—thousands of minds moving toward the same violent intent.
I stood near the edge of the platform, arms folded behind my back, watching them gather in formation.
Thousands upon thousands of them. An army engineered to consume worlds.
The floor beneath my boots trembled as entire battalions shifted at once. The sound rolled upward through the ship like distant thunder.
Beside me, Loki remained perfectly still.
Which usually meant his thoughts had become dangerous.
“The Tesseract has awakened,” the Other said from somewhere behind us, his warped voice echoing through the chamber. “It is on a little world. A human world.”
I kept my eyes forward.
“The humans would wield its power…”
The Other moved around us slowly, robes dragging across the metal floor. Even after years working beneath Thanos, I still hated the sound. It reminded me too much of graves being dug.
“But our ally knows its workings as they never will.”
A Chitauri servant approached carrying the scepter carefully in both hands. Blue light pulsed from the Mind Stone at its center, reflecting across Loki’s armor.
I felt it immediately.
The whispers.
Not words exactly. Thoughts. Pressure. Like a thousand voices speaking just beyond understanding. Not language but in intention.
Most people touched the Infinity Stone energy and saw power.
I heard noise.
My jaw tightened instinctively.
Loki noticed.
His gaze flicked toward me for half a second before returning to the weapon. “Still unpleasant?”
“That depends,” I muttered. “Do you enjoy migraines?”
His mouth twitched faintly.
The servant offered him the scepter. Loki wrapped elegant fingers around the handle and the glow sharpened instantly, illuminating the sharp lines of his face.
For a moment, the chamber went silent.
Then the ground shook.
Below us, tens of thousands of Chitauri slammed their weapons against the floor in unison, the sound deafening enough to rattle the walls.
The Other spread his arms wide toward the army beneath us.
“Our force, our Chitauri, will follow.”
The blue glow from the scepter flickered across Loki’s face. Across mine.
“The world will be his,” the Other continued. “The universe yours.”
The pause afterward lingered too long.
“And the humans,” he finished softly, “what can they do but burn?”
Silence settled over the platform.
I should have felt victorious.
Instead, all I could think about was how many worlds must have sounded exactly like this before they died.
Earth spun in the distance beyond the viewing glass, small and painfully blue against the endless dark. Fragile looking. Human.
Loki stepped beside me, the scepter spinning once lazily through his fingers before he rested it against the floor.
“You disapprove,” he said lightly.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
I glanced sideways at him. “Careful. You almost sound like you understand people.”
The Other watched us both carefully from the shadows. Nothing escaped him. Not the familiarity between us. Not the ease that had formed over months of fighting side by side.
Not friendship. Never that.
But trust on a battlefield was sometimes more dangerous.
“You fear them,” the Other observed suddenly.
The chamber fell still.
Loki’s posture changed almost imperceptibly beside me. “I fear no mortal.”
The Other’s gaze shifted toward me instead.
I met it without flinching.
But I said nothing.
Because fear was not the same as doubt.
And deep down, beneath the armor and knives and years of surviving under Thanos—
Somewhere along the way, conquest had stopped feeling inevitable.
---
???, ???
The first thing I felt was cold.
Not air. Not temperature.
Space.
It wrapped around me the second the portal opened, vast and endless and wrong in a way human language still couldn’t properly describe. My stomach lurched as blue energy tore across the laboratory, the force of it rattling steel beams overhead.
Then my feet hit solid ground.
Hard.
The first thing I noticed was the smell.
Burnt metal. Ozone. Electricity biting at the back of my throat.
The second thing I noticed was the cube.
The Tesseract sat suspended in the middle of the room like some kind of terrible star, glowing brighter than I had ever seen it before. Blue light pulsed through the massive machine surrounding it, throwing strange shadows across polished floors and steel walls.
My knees nearly buckled as the teleportation sickness hit me again, sharp and sudden. I caught myself against a railing tucked along the side of the chamber, hidden partially behind a stack of equipment crates. No one looked my way. No one even noticed me appear.
Good.
I stayed low immediately.
The room around me looked nothing like the SSR labs I knew. Cleaner. Brighter. Stranger. The glass panels alone probably cost more than Howard’s first workshop. Men and women rushed around in dark tactical uniforms with sleek weapons strapped to their bodies. Monitors glowed across every surface.
And the clothes.
God, the clothes.
The uniforms had gotten sleeker since the forties. Less military. More corporate intimidation.
I pressed myself farther into the shadows and tried to think.
Okay. Not dead.
Definitely not 1945.
Not 1995 either.
The Tesseract had thrown me somewhere else. Again.
Fantastic.
A man in a long black coat strode into the center of the chamber, barking orders. Another scientist stood nearby looking increasingly panicked as the cube crackled violently.
“The Tesseract is misbehaving,” the scientist muttered.
I almost snorted despite myself. Some things apparently never changed.
The machine began to shake harder. Blue rings of energy burst outward.
Every instinct in my body screamed at me to move.
The beam hit the platform. The portal opened. And then the room exploded into chaos.
A gust of freezing wind tore through the chamber as darkness split open in the center of the platform. Not darkness exactly—space. Endless stars stretched beyond the opening like the universe itself had been ripped apart.
Then someone stepped through.
Tall. Lean. Armored.
The man rose slowly from one knee, smoke curling from dark green leather and gold armor. A staff gleamed in his hand, fitted with a glowing blue stone.
The room went dead silent.
He lifted his head.
Blue eyes. Sharp features. Calm in a way that immediately made me uneasy.
Not because he looked angry.
Because he looked completely certain.
“Sir, please put down the spear,” the man in the trench coat ordered.
The stranger answered by blasting half the room apart.
Gunfire erupted instantly.
I ducked lower behind the crates as agents opened fire, bullets ricocheting uselessly off the intruder. He moved fast—faster than any normal man should have been able to. Elegant almost. Like fighting was choreography to him instead of survival.
Knives flashed in his hands. Bodies hit the floor. The blue glow of the staff lit the room in violent bursts.
Gods.
Red Skull had been right.
The realization landed cold and heavy in my stomach.
Not metaphorical gods. Not propaganda or delusions or ancient myths twisted into HYDRA fantasy.
Real ones.
A blond agent dropped from the upper catwalk, weapon raised, only for the stranger to grab his wrist effortlessly.
“You have heart,” he said softly.
The tip of the staff pressed against the man’s chest.
His eyes turned black.
I stared.
Mind control.
Well. That was deeply horrifying.
The possessed agent straightened immediately and stepped beside him like a loyal soldier.
The stranger continued through the room, touching more agents with the staff. One after another fell under whatever influence the glowing stone carried.
I stayed perfectly still.
Observe first. Survive second. Panic later.
That had always been my rule.
The trench coat man—Fury, someone had called him—grabbed the Tesseract case and slowly backed away.
“Please don’t,” the intruder said smoothly. “I still need that.”
“This doesn’t have to get any messier,” Fury replied.
The man actually smiled at that.
“Of course it does. I’ve come too far for anything else.” He spread his arms slightly. “I am Loki of Asgard. And I am burdened with glorious purpose.”
Asgard.
Right.
Sure.
Apparently gods were real.
I did not care for that development.
The scientist beside him blinked rapidly. “Loki? Brother of Thor?”
Thor.
Wonderful. There were multiple of them.
“We have no quarrel with your people,” Fury said carefully.
Loki tilted his head. “An ant has no quarrel with a boot.”
I grimaced slightly from my hiding spot.
Well. Someone certainly enjoyed hearing himself talk.
The room trembled again overhead. Dust rained from the ceiling as the portal destabilized.
One of the mind-controlled agents stepped forward immediately. “Sir, Director Fury is stalling. This place is about to blow.”
Efficient. Cold. Completely different from the man’s earlier posture.
The staff really did rewrite people.
Loki looked almost amused by the destruction building around them.
“Well then.”
The possessed archer raised his gun and shot Fury clean through the shoulder.
I moved before I fully thought it through.
The second Loki and his little parade started toward the exit with the Tesseract, I broke from cover and sprinted toward Fury.
The trench coat man was already trying to push himself upright despite the blood soaking his jacket.
Stubborn. I respected that.
I slid beside him and grabbed under his arm before he could reach for the wall.
“Easy,” I muttered automatically, hands pressing against his wound.
His gun snapped toward me instantly.
Fast reflexes. Good training.
His eye narrowed sharply. “Who the hell are you?”
Reasonable question. I was still dressed for bed.
“Currently?” I hauled him upright as another explosion rattled the room. “Someone trying to stop you from bleeding out on the floor.”
His gaze flicked rapidly over me. My clothes. My face.
Recognition hit almost immediately after confusion.
Not recognition exactly. More like disbelief.
Another violent tremor cut through the facility. The ceiling cracked overhead.
Fury grabbed my wrist and started dragging me toward the exit before I could ask anything else.
“No time,” he barked. “Run first. Existential crisis later.”
Under the circumstances, I couldn’t argue with that.
I followed Fury because, at that particular moment, he seemed like the safest option in a rapidly collapsing underground science bunker full of mind-controlled agents and alien gods.
The entire facility groaned around us as we pushed into a long concrete corridor. Red emergency lights flashed overhead while alarms screamed through the bunker.
“Move!” Fury barked at a passing group of agents.
I kept pace beside him automatically despite the lingering ache in my chest from the teleportation and the ill-fitting slippers I was given back in 1995. My body still felt wrong. Loose around the edges somehow. Like reality kept trying to place me somewhere permanent and failing.
The ground shook violently beneath us. Dust rained from the ceiling.
Somewhere behind us, something exploded.
“Well,” I muttered breathlessly, “this feels familiar.”
Fury shot me a sharp look as we turned another corner. “Are you always this calm during an apocalypse?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “Usually there’s more paperwork first.”
That almost got a smile out of him. Almost.
We burst out into the open desert air just as a convoy of black vehicles tore from the tunnel entrance ahead of us. I immediately spotted Loki standing in the back of one truck like some kind of theatrical nightmare, coat whipping dramatically in the wind while he blasted pursuing vehicles apart with the glowing staff.
Loki, apparently, preferred spectacle.
I stared for half a second too long at the sheer scale of the facility around us.
Massive concrete structures stretched across the desert landscape under floodlights, larger than anything built during my time. Helicopters roared overhead. Armored vehicles screamed across the sand.
Even the bunker doors looked expensive.
Howard would’ve tried to improve half the systems before breakfast.
The tunnel behind us suddenly collapsed inward with a deafening roar.
A shockwave burst across the desert.
The ground trembled so hard I nearly lost my footing.
Fury grabbed my arm before I could fall. “Come on!”
We sprinted toward a helicopter as flames erupted from the tunnel entrance behind us. Agents swarmed everywhere, shouting over radios while debris rained from the collapsing structure.
The helicopter barely lifted before half the platform gave way beneath it.
I grabbed onto the interior railing as we shot upward into the night sky.
From above, I watched the entire facility implode into itself in a violent bloom of blue light.
My stomach dropped.
The Tesseract.
Even from miles away, I could feel it.
Not physically exactly.
More like pressure behind my eyes. A pull deep in my chest. The same strange sensation I’d felt every time it had dragged me through space and time.
I turned sharply toward the convoy speeding through the desert.
“There,” I said immediately.
Fury looked over. “What?”
“The cube.” I pointed toward the fleeing trucks. “I can feel where it is.”
That got his full attention.
“You can track it?”
“I can try.”
Good enough apparently.
The pilot banked hard toward the convoy.
Below us, Loki looked up slowly as the helicopter descended overhead. Even at a distance, I could feel how furious he was.
Fury slid the helicopter door open and immediately started firing downward at the trucks below.
Fury fired like he intended to win through sheer stubbornness alone.
There was something almost inspirational about watching a middle-aged man with a gun decide to personally fistfight an alien invasion.
I grabbed a rifle from the rack near the door and leaned out beside him.
“You know,” I shouted over the roar of the wind, “I only got here twenty minutes ago!”
“Bad timing,” Fury answered.
“No kidding!”
I fired toward the truck tires.
One shot hit metal.
Another shattered a windshield.
Below us, Loki raised the scepter.
“Oh, that feels ominous—”
Blue energy exploded upward.
The helicopter burst into flames.
The pilot shouted something deeply unprofessional as the aircraft spiraled sideways.
“Jump!” Fury yelled.
I didn’t hesitate.
Training took over instantly.
I hit the sand hard beside Fury as the helicopter crashed behind us in a violent fireball. Heat rolled across the desert at our backs while debris scattered through the air. My clothing did little to protect my body as I rolled on the ground.
I pushed myself upright with a groan. Deep scratches and patches of skin started bleeding.
“Well,” I coughed, brushing sand from my legs, “that could’ve gone better.”
Fury was already back on his feet, still firing at the retreating convoy even as it disappeared into the distance.
Loki stood in the back of the truck watching us vanish behind them, his expression calm again. Almost amused.
Then they were gone.
The desert suddenly fell quiet except for the crackle of burning wreckage.
Fury lowered the gun slowly.
A voice crackled through his radio. “Director Fury, do you copy?”
“The Tesseract is with the hostile force,” Fury answered immediately. “I have men down. Hill?”
Static answered before another voice came through.
“A lot of men still under. Don’t know how many survivors.”
Fury’s jaw tightened.
“Sound the general call. I want every living soul not working rescue looking for that briefcase.”
Another pause.
“This is a Level Seven. As of right now, we are at war.”
I closed my eyes briefly and pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Not again,” I muttered.
Fury glanced sideways at me.
“You say that like you’ve done this before.”
I laughed once under my breath. Tired. Hollow.
“It’s starting to feel like it’s all I’ve been doing lately.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. The desert wind howled around the burning wreckage while the reality of everything settled heavier into place.
Howard was dead.
Bucky is dead.
Steve is gone.
Peggy was old.
Tony—
I shoved the thought away before it could finish forming.
And now there were gods stealing powered cubes from secret military bunkers.
Wonderful.
Fury finally turned fully toward me, studying me carefully in the firelight.
“You got a name?”
I hesitated.
There probably wasn’t much point hiding it anymore.
“Beatrice Rogers,” I said quietly. “Most people call me Bea.”
His expression shifted instantly at the last name.
Not shock exactly.
Recognition.
Calculation.
“…Rogers,” he repeated carefully.
“Unfortunately.”
One corner of his mouth twitched upward.
“Well, Agent Rogers,” he said, gesturing toward the waiting rescue vehicles arriving in the distance, “ Welcome to 2012. It looks like we can use your help.”
---
Helicarrier?, 2012
The helicarrier was absurd.
That was my first official conclusion after stepping onboard.
Not terrifying. Not revolutionary. Not even impossible somehow, despite the fact that I was currently standing inside a flying aircraft carrier hidden in the clouds.
Just absurd.
Howard would have proposed something exactly like it with the confidence of a man who thought gravity was more of a suggestion than a law.
I was given a change of clothes once we got out of the desert and onto the helicarrier . I finally had a chance to shower and take care of any injuries from the past week of being teleported around and fighting. The clothes feel weird, but at least im not in pajamas anymore.
“Bucky would’ve loved this,” I muttered under my breath as I stared through the massive glass windows overlooking the clouds below.
Agent Phil Coulson stood beside me holding a tablet against his chest, looking entirely too calm for someone escorting a time-displaced SSR agent through a floating military fortress.
I liked him immediately. There was something comforting about how normal he seemed compared to everything else happening around me.
“Well,” I sighed, “It can't get any weirder than this.”
Coulson smiled faintly. “Director Fury asked me to bring you up to speed.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It is a little.”
Turns out “a little” meant several straight hours of briefings, archived footage, classified reports, and what Coulson called “necessary cultural context.”
Which apparently included something called Star Wars.
And the internet.
The internet alone nearly killed me.
“You’re telling me,” I said slowly, staring at the glowing screen in front of me, “people voluntarily put personal information into a machine everyone can access?”
Coulson nodded.
“Why?”
“…That’s still being debated.”
Fair enough.
Some things, however, were easier to absorb than others.
SHIELD replacing the SSR. The Cold War. Space exploration. Advanced weapons.
Other things hit harder.
Peggy Carter helping build SHIELD from the ground up.
Howard spending decades searching for Steve.
Searching for me.
Howard dying before he ever got answers.
That one still sat like glass in my chest.
Fury had noticed quickly whenever conversations drifted too close to Steve.
Every single time, he redirected.
Subtle at first.
Then intentionally.
A different file. A different mission. A different subject entirely.
At first I thought it was suspicious. Then I realized what he was doing.
Keeping me functional.
Not cruelly. Strategically.
Because if I let myself fully think about Steve crashing into the ice alone while believing he had just watched me disappear forever— I would stop functioning too.
So instead, Fury handed me work.
And Coulson handed me history.
“Peggy kept your clearance active,” Coulson explained later as we walked through one of the carrier hallways. “Legally speaking, you’re still considered an SSR operative transferred into SHIELD.”
I blinked. “After seventy years?”
“She never closed your file.”
That stopped me cold.
Coulson slowed slightly beside me.
“She listed you as missing in action,” he continued gently. “Not deceased.”
For a moment I couldn’t speak.
That sounded exactly like Peggy. Stubborn until the bitter end.
I swallowed hard and kept walking, “She really thought I’d come back?”
Coulson looked at me carefully. “I think Agent Carter planned for every possibility.”
God. I missed her already.
The psych evaluation came next. Honestly, I’d expected worse.
Instead of some hostile interrogation, SHIELD’s psychological team mostly seemed concerned with whether I understood reality, knew what year it was, and intended to murder anyone with advanced weaponry.
Reasonable standards.
Afterward, Fury authorized full access to the Avengers Initiative files.
That was how I learned the world had apparently started collecting super-powered disasters like trading cards.
Dr. Bruce Banner. Gamma radiation accident. Turns into giant rage monster. Wonderful.
Thor. Actual Norse god. Brother of Loki. Still not over that one.
Tony Stark. Well. That one I already knew. Unfortunately, he went through some stuff after I disappeared. I made a note to myself to reach out once I get the chance to.
I was halfway through her assessment file when I heard Coulson make a phone call.
I kept reading while he walked a few steps away.
At first, I only caught pieces of the conversation.
I looked up just in time to hear a woman’s irritated voice say:
“Are you kidding? I’m working.”
Coulson pinched the bridge of his nose. “This takes precedence.”
I blinked slowly. Coulson looked deeply tired.
The woman came back onto the line sounding completely unbothered. “Look, you can’t pull me out of this right now.”
“Natasha,” Coulson said firmly, “Barton's been compromised.”
Silence.
Then calmly:
“Let me put you on hold.”
I heard fighting immediately afterward.
Violent fighting.
Not sloppy either. Efficient. Measured.
Someone hit the floor hard enough that even I winced sympathetically.
I leaned toward Coulson slightly. “I like her already.”
To my surprise, he laughed, “I had a feeling you might.”
A few moments later Natasha’s voice returned to the line entirely composed.
“Where’s Barton now?”
“We don’t know.”
“But he’s alive.”
“We think so.”
I exchanged a look with Coulson. Definitely liked her.
After the call ended, he slipped the phone back into his pocket.
“She’s one of our best agents,” he explained.
“She sounds terrifying.”
“That too.”
We resumed walking through the carrier.
I glanced down again at the Avengers files in my hands.
A billionaire engineer in a flying metal suit.
A god with family issues.
A spy who conducted interrogations while tied to chairs.
A scientist with anger management problems.
And somewhere out there, Loki.
The man with the glowing staff. The god who could control minds. The man who stole the Tesseract.
The beginning of another war.
I rubbed a hand over my face slowly.
“You know,” I muttered, “I was having a perfectly nice evening with Tony Stark before all this happened.”
Coulson looked mildly amused. “That sounds dangerous in its own way.”
“You have no idea.”
---
Brooklyn, 2012
The gym smelled exactly the same.
Old leather. Sweat soaked into worn canvas. Metal rusting beneath too many hands and too many years. The second we stepped through the doors, I knew where we were before Fury even said a word.
Bucky’s gym.
We used to spend hours here before Bucky’s deployment. Sparring. Talking. Listening to Bucky complain while Steve patched up bruised knuckles afterward.
Before everything fell apart.
My chest tightened painfully.
The walls had changed. The city outside had changed. Hell, the entire world had changed. But this place still carried echoes of him. I could almost hear his laugh bouncing off the walls, see him leaning against the ropes with bruised knuckles and that stupid crooked grin while Steve patched him up afterward.
For a moment, I couldn’t move.
Fury noticed.
“You alright, Agent Rogers?”
I swallowed hard and nodded once. “Yeah.” My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. “Just… memories.”
He studied me for a second but didn’t push.
Somewhere deeper in the gym, rhythmic pounding echoed through the empty space.
And then I saw him.
Steve.
He was in the middle of the room, fists wrapped, shoulders tense, hitting a punching bag like it had personally ruined his life. Each strike echoed through me more than the last.
For a second I just stood there.
Because my brain refused to accept it.
It wasn’t possible.
Not after the plane. Not after the ice. Not after I started thinking of him in the past tense.
My chest tightened so hard it hurt to breathe.
Steve hit the bag again, harder this time, and I felt something inside me crack open.
I took a step forward before I could think better of it.
Then another.
And suddenly I wasn’t in control anymore.
“Stevie?”
It came out broken. Barely more than air.
Steve froze instantly.
Not slowed down. Not confused. Frozen.
Like the world had stopped around him.
Slowly, like it physically hurt him to turn, he looked over his shoulder.
At me.
For a second, nothing happened.
Just silence.
