Mirror, Mirror ↠ Steve Rogers

Chapter Eight

Hill doesn't answer when Leila pages her to ask where Fury is. When she pages Fury directly--which she's really not supposed to do, but she feels like the situation merits an exception--he doesn't answer, either. Which is more annoying that she thought it'd be. So she heads to the bridge, figuring that as the most likely place to find the Director, or someone who knows where he is, and therefore the best place to start looking.

She keeps paging them along the way. Hill, Fury, Hill, Fury. Every time the page doesn't go through it makes her more and more annoyed until she finally hits angry and then gets almost to infuriated. It's good that she reaches the bridge when she does; she might've broken her pager otherwise.

When she arrives, the first thing she sees is Thor talking to Coulson, and she balls her hands into fists. "Infuriated" has been reached. For some reason, it feels natural to push some of the blame for this onto Thor's shoulders, maybe because he's the nearest thing to Loki she can find at that moment, but also because he has to know something about this, right? He has to. Someone has to.

She hasn't even made it to the catwalk yet when Fury steps out of the shadows to join the conversation, and she tries to listen to what they're saying--the more information she has, the better--but her anger is drumming in her ears and it's all she can do not to explode right then and there.

She finally catches herself, finds herself back to earth when she's near enough to talk to them.

"Loki is a prisoner," Thor is saying.

"Then why," Fury says, "do I feel like he's the only person on this boat that wants to be here?"

"Because he is," Leila says before she can stop herself. The three men turn in unison to look at her. All of them had to know she was there--Coulson and Fury are spies and Thor was facing in her direction--but they seem surprised all the same, maybe because of how pissed she assumes she must look.

Although her comment is in response to Fury, her eyes are locked on Thor as she approaches him.

"Your brother is hands-down the most powerful being I've ever come into contact with," she says, barely managing to keep her voice low. "I have his powers inside me right now, and I still don't know what he's capable of, so I want to know right now--what are you hiding?"

Thor looks genuinely confused, albeit defensive. "I've hidden nothing. Why would I?"

"I dunno, you tell me. Tell me why your DNA doesn't match his, for example."

"You were there when I told you, he's adopted--"

"From where? From where, Thor?" A feral smile creeps onto her face. "His DNA doesn't just not match yours, it's not Asgardian, it's not even--" She clenches her jaw. She's too angry to put the whole "spliced DNA or something" situation into words.

"It's frost giant," Thor says, sounding annoyed now. "Loki is of Jotenheim."

"Not good enough," she snaps. "Your brother is holding a bomb inside of him. I know, because I'm holding the same one, and I don't know anything about it, so I'm gonna ask you again--" and here she steps up, shoving his chest to make her point--"what aren't you telling us about him?"

She feels a hand on her shoulder, she's not sure whose and she doesn't care. Thor's squaring his shoulders, trying to intimidate, ready to fight if she pushes it that far, and oh, she's tempted--

"Whittaker," she hears suddenly, and she gets the sense from the tone of voice that it's been said a few times. It's Fury's voice, and she whirls around to face him, ready to tear into him too, for what reason she hasn't decided--

"Let go," he says sternly. "Let go of Loki's powers. That's an order."

She doesn't think through the logic of his instruction just then. She doesn't realize until then that it really is her best option--there's no understanding Loki's abilities, at least not via her holding onto them, and it's obviously having a detrimental effect on her. Really, she should've dropped them as soon as the lab results came back, but she's so angry, she wasn't thinking.

She doesn't think about any of that until later. In the moment, all she thinks is Oh thank God , there's an out, she doesn't have to carry this...whatever is, anymore.

She closes her eyes for a moment, breathes in and out slowly--it's hard to focus with that white-hot rage in her, and even when she does, these abilities seem to stick to her for a moment, unwilling to let her go, but unlike taking them, it doesn't take much effort to shake them off. She opens her eyes, and there's that split second of white light before the world comes back into focus.

Not just visually. Emotionally. Psychologically. The rage and frustration and fear that had built up since first taking the powers simmers down.

She takes a few deep breaths. She's not sure what to say now. She feels the vague need to apologize, but it's not really in her character.

"You seeing clearly now?" Fury asks her, giving her a stern look.

She nods. "Yeah. I--yeah."

She glances over at Coulson and Thor. Coulson looks openly concerned. Thor looks confused--albeit still a little defensive, but mostly confused. She's not sure which one is worse.

She nods in their direction, hoping to convey "I'm fine, also sorry I guess. Not that sorry, but like, baseline level of sorry necessary to exist as a functional member of semi-polite society. But that's it."

Then she turns back to Fury. "Where's Romanoff?"

********

Fury has Leila make the call to Natasha herself. She thinks maybe he just wants to make sure she really is sane again, which is reasonable.

It's normal for Natasha to answer comms almost immediately, so it's no surprise when she does it this time.

"Romanoff."

"It's Whittaker. I--" she clears her throat. "Fury needs you to talk to Loki. He's hiding something. He's..."

"Too powerful?"

"Very much so. He shouldn't have let us take him. We need you to get in his head. See what he's planning."

"On it. I'll get back to you ASAP."

"Great. Thanks."

She hangs up, and glances back at Fury, as if to say see? I'm fine. Fury nods in response. She is, for the moment, dismissed.

She decides to go find a vending machine. Sharing candy is, in her experience, a decent replacement for verbal apologies, casual enough to not be misconstrued as actual remorse. More of a "we good?" gesture. She's not sure what kind of candy Asgardians have. She doubts SHIELD's vending machines carry them.

Maybe Thor likes gummy bears. Can't hurt to find out.