The Serpent and the Dove: a Loki Fan Fiction

Chapter 1

Jessica sat on the plateau overlooking the SHILED Headquarters, sinking her teeth into a pear. Despite insisting on staying to investigate the Tesseract, Nick Fury and Eric Selvig had both agreed that they wanted her outside to patrol the surrounding area to check for any outside threats while they prepared an evacuation. Begrudgingly she had gone, and so far she had seen nothing. This was dumb; Barton got to stay behind, and they all knew she was a World War II and Hydra fanatic. So what if it was scary and unexpected that it turned itself on six hours ago? The very least they could do was let her stay behind for a little longer and soak in the delight of gazing upon history.

But, alas, she was sitting out in the cool, desert night, eating a pear in boredom, while everyone inside was dealing with a thrilling situation. The rest of her patrol was regrouping on her finally, and they, too, looked bored.

"Nothing?" she asked.

One of the men shook his head. "Nah, not a thing. Looks like we're all clear for an evacuation when they call for it."

An inhuman groan rumbled in her chest as she rolled her eyes toward the sky. Things had been so boring for the last month, and she was getting tired of doing the boring jobs around SHIELD; patrols, filing paper work, pretending to be interested in lengthy written reports of all being well around the world. Worse yet, she had to report all of those things back to HQ. There were only so many uneventful reports she could give Fury, and only so many coffee meetings with Coulson she could take before she lost her mind. Why did they chose to leave her out of the most interesting thing to happen in the last month now?

As she examined the sky, she reflected on Asgard. She hadn't been there in seemingly forever, and she was growing to miss the old days with Thor, Loki, Sif, and the Warriors Three. The edge of her mouth started to turn up in a grin. Such fragrant memories; if only she could go back. There wasn't a Bifrost on Earth, and even if she could get Heimdal to take her back up, she'd have to get time off with SHIELD, and so far, they hadn't been able to give her any.

She was also anxious to go back after the last battle between Thor and Loki. Jess hadn't been allowed to go back to Asgard with Thor to stop Loki from destroying Jotunheim, but she knew it must have been a desperate fight, since Thor didn't come back to Earth, nor was she able to call on Heimdal to return to Asgard. Perhaps Loki's attempts had destroyed not only Jotunheim but also Asgard with it.

An energy surge pulsed through the ground, and it was very strong and lengthy. Jessica stood up and stared at the base, muscles tense and every sense straining to understand what was happening. "... What the hell? Did you guys feel that?"

"Yeah," replied one of the patrolmen, an ex-Marine by the name James Turk with blemish-less dark skin and a sturdy build. "I've felt a few of them already."

"That one was a lot longer, though..." she said.

Turk tapped into the comlink. "Fury, what's goin' on in the base, over?"

No reply.

"Fury? Do you copy?"

No reply.

"Does anybody copy?"

Silence.

Jessica picked up her rifle that lay beside her feet and started back toward the base. "I'm going down to check on them. Turk, come with me; the rest of you stay here."

"Yes, ma'am." he said, and walked at her side with his weapon drawn and ready.

They hadn't walked much farther than the base of the plateau when the earth heaved under them, and a helicopter thundered overhead. Turk looked down and took a step back. "The hell...?"