Then his face went completely still.
“No,” he whispered.
A beat.
His voice cracked on the next word. “Bea…?”
And that was it.
Steve crossed the room so fast I barely saw him move before his arms wrapped around me hard enough to lift me clean off the ground.
And suddenly I couldn’t breathe around the relief of it.
“Oh my God,” I whispered into his shoulder. “You’re here. You’re actually here.”
His hands shook against my back. “I thought you were gone. I thought I lost you too.”
“I thought I lost you first,” I said, voice breaking halfway through.
That did something to him.
His grip tightened like he was afraid I’d vanish mid-sentence. It felt like if we separated even an inch, the universe might decide to correct itself and take him away again. His arms were still locked around me, tight enough that I could feel every sharp breath he took trying to steady himself.
I pressed my forehead briefly against his shoulder, just to confirm he was solid.
Real. Here. Alive.
“Bea…” he said again, quieter this time, like he was still afraid saying my name too loudly would make me vanish. “How…?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, voice rough. “I was in the 90s— I was with Tony Stark, Steve, I swear I was just— and then I was here.”
That made him pull back slightly, just enough to look at me properly.
“Tony Stark?” he echoed, confused.
“Long story,” I muttered. “He’s…he’s a whole thing.”
That earned the smallest, disbelieving exhale from him, almost a laugh.
Steve finally pulled back enough to look at me properly, his hands still fixed on my shoulders.
“You’re real,” he said again, quieter this time.
I nodded fast. “I’m real. I’m here.”
His jaw tightened, eyes shining in a way I wasn’t used to seeing on him. His eyes kept scanning my face like he was trying to memorize every detail in case I disappeared again mid-sentence.
“I thought you died on that plane,” he said.
I swallowed hard. “I thought you froze in the Arctic and never came back.”
Steve let out a shaky breath, forehead almost touching mine for a second like he couldn’t decide if he wanted distance or not.
“I looked for you,” he said.
That hit harder than anything else.
Because I knew what that meant.
Steve Rogers looking for you meant he never stopped.
“I know,” I repeated, softer.
Behind us, Fury cleared his throat loudly.
Neither of us let go.
Finally, Fury sighed. “I hate to interrupt the family reunion, but the world is potentially ending.”
I sniffed hard and wiped at my face. “You have impeccable timing.”
Steve actually smiled a little at that.
Fury stepped forward and handed Steve the file. “We’ve got a hostile force using the Tesseract. Alien hostile force.”
Steve looked down at the folder before glancing toward me instinctively.
I nodded once.
“We’re already in this mess anyway,” I muttered.
Steve exhaled slowly before taking the file.
“Who took it from you?”
“He’s called Loki,” Fury explained. “Not from around here. There’s a lot we’ll need to bring you up to speed on. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know.”
Steve let out a short, humorless breath, almost a laugh that never quite forms.
“At this point,” he says, setting the file down like it weighs more than it should, “I doubt anything would surprise me.”
Fury’s eye lingers on him for a second too long.
“Ten bucks says you’re wrong.”
Steve finally looks up at him.
“Oh, you have no idea,” I muttered under my breath.
Steve looked sideways at me. “You know him?”
“Not personally. He stabbed a lot of people though, so first impression wasn’t great.”
Fury raised an eyebrow. “That’s the report you’re going with?”
“He also talked like a Shakespeare play while blowing up a government facility.”
“That’s more accurate.”
Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was asleep for seventy years.”
“And I skipped around time like a malfunctioning radio,” I said. “We’re both having a rough week.”
To my surprise, Steve huffed a quiet laugh again.
Fury looked between us carefully. Probably evaluating whether either of us was stable enough for this mission.
Honestly? Fair concern.
Fury turns slightly toward the exit, already moving the conversation forward like he always does.
“There’s a debriefing package waiting for you back at your apartment. Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract now?” Fury asked Steve.
Steve’s expression darkened instantly.
“You should’ve left it in the ocean.”
---
New York, 2012
The tower came into view through the car window like something out of one of Howard’s old sketches if he’d been given unlimited money and absolutely no supervision.
Which, apparently, had happened.
I tipped my head back as we pulled up to the building, staring at the massive glowing STARK letters stretching across the skyline.
“Well,” I muttered, “that’s definitely Howard Stark’s son.”
Coulson glanced over. “How can you tell?”
“The ego,” I answered immediately.
That earned me the smallest twitch of amusement from him.
The lobby alone was larger than some apartment buildings back home. Glass, chrome, polished marble—everything sleek and expensive in a way Howard would have loved but never had the patience to maintain himself.
Tony, apparently, did.
Or more likely, someone cleaned up after him.
“Still weird,” I murmured as we crossed the floor. “Howard hated modern architecture. Said it looked emotionally unavailable.”
Coulson blinked once. “That sounds exactly like something Howard Stark would say.”
“I know. I was there.”
The elevator ride up was smooth enough to make me suspicious. Howard’s elevators had always sounded vaguely explosive.
The doors opened directly into the penthouse.
And dear God.
The place looked like the inside of a genius’s brain.
Half laboratory, half luxury magazine spread.
Music hummed softly somewhere overhead while holographic displays drifted through the air like ghosts made of blue light. Tools and unfinished projects cluttered nearly every surface in a way that felt strangely familiar.
I almost smiled.
Tony Stark stood near one of the displays while Pepper Potts leaned against the bar with a champagne glass in hand. They were mid-conversation when Coulson stepped inside.
Tony looked up first.
“Agent,” he greeted dryly. “You know, normal people use doors with appointments attached to them.”
Then he saw me.
And stopped.
Actually stopped.
The expression on his face would have been funny if it wasn’t so genuinely stunned.
For a moment, he just stared.
“…No,” he said finally.
I lifted a hand awkwardly. “Hello, Tony.”
Pepper looked between us immediately. “Wait.”
Tony pointed at me like he thought I might disappear if he stopped. “No. Absolutely not. That is impossible.”
“Been hearing that a lot lately.”
Pepper frowned slightly. “Tony?”
He looked at her with the expression of a man actively questioning reality.
“This,” he said carefully, gesturing toward me, “is Bea Rogers.”
I gave a small wave.
Tony continued, “Dad’s disappearing war-era science partner who may or may not have terrified several government agencies.”
“That’s not an official title,” I muttered.
Pepper’s eyes widened slightly. “Oh my God.”
“She vanished in 1945,” Tony continued. “Dad spent years trying to find her.”
I shifted awkwardly. “Technically, I vanished from 1995 this time.”
Tony stared harder.
“…That somehow made it worse.”
Pepper walked forward first, thankfully more socially functional than Tony.
“Pepper Potts,” she introduced warmly, holding out her hand.
I took it with a grateful smile. “Bea Rogers. It’s very nice to finally meet you.”
“Finally?” Tony echoed.
“You came up in conversation,” I admitted.
Tony looked deeply offended. “I was discussed behind my back?”
“Constantly.”
Pepper laughed softly while Tony put a hand dramatically over his chest.
“I don’t know if I’m emotionally prepared for this.”
I looked between them once before pointing lightly.
“So… you two are together?”
Pepper blinked.
Tony grinned immediately. “Oh, Don’t worry. She approves already.”
“I do,” I admitted. “You look sane enough to manage him.”
Pepper snorted into her champagne.
Tony looked personally betrayed.
“I’m standing right here.”
I gave Pepper an awkward thumbs up.
“Good job.”
I regretted the gesture instantly.
Tony stared. Pepper stared.
I sighed. “That looked less embarrassing in my head.”
Pepper laughed fully this time, warm and bright, and something in my chest loosened a little.
Good. Howard would have wanted that for him.
Coulson stepped forward then, slipping neatly back into business.
“We need Mr. Stark to review the Tesseract situation.”
Tony’s expression shifted slightly at that.
More focused now. Less joking.
He pulled the files from Pepper’s hands before glancing back at me.
“You staying?”
“Depends,” I answered. “Am I being held hostage?”
“Only conversationally.”
Pepper squeezed Tony’s arm gently before grabbing her coat.
“I’m going to head out before the science starts becoming dangerous.”
Tony pointed after her. “See? That’s healthy relationship behavior. She knows when to evacuate.”
Pepper rolled her eyes fondly before looking back at me.
“It was really nice meeting you.”
“You too.”
Then she leaned slightly closer and lowered her voice.
“For the record, I thought Tony was joking about the disappearing godmother.”
I blinked.
Tony looked absolutely delighted by my expression.
“I told you that’s what you are.”
“I am not old enough to be your godmother.”
“You fought Nazis with my father. That automatically makes you at least spiritually seventy.”
“That is unbelievably rude.”
“And yet accurate.”
Pepper laughed again before finally heading for the elevator with Coulson.
The doors slid shut behind them, leaving the penthouse quieter.
For a second, neither Tony nor I spoke.
Then he looked at me again, the humor softening around the edges.
“You disappeared right in front of me,” he said quietly.
The joking tone was gone now.
I leaned against the workbench beside him.
“I know.”
“One second you were there,” he continued, eyes fixed somewhere past me now, “and then you just… vanished.”
“I didn’t choose it.”
“I figured.”
“I never know when it’s going to happen,” I admitted softly. “Or where.”
Tony nodded slowly.
“I waited a while after,” he said. “Thought maybe you’d come back.”
Guilt hit me harder than I expected.
“I’m sorry.”
Tony glanced sideways at me immediately.
“Hey.” His voice softened slightly. “I’m kidding when I give you grief about it.”
“I know.”
“No, seriously. I know you wouldn’t leave on purpose.”
I swallowed hard.
“I should’ve stayed,” I admitted quietly. “You’d just lost your parents. You were barely older than a kid.”
Tony let out a slow breath through his nose.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “That part sucked.”
“That’s one way to phrase catastrophic emotional trauma.”
“That’s the Stark method.”
Despite myself, I laughed softly.
And for one strange moment, standing there surrounded by holograms and impossible technology, it almost felt like being back in Howard’s workshop again.
The same energy.
The same rapid-fire intelligence moving three steps ahead of everyone else.
The same humor covering things neither of them liked talking about directly.
Tony noticed the look on my face.
“What?”
“You think exactly like him sometimes.”
Tony groaned immediately. “Please don’t curse me like that.”
“You do.”
“I’m cooler.”
“You are louder.”
“That’s genetically unavoidable.”
I smiled faintly, looking around the tower again.
“You know,” I said softly, “he would’ve loved this place.”
Tony’s expression shifted at that.
Not defensive.
Just quieter.
“…Yeah?”
I nodded, “He would’ve bragged about you constantly.”
Tony huffed a laugh. “He already did that.”
And somehow, hearing that made missing Howard ache all over again.
---
Somewhere Over The Ocean, 2012
The Quinjet hummed steadily around us, low and mechanical, nothing like the roaring war planes Steve and I were used to. Everything about modern aircraft felt too smooth. Too quiet. Even the turbulence seemed organized somehow.
Steve sat near the front of the cabin staring at a tablet with visible distrust.
I sat nearby pretending not to watch him struggle with the touchscreen while Coulson stood beside him like an overly eager museum tour guide finally meeting his favorite historical figure.
On the screen, a massive green figure tore through military vehicles like paper.
Steve frowned slightly.
“So this Doctor Banner was trying to replicate the serum that was used on me?”
Coulson nodded immediately.
“A lot of people were. You were the world’s first superhero. Banner thought gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine’s original formula.”
Onscreen, the Hulk roared and threw a jeep hard enough to make me wince.
Steve tilted his head slightly.
“Didn’t really go his way, did it?”
“Not so much,” Coulson admitted. “When he’s not that thing, though, the guy’s basically a Stephen Hawking.”
Steve blinked once.
Coulson corrected quickly, “He’s like… a very smart person.”
I looked down quickly before Coulson noticed I was trying not to laugh.
Steve noticed immediately.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“A little.”
Coulson straightened slightly, trying to regain composure.
“I just— I have to say, it’s an honor meeting you. Officially.”
Steve softened at that in the way he always did around genuinely decent people.
“Thanks.”
Coulson kept going.
“I sort of met you already, technically. I watched you while you were sleeping.”
A beat.
I looked up slowly.
Steve looked up slowly.
Coulson realized what he’d said approximately three seconds too late.
“I mean—not in a weird way,” he corrected rapidly. “You were unconscious. From the ice. I was assigned to the recovery team.”
I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek.
Steve looked deeply concerned, “That explanation somehow made it worse.”
“I know,” Coulson sighed.
I lost the fight against my laughter.
Coulson pointed at me immediately. “You are not helping.”
“Oh no,” I managed between laughs, “I absolutely am not.”
Steve was smiling now too, small and tired but real.
Coulson cleared his throat with what dignity he had left.
“It’s just… a huge honor to have you on board.”
“And what am I? Chopped liver?”
Coulson just shook his head.
Steve stood then, closing the tablet carefully before walking toward the side of the jet. The movement felt familiar—restless energy he never quite knew what to do with unless someone handed him a mission.
“Well,” he said quietly, “I hope I’m the man for the job.”
“Oh, you are,” Coulson answered immediately. “Absolutely.”
Then, after a moment, “We’ve made some modifications to the uniform. I had a little design input.”
Steve looked over cautiously, “The uniform?”
His expression shifted immediately toward suspicion.
“Aren’t the stars and stripes a little… old fashioned?”
Coulson hesitated only briefly.
“With everything that’s happening,” he said carefully, “the things that are about to come to light… people might just need a little old fashioned.”
Steve considered that quietly.
I leaned back in my seat and lifted a hand.
“Are you talking about him,” I asked, pointing toward Steve, “because I’m with the times now.”
Steve snorted softly.
Coulson looked politely horrified, “You called the internet ‘wizard electricity’ yesterday.”
“I stand by that observation.”
“You tried to turn on a touchscreen by knocking on it.”
“And it worked didn't it?”
Steve shook his head, smiling into his hand now.
Traitor.
I pointed at him immediately.
“You are not allowed to laugh. You thought the automatic soap dispenser was broken for ten minutes.”
“It wasn’t dispensing soap.”
“You were standing at the hand dryer.”
Coulson made a noise suspiciously close to choking back laughter.
For a second, it felt dangerously easy to pretend none of this had happened.
Steve rubbed a hand over his face. “This is a nightmare.”
“You missed seventy years,” I informed him. “I missed maybe fifteen. I’m basically a local.”
“You asked if Bluetooth was a dental condition.”
“That name is misleading and you know it.”
For the first time since waking up in this century, Steve laughed properly.
Not forced. Not strained. Real.
And honestly?
I thought the whole plane relaxed a little when he did.
---
Underground, 2012
The underground lab smelled like metal, oil, and fear.
I stood near the far wall with one of the Chitauri rifles strapped across my back, watching the humans scramble around the warehouse beneath flickering fluorescent lights. None of them spoke unless spoken to. None of them looked at Loki for too long.
Smart.
Selvig worked feverishly over the strange Midgardian machinery while Barton directed the others with sharp military efficiency. Even under the scepter’s influence, he moved like a soldier. Controlled. Dangerous.
Loki sat apart from them all.
Still.
Too still.
Most people thought silence meant calm. It didn’t. Not with him.
I leaned one shoulder against a support beam, sharpening one of my knives against a whetstone while I watched him from across the room. His fingers flexed once against the head of the scepter. His jaw tightened.
Then the blue light came.
The room vanished beneath my feet.
—
The throne room was colder than death.
Dark stone stretched endlessly beneath us while stars burned in the distance like open wounds in space. Chitauri lined the lower levels in endless rows, unmoving except for the occasional twitch of armor or weapon.
Every visit to Sanctuary left something cold beneath my skin.
Loki appeared several steps ahead of me, armor gleaming green and gold beneath the dim light. His helmet cast long shadows across his face, but I still caught the irritation in his expression before he buried it beneath arrogance.
The Other descended slowly from the throne platform.
“The Chitauri grow restless.”
Loki tilted his head lazily. “Let them go at themselves. I will lead them into glorious battle.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
He always sounded taller when he spoke to them.
“Battle?” The Other’s voice slithered through the room. “Against the meager might of Earth?”
“Glorious,” Loki corrected smoothly, “not lengthy. If your force is as formidable as you claim.”
Dangerous.
I straightened subtly against the pillar behind me.
The Other did not like being challenged.
“You question us? You question Him?” the creature hissed. “He who put the scepter in your hand. Who gave you ancient knowledge and new purpose when you were cast out, defeated?”
Loki’s composure cracked for half a second.
“I was a king,” he snapped. “The rightful king of Asgard. Betrayed.”
The room seemed to darken around him.
I knew that tone.
Pain dressed up as fury.
The Other stepped closer. “Your ambition is little, born of childish need. We look beyond Earth to greater worlds the Tesseract will unveil.”
Loki’s grip tightened around the scepter.
“You don’t have the Tesseract yet.”
The Other lunged.
My hand moved before the decision fully formed, they dropped to my knife, knees bending slightly as I prepared to move between them if necessary.
Not to save Loki.
Not entirely.
If the Other killed him, Thanos would simply send someone worse.
The scepter lifted.
Blue light reflected across black stone as Loki pointed it directly at the creature’s throat.
“I don’t threaten,” he said quietly, “but until I open the doors, until your force is mine to command, you are but words.”
Silence.
Heavy. Violent silence.
Then the Other smiled.
It was somehow worse than anger.
“You will have your war, Asgardian. But if you fail—if the Tesseract is kept from us—there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where He cannot find you.”
Even after years beneath Thanos’ shadow, the warning still made cold crawl down my spine.
The Other moved closer until it towered over Loki.
“You think you know pain?” it whispered. “He will make you long for something as sweet as pain.”
I caught it then.
A fracture beneath the anger.
Fear.
Tiny. Buried deep beneath Loki’s pride and fury and desperate need to prove himself, but it was there.
The same fear I saw every time the Mad Titan’s name was spoken aloud.
The Other reached out, clawed fingers pressing against Loki’s temple.
Blue light exploded through the room.
I stepped forward automatically as Loki vanished—
—and then I was ripped backward through space beside him.
The underground lab slammed back into existence around us.
Loki staggered once before catching himself.
No one else noticed.
Humans kept moving. Machines kept humming.
I watched him carefully from across the room.
His breathing was uneven.
Anger radiated off him sharp enough to cut skin.
Without a word, I crossed the room and flipped one of my smaller knives through the air toward him.
The blade spun end over end.
Loki caught it instantly without looking.
His eyes lifted to mine.
For a second, neither of us spoke.
Then his gaze dropped to the knife.
“My sister used to carry blades balanced like this,” he said quietly, turning it once between his fingers.
The words surprised me enough that I answered honestly.
“I’m not your sister.”
A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth. Tired. Crooked.
“No,” he agreed softly. “You would stab me faster.”
“Depends.”
“On?”
I sheathed another knife at my hip. “Whether you deserve it.”
That earned a quiet laugh from him. Real this time.
Small but real.
The sound faded quickly as his eyes drifted back toward the glowing machinery Selvig worked over.
“You should rest,” I said eventually.
Loki scoffed lightly. “And miss all this?”
“Your dramatics are exhausting.”
“And yet you remain.”
I looked away first.
Because the truth was ugly.
Because damaged things recognized each other.
Because we were both creatures shaped into weapons by people far crueler than ourselves.
In a universe built on fear, familiarity became difficult to distinguish from comfort.
---
Helicarrier, 2012
The Quinjet doors lowered with a hiss, and Steve stepped out beside me into the whipping wind of the landing strip. Agents moved with practiced precision around us while enormous engines thundered beneath the deck.
I tilted my head back slowly, staring up at the structure towering above us.
“Well,” I muttered, “that certainly screams Stark funding.”
Steve huffed softly beside me. “You can tell?”
“The dramatic flair gives it away.”
Ahead of us, Coulson approached with a woman in a black tactical suit beside him. Red hair. Sharp posture. Watchful eyes.
“Hi,” she replied easily before glancing toward Coulson. “They need you on the bridge. Fury wants a briefing.”
Coulson nodded before looking back at me. “Agent Rogers, you’re welcome to come along after orientation.”
“Orientation,” I repeated flatly. “That sounds threatening.”
Natasha’s mouth twitched.
Coulson walked off, leaving the three of us standing near the railing while the deck crew scrambled around us.
“There was quite the buzz around here finding you in the ice,” Natasha said to Steve casually. “I thought Coulson was gonna swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?”
Steve blinked. “Trading cards?”
“Oh, they’re vintage,” she said seriously. “He’s very proud.”
I snorted before I could stop myself.
Steve looked over. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, already laughing. “I’m just trying to imagine your face on a collectible card.”
Natasha crossed her arms. “You should see Coulson’s prized possession.”
“Oh no,” I said immediately. “There’s a prized possession?”
“A mint condition Lady Liberty.”
I pressed a hand over my mouth dramatically. “Not the Lady Liberty in mint condition.”
Steve looked horrified. “There were different editions?”
A nervous looking man nearly walked straight into Steve while staring at a tablet in his hands.
“Dr. Banner,” Steve greeted.
Bruce Banner looked up quickly. Tired eyes. Gentle face. A man perpetually bracing for disaster.
“Oh,” he said. “Hi. They told me you’d be coming.”
Steve shook his hand. “Word is you can find the cube.”
Banner hesitated. “Is that the only word on me?”
“Only word I care about.”
Banner looked genuinely surprised by that.
His gaze shifted toward me next. “Bea Rogers.”
I blinked. “You know me?”
“Your wartime neurological studies,” he admitted awkwardly. “The trauma conditioning research.”
