✍🏻 Bonds of Fear (Loki)

26 - The Plan

Loki

The meeting room wasn't as large as I expected. The number of people in there wasn't that large either. The air was stuffy with everyone cramped in there and some of them - including me - had to stand with no free seats. Fury wasn't even trying to hide his victorious smirk and the more I looked around the room, the more certain I was that he wanted the number of attendees to be that small to reduce any risk of votes that weren't in his favor.

He was standing together with Rina at the head of the rectangular table with Tony and his woman sitting at the opposite end, both of them looking worried. Tony's leg was nervously jumping up and down under the table and the blond woman he was with had her palm reassuringly on his knee. What was her name again? Some food condiment or something....

Then there was the self-righteous Captain America on one side together with Natasha and Hawkeye. Opposite them was then Banner and two other people I didn't recognize. And so was everyone else who was standing around the table. Only faces I was passing by on the hallways but didn't seem of any importance. Thor was standing next to me at first but when he sensed the tense atmosphere in the room, he moved a few steps away and left me alone.

"Is it something my brother did?" He eventually broke the silence that brought Fury back into reality from his smug fantasizing of putting Feer behind bars and throwing away the key.

"Your brother," Fury started and nonchalantly motioned in my direction, "was cleared. He may return to Asgard whenever he pleases. Ideally rather sooner than later."

At those words, Thor smiled but his face went quickly back to concern when the atmosphere in the room only worsened. The rest of the team didn't seem all that excited that I was set free. Natasha opened her mouth to protest but before she could get a word in, Fury interrupted her.

"Oliver Collins," Fury announced to the room and I rolled my eyes at the emotional theatrics he was about to pull. "Sergeant, Oliver Collins." With those words, a soundless hologram video of Oliver appeared in the air, showing him amid some battle, pulling another soldier from harm's way while grenades were exploding all around. "He was a brave soldier. Very promising member of SHIELD. A good son and most of all an ambitious yet kind man."

"Never heard of him," Natasha muttered under her breath and crossed her arms while Tony rested his head in his hands, staring at the table and clearly knowing what this was all about.

Fury ignored Natasha's remark and with a wave of his hand switched the video to a static image of Oliver dressed up in a fancy uniform and receiving a medal of some sort. "So many opportunities ahead of him. So much potential. And yet, it was all taken away from him." At those words, everyone's confused frowns only deepened and Fury enjoyed that brief dramatic pause before adding his final strike. "Taken away by no other than Feer. When she killed him."

One could cut through the thick silence in the room and Fury was failing miserably at hiding his victorious smirk. "Last night during our mission, she committed a murder. A cold-blooded murder of one of our team members."

A hushed murmur went around the table except for Tony who only quietly groaned and his woman reassuringly squeezed his knee. My mind drifted back to the dinner they had with Feer, reminding me once more that there must have been something more to it. Why he was so protective of her. On the other hand, he knew her and followed her life for years. I felt protective of her only after several weeks.

Natasha once more opened her mouth in protest and once more Fury caught it in time to interrupt her. "We're still searching the caves for his body but with the memory Rina managed to extract from Feer just a moment ago, we now know for certain that she murdered him."