A Taste of Vengeance

If I thought I had been intimidated by the Norse God before, I didn’t know what I was now. Loki’s green eyes watched me with a mischievous, malicious glimmer that I had never seen before as I placed his hands in electromagnetic cuffs, made to burn his wrists every time he strained against the metal. He was undeniably handsome, but there was a type of madness, a time of anger that rolled on him in waves that nearly made me tremble in fear.

Natasha glanced at him with hatred so pure and so strong that it would have made any mortal human being weak at the knees with submission. The act of taking Barton under his control was one of the worst things he could have done. Natalia Romanova was not someone that you wanted as an enemy.

I sat in the co-pilot chair next to Natalia, turning my head to the side every so often to look at the men on the plane. The plane was silent, and Loki had not so much as said two words. I had been tempted to touch his mind, but I decided against it. I would not risk my sanity until Director Fury had instructed me to do so.

“He saying anything?” Fury’s voice came over the intercom.
“Not a word,” Natasha responded, flicking on the auto pilot button. I stood up from my chair, walking towards the back. Loki sat motionless, glaring at the ground. I stepped off the last step, causing him to look up at me. His piercing gaze held me there for a moment, so glacial cold that I almost felt my insides freeze. He smirked before returning his gaze to the ground, which he seemed to find particularly interesting.
“Just get him here,” Fury sighed. “We’re low on time.”
“And I’m low on patience,” I muttered, implying how annoyed I was at his silence. I didn’t really expect him to talk, but with someone of his stature and personality, it was unnerving.

I moved to stand next to Tony and Steve, watching Loki all the while. I was beginning to feel very uneasy with his presence on the plane. As much as I would have loved to think I had overpowered him, my gut told me he easily could have worked his way out of my psychic hold. I may be a mutant, and my powers may be near unexplainable, but he was a God, and being a God meant more than my abilities. The fact that he was on this plane, unmoving and calm, was setting off several alarms in my head.

As if reading my mind, Steve murmured, “I don’t like it.”
“What?” Tony asked, looking at Loki. “Rock of Ages giving up so quickly?”
“No. The fact that it was so easy… this guy packs a whollup.”
“Not to mention he seems pretty content to be here,” I threw in, looking at Steve. He seemed to share the same exact feelings as myself. Tony, on the other hand went on, untouched. “Still, you are pretty spry for your age.” Steve glared. “What do you take? Pilates?”
“What?” Steve clearly had no idea what on earth the exercise was.
Tony rolled his eyes. “Oh, I forgot. It’s kind of like calisthenics. You might have missed things, you know, being a Capsicle and all.”
“Feel free to apologize to that tree any day now,” I called out to him.
Tony looked at me. “I’ve had about enough from you, peanut gallery.”
“Just because you’re not the only one with smart remarks?”
“No, just because you’re the only one with the mutated chromosomes.”
“You know,” Steve said, pacing away from Tony and standing next to me, an almost protective gesture. “Fury didn’t tell me he was calling you in.”
“Fury doesn’t tell you a lot of things.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, like you’re Fury’s favorite. I bet you took all the toys from the kids in the sandbox, didn’t you?”

Just then an uncommonly loud crash of thunder rumbled through the plane. I flinched slightly, not used to the sound way up in the sky. out of the corner of my eye, I watched Natasha look up through the glass uncomfortably. The lightning that lit up the sky was purple and filled with wrath. Another strike hit next to the plain, shaking it. I ran up to the cockpit, flipping through screens and pulling up the radar. There was nothing there.

“Where is this coming from?” she asked me, her green eyes flicking up to mine in worry.
“What’s the matter?” Steve called to Loki, talking loudly over the thunder. It didn’t take much to see that Loki was visibly uncomfortable as he cast his green eyes up, as if waiting for something to come through the roof. “Afraid of a little lightning?”
He grimaced. “I’m not overly fond of what comes after it.”
I paused, my whirling. “And what comes after it?”

No one ever got the chance to answer my question. Without warning, a loud noise banged on the roof of the jet, causing it to swerve. Loki’s face took on something close to annoyance mixed with fear. Sharing a quick glance, Tony went for his helmet, placing his helmet on and opening the door, much to Steve’s protests.

Clouds and lightning swirled in a vortex around the plane, causing me to stumble forward from the sudden wind. Steve caught my wrist steadying me. I glanced up at him and thanked him, but he raised his shield as a newcomer announced himself by landing in the doorway.

He was like nothing I had ever seen, although comparable to Loki. He had silver plated armor, with all the splendor of the finest metal. His blond hair was long, just past his shoulders and whipping in the wind with the anger that was equal to the features on his face. He was ruggedly handsome, and he toward over me by such a great amount that my heart even skipped in cowardace, something that I instantly felt ashamed of. He was definitely not of the human race, with his red cape snapping like the cracks of lightning that had come with his arrival.

Tony charged him but the man reacted quickly, throwing out an abnormally sized hammer, sticking Tony in the chest, sending him flying backwards. The man ripped Loki from the seat, glaring at him with contempt and hurt as the seat belts snapped at his raw power. I pulled out a knife and threw it, putting all my strength and speed into it, just in time for it to stick him in the arm as he took off with Loki. His roar of pain could be heard as the clouds swallowed them whole.