I blinked at him. “You’ve actually read those?”
“Some of it’s still referenced,” Bruce said. “Your work on stress compartmentalization was ahead of its time.”
I pointed at him immediately. “Steve, I like him.”
Bruce actually smiled a little at that.
Natasha glanced upward as the entire deck began vibrating beneath our feet. “Gentlemen—and Bea—you might wanna step inside in a minute. It’s gonna get a little hard to breathe.”
The Helicarrier shuddered violently.
Steve frowned. “Is this a submarine?”
Bruce looked mildly horrified. “Really? They wanted me in a submerged pressurized metal container?”
“Nobody mentioned the flying part last time I was here.”
Then the engines activated.
The massive lift fans beneath the carrier rotated downward with a deafening roar, and suddenly the entire ship began rising into the sky.
I instinctively grabbed the railing while staring over the edge.
The ocean dropped farther and farther beneath us.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
Steve looked just as stunned.
Bruce gave us both a small, deeply amused smile. “Oh no,” he said. “This is much worse.”
—
The bridge looked like science fiction.
Screens stretched across every surface while agents barked orders over one another in controlled chaos. The windows alone were larger than my entire apartment back in Brooklyn.
Steve reached into his pocket beside me and silently handed Fury ten dollars.
Fury took it without hesitation.
“Told you,” he said.
Bruce was already moving toward the briefing table while Fury approached him.
“Doctor, thank you for coming.”
“Thanks for asking nicely,” Bruce replied. “So, uh… how long am I staying?”
I drifted beside Steve while Fury explained the situation, both of us quietly taking in the bridge around us.
It felt strange standing beside him again after all those years.
Like I could finally unclench something inside myself.
Every so often, one of us glanced over automatically.
Old habits. New century.
Banner eventually began explaining his tracking plan involving gamma spectrometers and satellite calibration, and before I realized it, I had wandered closer.
“You’re tracking residual cosmic radiation signatures through gamma clustering?” I asked.
Bruce looked delighted someone followed that sentence. “Basically, yes.”
“The cube’s energy output fluctuates under stress conditions,” I added. “Back in the forties, we noticed it reacted almost like a living nervous system.”
Bruce’s eyes widened slightly. “You saw the Tesseract in the forties?”
“Unfortunately.”
“What was it like?”
I folded my arms. “Temperamental.”
Bruce laughed softly. “That tracks.”
For the next several minutes we fell into easy scientific conversation while agents rushed around us completely lost in the terminology. Steve stayed nearby the entire time, leaning casually against one of the consoles even if he understood maybe half of what we were discussing.
Not because he cared about the science.
Because after seventy years apart, neither of us wanted the other out of sight.
Eventually Natasha reappeared beside Bruce. “You’re gonna love the lab, Doc. We’ve got all the toys.”
Bruce followed her out while Steve and I remained behind near Coulson.
Hours later, the bridge had dimmed into nighttime operations when an agent suddenly called out from one of the consoles.
“We got a hit. Sixty-seven percent match.”
Coulson straightened immediately. “Location?”
“Stuttgart, Germany. Twenty-eight Königstrasse. He’s not exactly hiding.”
Fury looked toward Steve.
“Captain, you’re up.”
Steve nodded once before turning away.
I followed him automatically.
Inside the locker room, the updated Captain America uniform already waited behind glass alongside the shield.
Steve stopped in front of it silently.
I watched his shoulders tense.
Not fear.
Memory.
Carefully, I stepped beside him and picked up the straps of the suit jacket.
“Turn around,” I said gently.
Steve obeyed without argument.
I helped slide the material over his shoulders, smoothing the fabric automatically the same way I used to fix his collars before dances and exhibitions and missions.
Only now the uniform was darker. Sharper. More tactical.
Still Steve underneath it though.
“You know,” I murmured while adjusting one of the straps, “I think the stars and stripes are growing on me.”
Steve glanced sideways. “Thought they were too old fashioned.”
“Oh, they absolutely are.”
He smiled faintly.
I tightened one final buckle before stepping back to look at him properly.
Captain America.
My brother.
Still here. Still standing. Still running headfirst into impossible situations because someone had to.
The lost Princess of Asgard awakens after centuries imprisoned beneath the ice of Jotunheim. Returned to a family she barely remembers, Idun must find her place in a realm that never stopped mourning her while forming an unexpected bond with the brother who brought her home.
Word Count: 9,861
A/N: Lowkey was not a fan of the Thor movies, but I ended up enjoying writing this one. I think my Loki bias showed through a little with this one. Enjoy!
Masterlist
---
Asgard
Odin began, “Once, mankind accepted a simple truth, that they were not alone in this universe. Some world's men believed to be home to their gods. Others, they knew to fear. From a realm of cold and darkness came the Frost Giants, threatening to plunge the mortal world into a new ice age. But humanity would not face this threat alone. Our armies drove the Frost Giants back into the heart of their own world.”
An old memory surfaces for Odin. A much more painful one, where he remembers the loss of a child, a princess. She was taken from her cradle as she slept and was never to be found again.
“The cost was great. Our precious princess, Idun, was taken from us. My biggest regret was not being able to find her again. But in the end, their king fell. And the source of their power was taken from them. With the last great war ended, we withdrew from the other worlds and returned home to the Realm Eternal, Asgard. Here we remain as a beacon of hope, shining out across the stars. And though we have fallen into man's myths and legends, it was Asgard and its warriors that brought peace to the universe. But the day will come when one of you will have to defend that peace.” Odin finishes.
Thor and Loki both loved listening to this story of their father’s, the tale of how Asgard prevailed over the frost giants and the lost princess they hoped to find.
“Do the Frost Giants still live?” Loki asks.
“When I'm king, I'll hunt the monsters down, slay them all and find Idun! Just as you did, Father. I’ll bring her home!” Thor exclaimed louder.
“A wise king never seeks out war. But he must always be ready for it.” Odin reminds the boys. Loki nods quietly.
“I'm ready, Father,” Thor claims. Loki repeats after him.
“Only one of you can ascend to the throne. But both of you were born to be kings.” Odin says.
Jotunheim
I do not remember how long I slept.
In Jotunheim, time did not move as it should. There were no mornings, no sunsets bleeding gold across the sky, no voices drifting through palace halls to mark the passing hours. There was only silence, cold and endless, stretching so far that eventually it swallowed everything else.
Even memory.
Sometimes I woke. Not fully. They would never let me wake up fully. Just enough to remember that I existed. Like I was still in a dream.
The room was always the same.
Walls of carved ice towered high above me, smooth and untouched, gleaming faintly beneath pale blue light that seemed to come from nowhere at all. Frost covered every surface like a second skin, creeping endlessly across stone and crystal alike, preserving the chamber exactly as it had been left.
Exactly as I had been left.
Nothing grew there. Not moss. Not lichen. Not even the smallest stubborn thing clinging to stone. Some part of me mourned that, though I did not understand why.
I never knew how much time passed between waking moments. Days could have gone by. Years. Entire lifetimes. Nothing changed enough in this room for me to tell the difference.
When consciousness returned, I would rise slowly from the bed of stone and walk the length of the chamber, bare feet brushing frozen floors that never warmed beneath my touch. There was always a door at the far end of the room, massive and sealed with ice thicker than my hand.
I always walked to it. I always pressed my palm against it and it never opened.
The Frost Giants rarely came to see me. When they did, they spoke little, their deep voices rumbling through the chamber in a language I only half understood before sleep dragged me under once more. They treated me less like a prisoner and more like something being stored away for later use.
A relic. A stolen thing. Something frozen in time so it would never fade.
And each time I woke, I felt less certain of who I had once been.
There were pieces I could still grasp at occasionally—golden halls, warm hands smoothing back my hair, laughter echoing somewhere far away—but they slipped through my fingers whenever I reached for them directly.
Only the cold and silence remained constant.
Until the day the door opened.
The sound alone was enough to wake me from my slumber.
Ice groaned loudly as the seal broke apart, the heavy slab shifting inward for the first time since I could remember. A sharp gust of colder air swept into the room alongside hurried footsteps, breaking the stillness so abruptly that it almost felt violent.
Someone stumbled inside.
At first, he did not notice me.
His attention was fixed behind him, shoulders tense as though he expected someone to follow. He moved quickly, breathing harder than someone accustomed to battle should have been, dark hair slightly disheveled from whatever chaos had driven him here.
Then he turned and stopped.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
He stared at me as though he could not quite understand what he was seeing.
I must have looked strange.
A girl untouched by time, dressed in pale fabrics long since out of fashion, sitting motionless within a hidden chamber buried deep beneath Jotunheim’s palace.
Not Frost Giant. Not prisoner. Not corpse. Something in between.
His brow furrowed slightly as he stepped closer, cautious now, green fabric shifting softly beneath gold armor.
“You’re…” he started quietly, before stopping himself.
The words seemed to die before reaching his lips.
I tried to answer him. At least, I think I did.
But sleep already clawed at the edges of my mind again, heavy and insistent, dragging me downward before I could fully gather myself. My fingers twitched weakly against the stone beside me, the smallest movement imaginable.
Still, he noticed.
His expression changed then, uncertainty giving way to something sharper.
“You’re not one of them, you are of Asgard” he murmured.
Beyond the room, distant voices echoed faintly through the halls. Urgent. Angry. Growing closer by the second.
The man glanced back toward the doorway before looking at me again, and I saw the exact moment he made his decision.
“All right,” he muttered softly.
Then he crossed the room entirely and reached for me. Warmth flooded through me the moment his arms lifted me from the stone bed. It startled me more than the movement itself.
After so long surrounded by nothing but cold, the heat radiating from another living person felt almost unbearable. My body reacted instinctively, leaning toward it even as exhaustion dragged heavily at my limbs.
I barely registered leaving the room.
The corridors beyond blurred together in fragments of blue ice and echoing footsteps as he carried me through the palace. Voices rose around us almost immediately.
“Loki—what did you do?”
“I found her.”
Found.
The word settled strangely in my mind. As though I had once belonged somewhere else. As though someone had been searching.
Everything after that became scattered pieces.
Light replacing darkness. Warmth replacing cold. Voices overlapping too quickly for me to follow.
And then. stillness.
Not empty this time. Heavy. Important. The room changed before I even saw him.
The air itself seemed to tighten, every voice lowering instinctively as someone entered. Even half-conscious, I felt the shift immediately.
Power. Authority. Grief.
I forced my eyes open just enough to see him standing there.
Odin.
Though I did not remember his face fully then, something deep within me recognized him immediately.
His gaze fixed entirely on me.
Not on Loki.
Not on the warriors surrounding him.
Only me.
For one brief, fragile moment, the Allfather stopped looking like a king.
His breath caught sharply, barely noticeable to anyone else in the room.
But I heard it.
My daughter.
He did not say the words aloud.
He did not need to.
The meaning was written plainly across his face.
No one had ever looked at me like losing me had wounded them.
I think that was the first moment I truly understood that I had once been loved.
Darkness pulled at me again before I could hold onto the thought for long. The last thing I felt was being carefully lifted from Loki’s arms into another pair of hands, gentler somehow despite their strength.
As though I were something precious.
Asgard
When I woke again, the cold was gone.
The warmth around me felt almost unnatural after so many years encased in ice, sinking into my skin and settling deep into my bones. Soft fabrics replaced stone beneath me, and somewhere nearby I could hear quiet voices speaking in worried tones.
“Healing magic shows no damage.”
“Then why won’t she wake properly?”
“She should have aged.”
“Something preserved her.”
The voices faded together as I turned my head slightly.
Frigga sat beside the bed. She had not left.
One of her hands remained wrapped tightly around mine, fingers trembling faintly despite the calm expression she tried so hard to maintain. Tears shone in her eyes, though she smiled the moment she realized I was looking at her.
Relief transformed her completely.
“My daughter,” she whispered softly, brushing a strand of hair back from my face with shaking fingers. “You’ve come home.”
Home.
The word felt unfamiliar.
But not wrong.
Around us, healers continued their examinations, magic glowing faintly as they searched for answers none of them seemed able to find. Questions filled the room in hushed voices—why I had remained asleep, how I had survived untouched by time, what the Frost Giants had done to me all those years ago.
But Frigga ignored them all.
She stayed beside me through every test, every whispered discussion, every passing hour, as though afraid that if she looked away for even a moment, I might disappear again.
And for the first time since the cold had taken me— I did not face the darkness alone.
Asgard, The Next Day
The celebrations did not last long.
Though music once again filled the halls of Asgard and the servants spoke openly of the lost princess finally returned home, there remained something quieter beneath the joy—something strained and uncertain that lingered behind every smile.
Thor was gone.
No one spoke of it loudly, not within the grand halls where the court gathered and laughter was expected to continue as though nothing had changed, but the sorrow remained all the same. Warriors who had once stood proudly at Thor’s side now moved through the palace with heavy expressions and lowered voices, their grief hanging over them like storm clouds refusing to break.
Asgard rejoiced for one child returned while mourning another cast out.
It felt wrong somehow. I noticed it most in the silences.
Joy moved strangely through the palace, never settling fully anywhere.
The feasts held in my honor were grand, overflowing with music and golden light and enough food to feed entire villages, yet every conversation seemed to falter eventually, drifting toward the same absence no one wished to name directly.
Thor’s seat remained empty and everyone saw it. I did too. Even Loki seemed altered by it.
He hid it better than the others, of course. He moved through the palace with the same measured grace he always had, calm and composed where Thor had once been loud and immediate. But there was something sharper beneath it now, something more carefully restrained.
The night I finally spoke to him properly, I found him alone near one of the outer balconies overlooking the city.
The stars stretched endlessly beyond the palace towers, scattered across the sky like fragments of silver glass, while below us the Realm Eternal still glittered with light despite the late hour. From this high above the city, Asgard almost looked untouched by grief.
Almost.
Loki stood near the edge of the balcony, hands clasped behind his back as he stared out across the golden realm in silence. He did not turn when I approached, though I suspected he had heard me long before I arrived.
“You should be resting,” he remarked quietly.
His tone carried no accusation. Merely observation.
“I have done little else since returning,” I answered.
That earned the faintest flicker of amusement from him.
“Fair enough.”
For a moment, silence settled comfortably between us. Not awkward. Not tense. Simply quiet.
It was strange how easily that quiet came with him.
“I never thanked you properly,” I said after a while. “For finding me, and for bringing me back.”
That finally caused him to glance toward me.
Moonlight caught faintly against the sharp lines of his armor, softening him just enough to make him look younger than he usually allowed himself to appear.
“You do not owe me thanks,” he replied. “Anyone would have done the same.”
I thought of the hidden chamber beneath Jotunheim. Of the door that had never opened until him.
“I was hidden for so long,” I said softly. “I do not know how long I have been away. Nor what I have missed in my absence. Everyone here remembers the princess they lost. I do not know if she is the person who returned.”
Something unreadable crossed his expression then before disappearing just as quickly.
His gaze shifted back toward the city below.
“What was it like?” he asked after a moment. “Growing up there.”
I leaned slightly against the balcony beside him, searching for an answer that felt honest.
“I did not grow up there,” I admitted. “Not really.”
He frowned slightly, “I do not understand.”
I watched the lights flickering across Asgard beneath us before continuing. I can still hear the cheer and joy from the hall behind us and from the streets below.
“I slept,” I said quietly. “Most of the time, I think. Whenever I woke, I was still in that room. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes longer. Then I would fall asleep again.”
The words sounded strange spoken aloud.
“I barely remember anything else.”
Loki was silent beside me.
When I glanced toward him again, the sharpness usually present in his expression had faded into something far more difficult to place.
Recognition, perhaps.
Something quieter than pity.
“That is no life,” he murmured.
“No,” I agreed softly. “It is not.”
For the first time since returning to Asgard, I thought perhaps someone truly understood how alone I had been.
Not because Loki knew what it was like to live in isolation.
But because he understood what it meant to feel separate from everyone around you. Like you do not quite fit in with those around you.
The realization settled quietly between us.
Asgard
Days later, the tension within the palace finally fractured completely.
I was walking through the upper halls when raised voices echoed from deeper within the palace, sharp enough to still every servant nearby.
The throne room.
No—not the throne room. The vaults beneath it.
Before I could fully decide whether to continue forward or turn away, Odin passed me swiftly, his expression darker than I had seen since my return.
“Stay here,” he ordered firmly.
Naturally, I followed him anyway.
The lower vaults were colder than the rest of the palace, though nothing in Asgard could ever truly compare to Jotunheim. Golden relics and ancient weapons lined the chamber walls, each carrying enough power to alter worlds, yet none of them held my attention for long.
Loki stood at the center of the room beside the Casket of Ancient Winters.
His skin was blue.
For one brief, terrible moment, neither of us moved.
Loki stared down at his own hand in horror, frost spreading faintly across his skin before fading once more into its usual form.
“Stop!” Odin commanded sharply as Loki reached toward the Casket again.
Loki looked up slowly. The expression on his face was not anger. It was devastation.
“Am I cursed?” he asked quietly.
Odin stepped closer. “No.”
“What am I?”
“You’re my son.”
Loki laughed once then, though there was no humor in it.
“What more than that?” he demanded, his voice beginning to rise. “The Casket was not the only thing you took from Jotunheim that day, was it?”
Silence followed.
Heavy. Unavoidable.
“No.”
The word seemed to strike Loki harder than any weapon ever could.
“In the aftermath of the battle,” Odin continued carefully, “I went into the temple and found a baby. Small for a giant’s offspring. Abandoned. Suffering. Left to die.”
Loki’s breathing had become uneven now, his eyes fixed entirely on Odin.
“Laufey’s son,” Odin finished softly.
The room fell silent.
Loki stared at him as though the world itself had split apart beneath his feet.
“Laufey’s son,” he repeated faintly.
“Yes.”
The look on his face reminded me of waking in that frozen room and realizing no one was coming.
“You were an innocent child,” Odin continued. “I thought we could one day unite our kingdoms. Bring about peace.”
“So I am no more than another stolen relic?” Loki snapped suddenly, his voice echoing violently through the chamber. “Locked up here until you had use for me?”
Something twisted painfully in my chest then. Because part of me understood exactly what he meant.
“No—”
“You could have told me what I was from the beginning!”
“You are my son.” Odin’s voice sounded tired suddenly. Older than I had heard before.
“Because I am the monster parents tell their children about at night?” Loki shouted.
“No,” Odin answered immediately.
But Loki was no longer listening.
His voice no longer sounded angry. It sounded unsteady. Like someone trying desperately to remain standing while the ground disappeared beneath them.
“You know,” he said bitterly, “it all makes sense now. Why you favored Thor all these years. Because no matter how much you claimed to love me, you could never have a Frost Giant sitting on the throne of Asgard!”
“If that is truly what you think of yourself,” I said softly before I could stop myself, “then what does that make me?”
The words cut through the room more effectively than shouting ever could.
Loki froze.
Slowly, he looked toward me.
I stepped closer carefully, though not too close.
“I lived among the Frost Giants my entire life,” I continued quietly. “I was raised in their world. If being connected to them makes you a monster… then what am I?”
For the first time since the confrontation began, uncertainty flickered across Loki’s face.
Not anger. Not hatred. Uncertainty. His expression faltered.
And then Odin collapsed.
The sound of his body striking the floor shattered the silence instantly.
“Father!” Loki lunged forward first, but I reached Odin nearly at the same moment, catching part of his weight before he struck the stone fully.
He felt impossibly heavy.
“Guards!” Loki shouted desperately, panic finally breaking through his composure. “Guards, help!”
The doors burst open moments later as servants and healers rushed inside.
And amidst the chaos, I saw it clearly for the first time.
Loki looked terrified.
Asgard, 1 Day Later
The palace changed after Odin fell into the Odinsleep.
Not suddenly. Not loudly. But slowly, quietly, like warmth leaving a room one window at a time.
The halls of Asgard still gleamed beneath golden light, servants still moved through the palace with practiced grace, and the great city beyond continued on as though nothing had happened at all. Yet beneath it lingered something uncertain, woven carefully into every lowered voice and unfinished sentence.
Fear lingered beneath the palace like frost beneath thin ice.
The Allfather slept.
Thor was banished.
And for the first time in longer than most could remember, Asgard stood without certainty.
I felt it everywhere.
In the silence that followed footsteps through the corridors.
In the guarded expressions of the Einherjar standing watch outside Odin’s chambers.
In the way servants bowed more quickly whenever Loki passed them now.
King.
No one said the title comfortably yet. Not even Loki.
I stood near the throne the first time the Warriors Three and Lady Sif came seeking audience after Odin’s collapse. The throne room felt impossibly large without Odin sitting upon it, the vast golden chamber swallowing sound until every voice seemed smaller than it should have been.
Loki stood before the throne instead.
The armor suited him less than I thought it would. Not because he looked weak in it. But because he stood near the throne like someone waiting for it to reject him.
“Allfather, we must speak with you urgently.”
Sif’s voice echoed firmly through the chamber as she and the others approached.
Loki descended the steps before the throne before they could come further.
“My friends,” he greeted smoothly.
There was no warmth in the title. Only exhaustion carefully hidden beneath politeness.
“Where’s Odin?” Fandral asked immediately.
Loki’s expression dimmed slightly.
“Father has fallen into the Odinsleep,” he answered. “Mother fears he may never awaken again.”
A heavy silence followed the words. Even Volstagg lowered his gaze.
“We would speak with her,” Sif said after a moment.
