Of All The Stars

5~ Good Or Bad

"Good job kid." Estrid smiled slightly as she massaged her neck. "Run up to the controls room, everyone will be there. You know where that is, right?" she nodded. "I'm going to patch Barton up, but I will be up in a minuet." Estrid nodded again before turning and running to the stairs. As she speed walked through the halls, she glanced down at her hands, watching the blue glow from her veins fade away. As she rounded a corner she fell to the ground as she rammed against a man. She scooted back as the angry looking man pointed a big gun at her face.

"Stand down." A voice said.

"Kiki?" Estrid called as she tried to see around the man. Her uncle walked around the man and helped Estrid up.

"Are you okay, dear?"

"Where are you going Kiki?" she asked desperately, still out of breath.

"I am going to go save this world, the people here don't want me to save it."

"The people here are bad?" she asked as Loki used his thumb to wipe some grime off her forehead."But father said that you were bad now?"

"Your father has been blinded by the bad men. Estrid, if you come with me, you can help me save this world."

"But father said you hurt people!"

"Sir, we have to go." The armed man said.

"There are always sacrifices. We need to go now, I can explain more to you on the jet."

"These people are actually bad?" she questioned quietly. "Okay." She put her hand in her uncle's as he led her out."Anty's not bad." She said quietly to herself as the walked quickly to the jet. The door of the jet closed as Estrid watched with a confused expression. 

"These were in Coulson's jacket. Guess he never did get you to sign them." Fury threw the playing cards in front of Tony and Steve. "We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, the location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye, maybe I had it coming." He paused, "Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea, Stark knows this, called THE AVENGERS INITIATIVE. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes." Tony walks off quickly. "Well, its an old fashioned notion."

"Was he married?" Steve asked as he walked into the room that once held Loki's cell.

"No. There was a uh...cellist, I think." Tony answered from where he was leaning against the rail.

"I'm sorry. He seemed like a good man."

"He was an idiot."

"Why? For believing?"

"For taking on Loki alone. And we are all idiots for leaving the kid alone."

"He was doing his job."

"He was out of his league. He should have waited. He should have-"

"Sometimes there isn't a way out, Tony."

"Right. How did that work for him?"

"Is this the first time you've lost a soldier?"

"We are not soldiers! The kid's not a soldier! I am not marching to Fury's fife!"

"Neither am I! He's got the same blood on his hands as Loki does. Right now we've got to put that aside and get this done. Now Loki needs a power source, if we can put together a list-"

"He made it personal."

"That's not the point."

That is the point. That's Loki's point. He hit us all right where we live. Took away the tape holding us together. Why?

"To tear us apart."

"He had to conquer his greed, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That's what he wants. He wants to beat us and he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience."

"Right, I caught his act at Stuttengard."

"Yeah. That's just a preview, this is opening night. Loki's a full-tilt diva. He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built in the skies with his name plastered... Son of a bitch!"