A Taste of Vengeance

Third person
“That’s the guy that my dad wouldn’t shut up about?” Tony asked, clearly amused. “Maybe they should’ve kept that guy on ice.”

Bruce laughed and continued to look at computer screens, tapping buttons here and there. He had a lot on his mind, and he wasn’t sure if he felt like listening to Tony rant about pointless things, or if he might as well listen to the entertainment, so he commented lightly, “The guy isn’t wrong about Loki. He had the jump on us-"

Shouting from the hallway cut Bruce off and he lowered his glasses, looking out the window. It seemed Steve and Ash was having a confrontation outside the door about their incident previously that night. Bruce had unwillingly watched as Tony hacked the security feeds, giggling and making fun of them like a little kid. He had to admit, it was still amusing.

Tony stared out of the glass window, watching the exchange between Uncle Sam and Assassin’s Creed with sheer amusement. It was amazing that both of them were to stupid and caught up in their soppy woe is me stories to see that they had chemistry between them.

They were yelling loud enough to wake the ship, but Tony chose to hope up on the counter, popping a blueberry in his mouth and watching the exchange. He had the sudden urge to start chanting “Jerry” over and over, because this certainly was a lot like what you would see on an episode of Jerry Springer.

“Poor Cap,” Tony commented to Bruce who was attempting to give them their privacy, although it was kind of difficult now that Ash was screaming literally on top of her lungs. “She’ll chew him up and spit him back out.”

Steve suddenly walked across the hall towards Ash who had walked away. Tony frowned and jumped off the counter, going to the window and smiling triumphantly when he could see them again, popping another blueberry into his mouth. He watched as Steve muttered something and kissed her, much to Tony’s surprise. Cap was way to old for her.

“Yeah,” Bruce chuckled lightly, looking at his friend through his glasses. “She made real work of him.”

“Excuse me, Memorial Day and Lynyrd Skynyrd,” Tony called out of the doorway. “We have work to be doing, not listening to you fight over who get’s to sit next to One-eyed Willy in the morning.”

Ash broke away from Steve, red in the cheeks but shot back, “Go back to your wand waving, Tin Man.”

Tony frowned. “Tin Man?”

Ash peered around Steve’s shoulder, smiling at him. “Yeah, tin man. You’re made of metal and you have no heart!”

Tony rolled his eyes and walked back into the lab. He found that he was fond of Ashlynn Bane and her witty remarks. Unlike the rest of the avengers, she wasn’t so serious all the time, and even when she was serious, she wasn’t a buzz kill. Her anger issues were a little unhinging and the fact that she probably had knives hidden up the wazoo were odd, but Tony, despite himself, found that he was feeling like she was the niece he never ever wanted.

*
First person

“Come on,” Steve said, pulling my hand as we walked back by the lab. I made sure to mentally knock Tony’s blueberries from his hand, earning an echoed curse down the hall. Steve led me down twists and turns but I didn’t bother asking where we were going. I was so happy in that moment that he could have taken me to dance around Loki’s cell and I wouldn’t have questioned it.

I had never been kissed like that before. Of course I had kissed people on mission to lure them in, but it was never the same. It had always been an empty action for me, one that I didn’t think would ever hold any meaning. And yet, a simple, brief touch of the lips from Steve and the world was unhinged, spinning wildly and out of control on its axis. I could even forget Loki for the time being.

We finally came to a sealed door that had a giant warning sign on it. Obviously this room was off-limits, even to us. I didn’t have to peek into his mind to know that Tony had gotten to Steve. The idea of someone being dishonorable, someone lying to him to manipulate him was too much, and he had to get to the truth.

“Anyone in there?” he asked, turning to me. I took a moment before scanning the room with my mind in one swift sweep before shaking my head. He smiled at me then. “I love that you can do that.”

Steve leaned against the door then and grabbed it from the outside frame, pressing into it and pulling. After a few seconds of strain and brute strength, the door unhinged, breaking off and opening up to the room.

“I love that you can do that.”
He rolled his eyes. “You can do.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, following him in. “But it takes a lot longer.”

The room was dark and cold. The ceiling was extremely high up, but then again, so were the endless rows of catwalks leading to different file cabinets and lockers. There were hundreds of storage bins in the room, and I was confused at where we were supposed to start.