“More Asgardians?” Natasha barked from the front, wind whipping her fiery hair.
“Are they nice?” Rogers asked, nearing the opening in the jet.
“Doesn’t matter,” Tony snapped getting up. “If he frees Loki or kills him, the tesseract is gone.”
“Then I suppose we have some hunting to do.” I joined Tony at the door.
“Wait, we need a plan of attack.”
Tony looked at Steve. “I have a plan: attack.” With that, he jumped from the plane, blasting me with heat as his thrusters came on.
I looked back at Steve. “Shall we, Captain?”
“Ash, I wouldn’t. There from legend, their basically Gods.”
Steve ripped two parachutes from the storage, tossing me one with a grin on his face. “There’s only one God ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.” Without another word he jumped from the plane.
“Make a circle,” I called to Natasha, yelling over the roar of the storm. “If I haven’t broken up their row by then, light their asses up.”
“You got it.”

The exileration that ran through my veins as I plummeted from the sky was incredible. I reached out my mind while I fell, searching for Loki and the other man’s mind. I found both, each mind raging with anger and argument. Loki’s mind was distinctly poisonous and black, smoking around like dangerous black tendrils of a squid. The other man’s mind- Thor, from what I could glean- was far richer in feeling and light.

“Come home,” Thor begged Loki. I could see it from Thor’s mind, as he held his adoptive brother by the collar. I nearly missed the time to pull my chute, overwhelmed by the feeling that flood through me from Thor’s mind. He was filled with so much emotion that it nearly overrode my human emotion. God’s were able to feel much more powerfully than myself.
“I don’t have it,” Loki replied, simply because he knew it would anger his brother. And it did.
“You listen to me brother-“ Thor was caught off guard as Tony shot into him like a bullet, taking the God of Thunder with him. Loki smirked, knowing that the two would grapple amongst themselves like children. “I’m listening.”

I pulled away from Thor’s mind and landed on the ground with a running start. I ripped the vest off me and took off in the direction that I knew Tony and Thor would be brawling. I could hear the clamour from a mile away, and I had come to find that I really was a mile away from them. But for someone with inhuman strength and stamina, running a mile to something was easy as taking three steps.

The carnage that Tony and Thor began to create in their fight was unbelievable. I had to duck several times as I moved through threes exploding and once from the large hammer Thor used as a weapon. Of course neither one of them remembered why they were fighting in the first place- for control of Loki. It was a battle of pride now, one that would cost them the enemy.

If I hadn’t stepped on his cape while he began moving, that is.

I pulled out a gun and pointed it right at his forehead, much to his surprise. “Move again, Zeus, and watch what happens.”
He laughed, much to my irritation. “You are quite interesting, for a mortal you know.”
“You act like your arrogance is a virtue.”
“I have many virtues, Ashlynn Bane. One of them is lack of conviction, which I sense you understand.”
I frowned. “I don’t lack conviction. I don’t let myself become emotionally compromised. You on the other hand, seem to have very emotional family issues.”
“Family issues.” He smiled. “Pray tell me, Ashlynn Bane, daughter of Michael and Wendy Bane, does it hurt to know you work for the very people that killed your parents, or are you so emotionally incompetant that you no longer mind?” I froze. People that killed my parents? An assassin killed my parents, which is exactly why I became one in the first place- so that I could never be snuck up on as they were. “I see,” he continued, shifting towards me. I ground his cape further in the dirt. “I suppose it was not in the job description, was it? No, SHIELD needs to manipulate tools like yourself into working for them because it’s the only means by which they can get what they want. You have been lied, to Ashlynn Michaelsdaughter. If you worked for me, I wouldn’t dream of lying to you.”
“Of course not. You’d just put me under mind control, am I correct?”
“Something tells me that your mind is far to competent and skilled to control. Why do you not use your power now? Why do you not look inside the thoughts and memories of a race, far greater than your own? Is it fear? Can it be that you truly feel?”

Ignoring Loki was the only solution I could find in the situation. His words were poison of the ear, and I knew they could seep into my heart and pump through my veins, killing me from the inside out. I distracted myself from his words about my parents death by watching the fight come to a halt, where Steve began yelling at the god in a cap the man in iron.

Thor suddenly swung his hammer, knocking an unprepared Tony several feet back before turning to Steve and launching himself at him, hammer raised. Steve did not have an iron suit like Tony, but raised his shield, a pathetic attempt at defense. My heart went cold and I found myself screaming, “No!” as the hammer came down on his shield, sending out a shockwave so great that it knocked me down flat on my back.

My gun was still trained on Loki for what it was worth but I scrambled up, sure that I would find Steve lying dead on the floor. I had no idea what the thought made me want to burst into tears, or why the fear had risen so suddenly in my chest, that I would not see his sideways smile, or his blue eyes, or hear his polite ‘yes ma’am’ and the way his cheeks would blush.

But I watched in amazement and thanked the lord as I watched him stand up, moving his shield that didn’t have a single scratch, even from the powerful hammer. My heart bean beating in my chest again, and I felt as though it had momentarily stopped in those moments of doubt.

Loki began laughing then. “Just when I thought perhaps I had found a mortal without human sentiment. You’re pathetic. You begin to feel affections for a man in the middle of a war, and you try and to convince yourself that you are not having feels of affection. You believe you are cold, and unattached to the world because you live comfortably without feeling. You live a lie, human.”

I looked at Loki then, and as much as I wanted to tell him he was wrong and that no amount of his endless rambling would work, but a flower of doubt bloomed in my chest, planting it’s roots in the very center of my brain. His voice, no matter how silky and seductive, held nothing but truth in it. And I hated him for it.

Without thinking I faced Loki, pointing the gun at him and squeezed the trigger.

A loud bang echoed around me.