Madness of the Serpent

Damaged

The spirit surrendered itself peacefully, waiting on the flat top of the gargantuan flying machine which had thankfully stopped tipping precariously to one side.

The small army of uniformed males and females surrounding it with large, black weapons pointed at its head seemed overly cautious given that it was completely defenseless and exposed without the bestowed power of the mind-jewel.

After the humans were finished shouting different variations of "Don't move!" which it had not done since their arrival, one of them came forward and placed heavy manacles on its wrists. As it was escorted back through the air vessel, it surveyed the impressive damage, and looked with wide eyes at the infrequent corpses. The emergency had finally passed, and the humans were only just beginning to gather their dead.

It was led back to its original cell, which was not surprising.

What was surprising was when the door opened several minutes later, and a very large, very muscled, and very upset blue-clad individual stormed into the room, grabbed it by the shirt, lifted it up, and shoved it against the wall.

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"Whoa, whoa, Cap, slow down. Cap!" Anthony Stark yelled as the blond man built like a brick-house power-walked down the hallway, his steely hands clenched in impressively large fists.

Rogers had gotten this look on his face when they had all been informed of Agent Coulson's death at the hands of the mad demigod. They had all been devastated of course, but Cap had looked particularly affected. His baby blue eyes had looked like they were about to spill over into tears, which made Tony want to either awkwardly pat his arm or run from the room as quickly as possible.

Instead, Tony had ended up chasing after Rogers, seeing the murderous light in his eyes after Agent Hill had informed Director Fury that they had recaptured the groupie who had been picked up with Loki in Stuttgart.

And apparently, she had helped him escape.

Why Agent Hill had decided to reveal such sensitive information in front of Tony and Rogers after Fury had given them the guilt trip speech of the century, he could only speculate.

And Tony was excellent at speculation. He could swear by his entire Rolling Stones vinyl collection that Fury and Hill pulled this kind of shit on purpose. You didn't become the head of the intelligence community by playing the game fairly, with all of the players even aware they were taking part in the sport.

Tony had not forgotten Dr. Banner's revelation just before the ship had almost been taken out by a dude with a bow and arrow – the girl had been giving off gamma radiation similar to the Tesseract. If Rogers strangled the life out of her now, they might not find the Tesseract in time – not when Banner had decided to go green and skydive without a parachute.

Besides, Rogers was supposed to be the responsible, sensible one in this band of lunatics. Their moral center. Or their moral compass. One of those silly metaphors which placed the Captain as the gushy center of their collective Tootsie-Pop.

If he went around strangling helpless prisoners, Tony might lose his spot as the bad-decision-maker in-residence. And the devastatingly traumatic Cap, hovering over the lifeless corpse of said prisoner, would be too nauseating to bear.

So Tony tried his best to hang on to the bicep of the Pissed-Off Boy of America, and he managed to slow him down not even a little.

"Hey, Cap! Remember... that time... I jumped out of the back of the Quinjet... in order to chase down two gods? That was stupid, right? This... is kind of like that," Tony said through gritted teeth, his words staggered when he could catch his breath, the heels of his ludicrously expensive Louis Vuittons sliding across the metal flooring of the hallway.