Sound caught my ear. People were talking not to far down the hallway, and I knew we would get in serious trouble if we were found here. I tapped Steve silently and tapped my ear, signaling there were people coming. He nodded and looked up before smoothly jumping up onto the railings of a catwalk, swinging over the metal bars and landed without so much as a whisper of noise. He gave me a look that was challenging.

I hopped up and over the railing in a single fluid motion as oppose to his pause, and landed with poise and lissome posture. I smirked at him and did a sort of bow before he chortled and beckoned for me to keep following. I had no problem with him taking the lead. I preferred to be able to study him as he walked in front of me.

It was odd, that he moved so slowly for such a tall, muscular person. He was the complete opposite of Thor’s form of brute source, which was all smash, crash and make really loud noises as he moved about. But that was how Asgaridans were- loud and proud. Loki wasn’t truly an Asgaridan, so he was the exception.

It took several minutes of walking different catwalks until Steve found a label that interested him. It only said Protocol 2, but the keypad on it was different than the others, it was more difficult to open. I smiled at it, sweeping the minds of the ship until I found what I wanted. Bumping him out of the way with my hip and smirking, I typed in a rapid set of numbers, opening the box with a click.

“Yeah,” I commented as I let him open the box. “I guess I love that about me too.”

Steve kissed me lightly, still sending shivers up and down my spine and opened the box all the way, the smile falling instantly from his face. I in took a sharp breath, looking at the contents of the box, all feeling draining out of me. A familiar sense began to seep back into my blood, a taste that I had in my mouth before. A feeling of betrayal and lies.

The box contained large weapons that were dangerous looking and far more advanced than I had ever seen. This is why SHIELD was in the “energy” business. They were posing under the idea of using the energy of the tesseract to help light the world, and yet here was all the evidence we needed in front of us, to tell us that they were doing exactly what our enemy was doing: making weapons.

A sudden distress broke out into my mind and I snapped to attention. I knew Natasha’s dark red stream of thought from anywhere, and she was not happy. Her mind was ebbing with hatred and fear, and I took no time delving into her conscious, looking through her eyes at Loki, sneering at her and slamming his fist against the glass.

“I won’t touch Barton,” he hissed in a voice I had never heard before. It held so much darkness that Fear crept up my spine- or Natasha’s I’m not sure which- and I felt sick. “I won’t touch him until I have him kill you slowly and intimately in every way he knows you fear! And then he will wake long enough just to see his work, and when he screams I’ll split his skull.”

“Enough!” I screamed, although it was not a scream through Natasha. I let go of her mind, raging and felt Loki’s thought process, the black poison that was his intellect.

I dove into the black liquid that was Loki and seized it savagely, but I had not expected what I found. He had let me in far to easily, and he was prepared to attack back, snatching at me with black claws and forcing me to see the images he wanted me to see.

I watched, helpless to his grasp as I saw my mother and father, standing in their old lab together. Even with their glasses pushed up on the bridges of their noses, delving into endless amounts of work, they seemed happy and in love. They were learning so much it seemed, and their teamwork was beyond compare to the other surrounding them.

The object they were studying was glowing blue, and one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. The glow it gave off was the glow of power, and knowledge. I felt as if I were seeing truth, although I didn’t quite understand what it was. A soft word in my mind reminded me, and I knew what it was. The tesseract.

My mind whirled painfully again and I fought bitterly with Loki, shoving at him to let go of my mind. I realized somewhere deep in my own thoughts that I was being subject to my own torture and strengths.

It stopped on a file then, and I watch as a former SHIELD director looks through a file and signs an order. I feel a blade go through my chest as I watch him sign the death sentence on my parents, all because they refuse to give them information on how to turn the tesseract into a weapon, a feat SHIELD had now accomplished.

The scene whirls again and I find myself watching as a sharp shooter shoots my parents, one by one. Neither of them have time to react before the bullet penetrates their head, the blood spraying the white counter tops. All I can do is stare at the counter tops with my parents crimson blood on it, the way it paints it in a sickening manner.

You work for the killers of your own parents Loki’s head hissed in my mind, sounding like razors and nails on a chalkboard all at once. You are no better than the rest of them, and when I’m through with your friend Barton, I will kill the solider in front of you, and the last piece of your heart will be taken before you die in misery.

He continued to attack me, but the last threat had struck home. He hit the one nerve that I tried to avoid letting others touch. The one nerve that no one could control or withstand when it was touched. It was a weakness and a strength, a curse and a gift, a save and an end.

It was my vengeance.