The Familiar Taste of Poison

Lacy had been awake, without the urge to sleep for nearly thirty consecutive hours. She was tired and her eyes were dry and sore. Her hands ached, along with her feet. Her mouth was dry and her tongue felt swollen. To top all this off, she had a strange ache, almost like a burning, in the base of her skull. However, Lacy was at ease. There was no need for sleep. The only need she had was to stand outside, holding her gun and watch for anybody who wasn’t supposed to be here.

She yawned and the action made her dry lips crack just a bit. It was the first time that Lacy had done anything in hours. She felt horrible but was content, almost happy. Even though her subconscious kept screaming something was very wrong, she felt very, very right.

A door opened to her left and as somebody walked outside Lacy’s stiff neck turned to see Agent Barton. Her eyes were slow to focus on him until he was standing right next to her.

“Loki needs you inside,” Agent Barton said to Lacy, his eyes burning with a phantom-like blue glow. He didn’t sound as used up as she would imagine of herself, though she did not speak to him. No reply was needed, and instead Lacy nodded once in acceptance, feeling her neck protest violently. Clint Barton turned and led Lacy inside the abandoned subway, leaving the few German soldiers that were on watch with her alone.

Inside, they immediately boarded an escalator and Clint led Lacy down to where Professor Selvig was working on something to do with Loki’s Tesseract. In the pit of her stomach, fear started to swell and Lacy couldn’t remember why.

Passed all of that, Lacy followed Clint to a heavy green curtain, pulling it back to reveal Loki. He was seated on a military style bed in his own separate room divided by the thick, woolen curtains from the rest of this place. Where they had settled was mainly void say for military and scientific gadgets, and the like.

“Leave us,” Loki said and the pair didn’t have wonder if he was talking to Clint or Lacy. However the burning in the back of their skulls intensified when he spoke.

Clint turned and left without a word, the curtain dropping closed behind him. “You don’t need that,” Loki stated and Lacy’s weary eyes looked down to her gun, which was still clutched tightly between her hands. The joints in her hands and arms screamed with pain when Lacy moved to place the Glock back into its holster on her belt. Securing it in place, Lacy looked back up to Loki, who was now suddenly in front of her, holding out a glass of water. It should have startled her, even scared her, that he could move that fast without her noticing. That’s what’s Lacy's duty was good for Loki, noticing things. That’s exactly why she was outside. Instead, Lacy was unfazed by him.

“Drink that before you fall over,” Loki handed the glass over to Lacy, before turning around and placing a metal chair in front of his bed. With no words spoken, and the burning getting slightly worse, she obliged and sat down in the chair. Obediently, she began drinking the water. Lacy hadn’t really realized how thirsty she was before the water was gone in seconds. She drank it so fast that there was barely time to taste it. In her mind a sudden spark, something like a lighter void of fuel, told her water wasn’t supposed to have that taste. No attention was paid to that thought, as Loki sat on his bed in front of her.

“Feeling any better?” he asked, smirking at the empty glass Lacy had in her hands. She really didn’t, and was honestly afraid to lie to him. She had no idea how to respond. Lacy was content but her body felt broken. “I thought so,” he stood again, walking around Lacy. Once behind her, Loki began to gently remove the pins from her blonde hair, letting the golden waves fall around her shoulders. In any other situation, Lacy would find this an extremely uncomfortable position but right now she didn’t think twice about it.

Once finished, Loki walked away from her and reached for his scepter while she stayed seated forward. Loki’s footsteps slowly returned and one of his hands fall on her tense shoulder. Goosebumps flooded her washed-out skin as he leaned down, his ice cold breath hitting her neck as he whispered, “I think this may kill you.”

The smile was present in his voice but his words didn’t trouble Lacy at all. As long as he was smiling, she was fine. She was still content. Loki walked back around her, and she looked to his strange scythe like scepter. He pointed the lethal end of the scepter at her chest, just where her heart was, before she looked up to him. “And,” he added after a second, “I know this is going to hurt you, Agent Garrett.” Lacy should have been worried but wasn’t. She just sat in the metal chair, holding her empty glass and staring up at Loki.

Suddenly, without warning, Lacy felt as if her very soul was being ripped from her body. The glass she was holding fell and shattered on the concrete floor when she tried to scream from the pain. Her voice was too hoarse and instead just cracked. Every nerve in her body slowly set ablaze, not even to mention the fire in the back of her skull exploding. Her vision was full of color, overloaded along with her hearing and other senses. Everything was vivid and painful as she felt her soul flood back into her body.

After what seemed like an eternity, Loki finally took the spear away from her chest, and she fell out of the chair, limp. She landed in the small glass fragments on the floor, tiny cuts erupting with beads of dark blood over her bare skin. Compared to what Loki had just done, Lacy could barely feel the shards ripping through her clothes and skin. It was painful none the less, and when she tried to move out of the fragments her body ignited all over again. Before she could cry out from the slowly worsening sting, Lacy’s blue eyes landed on Loki.

“Oh shit,” her voice cracked and weakened with each letter but was still able to get her point across.

“Hmm,” Loki smiled devilishly. “Surprising.”

Staring up at him, though every nerve was still smoldering, Lacy quickly reached for her gun. Before she could properly aim at him, the gun was kicked violently out of her hands. Crying out again, and clutching her hands to her chest while the gun flew across the room, she felt as if her hands had been broken. Then again, all of her felt broken.

“I said you wouldn’t need that,” Loki scolded her, setting his spear on his bed. He took a step forward and towered over Lacy on the floor, glass crunching loudly under his boots. She attempted to scurry away from him. As she did the glass her body sunk deeper.

“What do you want with me?” She choked out.

“I wanted to know what would happen when I took that enchantment off a mortal,” Loki stated blandly. “I needed to know it’s power.”

“Why me?” Lacy gasped. She wanted to get off of the ground, however since she had fallen her legs felt useless, like Jell-o.

“Don’t be conceited. You weren’t important. I’ve got Selvig and Barton and may others who are just as disposable as you. Like I said before, I thought you would die from taking that enchantment away.” Something about him, and the way he answered her, told Lacy that he was lying.

“So you poisoned me just in case?” While she spoke, her whole body started to slowly tremble. As if Lacy wasn’t tired enough, she wanted very badly just to pass out.

“Poisoned? No. I had my doubts, yes, but I would not need to poison you. The water had a sedative in it.” Loki smiled once more, brandishing his teeth at her.

“Son of a bitch,” Lacy muttered and gave up, her head falling to the ground. Loki stood up and walked over to her, picking Lacy up before carrying her to the bed and laying her down next to his spear. It was the last thing her consciousness could grasp before loosing herself to sleep.