“She has refused to leave my father’s bedside,” Loki replied calmly. “You may bring your urgent matter to me.”
His gaze lifted steadily toward them.
“Your king.”
No one looked comfortable hearing it. Least of all Loki.
I remained near the side of the chamber, quiet and observant, saying nothing as the conversation unfolded. I had not been back in Asgard long enough to understand all the fragile politics twisting beneath each carefully chosen word, and more importantly, nothing Loki said sounded unreasonable.
“My king,” Sif began carefully, “we would ask that you end Thor’s banishment.”
For the briefest moment, something flickered across Loki’s face. Pain, but gone almost immediately.
“My first command cannot be to undo the Allfather’s last,” he answered evenly. “We stand on the brink of war with Jotunheim. Our people need stability now more than ever.”
His voice carried clearly throughout the throne room, calm and composed in a way Thor’s never would have been.
“They need continuity,” Loki continued. “They need to feel safe during uncertain times. All of us must stand together for the good of Asgard.”
He sounded rehearsed suddenly. Like he had spent the night repeating those words until he believed them.
Fandral exchanged a glance with Volstagg before nodding reluctantly.
“Yes. Of course.”
“Good,” Loki said softly. “Then you will wait for my word.”
Volstagg stepped forward slightly anyway.
“If I may beg the indulgence of Your Majesty to perhaps reconsider—”
“We’re done.”
The sharpness in Loki’s voice silenced the room instantly. Not anger, but full of authority.
For a long moment, no one moved. Then slowly, reluctantly, the warriors bowed and turned to leave.
Sif lingered the longest. She looked at Loki as though searching for the brother she had once known beneath the weight of royal armor and impossible responsibility.
Eventually, she turned away too.
The great doors closed behind them with a heavy finality that echoed through the chamber long after they were gone.
Silence settled once more.
Loki exhaled slowly, the composure he had maintained throughout the audience loosening almost immediately the moment we were alone.
“You disagree with me?”
I blinked slightly at the sudden observation.
“You noticed?”
“I notice most things.”
There was no arrogance in the statement. Only truth.
I stepped down from the side of the throne carefully, the sound of my footsteps soft against polished stone.
“I do not know enough about Asgard to disagree with its king,” I answered honestly.
“That was not an answer.”
“No,” I admitted quietly. “It was not.”
Loki watched me expectantly. I hesitated before speaking again.
“He must feel very alone.” I asked softly. “Especially now.”
The question lingered between us. For the first time since the warriors had entered the throne room, Loki looked tired. Not physically but something deeper.
“He nearly started a war,” he said after a long silence. “If Father had not intervened, thousands would have died because Thor could not control his pride.”
“He is your brother.”
“He is brave,” Loki continued quietly, turning slightly toward the throne behind him. “And strong. The people adore him. But Thor has spent his entire life believing power alone makes him worthy to rule.”
His expression darkened faintly, “One day it may destroy him.”
I studied him carefully then, trying to reconcile the man standing before me now with the prince who had carried me from Jotunheim without hesitation.
“You sound afraid for him,” I murmured.
Loki gave a quiet laugh beneath his breath, “I am. But if he returns now, he learns nothing.”
For all the sharpness others seemed to expect from Loki, I was beginning to realize how much of him existed beneath layers carefully built to keep the world at a distance.
Asgard, Later That Evening
We visited Odin’s chambers together.
The room was dimly lit, quieter than the rest of the palace, as though even the walls understood the need for stillness here. Frigga sat beside Odin’s bed exactly as she had every time I had seen her since his collapse, one hand resting gently over his while healers moved silently throughout the room.
Grief sat heavily beneath Frigga’s composure, though she carried it with practiced grace.
Her gaze lifted when we entered, softening slightly at the sight of us together.
“There you both are,” she said quietly.
I moved toward her immediately, taking the empty seat beside her while Loki remained standing near the bedside. Odin looked unchanged from the moment he had fallen, peaceful in a way that felt deeply unsettling considering the chaos surrounding his absence.
Loki stared down at him for a long moment before speaking.
“I never get used to seeing him like this.”
His voice was quieter than usual, stripped of the careful composure he wore everywhere else.
Frigga’s expression saddened faintly as she brushed her thumb gently across Odin’s hand.
“He’s put it off for so long now,” she murmured. “That I fear…”
The sentence faded unfinished into the stillness.
Loki looked toward her immediately.
“How long will it last?”
“I don’t know,” Frigga admitted softly. “This time is different. We were unprepared.”
Silence followed. Heavy and uncertain.
Then finally, Loki spoke again, “So why did he lie?”
The question lingered in the room longer than it should have. Frigga understood immediately what he truly meant.
“He kept the truth from you so that you would never feel different,” she answered gently. “You are our son, Loki. And we are your family.”
Something in Loki’s expression tightened then, though whether from grief or anger I could not tell.
“We must not lose hope,” Frigga continued quietly. “That your father will return to us. And your brother.”
At the mention of Thor, Loki’s gaze lowered.
“What hope is there for Thor?” he asked softly.
Frigga smiled sadly, “There is always a purpose to everything your father does.”
Loki did not answer. Neither did I.
Because for the first time since returning to Asgard, I realized something unsettling.
Everyone in this palace was waiting for Odin to wake and restore order.
But until then, everything rested upon the shoulders of the son who had spent his entire life believing he came second.
For a while, none of us spoke. Then Frigga looked between Loki and me carefully.
“It is good,” she said softly, “that the two of you can rule together while your father sleeps.”
Loki stiffened slightly beside the bed. I glance over at Loki.
But Frigga only smiled gently, reaching for my hand briefly before turning her attention toward Loki.
“Asgard will need both of you in the days ahead.”
The thought should have comforted me. Instead, it frightened me slightly. I had spent so long surviving as something forgotten that I no longer knew what to do with being needed.
Asgard
The Bifrost was quieter than I expected.
For something capable of reaching across the Nine Realms, carrying armies and kings between worlds in the span of moments, there was an almost sacred stillness to it when unused. Its golden mechanisms turning slowly beneath pale starlight while the universe stretched endlessly around us.
It reminded me, strangely enough, of Jotunheim.
Not in cold, but in solitude.
Heimdall stood motionless near the center of the observatory, one hand resting lightly upon the great sword that controlled the bridge itself. He looked as though he had been carved directly into the structure around him, ancient and unmovable, his gaze fixed upon distant realms only he could truly see.
I had begun to understand that silence came naturally to him. It did not feel uncomfortable between us.
Below, the last traces of the Bifrost’s light faded into nothingness.
Loki had gone to Midgard. To Thor.
Neither Frigga nor the council had questioned his decision aloud, though I suspected everyone understood why he had gone. Whether they approved of it was another matter entirely.
“You have traveled the realms often?” I asked quietly after a long silence.
Heimdall’s gaze remained fixed outward.
“I have seen every realm,” he answered calmly. “Every war. Every triumph. Every sorrow.”
There was no pride in the statement. Only certainty.
I leaned lightly against the edge of the observatory, staring down into the endless stars below us.
“I remember very little of them,” I admitted softly. “Only Jotunheim.”
At that, Heimdall finally looked toward me.For someone whose eyes missed nothing, there was surprisingly little judgment in his gaze.
“Jotunheim was not meant to be your home,” he said.
“No,” I agreed quietly. “But it became the only one I knew. The place I thought I was to be forgotten in.”
The wind moved softly through the observatory, carrying with it the warmth of Asgard’s eternal skies. It tangled briefly through my hair before disappearing again into the night.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then Heimdall’s voice broke the silence once more, “I watched over you.”
I looked at him in surprise. Heimdall’s gaze had already shifted back toward the stars.
“I searched for you for many years after your disappearance,” he continued. “The Allfather commanded it. But there are places even my sight cannot fully reach.”
The realization settled quietly between us.
“I am sorry,” he said after a moment, and though his voice remained steady as ever, there was something undeniably sincere beneath the words. “That I could not find you sooner.”
The apology caught me off guard. I did not know what to do with it.
“You were looking for me,” I said softly, “ Even after all this time?”
“Always.”
Something inside my chest tightened unexpectedly.
For so long, I had believed myself forgotten. Left behind somewhere beneath the ice while the universe simply continued on without me. But they had searched. They had mourned. They had remembered.
“I do not blame you,” I told him honestly.
Heimdall inclined his head slightly at that, though whether in gratitude or acknowledgment, I could not tell.
“The realm is glad for your return,” he said.
I smiled faintly, “The realm does not know me.”
“No,” Heimdall agreed. “But perhaps it will. Some still remember the lively princess running around the palace. Smiles following wherever she went.”
The words lingered with me long after silence reclaimed the observatory.
The Bifrost erupted suddenly into brilliant light, illuminating the observatory in gold and silver as energy thundered through the bridge. Heimdall moved immediately toward the mechanism while I instinctively stepped back against the railing, shielding my eyes briefly against the brightness.
Then the light faded.
Loki stood alone at the center of the observatory.
For one brief moment, he simply remained there motionless, shoulders tense beneath dark green armor, his expression unreadable as the last remnants of cosmic light disappeared around him.
Something was wrong. I felt it immediately.
Heimdall seemed to sense it too, though he said nothing as Loki descended from the platform slowly.
“My King,” Heimdall greeted calmly.
Loki only nodded once in acknowledgment before turning toward the exit.
“Loki.”
He stopped at the sound of my voice. For a moment, I thought he might continue walking anyway.
Then finally, slowly, he looked back toward me.
“How did it go?” I asked quietly.
A shadow passed briefly across his face.
“He accepted his exile.”
The answer sounded rehearsed.
Too clean. Too empty.
He moved toward the bridge leading away from the observatory, and after only the briefest hesitation, I followed him.
Neither of us spoke for some time as we walked through the palace corridors together. Dawn had only just begun creeping across Asgard’s golden towers, leaving most of the halls quiet and dim beneath flickering torchlight.
Loki walked slightly ahead of me, hands clasped behind his back, posture rigid enough to make the tension in him impossible to ignore.
“You lied to him.” The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
Loki slowed slightly. But he did not turn around.
“Yes,” he answered calmly.
“You told him Odin was dead.”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of it unsettled me more than anger would have.
I quickened my pace slightly until I was walking beside him instead, “Why? Why would you lie to Thor about that?”
Loki laughed softly beneath his breath, though there was no humor in the sound.
“Because it was easier.”
“For who?”
That finally made him look at me. There was something dangerous in his expression now—not rage exactly, but something wounded enough to resemble it.
“You think me cruel.”
“I think you are hurting.”
The answer seemed to catch him off guard. His gaze faltered briefly before hardening once more.
“You know nothing about what I am.”
The words were sharper than anything he had ever directed toward me before.
But beneath them, I heard the real meaning clearly enough.
Frost Giant. Monster. Other.
I stopped walking.
“So that is what this is truly about.”
Loki turned fully toward me now, frustration flashing openly across his face for the first time since I had known him.
“You do not understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“You cannot possibly understand what it feels like to discover your entire life has been built upon a lie.”
His voice echoed quietly through the empty corridor.
“To realize that every look, every kindness, every moment suddenly carries doubt beneath it.”
I held his gaze steadily. “You think they love you less now.”
Something in his expression cracked. Only for a second. But I saw it.
Loki looked away first, “They should.”
I stepped closer carefully.
“Why?”
“Because I am him,” Loki snapped suddenly. “I am Laufey’s son.”
“And?”
The word escaped before I could soften it.
Loki stared at me in disbelief.
“And?” he repeated sharply.
“You think that changes who you are?”
“It changes everything.”
“No,” I answered quietly. “It only changes how you see yourself.”
For a moment, neither of us moved.
The corridor around us remained silent and empty, the first light of dawn spilling faintly across polished gold floors between us.
“You carried me out of Jotunheim,” I said softly. “You brought me home when you had every reason not to care what happened to me.”
Loki’s jaw tightened slightly.
“You were innocent.”
“So were you.”
The words settled heavily between us. Two children who were innocents in the war between worlds.
I saw the exact moment they reached him.
Loki looked away again almost immediately, but not before I caught the flicker of emotion breaking through his carefully controlled expression.
Fear. Grief. Anger. Not at me, but at himself. At what he believed himself to be.
For all the distance he tried to place between us, I realized then that Loki still saw me as something separate from him. A princess stolen by Frost Giants.
Not someone shaped by them. Not someone who had survived among them.
But I did not care what blood ran through his veins.
He was still the person who had opened the door. Still the one who brought me home.
And perhaps some part of him desperately wanted to believe that mattered. That made him less of a monster that children hide from.
“You should rest,” Loki said quietly after a long silence.
The sharpness in his voice had faded again. I nodded slightly.
But before he could turn away completely, I reached out and gently took his hand.
Warm. Living. Real.
Loki looked down at our joined hands in visible surprise.
Then slowly, cautiously, his fingers tightened around mine in return.
Like someone afraid to trust the comfort being offered to him.
“Good night, Loki. It is… nice not to be alone anymore.” I said with a small smile before departing for my bed chambers.
Jotunheim
Far beyond the golden skies of Asgard, beneath endless storms and frozen mountains, Loki stood once more within the ruined halls of Jotunheim.
The realm looked dead.
Ice stretched endlessly across the wasteland, pale blue and jagged beneath dim celestial light while ancient frost crept across shattered stone pillars surrounding the throne of the Frost Giants.
Laufey watched him carefully from atop that throne.
“Kill him.”
The command echoed coldly through the empty hall, but Loki remained perfectly still.
“After all I’ve done for you?” he asked lightly.
“So,” Laufey rumbled, “you are the one who showed us the way into Asgard.”
“That,” Loki replied with a faint smile, “was merely a bit of fun. To ruin my brother’s coronation. And to protect the realm from his idiotic rule for a little while longer.”
Laufey’s gaze narrowed slightly, “I will hear you.”
Loki stepped forward slowly, dark green armor stark against the frozen blue around him.
“I will conceal you and a handful of your soldiers,” he explained evenly. “Lead you into Odin’s chambers, where you may slay him while he lies helpless.”
“Why not kill him yourself?”
For one brief moment, something unreadable flickered behind Loki’s eyes.
“I suspect the people of Asgard would not look kindly upon a king who murdered his predecessor.”
The title lingered heavily in the frozen air.
“Once Odin is dead,” Loki continued smoothly, “I will return the Casket to you. And you may restore Jotunheim to all its… glory.”
Silence followed.
Then slowly, Laufey smiled, “I accept.”
Asgard, 3 Days Later
Something changed in Loki after Midgard.
At first, it was subtle enough that I almost convinced myself I imagined it.
A hesitation where there had once been calm certainty. A sharpness in his voice that lingered longer than before. He still moved through the palace with the same effortless grace, still carried the weight of the crown with measured composure, but now there was something restless beneath it all, like a storm barely contained beneath ice.
And once I noticed it, I could not stop seeing it.
He spent less time in the palace after returning from Earth. Entire evenings passed where no one seemed to know where he had gone, only for him to reappear hours later with frost still clinging faintly to the edges of his armor before vanishing again beneath illusion and magic.
Jotunheim.
I knew before anyone said it aloud. Part of me wanted to ask why. Another part already understood.
Loki was searching for something. Answers, perhaps. Or punishment. Maybe both.
The first time he returned from one of those journeys, I found him standing alone near the outer gardens overlooking the stars. A faint red light shone from under my feet as I walked. Spring flowers had begun blooming there beneath my touch almost unconsciously, pale green vines curling along golden stone wherever I lingered too long.
Life followed me now that I was awake.
Small things at first.
A branch flowering out of season. Dead grass returning green beneath my feet. The palace servants whispered about it when they thought I could not hear. Goddess of Spring. Bringer of New Life.
I did not feel like either of those things.
Not when Loki looked at me now like someone standing too close to the edge of a cliff.
“You went back there,” I said quietly.
Loki did not deny it.
The night wind shifted softly through the gardens, carrying frost from him and warmth from me until the air between us felt caught between two seasons.
“It is my realm too,” he answered at last.
“You do not belong to Jotunheim,” I said gently.
At that, Loki laughed softly beneath his breath, “You still do not understand.”
He turned toward me then, and for a moment I caught sight of something raw beneath the mask he wore so carefully for everyone else.
“I spent my entire life believing I was destined for greatness here,” he continued quietly. “Only to discover I was never truly one of them at all.”
“You are Odin’s son.”
“I am Laufey’s son.”
The correction came instantly. Sharply. Like a wound reopened.
I stepped closer anyway, “And what difference has that made to the person you were before learning it?”
Loki’s jaw tightened, “You think blood means nothing?”
“I think choice means more.”
“You speak like someone who has never been hated for what they are.”
The words stung more than I expected. Not because they were cruel. Because some part of him truly believed them.
“I spent my life locked away in a frozen room because of what I am,” I answered quietly. “Do not speak to me as though I have never known fear.”
Silence followed. Heavy. Uncomfortable.
“You may think of me as a naive princess, but don’t forget that I was still raised as a warrior. They kept me asleep, weak, defenceless for years.”
Loki looked away first.
“Every time I could feel the draw of sleep, I worry that I will not wake up again.” I shared, not having enough courage to look over at Loki. My fears finally spoken out loud after holding it in for so long.
Loki reached over and squeezes my hand softly. We stand next to each other in a comfortable silence.
The next time I saw him, he was speaking with Heimdall.
The observatory stood quiet beneath the stars, golden mechanisms humming softly around them while the Bifrost rested dormant at the center platform. I enjoy spending time in the observatory, watching the stars.
“I turned my gaze upon you in Jotunheim,” he said evenly, “but could neither see nor hear you. You were shrouded from me. Like the Frost Giants that entered this realm.”
Loki’s expression did not change.
“Perhaps your senses have weakened after your many years of service.”
“Or perhaps,” Heimdall replied calmly, “someone has found a way to hide what he does not wish me to see.”
The air between them sharpened instantly.
“You have great power, Heimdall,” Loki said softly. “Did Odin ever fear you?”
“No.”
“And why is that?”
“Because he is my king,” Heimdall answered steadily. “And I am sworn to obey him.”
Something cold settled behind Loki’s eyes.
“He was your king,” he corrected quietly. “And you are sworn to obey me now.”
Heimdall held his gaze, “Yes.”
“Then you will open the Bifrost to no one,” Loki commanded softly, “until I have repaired the damage my brother has done.”
The words lingered heavily through the observatory. Like someone trying desperately to become a king before he truly understood what that meant.
The words sounded wrong in his voice somehow. Colder. Sharper.
Asgard, The Next Night
The truth revealed itself fully not long after.
I realized something was wrong the moment I entered the observatory.
The Bifrost churned violently with energy, golden mechanisms turning faster than they should while Heimdall stood restrained at the center platform, Covered in a thick layer of ice, strong enough that even he could not break free from it.
And Loki—
Loki stood before the controls.
The Destroyer armor loomed nearby, empty and waiting, its massive metal frame glowing faintly from within like something alive beneath the surface.
My stomach dropped instantly.
“What are you doing?”
Loki glanced toward me sharply, surprise flashing briefly across his face before disappearing behind composure.
“You should not be here.”
“Heimdall is bound.”
“Yes.”
“You are sending the Destroyer to Earth.”
Again—
“Yes.”
The calmness in his voice terrified me more than anger would have.
I moved toward him quickly, disbelief rising with every step.
“Thor is there.”
“I am aware.”
“There are mortals there.”
His expression hardened slightly.
“Thor chose exile.”
“No,” I snapped. “You chose this. You are choosing fear and hatred. Like a mon-”
For the first time, frustration and hurt cracked visibly across Loki’s face.
“I am doing what a King needs to do. You do not understand what is at stake.”
“Then explain it to me!”
The observatory trembled faintly as the Bifrost activated again, cosmic energy roaring beneath our feet while the Destroyer began its descent toward Midgard.
Toward Thor. Toward innocent people who had no understanding of the war unfolding above them.
“We are supposed to keep Midgard safe,” I said desperately. “Not send a killing machine against it.”
Loki turned toward me fully then, and the coldness in his expression startled me more than anything else had since returning to Asgard.
“You still think like Odin.”
“And you do not?”
“No.”
The answer echoed sharply through the observatory.
“He would never have done this.”
“Wouldn’t he?” Loki countered bitterly. “You know nothing about the wars he fought to build this realm.”
“That does not make this right.”
“Right?” Loki laughed once, though there was no humor in it. “Thor would have destroyed worlds if Father had allowed him to continue unchecked, yet all anyone speaks of is his nobility.”
“This is not about Thor.”
“Yes,” Loki snapped suddenly. “It is.”
The words rang through the observatory loud enough to silence even the roar of the Bifrost for a moment.
“He was born worthy before he ever earned it. Loved before he ever proved himself deserving of it. Everything was always his.”
His voice had changed now. Not calm anymore. Not controlled. Years of resentment cracked through every word.
“And now?” Loki continued. “Now they expect me to mourn him while he lives more freely in exile than I ever did in this palace.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
“This is not you.”
At that, Loki went still.
Then slowly, dangerously, “What if it is?”
Something inside me went painfully still.
Worse than anger. Worse than hatred.
He believed it.
“You are not a monster.”
“No?” Loki stepped closer. “You said it yourself. I am a monster, no different from the Frost Giants.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“But it is what I am.”
His eyes flashed briefly blue beneath the observatory lights.
Cold. Ancient. Frost Giant.
“You think this changes you?” I whispered.
“It defines me.”
“No,” I answered fiercely. “It defines nothing.”
Loki’s expression hardened completely then, the brief cracks in his composure sealing shut once more.
