Worlds Apart

Chapter 30

Everything was going exactly according to Loki's plan.

Agent Barton had collected the iridium, his slaves were no doubt hard at work on the portal, Bowen had been locked away under suspicion of treachery, and SHIELD seemed to be none the wiser that he was exactly where he wanted to be. When, after hours of solitude in his glass cage, he finally heard someone enter the room, he expected it to be Fury. He assumed the agent would concoct some sort of interrogation or torture to get whatever information out of the god as he could. It was only a matter of time before he showed up.

So when Loki looked over to the sound of the footsteps entering the room, he was shocked to see Bowen walking towards him. Loki hid his surprise and annoyance behind a sly smirk and eyed the girl curiously. It appeared as though she had swapped out the dress he had given her for a SHIELD uniform, save for the weapons holsters and weapons themselves, but the makeup and neatly styled hair he had given her still remained.

"Hi, Loki," Bowen greeted quietly, taking slow strides towards the front of the cell.

"Well, hello, indeed," Loki replied. "I must say, out of all of the people I was expecting to walk through that door, you were not one of them. I see they let you out of your cell. How did you manage that?"

Loki had been counting on her staying imprisoned until he was able to make his escape. Barton had given him the layout of the helicarrier and the brig was far enough away from where the attacks would hit that she would not get injured, but close enough to where Loki would be leaving the ship that it would be relatively easy to collect her on his way out. Her being released early complicated those plans quite a bit.

Bowen shrugged. "I told them the truth, and they believed me."

Loki sincerely doubted that; not with all of the evidence he knew she had stacked against her. At the very least, there had to be more to the story that she wasn't telling him.

"Interesting. Does Fury know that you are here? I cannot imagine that he would agree to allowing his prisoner visitors. Or are you here to interrogate me under the guise of some who, up until now, seemed to me to have somewhat of a soft spot for me?"

"Fury knows that I'm here," Bowen admitted. "But I'm not here to interrogate you. I told him about how even though the scepter didn't control me the way you wanted it to, it did give me some sort of connection to you."

"And I suppose now that he knows this, he wants you to try and use this ability of yours to try to figure out my plan," Loki accused.

While he had believed her when she'd said she was human, it was fairly obvious that she was still keeping something from him. What that was exactly, he hadn't the faintest idea, but he was determined to find out. The only way for him to do that, however, was to get her to trust him. That task shouldn't have been too hard, given that the girl seemed to trust him somewhat already, but it did mean that, as much as he sometimes felt the urge to verbally or physically attack her to get the information out of her, he had to restrain himself.

It was...odd how he felt about her. There were a few reasons he had taken her along with him on this mission. One reason was because he felt that if he brought her along, Bowen would believe that she was there to serve some purpose that, since it would never be fulfilled, would further the illusion he'd concocted that he had been captured unwillingly. Another reason was because he didn't trust someone as powerful as her to be anywhere but at his side where he could keep an eye on her.

While those reasons were both true, they weren't the only reasons he had for his decision to bring her along (even if he would rather die than admit it to himself or anyone else). While it angered him that she should dare have any sort of sympathy for him...he also yearned for her sympathy.