“You should not have come here.”
“And you should not be sending a killing machine to Midgard!”
The words echoed violently through the observatory.
For one brief moment, genuine anger flashed across Loki’s face, “You speak as though you understand rulership.”
“I understand cruelty.”
That struck him. I saw it immediately. But instead of softening him, it only made something darker settle into place behind his eyes.
“You sound just like them,” I said quietly. “The Frost Giants.”
Loki stared at me for a long moment.
“I am a Frost Giant,” he said coldly. “By birthright.”
The words felt like a door slamming shut between us.
Before I could answer, green magic curled suddenly around my wrists, sharp and unyielding. I gasped as invisible force locked around me, pinning my arms at my sides.
“Loki—”
“You will return to your chambers.”
The command carried the unmistakable weight of a king.
“I will not.”
“You will.”
The magic tightened. Not enough to hurt. Enough to force obedience.
“You cannot truly believe this is the answer,” I whispered desperately.
For one terrible moment, uncertainty flickered across his face again.Then it vanished.
“Take the princess back to her rooms,” Loki ordered the guards approaching behind me. “And do not allow her to leave.”
The Einherjar hesitated only briefly before obeying. I fought them at first. Not violently, but enough.
Enough to make my anger clear as they escorted me away from the observatory while the Bifrost thundered behind us.
The guards outside my chambers did not speak to me. Not when I demanded to be released. Not when I threatened to force the doors apart myself.
Not even when the walls began blooming with green vines and flowering branches in response to my rising emotions, life pushing through polished Asgardian stone faster than the servants could cut it back.
Loki’s magic still lingered heavily across the room, woven through the walls and doorway like invisible chains. A king’s command. Cold and unyielding no matter how angry I became.
I paced endlessly beneath the dim golden light of my chambers, frustration tightening sharper and sharper in my chest with every passing moment.
Thor was on Midgard.
The Destroyer had been sent after him.
And Loki. Loki was slipping further away from himself with every hour.
Then suddenly, a distant scream echoed through the corridor.
I froze.
Another followed almost immediately after, sharper this time, cut short by the unmistakable sound of steel striking armor.
Battle.
The guards outside my chambers shouted something I could not fully hear before silence fell abruptly.
Then the magic sealing my doors weakened. I did not hesitate.
Red light flickered briefly across my fingertips as I forced against the remaining enchantment. The lock shattered instantly beneath the strain and the doors burst open hard enough to slam against the walls beyond them.
Two Einherjar guards already lay dead in the corridor outside.
Frost spread across the floor around their bodies.
Frost Giants.
A cold wave of realization swept through me immediately.
Laufey.
I drew the sword hanging beside the doorway without thinking and ran.
The palace halls were eerily quiet.
Not an invasion. Not an army. A strike team.
Small enough to avoid immediate detection.
Fast enough to reach Odin before anyone could stop them.
The realization made my stomach twist violently.
I sprinted through the corridors toward Odin’s chambers, boots striking sharply against polished gold floors while distant sounds of fighting echoed somewhere ahead.
By the time I reached the doors, the guards protecting the room were already dead.
Ice crept across the walls surrounding the entrance while shattered spears and fallen swords littered the ground beneath them.
I pushed through the doors immediately. The chamber beyond had become chaos.
A dozen Frost Giants moved through the room, blue skin stark against golden Asgardian walls while overturned furniture and shattered stone littered the floor around them. Frigga stood near Odin’s bedside with a blade in her hand, fury and fear burning together across her expression as she defended the Allfather’s unconscious form.
And at the center of it all, Laufey.
His pale eyes lifted toward me the moment I entered.
For one brief second, surprise flickered across his face.
Then it vanished.
I charged before he could speak.
The first Frost Giant reached me near the doorway, swinging a jagged ice blade toward my side. I blocked instinctively, Asgardian steel clashing hard enough to jar my entire arm before twisting sharply beneath his guard and driving my sword through his chest.
The second attacked immediately after.
Then the third.
Movement took over after that. Training. Instinct.
I had spent years weak and trapped in Jotunheim, but I had not been idle once I had returned home. Frigga herself had begun training me in magic after my return, determined that I would never again be unable to defend myself again.
Steel rang sharply through the chamber as I fought beside the Queen of Asgard.
A Frost Giant lunged toward Odin’s bed.
I intercepted him before he reached it, slashing across his arm hard enough to force the weapon from his hand before driving my shoulder into his chest. He crashed backward into one of the stone pillars lining the room while frost exploded outward across its surface.
Another grabbed my arm from behind.
Cold burned instantly through my skin.
I twisted violently and drove the hilt of my sword into his jaw before cutting across his chest fast enough to send him collapsing beside the others.
But there were too many.
And they were all moving toward Odin.
Laufey remained near the center of the room watching everything unfold with terrifying calmness, making no move to join the fight himself yet.
As though he already knew he had won.
“It's said you can still hear and see what transpires around you,” Laufey said coldly as he stepped toward Odin’s bed. “I hope it’s true. So that you may know your death came at the hand of Laufey.”
Frigga moved immediately to intercept him. So did I.
But before either of us reached him, green light flashed sharply through the chamber.
Loki appeared behind Laufey like a shadow.
“And your death,” Loki said quietly, driving a blade straight through Laufey’s chest, “came by the son of Odin.”
Everything stopped. Laufey staggered once in shock before collapsing heavily to the floor. Silence followed.
The remaining Frost Giants barely had time to react before Einherjar soldiers stormed into the chamber behind us, quickly overwhelming what remained of the attackers.
I lowered my sword slowly, breathing hard. Loki stood motionless over Laufey’s body, staring down at the dead king with an expression I could not read.
Frigga stepped toward him first.
“Loki,” she breathed. “You saved him.”
Loki looked toward her slowly.
Toward Odin. Toward all of us.
“I swear to you, Mother,” he said quietly, “they will pay for what they’ve done today. I will end the Jotun threat, now and forever!”
The hatred in his voice frightened me more than the battle had. Because for the first time since meeting him, Loki no longer sounded afraid. He sounded certain.
Loki turns to look at Odin, still asleep, “And I will make you proud.”
Suddenly, the door slams open. I quickly raise my sword at the intruder.
Thor stood across the chamber, armor scorched and Mjolnir once more resting firmly in his hand while Frigga rushed toward him, relief overwhelming her expression.
“Thor!” she breathed. “I knew you’d return to us.”
Thor’s arrival changed the entire room instantly. Relief. Anger. Hope. Everything tangled together so quickly I could barely follow it.
Thor embraced her briefly before pulling back, his expression hardening immediately as he looked toward Loki.
“Found its way back to you, did it?” Loki asked, sneeringly.
“No thanks to you.” Thor replies.
Frigga pulls away from Thor and looks between her two sons. I lean on my sword, witnessing the reunion from the sidelines.
“Why don’t you tell her how you sent the Destroyer to kill our friends,” Thor demanded. “To kill me.”
Frigga froze.
“What?”
Loki stood near the bed, face unreadable.
“Why,” he replied smoothly, “it must have been enforcing Father’s last command.”
“You’re a talented liar, Brother,” Thor snapped. “Always have been.”
Something twisted painfully inside my chest at the look on Loki’s face then.
Not guilt. Not entirely. Hurt. Like every terrible choice had finally become too heavy to carry.
“It’s good to have you back,” Loki answered calmly. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”
The blast struck Thor before I fully realized Loki had moved. One moment they were arguing.
The next Thor was gone.
“—I have to destroy Jotunheim.”
The words silenced the room instantly.
Frigga and I stared at him in disbelief as he ran out of the room and towards the observatory.
Asgard, The Next Day
The palace felt emptier afterward.
Quieter.
Like grief itself lingered in every corridor.
No one spoke much of Loki in the days following his fall. Not openly. But his absence settled heavily across Asgard all the same, especially within the royal halls where he had spent so long standing just slightly behind Thor.
I mourned him quietly. Perhaps more deeply than anyone realized.
Loki had been the first person to bring me home. The first person in Asgard to truly speak to me as though I belonged there.
And despite everything, despite the lies, the anger, the terrible things he had done. I still remembered the boy who carried me out of Jotunheim in his arms. I still remembered the brother who stayed beside my bedside while I slept during those first few nights. Part of me always would.
Life continued regardless. It always did. Even after the harshest winters.
The warriors returned often to the palace now that Thor had regained his place among them, their laughter once again filling the halls of Asgard where silence had lingered for too long.
And Thor changed too.
The arrogance remained sometimes, hidden beneath smiles and confidence, but now there was patience beneath it too. Thoughtfulness. Kindness. Humility.
One afternoon, I found him sitting near the gardens overlooking the stars, Mjolnir resting beside him while spring flowers curled slowly across the stone beneath my feet.
“You’re doing that on purpose now,” Thor observed lightly.
I glanced downward at the flowers blooming around us and smiled faintly.
“Maybe.”
Thor laughed softly before the sound faded again. He had been quieter these past few days. Sadness lingered behind his smiles more often than not.
“You miss her,” I said gently.
Thor leaned back slightly against the stone bench.
“Yes.”
Jane. The mortal woman from Earth. The woman who had changed him.
“The bridge is gone,” he murmured. “I cannot return to her now.”
I sat beside him quietly.
“The realms found each other once before,” I said after a moment. “They can again.”
Thor glanced toward me, “You truly believe that?”
“I am the goddess of spring,” I reminded him softly. “Hope is rather part of the job description.”
That finally earned a genuine laugh from him.
Small. But real.
For a moment, the sadness eased slightly from his face.
Then footsteps approached behind us.
We turned to find Odin and Frigga walking slowly through the gardens together, the Allfather finally restored though still visibly weary from sleep and loss alike.
Sif stood nearby speaking quietly with Frigga.
“My Queen,” Sif said softly, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Frigga’s expression faltered only slightly.
“How is he?” she asked.
Sif glanced toward Thor.
“He mourns for his brother,” she answered gently. “And… he misses her. The mortal.”
Thor looked away awkwardly.
Odin stepped forward then, resting a hand briefly upon Thor’s shoulder.
“You will be a wise king.”
Thor shook his head immediately.
“There will never be a wiser king than you,” he answered quietly. “Or a better father.”
Emotion tightened briefly across Odin’s face.
Thor sounded younger suddenly.Not like the warrior who had challenged kingdoms. Just a son trying to make his father proud.
“I have much to learn,” Thor continued. “I know that now. Someday perhaps… I shall make you proud.”
Odin smiled faintly.
“You already have.”
Silence settled softly across the gardens after that. Not painful this time. Peaceful.
Summary: Before Dr. Ryland Grace was drafted into the task force, the female-dominated lab section (including you) had to deal with Dr. Tom, a brilliant but subtly toxic aerospace engineer. Stratt keeps him around because he’s useful, leaving you and the other female scientists to form a tight-knit "safe space" support network to navigate his exhausting, offhand remarks. Then, Grace joins the team. He isn't just a brilliant junior high teacher turned savior; he’s someone who absolutely cannot stand bullies or casual cruelty.
Word Count: 6.8k
The atmosphere inside the Task Force Hail Mary research facility was a paradoxical mix of apocalyptic dread and sterile, fluorescent-lit bureaucracy. Everyone knew the stakes. The sun was dying, Astrophage was consuming the solar system, and humanity was on a ticking clock. But inside the subsurface labs of Section 4, a smaller, more localized toxicity had been festering long before Dr. Ryland Grace ever set foot in the building.
Dr. Tom was a brilliant aerospace engineer—which, in Eva Stratt’s eyes, made him virtually untouchable. He was also a master of the casual, deniable slight. He never screamed or used overt slurs; instead, he dealt in a currency of patronizing sighs, stolen credit, and offhand remarks that weaponized gender against the highly qualified women surrounding him. His comments were rarely blatant enough to get him into serious trouble individually, always wrapped in a layer of plausible deniability.
"Relax, it was a joke."
"You're too sensitive."
"I'm complimenting you."
Each remark by itself was easy to dismiss. Together, they created an exhausting, suffocating pattern.
To survive without losing their minds—or being shipped off to a black site by Stratt for "disrupting progress"—the female scientists had formed an unspoken alliance. It started as an encrypted group chat titled Thermal Dynamics Support, but it quickly evolved into a genuine safe space. It was a network of shared looks, quiet interventions, and a meticulously kept digital log of Tom’s behavior, maintained just in case they ever found a way to bypass Stratt’s pragmatic shield. You were a core part of this protective circle, helping junior researchers navigate Tom’s exhausting ego.
You weren't necessarily the highest-ranking scientist or the loudest voice in the room. You were simply the one who listened. You remembered who got talked over. You checked on colleagues after difficult meetings. You quietly validated them, confirming that no, they weren't overreacting. You shared coffee breaks with anyone who needed to vent.
Over time, the women on the project began gravitating toward you. Some sought advice; others just needed a place to exhale. A few started calling your office "the sanctuary." At first, it was just one person stopping by after a rough meeting. Then another. Then someone bringing coffee and shutting the door behind them with a heavy sigh. Eventually, people stopped asking if you were busy. They just knocked and walked in.
One afternoon, a systems engineer named Amy dropped into the chair across from your desk, looking entirely drained.
"He did it again."
You didn't need clarification. "What was it this time?"
"Apparently, women are 'naturally better' at taking notes."
You closed your eyes, a weary sigh slipping past your lips. "Wonderful."
Amy laughed bitterly, then spent ten minutes venting. At the end of it, she asked the inevitable question: "Should I report it?"
The words hung heavily in the air. You knew she wasn't really asking for permission; she was asking whether it was worth the inevitable, career-stalling fallout.
Eventually, she shook her head and rose. "Never mind."
When she left, the silence rushed back in. That same conversation repeated itself over and over again with different names and different comments, but it always had the same ending. Nothing changed.
Then came the day Stratt dragged a disheveled, hyperactive junior high school teacher into the lab. Ryland Grace looked entirely out of his depth, terrified, and fundamentally unsuited for the military-grade intensity of the project. He was a sunbeam in every sense of the word—the golden warmth of his tousled honey-blond hair and clear blue eyes stood out starkly against the concrete walls, and his bright yellow rain jacket made him look like a literal ray of sunshine.
But as you and the rest of the team would soon learn, Grace possessed two traits that made him entirely unpredictable: an absolute inability to tolerate a bully, and a complete lack of a filter when he saw someone being treated unfairly.
Suddenly, the entire ecosystem shifted. Because Ryland had absolutely no idea he was supposed to ignore Tom.
The first time it happened, it left the team completely speechless.
The main lab’s central glass table was covered in projected holograms of Astrophage migration patterns. The air smelled of ozone and stale, government-issued espresso. You had been awake for thirty-six hours tracking a localized thermal anomaly in the proposed fuel-tank shielding. Finally, you had arrived at a viable solution, and you were sharing it with the team—Tom included, much to the collective, quiet dismay of the women in the room.
"The localized heat signatures don't align with standard radiation dissipation," you said, tapping a finger on the glass to isolate a spike in the graph. "If we proceed with the current aluminum-alloy matrix, the Astrophage will trigger a thermal runaway before the ship even clears Jupiter. We need to pivot to a carbon-composite weave."
Tom leaned back in his chair, folding his arms with a slow, patronizing chuckle.
"Let's take a breath, Y/N. I know the pressure is getting to everyone, but letting panic skew your interpretation of the data isn't going to help. The aluminum matrix is standard aerospace protocol. Let’s have one of the guys take a look at those integration steps before we completely overhaul a multi-billion-dollar chassis based on a stressful night, okay?"
A heavy, familiar silence fell over the room as his words washed over the group. You felt a headache blooming behind your eyes—not just from the lack of sleep, but from the sheer exhaustion of having to defend your baseline competence. You opened your mouth to demand he address the actual physics, but the loud, frantic squeak of a dry-erase marker cut through the tension.
The sound was jarringly loud in the steady hum of the room. You winced slightly, rubbing your temple.
Ryland Grace was standing at the main whiteboard, a marker cap clamped between his teeth. Noticing your winced expression, his eyes softened instantly. He mumbled a quick, chewing, "Sorry," spit the cap into his hand, and turned around looking genuinely baffled.
"Wait, sorry, Tom. I think my ears are clogged from the atmospheric pressure simulation earlier," Ryland said, his voice carrying a strange, bright energy that immediately drew your gaze. "Did you just say panic? Because I’m looking at Y/N’s math right here on the secondary monitor, and the only thing I see skewing the data is your inability to read a basic calculus curve."
Tom stiffened. "Dr. Grace, this is an engineering matter—"
"No, it's a math matter," Ryland interrupted, his tone cheerful, light, and utterly lethal.
He stepped closer to the table, shuffling past your chair. As he did, a wave of radiating, clean warmth bloomed against your shoulder from his proximity—a stark, comforting contrast to the chilly, air-conditioned lab. He pointed aggressively at your screen.
"Look at this integration step. See that spike? That’s not panic, Tom. That's physics. If anyone's being emotional here, it’s you, because you seem deeply threatened by a superior thermal model. Do you want me to explain the thermodynamics of a carbon weave to you, or can we let the adults finish saving the world?"
Tom's jaw tightened, his face flushing a dark crimson. Ryland casually turned away from him, his fierce expression instantly melting into a soft, private smile meant only for you. He gave you a reassuring nod.
"Anyway, Y/N, please continue. Your carbon-composite idea is brilliant."
The room seemed to collectively breathe again. As you reached for the marker in Ryland’s hand, your fingers brushed deliberately against his. A jolt of intense, comforting warmth flared from his skin, sending a sudden, electric flush up your neck. You looked up, catching his eye, and found him lingering on the touch for a fraction of a second too long, his blue eyes searching yours with a quiet intensity that made your heart skip a beat.
With a light flush on your cheeks, you quietly thanked him. Ryland gave a quick, theatrical bow, gesturing toward the whiteboard as if ushering you into a grand ballroom. You offered him a grateful look, trying desperately to keep your expression professional despite the sudden flutter in your chest.
As Ryland sat down, he delivered a finishing blow in a soft mumble, seemingly to himself: "Also, adding the 'one of the guys' part makes it weird. There’s only two of us here.”
Elena, a junior researcher sitting nearby, choked on her coffee. Amy immediately reached for a stack of napkins, scrambling to pass them around the table to cover the collective amusement of the other women. You instantly pretended to be fascinated by your notebook, biting your inner cheek to stifle the laugh bubbling up in your chest. Tom turned a deep purple, staying only because leaving would cause irreversible damage to his ego.
Afterward, Amy cornered you in the hallway, eyes wide. "Did Grace just do that?"
You grinned, still feeling the lingering, tingly warmth where his fingers had brushed yours. "I think he did."
The morning after the planning meeting, Ryland arrived at his desk, papers clutched in one hand and his wonky, gray, government-issued backpack in the other. Resting right next to his keyboard was a cup of coffee.
There was no note. No explanation. Just coffee—and not the stale, cheap sludge provided by the facility break rooms. This was premium, homemade, still steaming, and the aroma was heavenly.
He looked around, confused, as he plopped into his chair. "Did someone leave this here?" he asked the room.
Nobody answered. The sound of typing suddenly intensified as three nearby female researchers became deeply fascinated by their computer screens.
Biting the inside of your cheek, you leaned against your office doorframe. Ryland looked up, his eyes locking onto yours. The moment his gaze found you, a visible wave of relief washed over his face, and he gave you a helpless, boyish smile that made your stomach flip. He silently sought your guidance. You simply offered a small nod, signaling for him to enjoy it.
He blinked once, looked back at the cup, and smiled. "Free coffee is free coffee."
He took a sip, letting out a deeply appreciative hum. From across the room, the women exchanged victorious looks, while you just watched him, feeling a soft, radiating warmth in your chest that had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature of the room.
It took less than two months for the next incident to occur.
The atmosphere in the facility’s briefing theater was exceptionally formal. A United Nations oversight committee was arriving via a secure video uplink to review the project's budgetary allocations. For the occasion, you had traded your usual substance-stained lab coat for a sharp, tailored professional suit.
You were adjusting your microphone at the podium when Tom strolled down the aisle, holding a clipboard. He stopped, looking you up and down with a slow, lingering smile that made your skin crawl.
"Well, look at you," Tom said, his voice loud enough for the gathering tech crew to hear. "If nothing else, having you present the telemetry data will definitely keep the UN committee’s attention focused on the screen. It's amazing what a little formatting—and a flattering wardrobe choice—can do for a budget defense."
You gripped the edges of the wooden podium, your knuckles turning white. Before you could lash out, a sudden presence materialized beside you.
Ryland stepped right into Tom’s personal space, abruptly cutting off his line of sight. He was holding two paper cups of terrible lab coffee, his hair a bird's nest of stress. But his usual goofy, animated expression was completely gone. His eyes were cold, and his posture was rigid. Yet, as he stood just inches from you, the steady, grounding warmth radiating from his body seemed to envelope you, instantly melting the icy tension in your shoulders.
"Tom," Ryland said. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried a flat, dangerous edge that made the nearby techs freeze.
"Grace, I was just making a joke—"
"What's the joke?" Ryland asked, dead serious. He stepped closer, forcing Tom to take a step back. "Because it wasn't funny. If you look at Y/N's presentation and your only takeaway is her appearance, you are too blind, too dense, and too unprofessional to be working on a project of this scale. She spent three weeks calculating the orbital trajectories for the Hail Mary. Her brain is the only reason we have a budget to defend. Eyes on the data, man. Keep them there."
Ryland didn't wait for a response. He turned his back on Tom entirely, his face instantly softening into a warm, slightly breathless smile as he slid one of the coffee cups onto the podium for you.
"Break a leg up there," he murmured, his voice dropping to a low, intimate register meant only for your ears. His eyes lingered on yours, full of unshakeable faith. "Your trajectory models are terrifyingly perfect."
As he shuffled away, you watched him go, a profound sense of gratitude—and something much deeper—blooming in your chest.
Later that evening, your office filled up again. Two engineers, a biologist, and a mathematician crowded inside, with Amy and Jen among them, everyone talking at once.
"He's nice."
"He's normal."
"Do you realize how incredibly low that bar is?"
The room erupted into appreciative laughter. Then, Jen grew thoughtful, staring down at her lap. "I forgot what it was like," she said softly, "not having to constantly calculate the safety of every single interaction."
That comment silenced the room. No one offered a rebuttal; every woman understood exactly what she meant.
“And it seems like he has taken quite a liking to someone,” Jen added, a sly, knowing smile spreading across her face.
Several pairs of eyes snapped directly to you. Your mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. "I—what? No, he's just... he's just being a good colleague," you stammered, your face burning.
Laughter erupted even louder among the women as they began to tease you, entirely unconvinced. You tried to protest, but the memory of Ryland's protective stance and the lingering heat of his gaze made it impossible to hide the blush creeping up your neck.
The following week, a funny little cat statue mysteriously appeared on Ryland’s computer. It sat on top of his monitor, posed in exactly the same way as the cat on the San Francisco bridge from the t-shirt he had hidden under his blazer during the UN meeting.
From your office, you heard his sudden, suppressed giggle, and a wide grin plastered itself across your face.
Amy passed by your door, pausing to shoot you a deeply knowing look. Your smile instantly vanished, and you dove headfirst into the tower of paperwork teetering on the edge of your desk, pretending to be very, very busy.
It was a cross-departmental meeting in the main briefing room, crowded with thirty different scientists shouting over one another about payload logistics. You were in the middle of taking rapid-fire notes on your tablet, trying to keep track of the chaotic weight constraints.
Tom, sitting two seats down from Jen, let out a theatrical sigh. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a massive, unorganized stack of handwritten telemetry sheets. With a casual, dismissive flick of his wrist, he slid the heavy stack across the mahogany table, letting it crash directly over Jen’s tablet.
"Hey, Jen, be a doll and type these up into the central database before the evening sync, will you?" Tom said, already looking away to flag down a logistics officer. "Women are just naturally better at organization and secretarial pacing anyway. My hands get cramped doing that kind of grunt work."
The room went quiet for a beat. Several female researchers glared at the back of Tom's head. Jen reached for the stack, her eyes downcast in defeat. Across the table, your teeth gritted so hard your jaw ached.
Thwack.
Ryland's hand descended on the papers like a guillotine, snatching the entire stack off the table. With a dramatic, sweeping motion, he spun in his rolling chair and dumped the documents squarely back into Tom’s lap, knocking Tom’s pen out of his hand in the process.
"Whoa! Watch it, Grace!" Tom snapped, reeling back.
"Wow, Tom," Ryland said. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his eyes wide with mock amazement. "It is absolutely crazy to me how you survived a rigorous PhD process and an international vetting system without ever learning how to type. Like, seriously, it’s a miracle of modern science."
"I am an aerospace lead. I don't have time to—"
"Neither does she!" Ryland’s voice cut through the room like a whip, his cheerful sarcasm instantly evaporating. "She is a world-class geneticist trying to map Astrophage cellular division so we don't all starve in the dark. We all have computers, Tom. Look around—the room is full of them. I don't understand why you think your handwriting is her problem."
Tom stared at him, flabbergasted. "Relax, it's just a joke."
"No, it’s not," Ryland said, dead serious.
Tom opened his mouth, but no words came out. Across the room, people were actively hiding smiles. The briefing theater was filled with enough collective snots, muffled coughs, and shifting papers to make Tom flush a deep, painful red.
"Don't worry, buddy," Ryland added, delivering a final, cheerful blow. "There are plenty of free typing tutorials online for kids. I can send you a link. In the meantime, do your own homework and stop trying to use your coworkers as a secretarial pool."
Later that day, you found Ryland eating lunch alone in the corner of the commissary. You walked over and slipped into the plastic chair across from him. He looked up from his sandwich, his entire face lighting up as he offered a bright, easy smile.
"You know," you said softly, leaning your forearms on the table, tilting your head to look at him. "You don't actually have to challenge him every single time."
"Because he's exhausting, Ryland. I don't want you getting caught in the crossfire."
"That's exactly why I have to," he replied without a second thought. He reached across the small table to grab a napkin, and his arm briefly brushed against yours. The sheer, comforting heat of his skin sent a familiar thrill through you. He held your gaze, his eyes softening with a quiet, fierce sincerity. "If nobody says anything, it becomes normal. And it shouldn't be normal. Especially not around you."
He shrugged and went back to his lunch, treating the statement like it was the most obvious, fundamental law of physics in the universe. And unfortunately for the steady rhythm of your heart, you realized he meant every word.
A week after the meeting disaster, a junior engineer named Sarah brought a container of homemade chocolate chip cookies into the break room. She set the plastic container down directly in front of Ryland's workstation.
"I made too many," Sarah said smoothly. There were easily thirty cookies packed inside.
Ryland blinked up at her. "Wow. Thanks, Sarah."
Tom, sniffing out free food from a few desks down, immediately strolled over and reached a hand out. Before his fingers could even clear the rim of the desk, Sarah spoke up.
"Those are for Ryland."
The women in the room reacted with military precision. The container vanished from the desktop before Tom could touch it, slid down the counter by a neighboring physicist.
Ryland watched the tactical operation unfold in complete bewilderment. "Are the cookies classified?"
Nobody answered him. Instead, the sound of keyboard clicks filled the silence.
Tom froze, his hand awkwardly suspended in midair. Sarah smiled at him pleasantly—though the expression didn't reach her eyes at all. "You can have one after he takes some, Tom."
Ryland, sensing the mounting tension, tried to play peacemaker and pushed the container back toward Tom. "No, really, it's okay— shrink—"
Simultaneously, five different women reached out and slid the container straight back to Ryland. The movement was so perfectly coordinated it looked rehearsed. Tom slowly, bitterly retracted his hand and walked away.
Left alone with the pile of baked goods, Ryland stared at the container, utterly lost. "What just happened?"
From your doorway, you met his confused gaze and just laughed softly, the sound making his lips twitch into a helpless smile.
The pressure inside the facility finally reached a boiling point.
One of the senior structural engineers, Elena, had just received a secure patch from the surface: her daughter had been injured in an accident, and she needed to catch an immediate transport out of the bunker. She was visibly shaken, tears welling in her eyes as she handed off her tablet to you, apologizing profusely for leaving in the middle of a critical diagnostic run.
As Elena hurried out through the heavy blast doors, Tom leaned back in his chair, clicking his pen with an irritated, rhythmic click-click-click.
"And this is exactly why you don't put women in high-stakes, twenty-four-seven crisis roles," Tom muttered to a nearby colleague, his voice loud enough to echo across the concrete room. "The moment a domestic issue pops up, the science goes out the window. It's a structural liability when we’re on a clock."
A heavy, suffocating anger filled the lab. You stepped toward Tom, your voice trembling with rage, but a sudden, violent slam cut you off.
Ryland had snapped his heavy, ruggedized laptop shut against the metal desk. The sound echoed like a gunshot. He stood up so fast his chair rolled backward and crashed into a row of filing cabinets.
"We are trying to save humanity from an extinction-level event, Tom!" Ryland shouted, his face pale with pure, unadulterated fury. He marched around the table, pointing a shaking finger directly at Tom’s chest. "If you think human empathy, love, and family responsibility are 'structural liabilities,' then you are missing the entire point of why we are trying to save this planet in the first place!"
Tom blinked, startled by the sheer volume of the normally mild-mannered junior high teacher. "Grace, sit down. You're escalating—"
"No, you shut up!" Ryland snapped, his voice cracking slightly with emotion. As he stood between you and Tom, his back was entirely to you, shielding you. Even in his anger, the proximity of his body felt like a protective hearth, radiating a fierce, righteous warmth that grounded your shaking hands. "Elena has worked eighty hours this week. She is a human being! If we lose our humanity in the process of building this ship, then we’re just saving a bunch of cold, unfeeling machines. Sit down, shut your mouth, and do her work for her until she gets back. Because right now, you aren't contributing anything but hot air."
The next morning, a small, potted succulent mysteriously appeared on Ryland’s desk. Cradling it carefully in both hands, Ryland carried it straight into your office.
"Am I accidentally participating in a secret workplace tradition?"
You laughed so hard you had to look away to catch your breath.
Before long, Ryland started appearing in your office on a daily basis. At first, it was for quick, legitimate work questions. Then it was for completely unrelated questions. Eventually, he would just wander in while carrying a sandwich because he was bored. He would pull his chair right up to the side of your desk, always sitting close enough that you could feel the comforting, ambient heat radiating from him. It became a sensory anchor for you amid the high-stress chaos of the project.
One afternoon, he collapsed into the chair across from your desk, looking utterly perplexed. "Do people seem weird to you lately?"
You nearly choked on your water. "Define weird."
"Everyone keeps giving me things," he said, gesturing vaguely out the door. "Like coffee. And cookies. And someone gave me a plant."
You lost the battle against your own composure and laughed. "A plant?"
"I don't know why!" Ryland threw his hands up, completely oblivious to the underground network of gratitude he had triggered. "I don't know what it means!"
You smiled softly, leaning forward on your desk, your voice dropping to a gentle, affectionate murmur. "It means they appreciate you, Ryland. More than you know."
He paused, his frantic energy melting away as he looked at you. His blue eyes locked onto yours, wide and suddenly entirely focused, reflecting a deep, unsaid warmth that made your chest ache with a sudden, breathless tension. For a long moment, neither of you spoke, the space between you feeling thick, charged, and impossibly close.
Just outside your office door, half the women in Section 4 were absolutely listening in, thoroughly enjoying the confusion of their favorite accidental hero.
By now, the team had become openly protective of Ryland—not in a dramatic way, but in a familial way. A younger researcher saved him a seat at lunch. Someone always made sure he was included. The atmosphere around him felt easy, comfortable, and safe. The exact opposite of what Tom created.
And the women always made sure there was a free seat by either Ryland or you for the other.
The atmosphere in the primary biology cleanroom was exceptionally tense a few days later. You were standing before a transparent partition, using a digital stylus to map out a breakthrough in the Astrophage enrichment process—a method that would allow the Hail Mary’s engines to process fuel 12% more efficiently.
"By stabilizing the internal pH of the holding tanks using a localized nitrogen buffer, we can prevent the Astrophage from entering a dormant state," you explained, tracing a neat chemical diagram across the glass. "This ensures a continuous, high-yield energy output during initial acceleration..."
"Right, right," Tom interrupted. He stepped deliberately in front of you, effectively blocking you from the view of the visiting military tech team, and grabbed a marker from the tray. "So, what we’re looking at here is a nitrogen-based stabilization matrix. By adjusting the tank chemistry, I’ve figured out a way we can boost the initial engine acceleration by a significant margin. It's a classic engineering fix to a biological bottleneck."
You stood frozen, the stylus heavy in your hand. A familiar, exhausting wave of defeat washed over you as Tom completely rephrased your exact words, effortlessly claiming the breakthrough as his own.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Ryland was sitting on a lab stool in the corner, rhythmically striking a heavy metal wrench against a steel support beam. The sound was deafeningly sharp in the enclosed room. Tom stopped talking, glaring over his shoulder.
"Dr. Grace, do you mind? I'm trying to explain the acceleration fix," Tom said smoothly.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Tom," Ryland said, tilting his head with a wide, deceptively innocent smile. "Did you hear that high-pitched, incredibly annoying whistling noise just now? No? Oh, wait, my mistake. That wasn't a mechanical failure. That was just the sound of you completely plagiarizing a breakthrough that Y/N literally just explained two seconds ago."
The military tech team exchanged uncomfortable looks. Tom’s face turned an ugly, mottled purple. "I am simply translating her raw data into applicable engineering concepts—"
"No, you're stealing," Ryland said. His smile vanished as he dropped the wrench onto his workstation with a heavy, final thud. He stood up, stepping right back into the circle, his tall frame cutting off Tom and instantly filling the space next to you with his familiar, comforting warmth. "And doing a really bad job of it, too. Y/N, please continue. You were doing great before the interruption. And Tom? Step back. You're blocking the smart person's whiteboard."
A few days after he shut down Tom's interruption, Ryland arrived at his desk to find a new ceramic mug waiting for him. Printed across the front in bold, block letters was the phrase: LET HER FINISH.
He stared at it, then looked around the room. Nobody would admit responsibility. Naturally, the mug immediately became his favorite, and he carried it into every single briefing. Tom absolutely hated it.
Eventually, a silent game developed among the staff. Every time Tom said something ridiculous and Ryland shut him down, someone would secretly leave a small token of appreciation on his desk. One afternoon, a tiny, plastic trophy appeared next to his keyboard. The engraved plaque read: MOST LIKELY TO MAKE TOM MAD.
From your office, you watched Ryland read the inscription. He burst out laughing—a loud, unburdened, breathless sound that made him nearly fall out of his rolling chair. You realized you hadn't heard him laugh like that before. He looked up, catching you watching him through the glass, and flashed you a brilliant, dimpled grin.
Unfortunately for the steady rhythm of your chest, it did dangerous, wonderful things to your heart.
The final breaking point didn't happen during a structured meeting or a high-level briefing. It happened in the narrow, concrete corridor outside the secondary centrifuge lab. The corridor was crowded with technicians, junior researchers, and passing security guards moving equipment.
Tom had spent the entire afternoon being systematically corrected by Ryland during a cross-departmental review, and his fragile ego had finally shattered. He caught up to Ryland right outside the breakroom door, stepping into his path and forcing Ryland to halt. You were walking just a few paces behind them, carrying a tray of fresh cultures.
"You think you're real slick, don't you, Grace?" Tom sneered, his voice carrying clearly down the echoing hallway.
Ryland blinked, holding a box of protein bars. "I don't know, Tom. I think my outfits are pretty basic, but thank you?"
"Don't play dumb with me," Tom snapped, stepping closer, his voice rising in pitch, drawing the attention of every technician in the corridor. "The constant white-knighting. The constant pathetic, desperate running to the rescue every time someone looks at Y/N wrong. It’s embarrassing, Ryland. Everyone in this facility knows exactly what you’re doing. You’re an insecure, middle-school nobody who is completely infatuated with her, and you’re using this apocalypse to play hero just so you can get into her lab coat."
A collective, horrified gasp rippled through the hallway.
Ryland froze. His face went entirely pale, his knuckles turning white around the cardboard box in his hands. He opened his mouth, but for the first time since you had met him, the quick-witted, fast-talking Ryland Grace was completely speechless. The sheer, ugly malice of the attack had paralyzed him.
Tom smiled, sensing victory. "Yeah. That’s what I thought. You’re a pathetic, lovesick— shrink—"
"Tom."
Your voice didn't ring out in a scream. It was a low, vibrational frequency of pure, unadulterated ice.
Tom turned, his smug smile faltering slightly as you stepped forward. You didn't look at Ryland—who was staring at you with wide, terrified, and deeply vulnerable eyes. You walked directly up to Tom, stopping mere inches from his face. The tray of cultures was steady in your hands, but your gaze was sharp enough to cut glass.
"You are a coward," you said, your voice carrying an absolute authority that silenced the entire hallway. "You have spent months targeting the women in this lab because your fragile, mediocre ego cannot handle the fact that we are better at our jobs than you are. But to stand here and attack Dr. Grace—the man who is currently carrying the literal weight of human survival on his shoulders, the man who actually treats people with basic human decency—because you are throwing a temper tantrum? It is pathetic. You are a stain on this project."
Tom’s eyes widened, his chest heaving. "You can't talk to me like—"
"I am done talking to you," you interrupted, your voice dropping to a whisper that felt like a threat.
You turned on your heel, ignoring the stunned silence of the hallway, and marched straight toward the secure elevator leading to the command deck.
You didn't knock. You used your high-level security clearance to bypass the electronic lock, slamming Eva Stratt’s heavy steel office door open.
Stratt didn't even look up from her transparent computer terminal at first. She was typing rapidly, a cup of black tea steaming beside her. "This had better be a localized Astrophage containment failure, Y/N."
"It's a structural liability failure, Commander," you said, your voice ringing with an absolute finality.
You walked up to her desk and violently slammed down a heavily encrypted, ruggedized flash drive. The metal clicked sharply against the glass desk.
Stratt paused, her fingers hovering over her keyboard. She slowly raised her sharp, piercing eyes to meet yours. "Explain."
"On that drive is a meticulously compiled log spanning the last six months," you said, leaning over her desk, your hands planted firmly on the surface. "Every single instance of harassment, verbal abuse, credit theft, and psychological sabotage committed by Dr. Tom against the female members of Section Four. We kept it because we knew you valued his engineering specs too much to care about our comfort."
Stratt’s face remained a perfect, unreadable mask of stone. "I value the survival of the human race, Y/N. Dr. Tom’s team is currently designing the fuel-injection systems. I do not have the luxury of policing workplace etiquette."
"This isn't about etiquette anymore, Eva," you snapped, using her first name for the first time in your career. "Ten minutes ago, in a public corridor, Tom launched a vicious, defamatory personal attack against Dr. Ryland Grace. He targeted his integrity, his character, and his focus. He tried to humiliate the man you drafted to save our species, simply because Dr. Grace has the basic moral fortitude to stand up to a bully."
Stratt’s eyes narrowed, a sharp, calculating glint replacing her usual cold indifference. The explicit mention of Ryland Grace shifted something fundamental in her demeanor.
"I don't care how flawless Tom's engineering specs are," you continued, your voice vibrating with a fierce, protective intensity that surprised even you. "He is a toxic liability to the cognitive stability of this task force. Dr. Grace is indispensable to this project. He is indispensable to me. I will not allow a fragile, pathetic egomaniac to compromise the focus of the man who is actively saving the world. You get Tom off this project and out of this facility by nightfall, or I walk. And when I go, I take half the molecular biology team with me. Let's see Tom engineer a fuel system when his entire lab is a ghost town."
Stratt stared at you, an agonizingly quiet thirty seconds stretching between you. The silence in the heavily soundproofed office was absolute, suffocating. Finally, without a word, she reached out, picked up the flash drive, and slotted it into her terminal.
"Go back to your lab, Y/N," Stratt said softly, her eyes already tracking the rapid columns of data scrolling across her screen. "Ensure your cultures are secure."
Ryland Grace had not overheard a single word. Stratt’s office was built like a military bunker, entirely impervious to external audio or electronic surveillance. Instead, he had spent the last hour pacing frantic circles around his workstation, completely unmoored, utterly convinced that his lack of a filter had triggered a catastrophic incident that was going to get you fired or permanently reassigned.
When his personal terminal flashed with a high-priority summons to the command deck, his stomach dropped through the floor. He practically stumbled through Stratt's heavy steel doors, his palms slick with sweat, his heart hammering violently against his ribs.
"Commander Stratt, look, whatever happened in the hallway, it was entirely my fault," Ryland burst out before the door even clicked shut behind him, the words tumbling over one another in a panicked rush. "Tom was baiting me, and I shouldn't have let him get under my skin, but Y/N had absolutely nothing to do with it, she was just—"
"Sit down, Dr. Grace," Stratt interrupted, not looking up from her screen.
Ryland collapsed into the chair opposite her, his fingers fidgeting wildly with his security badge. "Is she in trouble? Because if you reassign her, I swear to God, I'll—"
"Dr. Tom has been stripped of his clearance," Stratt said, her voice flat and matter-of-fact. "His security detail is currently escorting him to a surface transport. He is being permanently reassigned to a low-level terrestrial filtration plant in North Dakota. His junior lead will assume control of the fuel-injection project."
Ryland stopped mid-sentence, his jaw going slightly slack. "Wait... what? Really? Just like that? You fired him?"
Stratt finally closed her terminal and leaned back, folding her hands over her lap. A tiny, almost imperceptible smirk tugged at the corner of her lips. "I didn't fire him, Ryland. Your friend Y/N did."
Ryland blinked, his brain completely short-circuiting. "What do you mean?"
Stratt slid a printed transcript across the glass desk. "She marched into my office an hour ago and threatened a full-scale mutiny. She laid out a comprehensive log of Tom's behavior that would make a military tribunal look lenient. But what truly amused me was how fiercely she defended your honor."
Slowly, hesitantly, Ryland picked up the paper, his eyes scanning the lines of text.
Stratt leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand, her sharp eyes boring into him. "She made it quite clear that any attack on you was an attack on the project itself. She called you 'indispensable.' She told me she wouldn't allow a bully to compromise the focus of 'the man saving the world.' Frankly, Ryland, it was a little embarrassing how deeply she cares about your well-being. She practically threatened to burn the facility down to protect you."
As Ryland’s eyes locked onto your exact words—He is indispensable to this project. He is indispensable to me—the blood rushed to his face with the force of a tidal wave.
A bright, violent shade of crimson flooded his cheeks, creeping up to the tips of his ears. His hands began to shake so hard the transcript rattled in his grip. He started stammering, his voice jumping an entire octave as his brain tried and failed to process the sheer weight of what he was reading.
"She—she said that?" Ryland squeaked, waving his hands wildly in the air as if trying to swat the words away. "She used the word 'indispensable'? Wow. Okay. That’s... that’s a lot of syllables for a Tuesday. She... she called me the man saving the world? I mean, I’m just a teacher, I just do the algae math, she’s the one with the—"
"Dr. Grace," Stratt cut him off dryly. "You're rambling. And you're melting down. Go find her before you pass out from hyperventilation."
Ryland practically fled the command deck, his head spinning in a dizzying whirlwind. The realization hit him like a physical blow: his massive, carefully hidden, deeply unprofessional crush on you wasn't a one-way street. The goofy, fiercely protective instinct that had driven him to shield you from Tom for months wasn't unrequited. You cared about him. You had stood up to the most terrifying, powerful woman on Earth just to keep him safe.
He tracked you down to the secondary greenhouse lab—a quiet, humid dome filled with rows of experimental hydroponic crops designed for the long voyage. It was entirely empty, saved for the gentle, rhythmic hum of the automated misting system.
You were standing by a rack of leafy seedlings, finally letting the adrenaline fade, your shoulders slumped with a profound, bone-deep exhaustion.
The heavy glass door slid open with a soft, pressurized whoosh.
You turned to see Ryland standing in the doorway. He looked entirely disheveled. His honey-blond hair was sticking up in three different directions from where he’d been running his hands through it, his lab coat was buttoned completely unevenly, and his face was still flushed a delicate, breathless pink. In his hands, he was awkwardly clutching two small, crinkled boxes of government-issued apple juice.
He stood there for a moment, shifting his weight from foot to foot, his security badge swinging wildly against his chest. He offered a small, incredibly nervous, boyish smile.
"So..." Ryland started, his voice cracking slightly before he quickly cleared his throat. He took a few hesitant steps into the greenhouse, holding up one of the juice boxes like a peace offering. "I just came from Stratt’s office."
You leaned back against the metal planting rack, a soft, tired smile breaking through your exhaustion at the sight of him. "Did you?"
"Yeah," Ryland said, stopping just a few feet away from you.
The distance between you closed, and instantly, that familiar, enveloping warmth radiated off him, washing over you like a physical balm. It cut through the damp, sterile chill of the greenhouse, making your chest tighten with a sudden, beautiful ache. He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, his blue eyes incredibly bright, burning with an intense, soft, and unmistakable affection.
"And, uh..." Ryland stepped just an inch closer, his gaze dropping to your lips for a fraction of a second before snapping back to your eyes, his voice dropping to a breathless, intimate murmur. "I hear you think I’m indispensable."
Rocky finds readers childhood stuffy on their side of the bed and Ryland dosnt know about them either
Anywho Rocky and Ryland ask lots of questions about said stuffie on Erid
-saturn
I say this as I’m laying in my bed with my childhood stuffy
"Barnaby The Blueberry?"
Ryland grace x reader (FLUFF)
summary: see request above!
yaps!: had sooo much fun writing this, hope you dont mind the fact i used my actual stuffies name for this HAHAHA!! mhwamhwa hope you like this as mush as i did!! listened to "Summertime" by My Chemical Romance, "Bulong" by December Avenue, and "Hearken" by Yaelokre!
The atmosphere inside the dome on Erid was a carefully curated slice of Earth, but it was impossible to keep the dust of a distant world entirely at bay. The air always smelled faintly of ozone and the spicy, metallic tang of Eridian tea. Inside the "humble home" shared by you and Ryland Grace, the lighting was currently set to a soft, pre-dawn amber, meant to ease you both into the day.
Ryland was already up, hunched over a workbench in the corner, scribbling frantically on a whiteboard. You, however, were still buried under a mountain of specialized, heavy-duty blankets.
You were also not alone.
A heavy, rhythmic thud-clack, thud-clack echoed across the floorboards. Rocky was on a mission. The Eridian engineer had become a permanent fixture in your domestic life, often wandering into your sleeping quarters to "inspect" the human habitat or, more often than not, to ask a thousand questions about things that humans did that made absolutely no sense to him.
Rocky scuttled toward your side of the bed. You were currently in the kitchen, having slipped out to grab a glass of water, leaving your side of the blankets rummaged and messy.
Rocky’s central carapace rotated, scanning the pillows. His form twitched. There, tucked deep into the crease of the mattress, was something he had never seen before. It was small. It was furry. It had the color of a blueberry, two glass-bead eyes and a very worn, long, black spoon-shaped nose.
“Grace! Question!” Rocky’s voice synthesizer chirped from the wall unit, sounding unusually high-pitched with curiosity. “There is a new organism in the insulation pile! Has no carapace! Has no pulse! Why it hiding?”
Ryland jumped, his marker streaking a long, accidental line across his physics equations. “What? A new organism? Rocky, we’ve lived here for years, there aren't any—"
He trailed off as he walked over to the bed. You walked back into the room at that exact moment, frozen in the doorway with your water glass halfway to your mouth.
Rocky was currently using one of his delicate, stone-like claws to poke at a very old, very loved, stuffed koala named Barnaby The Blueberry.
Ryland blinked. He looked at the koala, then at you, then back at the koala. A slow, delighted grin started to spread across his face.
"[name]," Ryland said, his voice dripping with playful curiosity. "What is that? And more importantly, why have I lived with you on two different planets and never seen it?"
You felt the heat rush to your cheeks, a deep crimson that Ryland always found endearing. You walked over, gently scooping Barnaby out of Rocky’s inquisitive reach. "It’s... it’s just my stuffie. Barnaby The Blueberry. He was in my emergency kit from the Hail Mary. I haven't pulled him out in a long time."
Rocky tilted his entire body, his five-legged frame shifting in a way that signaled deep confusion. “Stuff-ie? Is this a biological subspecies? It has no internal heat. It does not leak energy. Is it a parasite that feeds on sleep?”
"No, Rocky," you laughed, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding the rabbit to your chest. Being shorter than Ryland, you felt particularly small in that moment, sandwiched between a brilliant scientist and a brilliant alien, both of whom were looking at a plush toy like it was the most complex mystery in the galaxy.
Ryland sat down next to you, the mattress dipping under his weight. He reached out, his fingers brushing the fabric of your shirt—right over the spot where your "Rocky Scar" resided. It was a grounding touch, a reminder of the life you’d built together out of the wreckage of the mission.
"So, Barnaby," Ryland said, his eyes twinkling. "Does Barnaby have a PhD? Or is he more of a theoretical physicist?"
"He’s a koala, Ryland. He specializes in being soft," you retorted, though you couldn't help the smile tugging at your lips.
“Soft is not specialty,” Rocky pulsed, his voice synthesizer vibrating with a rhythmic trill. “Soft is vulnerability. Why you keep a vulnerable creature in bed? Does it guard? Does it watch for vacuum leaks with glass eyes?”
You looked at Rocky’s figure, trying to find the words to explain one of the most irrational, beautiful parts of being human.
"It’s for comfort, Rocky," you explained softly. "When humans are young—and sometimes when we're older—we like to hold things that are soft. It makes us feel safe. It’s like... it’s like a surrogate for the hive. For the cluster."
Rocky went silent for a moment, his clock-eye rotating slowly. “Comfort. Rocky understand comfort. Rocky hot, you cold, Rocky insulate you. But koala-thing not hot. Does not provide thermal stability.”
"It's not that kind of warmth," Ryland chimed in, his voice losing its teasing edge. He looked at you, his expression softening into something so tender it made your heart ache. "It’s emotional warmth, Rocky. Humans have this weird thing where we attach memories and feelings to inanimate objects. It’s like a physical anchor to a happy thought."
Ryland reached out and took Barnaby from you, turning the toy over in his hands. He noticed the worn fur, the slight tear in the ear that had been stitched back together years ago. "How long have you had him?"
"Since I was four," you whispered. "He’s been through every move, every lab accident, and apparently, a trip across the Tau Ceti system."
“Four years?” Rocky asked.
"No, Rocky. Since I was a pebble," you corrected.
Rocky’s synthesizer let out a series of musical whistles. “A pebble relic! An artifact! Why did hide it, Question? It a secret technology? Does Grace not know of koala-tech?”
"I didn't hide it," you pouted, leaning your head against Ryland's shoulder. "I just... I thought it was a bit silly. A grown adult, a scientist, sleeping with a stuffed koala on an alien planet."
Ryland wrapped his arm around your waist, pulling you closer. "[name], I spent six months talking to a camera and naming a spider-bot 'Rocky' before I actually met him. 'Silly' is our baseline. Besides," he leaned down, kissing the top of your head, "I think it’s brave. Bringing a piece of your childhood home across the stars? That’s some serious dedication to morale."
“Rocky wish to inspect texture,” Rocky announced.
You handed Barnaby to Rocky. The Eridian was incredibly gentle, using the tips of his claws to lightly brush the velvet ears. “Is... very textured. It feels like moss in lower caves, but without dampness. Is pleasant. Rocky understand now. It is a portable cluster-member.”
Rocky handed the rabbit back to you, his carapace radiating a steady, happy heat. “Grace is noisy and leaks heat. The koala is quiet and stays soft. You have a good cluster, Question.”
"I really do," you agreed, looking from the stone alien to the messy-haired man beside you.
Ryland chuckled, nudging you with his shoulder. "Does this mean I have to share the bed with Barnaby now? Is there a hierarchy? Do I have to ask the koala for permission to change the thermostat?"
"Barnaby says the thermostat stays exactly where it is," you joked.
---
The rest of the morning was spent in a rare, lazy sprawl. Ryland abandoned his whiteboard, and Rocky decided that "inspecting" the rabbit required him to stay on the bed with you both.
The three of you—plus Barnaby—piled onto the oversized mattress. Rocky sat at the foot, his heavy limbs tucked in, providing a grounding weight that always helped your anxiety. Ryland was a warm, solid presence behind you, his hand resting on your side, his thumb tracing the jagged line of the scar that matched his own.
The light in the dome shifted to a deeper, more comfortable gold.
“Question?” Rocky’s voice was low, almost a whisper in the quiet room.
“Yeah, Rocky?”
“Does koala require sleep-sounds? I can provide the resonance. It will help the rabbit’s internal systems stay calm.”
You felt a lump in your throat at the sheer sweetness of the offer. "I think Barnaby would love that, Rocky."
The Eridian began to thrum. It wasn't a song, but a deep, rhythmic vibration that resonated through the bed and into your very bones. It was the sound Eridians made to comfort their young, a biological lullaby that signaled total safety.
Ryland’s breathing slowed as he drifted back toward sleep, his grip on you tightening just a fraction. You tucked Barnaby under your chin, feeling the soft fur against your skin and the radiating heat of your alien friend at your feet.
In the vast, terrifying emptiness of the universe, you had managed to find a home. It was a home built on science, survival, and shared scars, but today, it was also built on the simple, fluffy importance of a childhood rabbit.
“Good hive,” Rocky trilled one last time before the room fell into a peaceful, humming silence. “Very good hive.”
i would and WILL fight anyone for my barnaby....👁👁
WHAT DO WE FEEL ABOUT THIS GNG hope u had fun reading!! hugs n kisses 💚💚👎👎
Main character who is forced to leave their world and solve the mystery that’s causing their existence to unravel and stop it, who changes so much in their journey that they end up staying in their new world instead even after being offered the chance to go back home
Friend they make while in the other world that is going through the same problem as them and believes in them even when they keep insisting they’re not anything special, and ends up saving them
Their not-quite-platonic but certainly not romantic relationship back home (that everyone else still assumes they’re dating) who commits several war crimes in their absence
Summary: Grace has a tendency to do a pattern of three. Especially around you. You try to figure out what it means.
Three.
Maybe it was his favorite number? Or maybe he just liked the rhythm of it, the pattern, the consistency of doing it.
Grace has a…quirk. A tendency. Not that you mind. You first noticed it when you comforted him after his nightmare. After his memory. He had squeezed your hand three times and you still remembered the flash in his eyes when you didn't copy him.
Maybe you should follow Rocky's method of connecting. Just repeat things to learn.
It kept happening, though, and there was no flash in his eyes. He was still…something…whenever he did it. You would smile at him and he would smile back, but almost sadly. Or resigned at least. Like you weren't doing it right, but you didn't know what the right thing was to do.
He kept doing it though, so you just went with it.
When Grace had to pass you in the ship, he would pat your shoulder three times as he went by. When you discovered something new, a memory, or even something to help you all out on whatever problem you were onto next, he would clap three times or high five you three times.
It caught you off guard the first time he high fived you the first time like this. You held your hand up for the one and you were bringing it down after the one, but Grace followed your hand down, getting in the three while he could. His face had turned bright red after he realized what he did, stuttering over his words, running off to go "fix the petrovascope" or something, which you just watched, not sure why he would fix something that wasn't broken.
Ever since that night, you both decided you slept better next to each other. You also both decided that holding hands was essential. Humans are social beings, right? They need touch to survive. It wasn't weird, it was actually important for both of your mental health. It also helped Rocky keep an eye on both of you while you slept, so really, it was to help everyone out.
When you say goodnight to each other and Grace taps his fingers on yours three times, you don't question it. Out loud, at least.
You've been thinking about it more and more. He's always touching you when he does it. Or at least, very close to you. Almost as though he prefers to do this pattern of three in reference to you. You don't mind it, though, that's for sure.
It's something that is just so 'Grace'.
You still aren't sure why you are on this mission. Grace had remembered that he was a molecular biologist, but you still couldn't remember. Bits and pieces of your life had made their way to you, but you still didn't really know who you were.
So, you decided to follow in your fellow human's footsteps and decided to observe and write down the science.
Over the next week or so, you quietly documented when Grace would do the pattern of three. Who he would do it with or if he did it by himself. The context of the pattern.
You totally weren't just bored on the ship.
The first one you documented was the next day after you decided to stop musing about it and actually pay attention. Rocky had been overhearing your conversation about life on Earth when the topic of video games came up.
"We have everything ever on the ship right? In terms of media?"
"Yeah, pretty sure we do, why?"
Your eyes light up, a mischeivous smile growing on your face. "You ever play Mario Kart?"
"Of course, I'm a middle school teacher." Grace gestures to his t-shirt, which had a joke about the noble gases being knights, "And a nerd."
"You any good at it?"
Grace scoffs at you, rolling his eyes. "C'mon. I got a solid third place while playing at a school event one time. Against middle schoolers? That's like a gold medal."
"You talk a big game. Wanna prove it?" You get up from your seat at the table, telling Rocky with your hand to follow you two. "Let's go play Mario Kart!"
"Rocky no understand."
"I know, bud, it's easier to just show you. Make sure you bring your screen gun, we are going to the screen room."
Two hours later, Rocky has a finally finished his xenonite workaround to being able to play, holding a controller. Grace put up a good fight at the beginning, but you are now on a roll, getting first place after first place.
"Grace bad bad bad at game."
"She's cheating! Got to be!"
"Nope" you say, throwing up some finger guns, "Just that good."
"You are so embarassing, finger guns, really?"
"Oh, as if you don't do that any time you don't know how to finish a conversation."
Grace throws up a hand in mock offense to his chest, "How dare you. Finger guns are a classic way to signal the end of a conversation."
"Right, right, sure. Rocky, you wanna play Grace? You get a turn now."
"Rocky want play game. Rocky going to 'smoke' Grace."
Grace looks over at you over his glasses, a pointed look clearly displaying his displeasure at you teaching Rocky more slang. You try to ignore the flutter in your chest at it. Your hands go up, telling him back, 'What can you do?' He chuckles at your response.
You watch them play a round or two, Grace teaching Rocky how to play and you throwing some tips in every now and then. Rocky takes a liking to Bowser as their character, as Bowser is a character with interesting texture. You tried to get Rocky to play as Bones, but the alien described bones as "boring, no spikes". Grace, of course, plays as Luigi. You sit back on your hands, watching the two of them, smiling the whole time.
"Man, what the hey. I thought I was really good at this game."
"Grace bad at game. Bad bad bad. Rocky great at game. Natural. Awesome."
Grace throws himself back, laying on the platform with his hands over his head. "You would think that practicing flying a spaceship would help me win video games." You miss it, but when you throw your head back to laugh, Grace watches you, biting his lip to prevent the smile from escaping. He's brooding. He can't smile when he broods.
You look back over at him, seeing his "brooding face" and shake your head. "Well, now it's my turn to prove us humans are good at video games. Gotta represent the human race!" Grabbing your controller, you pick your favorite character.
When Rocky plays, they act like the movement of their body helps them play. When they veer right, they shift the same way. When releasing special items, they tap one of their limbs. You keep an eye on their mannerisms as you play and when you pass over the finish line, first place flashing across the screen, Grace cheers you on.
"Yeah! Nice one, take that Rocky!"
"Rocky hate game."
"Oh, don't be a sore loser, Rocky" You say, stretching from your seated position. "I think we may have to postpone the rematch. I need a screen break." Grace stands up before you, offering you his hand. You grab it, but before you stand up, there it is. You feel him tap the back of your hand with his, three times.
"Yeah, I don't know about you, but I think I'm ready for some 'Day whatever, meal 3".
You let him pull you to your feet, dusting your self off, eyebrows furrowed. "Yeah, me too. Give me a second, though, want to grab something."
"Alright, I'll meet you in there."
You go to your storage bin, where you keep your notebook. You write "Day 1 - Three Taps on Hand" followed by a quick summary of how it happened. You don't understand if it was you winning that triggered it or the changing of tasks, but it was only data point one.
By data point ten, you are so confused. It's only day two. Early day two. He does it all the time. When you eat food and you ask Grace to pass the mustard, his fingers brush yours, tapping the bottle as he gives it to you three times. When it's bedtime, he says "Good night" and strokes his thumb over the back of your hand as you lay facing each other with hands intertwined, as you always do now. When working on a problem together in the lab, both of you sitting on stools, he pats your knee three times to get your attention.
It's constant. It's consistent.
It's confusing.
You want to ask him about it, but you fear breaking a rule that seems to have been put in place. Every few seconds after he does it, he looks at you, waiting. And every time, you don't do something right because he looks down, away from you, his smile fading a little at the edges. The first time he did it after you were both sitting on the floor, after the nightmare, you asked him about it, but he locked up on you.
He had stuttered out some excuse of hearing Rocky calling for him, even though you heard nothing, and he had run off. Hours later, you had sought him out, feeling lonely, only to find he had gone to bed early.
Which never happened. And never did he lay down without you now. So, it became a rule. Don't bring it up.
You wished you could remember more. You felt like you were breaking his heart every time, but you couldn't talk about it. He was ahead of you in remembering things and if you didn't catch up soon, you feared your relationship would stagnate, become strained.
You weren't sure why you felt that way, but you still feared it. Very much.
Ten data points wasn't enough, though, so you continued observing. Continued to write it all down.
Two weeks later, at data point 92, you are desperate for answers. Grace and Rocky have noticed that you've been off, asking why you keep going off to be on your own and you can't tell them. One night, you hear them talking to each other before the next night cycle.
You had been going to put away a tool and had come back to lay down, but stopped when musical notes made their way to your ears.
"Rocky concerned about friend."
"I know, bud. I am too."
"Rocky hear friend write lots. No understand what write. Can't hear texture. Friend don't talk much with Rocky."
"She writes? That's where she goes all those times?"
"Yes. Grace not hear Rocky? Rocky say word loud. Grace need sleep."
"Ok, no need to get sassy. I was just confirming what you said. Why would she write so much? Do you think she's…upset at me?"
"Rocky don't know. Grace think friend mad at Rocky?"
"No, no, no. I don't think she could ever be mad at you. You're Rocky! You're awesome and fun and honest. I think it's something I did."
"What Grace do?"
"Mmm, not sure, but I have a hunch. Don't worry Rocky, I'll fix this."
"Friend is near. Fix now?"
Your eyes had widened at that, but you loudly stepped down into the crews quarters to make sure they didn't suspect you were listening. You had come in, stretched your arms above your head, before saying, "Man, I am tired. Everyone ready for bed?" Walking over to the bed, ignoring the looks that they were both giving you.
Grace had laid down next to you, holding your hand in his, facing you. This was your nighttime routine now, but as you both said good night to each other, you waited for the three squeezes that you always got. Your eyes flicked from his to your hand, eyebrows furrowing. When you looked back at Grace, he had closed his eyes.
You waited a few more minutes. Maybe he just forgot? You shifted in your position, unable to fall asleep without the routine completed.
"You ok?"
"Yeah, yeah! Sorry, just getting comfortable."
"Alright. Good night."
"Good night, Grace."
As you closed your eyes, you tried to wait for it still, but it never came.
In the morning, when you found yourself resting your head once again on his chest, it was as though the night before hadn't happened. The warmth coming from his body was lulling you back to sleep when Grace's eyes fluttered open. You felt his head move, so you looked up at him, smiling.
"Good morning"
"Good morning" he returned, smiling at you.
"Good morning, human friends."
"Morning Rocky." "Morning Rock."
"Time go for day cycle. Much work need to be done."
"Yeah, yeah, bud, I'm up."
Grace slowly untangles himself from you, getting out of the bed. You roll over, letting him up, but stay in the bed for a few more seconds. You realize it quickly.
He didn't pat your back three times this morning. He had only been doing it for about two weeks now, but it was engrained in your routine.
You propped yourself up, rubbing your face, trying to wake up. Grace always did this pattern. Always. At least five or six times every day. He always did it in relation to you. Now he didn't do it.
You froze. Grace said he would fix this. Now he wasn't doing the one thing you were tracking.
No, no. It couldn't be that. He will do it the rest of the day. Right?
Three days later and all of you are off. You feel like something huge is missing from your life, when really you just haven't had that pattern of three. Grace is more awkward with you, less touchy. You still sleep at night in the same bed, but something's changed.
Rocky has noticed it too. If you weren't also suffering from this change, you would find it funny. Rocky has been asking you to play video games, asking if you need more sleep, or if you need "to look at trees". Apparently, Grace told Rocky about enrichment for humans and included seeing greenery as one of those things that helps mental health, so now trees are a must for you both to Rocky.
But you aren't amused by his concern. You can barely focus on your work. You feel distant from them, othered. All because of this stupid pattern. It's like a drug and you are in withdrawal.
As time continues on, you barely sleep. You find yourself waking up in the middle of night, extracting yourself from Grace while he sleeps, going to stare out into the stars through the window. You don't talk as much.
Grace and Rocky try their best to get you out of this. They make sure you eat your three meals, invite you to play games, watch movies, chat about Earth culture, and help you do your work.
None of it works. There's something missing desperately from your day and you can't do anything about it.
Except, you are exhausted, sleep deprived, when you get the idea. If you miss this stupid pattern that's upending your life on board the Hail Mary because one person won't give it to you, why don't you just do it?
This brilliant thought pops into your head randomly while you are working next to Grace at a microscope, both of you sketching notes down, not talking.
You pull your head away from the microscope, looking at Grace from the corner of your eye. You hold your hand out next to him.
It takes a second, as he's staring down into his own work, but the next time he goes to write a note, he sees your outstretched hand. Glancing up toward you in confusion, he gets no information as you still haven't turned to look at him.
So, he slowly grabs your hand. Constantly looking between them and you. As though he's worried you'll change your mind.
You latch onto his hand like it's a life raft and your alone at sea. You take a breath, then squeeze his hand three times.
You don't see his eyes snap up to your face because you are too busy remembering.
You are both sitting in a conference room, big windows showing the sun setting on the horizon. Purple streaks through the red and orange of the sky and clouds.
It had been a day. Long hours of meetings with various scientists, mathmeticians, and astronomers. Stratt had told you all that you had only weeks until the launch date and everything had to be checked and checked again to be ready.
You and Grace had stayed behind after the last meeting, just sitting in your chairs next to each other. You were both always next to each other. Carl never heistated to call you two "love birds" because you were so close, which caused both of you to immediately sweat and awkwardly say that's not what it was.
It was quiet in the conference room. Quiet was a luxury these days. One would think that scientists and people working on the most important mission in the world would sometimes want quiet to work, but meeting after meeting filled the air with conversation.
Grace usually also talked. A lot. But he seemed to understand that quiet was necessary right now. You usually didn't mind his rambling, loving hearing about his day and his life, but you laid your head down into your arms on the table.
Resting. Just resting. The weight of the world on your shoulders left one with a tendency to sink down into themselves.
After a little while, Grace spoke up.
"You alright?"
A muffled, "yeah" came from you.
"Can I ask you a question?"
You lifted your head, looking at him with tired eyes. "Yeah"
"What are you going to do once this is all done?"
You tilt your head a moment, before shrugging. "Hard to think about a life after all this. It's a lot, but I'll miss the companionship. The work. The sense of purpose."
Grace nodded along as you spoke. "I get that."
He drummed his fingers on the table for a few moments. "Do you think we… we'll still be-" he drifts off in his words.
"Still be what?"
"Oh, y'know. Like talking?"
"Yeah. If you want to. I'd love to hang out still. We still have to watch Zathura, remember?"
Grace chuckles at that. "Well, yeah, of course I want to. I've only heard great things about this movie." He pauses, again.
"Would you ever…nevermind."
"No, what? Would I ever what?"
"No, no, it's stupid."
You roll your eyes. "Grace."
"No, it really is, you don't want to hear it."
"I really do."
He huffs at you, before turning his swivel chair away from you. "Ok, but I can't look at you when I ask."
"Grace, really?"
"Yup. You want to hear this, you got to turn around too."
You scoff, but turn around, the squeak of the chair showing your compliance.
He shifts side to side and you wait.
"Would you ever want to…to get dinner with me? I know this small diner near my apartment. It's nothing fancy, seriously, but they have good burgers and fries. Or salads, if that's what you want. Not to say that you need to eat salad! Ceaser salad's are really good, y'know, not made by Julius Ceaser, that's just a myth. I don't think we actually know when it was invented, although Ceaser Cardini in Mexico is pretty believable, but-"
You stop him in his tracks, turning his swivel chair toward you. Grabbing onto his cardigan, that fox cardigan that he always wears. That you love.
You pull him close and it has the effect you hoped it would.
Grace shut up.
You look into his eyes intensely, "Are you asking me out, Ryland Grace?"
"Uh, well, I mean, yeah, I think so."
A smile slowly creeps onto your face. "Grace, we have known each other for years now. I thought you'd never ask."
"Is that a… a yes?"
You let go of his cardigan, instead taking his hands into yours. "Of course, it's a yes."
A brilliant smile crosses his face, as bright as the last shining rays of light from the sun outside. "Really?"
"Yeah. Of course it is. Can I say something now?"
"Of course."
"I need you to turn around too."
Grace laughs. Then he sees that you are serious, "Oh, sorry, yeah, let me just-" Before turning his chair around. You turn yours too.
Grace hears you take a breath, fidgeting in your seat. "This might be really forward, but…we've known each other a long time now. And with you asking for a date after all this time, and the sun is dying and we don't know how long we have, I think I want to just say it early. I want to not waste any more time. So… here it is. Ok. I love you. I've been in love with you."
Your hands are shaking in your lap as you desperately try to hear any kind of movement behind you. You wait a few more seconds before slowly turning your chair around.
"Grace?"
No response.
"Grace? Any words to shine a light on your mental state right now?"
You get up from your chair, slowly walking toward Grace's front.
"Grace, I'm getting worried now, you can just tell me off if you need, but please say something."
You finally walk far enough to see his face. His eyes blank, mouth open, face tinged red. You kneel in front of him, not daring to touch him, afraid to misread any signals.
Not like there are many coming your way.
"Grace? Did you hear me?"
"You love me?"
A breath escapes you, glad to have signs of life back. "Yeah. Did I break you?"
"A little. Hold on. I'm rebooting."
"Ok."
He blinks, runs a hand through his hair, before pulling his glasses down to under his chin. He looks at you then. "You love me?"
"Yup."
"Can you say it again?"
Your mouth twists a little at that. "Umm. I don't know if I want to say it again until I know how you're feeling about this."
He pulls you up to sit into a chair next to him. A shocked "hey" escapes you before you still as he places his forehead to yours, eyes closed. He reaches for your hands, holding them gently, so gently, before a ragged, "I love you too" is whispered in the space between you.
"Oh."
"Now that you know, can you say it again?"
You nod against his forehead, getting him to chuckle in amusement.
"I love you."
He pulls back a little, mouthing "wow" to himself. His eyes are still closed.
When you speak up again, his eyes open, staring into yours, soft and happy.
"It's funny you asked me three times if I did. In my family, three times meant 'I love you'. Like, if I tapped your hand three times or if I squeezed your hand three times while we held hands, that would be 'I love you."
Grace immediately squeezes your hand in his three times. You laugh, a loud joyful sound that fills the room. "You catch on quick!"
"I try."
The memory ends abruptly, throwing you back into the present moment, unlike other memories that fade from your vision. Grace is holding onto your shoulders, face full of concern and emotion. At this point, you both know when a memory has surfaced, what it looks like and that they can have different effects depending on what was remembered.
"You love me?"
Grace recoils from you, arms snapping back away from you and mouth dropping open, just like it did in the memory.
Your hand goes to your forehead, a headache surging forward, a pained hiss leaving you.
"Hold on, I'll go get you a pain pill." Grace gets up to leave, practically jumping from the stool to leave, but you grab his wrist, pulling him back towards you.
"You love me?"
He looks at you over his shoulder, before his shoulders drop and he sits back down on his stool.
"What do you remember?"
"You asked me out. You were going to wait until the whole mission was over to take me out on a date. So I told you I loved you."
His eyes close, eyelids pressed tightly together as you say those last three words, as though it hurts him to hear you say it.
"Do you?"
"Do I what?"
"Do you love me? After all this time? Even with limited memories? I don't want to rush you into anything, I mean we're practically different people now and-"
You squeeze his wrist three times, stopping him in his tracks. Again.
He looks at you up at you over his glasses. "I had to be sure."
"Oh. I'm sure too. I love you."
That same smile, the one from the memory, finds its way onto his face again. The lab seems brighter because of it.
"Can I hear you say it now, Grace?"
"I've been saying it. I'm sure you know now."
"Oh, you caught onto that?" You grin at him, ducking your head down,"I was trying to be a scientist."
"Yeah, I caught on. A scientist, huh? That's sweet of you."
"Yeah. I have all my notes on it if you ever want to check it out. You do it a lot. But, it's different to hear it… out loud?" Your hopeful tone betrays your wants.
He dramatically takes a big breath in, "I love you too." You giggle at him, wrapping your arms around his neck.
"Wow."
He laughs, too, "Wow indeed."
"I'm so glad I decided to take a chance. To tell you I mean."
A smirk graces his face. "Was it… a hail mary?"
You sigh, getting up to leave. Hiding the amusement on your face from him.
"No, wait, c'mon. It wasn't that bad!"
"Rocky! I need your help. We have to put Grace in the airlock."
You hear an outraged "What, question!?" Come from nearby, causing you to burst out laughing. Grace joins you, both of you doubling over, causing a distressed Rocky to enter the room completely confused.
"Why Grace go outside, question? What Grace do, question? Grace said he fix. Grace bad at fix."
This, of course, only made you both laugh harder. You would explain to Rocky after that it was a joke, but the whole time, you and Grace would be sneaking glances at each other, excited at the new relationship forming between you.
*slamming my fist on the ground* I WANT MORE ADRIAN CONTENT GUESS I GOTTA DO IT MYSELF.
The small concave that served as a communal grounds and classroom was bustling on a day when no classes were expected.
On one side of the room, Ryland and Rocky were locked into what you’d describe as a very intense engineering debate. A lot of notes of accusation, multiple arms raising and falling as Rocky was frustrated, Ryland waving his hands like it somehow proved his side of the argument and you were sure if the xenonite wall wasn’t between them, Rocky would be almost karate-chopping Ryland’s legs for being ignorant on the topic.
On the other side, you and Adrian sat together, the xenonite wall almost non-existent as a stream of faux sunlight hitting your face and caressing the intricate etching in their carapace, a few familiar enough as they matched with Rocky.
You could hear Ryland’s voice caring faintly across the rock-ladden room, echoing slightly, “No, no, no…” He pinched the bridge of his nose after taking his glasses off for a moment, “If you redistribute the load across the support lattice---”
Rocky was not having any of that nonsense and cut him off with a series of stubborn rhythms.
“Have already accounted for redistbution. Grace argument stupid, repetitive.”
You leaned towards Adrian and tilted your head against the xenonite as you gazed down. They were working on some sort of device, probably another tool to help the biodome work more smoothly. “So… Has Rocky always been like this?”
Adrian didn't need further explanation. You could see the shift of their carapace just enough and hear the series of echolocation markers to know they were gazing at their mate.
“Yes.”
You pointed your mouth sarcastically, nodding your head. “Just yes?”
“Quality is what drew Adrian to Rocky. Good quality to have in mate. Good, good, good.”
Ah, you nodded a bit more understanding now. Adrian liked Rocky’s combative and stubborn-nature, not too dissimilar to your attraction to Ryland for very much the same reason. Funny how that worked out.
You huffed a sarcastic laugh, “That’s comforting.”
Across the dome-shaped room, Ryland began gesturing wildly. “I’m telling you, it’ll buckle under the stress---”
Rocky snapped back at him, firm by the way that his claws hit the ground.
“Have calculated a 0.3% failure risk. Well within acceptable parameter---”
Ryland merely scoffed that away, leaning down and pressing his hands onto his knees so he can lean towards Rocky who stood his ground and almost egged the human on by pressing his carapace to the xenonite wall. “That is not acceptable. That is definitely not acceptable, Rock! C’mon---”
The conversation faded as Adrian shifted beside you, quiet but enough to captivate your attention as a series of floaty sounds came from them.
“Grace emotionally invested in being correct.”
“Yeah, it’s uhhh…” You laughed at the irony, “One of the things I like about him."
Adrian seemed to flicker a bit at that. “Understand. Rocky also emotionally invested in being correct.”
They paused and seemed to watch the argument before concluding.
“We are same.”
You chuckled in agreement and watched as Ryland began viciously tapping the xenonite wall, Rocky following suit and doing the same thing just to annoy your chosen mate.
Then, as if they always possessed the greatest comedic timing on Erid, Adrian turned to you, their face smooth and more rounded than Rocky’s, but slowly, it was becoming a friendly, familiar one.
“Still why Adrian prefer Eridian rocks.”
You blinked, double checking mentally that you heard their complex words correctly. “Rocks?”
“Rocks do not argue when told need to spend time with Adrian.”
Your mouth flew open at that right as Rocky clicked at Ryland who only groaned loudly, pointing at the Eridian before looking at you. “See? See what I have to deal with?”
Rocky responded right on cue, with almost the same dry… Humor as Adrian. “Grace arguing with reality and mathematical probabilities. Rocky right, Grace wrong.”
And that was the nail in the coffin. You lost it, bringing your hand up and laughing hard into it.
Adrian shifted to watch you a bit more closely. They didn't have the one-on-one time with Humans like Rocky had so things as simple as a laugh were interesting to witness.
“(Last Name) amused, question?”
You nodded, wiping a small tear of laughter from the corner of your eye and looked over at them with a bright smile. “This is my favorite conversation. Like, ever.”
Ryland and Rocky, still mid argument glanced over but still, he found the time to call over to you, accompanied by Rocky saying... Literally the same thing like they shared a braincell. “Hey! Are you laughing at us?”
“Yes.”
"Yes."
You and Adrian said at exactly the same time, the look on Ryland’s face and the perceived expression on Rocky’s causing you both to burst out in laughter, yours straight from the chest, and Adrian’s light and harmonic against your ear drums.
something something kindred spirits something something abandoned by their institutions but refusing to give up hope something something forming an unshakable bond with an unlikely ally something something grace's ship is the 'hail mary' and jud's church is 'pereptual grace'
𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: Rocky has some questions for the humans on the ship, all of which related to the concept of ‘human attraction’
𝐀/𝐍: My first attempt at gender neutral writing, kinda nervy! So it’s a ‘you’ ’yours’ etc kinda deal Please let me know in the comments if you have any tips for gender neutral writing! All interactions with this post are super appreciated, mwah <3
“Grace friend! Grace friend!” The small, computerised voice rung out throughout the room; seemingly bouncing off the ships metal walls as he came bounding down the length of the ship. The little alien halted to a stop just in front of your feet, his posture straightening as he tilted up towards your height.
“Hey rock, what’s up?” He knew your name, but insisted on referring to you as ‘Grace friend’, not so much to your dismay; Grace was your friend, and Rocky did sound very cute when he said it — who could complain really.
You crouched down in response, beginning to sit cross-legged on the cold, harsh material of the floor.
“Rocky want do experiment. Need word for.” Rocky paused for a moment, his frame shaking ever so slightly as he was deep in thought. His intelligent mind working a million miles per hour searching for every similar word in his capacity, his claws tapping rhythmically against his complexly engineered ball.
In that moment, Ryland turned the corner of the ship — dressed in his signature yellow jumpsuit, his blue name badge just below his shoulder, simultaneously sporting a badge of the american flag on his forearm. His glasses sat gently just under his chin; making contact with the overgrown stubble he was sporting that day.
Grace had seemingly heard Rocky’s incessant rambling of broken english, crouching down to the laptop as his hands hovered over the keyboard in order to grant him the word he was desperately searching for. He stole a glance at you from over the computer, a soft glint in his eyes as he awaited your response.
“Human relationship. Human like eachother. Drawn to like ions. Positive and negative.” Rocky affirmed
“Attraction?”
The room fell silent after that, Ryland’s posture freezing as he realised that’s exactly what Rocky wanted. He furrowed his eyebrows, shooting a curious glance over in the alien’s direction with a big sigh; head shaking in dissapointment as he reluctantly tapped away at the keys of the device.
“And that is my queue to leave!” Ryland announced urgently, his hands steadying themselves on his knees as he rose from the floor, switching to his hips as he straightened out.
Once again, he let out a big sigh, expressing clear discomfort for the topic. Especially since it was brought about by Rocky, known to be the ‘knower of no boundaries’ and perhaps a part of the most intrusive species now, thanks to you two, known to man.
Ryland had almost retreated around the corner before Rocky piped up again.
“No worry. Will ask Grace later too” He swivelled around in his ball, turning to Ryland, who had his back toward him; seemingly frozen in place, like a deer caught in headlights.
He threw his head back, the bottom of his head meeting between his shoulder blades — hands still sassily placed on the sides of his hips. While you couldn’t physically see Ryland’s expression, you pictured his face screwed up, the skin around his eyes wrinkled as he shut them tight, praying for an escape. Possibly wrestling with his own brain, that was urging him to throw himself off the ship in usual Ryland avoidance.
His hand came up to the side of his head, displaying a thumbs up with his fingers before continuing around the corner as you stifled a laugh, Ryland’s childish manner clearly amusing you.
“So. Grace friend. What attraction for you?”
Rocky managed to corner Ryland while he was working at something on his desk, eyebrows furrowed in concentration at whatever he was engrossed in. Ryland span around in his chair, hearing Rocky scuffling near the entry point of the room. Rocky stood firm, ready for Ryland to bolt out of the room — but, Ryland stayed put as he reluctantly ushered Rocky to come closer.
“Okay, let’s do this.” There was a hint of pain in his voice.
“Put me on table.” Rocky demanded in response, rolling himself to a stop just before Ryland’s feet.
Ryland obliged, his arms coming to either side of the ball Rocky lived within; gently lifting it upwards, his biceps flexing as the weight shifted from his arms to the sturdily engineered table. The two just looked at each-other for a moment as Rocky began setting himself up for a theatre-level performance.
“Grace friend say attraction is subjective. Different for everyone.” Rocky was gesturing with his claws while pacing up and down the length of the desk; excited to present his findings to his intelligent human friend, while also gaining Ryland’s own insight into the mystery of subjective human attraction.
“Yep. That’s true, buddy!” Ryland nodded gently, his foot tapping against the floor in a nervous manner.
In his head, Ryland began to prep himself for what his answer would be.
Ryland enjoyed emotional intimacy, the feeling of closeness that arises from sharing sworded-secrets with eachother; not caring for particular physical aspects of a person, more so the emotional bond shared between two people. He often found himself thinking about you, the connection that the both of you shared, feeling as if you had known each-other in multiple past lifetimes — his relationship with you was the epitome of what made him attracted to someone.
The way you’d laugh at his ironic, cringey science pun shirts, a chuckle would bubble up in his throat instantaneously; laughter like some sort of airborne pathogen, contagious. The difficult nights you shared, wondering if you were ever going to be back on solid ground, talking up an existential storm until one of you bored the other into a deep, undisturbed sleep.
“Grace friend like big, strong arms, wrap around. Is funny.” Rocky continued gesturing with his claws, as if he was beginning to have some sort of alien malfunction. His words were getting progressively louder as he finished his sentence, awaiting a reaction from the human.
A cocky smirk danced across Ryland’s lips, his brows raising as he pushed his chest out, subconsciously straightening his posture in the chair. He looked down at his arms, folded across his front; biceps filling out the sleeves of the jumpsuit in a way that wasn’t too tight, but definitely hugging his muscle enough for it to be noticeable.
Confirmation.
“Well, Rocky-“
“Not Grace” Rocky shot him down immediately.
Ryland returned to slouching, a small pout playing on his lips in defeat.
Later that day, it was Ryland’s turn to corner you, similar to how Rocky had cornered him. Positioned in the doorway, leaning slightly against its frame; the paralells were rather disturbing. Ryland had changed out of his jumpsuit, instead sporting one of his science-y joke shirts; one he knew you loved, that made you smile without fail.
“Rocky says you like big strong men.” He announced, as your eyes lifted up from the book you were reading.
“Excuse me?” A laugh escaped your lips at his ridiculousness. Ryland didn’t really know how to approach any social situation in a normal, conforming way. Always opting for some sort of theatrical delivery instead, it was part of his charm.
“Anyway, just thought I’d come to tell you that— oh, hold on, I need to yawn” Ryland cut himself off, goofily stretching his arms out to the side; his lips parting in a fake yawn as he brung his arms up to the back of his head, purposefully flexing his muscles with all his might as a small, amused smile overcame him. “Ah, sorry about that!”
His aim was clearly to amuse you.
Your lips pressed into a fine line, cocking your head to the side; shooting an unamused glare at the male, masking the butterflies dancing around your stomach. Not even objectively at the sight of his muscles, just at his sheer stupidity you found so endearing.
Ryland resumed his position, leaning against the doorframe, his elbow propped up just above his head as he awaited more of your reaction while a goofy expression washed over his face.
“Ouch!” He yelped, the book clattering to his feet after making direct contact with his chest.
“Ah, sorry about that!” You mocked.
The two of you shared a look, blank for a moment.
Then came the laughter.
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