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The next time my eyes opened, I was back in the Zoo.
A wave of loss hit me, knowing I was alone, but I felt so incredibly rested it was pretty easy to move past it. I sat up, yawning, and stretched.
I also scared the hell out of Selvig, who was at the foot of the bed making notes on a clipboard.
“Sorry,” I said. “Don’t run off – I’m me.” I held up my hands. “No sparks.”
Selvig still looked nervous. “Good, good. It looks like you’ve improved a lot.”
“How long was I out?”
“Nearly twenty hours,” he replied. “Pretty impressive. Your neural output has calmed down dramatically and your cortisol levels have been cut in half. Ah…any nightmares to report? Any major changes?”
I shook my head. “No nightmares,” I said, stopping there; probably best not to give him any details, though it was hard not to grin like an idiot. I reached up to run a hand back through what had to be some magnificent bed hair.
Selvig, though, was staring, eyes a bit wider than before. He didn’t look scared, exactly, just…shocked?
I followed his gaze to see what he was looking at. My arm? Okay. I lowered it, checking my palms, but there was no green light, just the usual skin, fingernails, muscles, and black leather cuff—
My mouth dropped open.
I touched it with my other hand, making sure it was really there. I ran my fingers over the knotwork, down the L, pressed it into my arm so I could feel the stone underneath.
How the…
“Where did that come from?” Selvig asked. “It wasn’t there when I got here. I swear.”
“I know it wasn’t,” I said, letting myself touch it for a minute. There was an ache in my chest, but it wasn’t so much pain as it was just longing. Longing might hurt but it probably wouldn’t make me zap anybody with green lightning.
Selvig was still staring at it, though, so I said, “It’s nothing dangerous, Erik. Just a talisman kind of thing – so I can deal with having someone else’s PTSD.”
He didn’t look 100% convinced, and I didn’t blame him, but he finished up whatever he was doing and left with a pretty normal goodbye.
Alone again, I let out a breath I hadn’t intended to hold and lay back with one arm up under my head and the other one down where I could see the cuff. Just having it there was comforting. The stone inside felt cool even after being next to my arm. I hoped when the time came it worked like Loki said it would.
I thought back to the dream…how safe I’d felt, how cared for…and how absurd it was to feel that in bed with Loki. Was that ever going to stop being strange? Was I going to have to spend every day justifying how I felt to my friends, who quite understandably thought I’d lost my mind? How long would I have to justify it to myself?
Too many questions whose answers were way too depressing to think about. There really wasn’t a future I could imagine where things went well. The very best I could probably do would be to convince Fury to let Loki back into the Zoo – and what kind of life was that, especially for someone immortal? It’d be a jail sentence with no end. Plus I wasn’t all that keen on the idea of conjugal visits in a glass cage. He might as well stay on whatever side of the galaxy he was on, where we could meet anywhere in dreams.
The only thing I knew for sure right now is that I wished he were here.
The thought of him popping in for a visit made me smile up at the ceiling. I wasn’t sure who would try to kill him first at this point. Evidently there would be a line.
Life in the Zoo was boring enough that I started to worry I would go insane. I had no way of knowing what time of day it was, what the weather was doing, unless I looked online. I had a lot of my stuff – my laptop, a pile of books, even Peggy’s little painting propped up on the shelf. Everyone was doing their best to help me make the best of it.
Night after night, I thought I would see Loki when I slept; night after night, I didn’t dream at all. I didn’t know why he wasn’t there. Every day felt a thousand times longer when there was nothing worth sleeping for.
I finally asked Natasha to bring me a paper calendar so I could physically mark off the days. She handed it to me with a completely straight face.
“Twelve Months of Kittens,” I read. “Really?”
“Everybody loves kittens.”
I smiled, took out a pen, and started drawing lines through the days I knew had already passed. Marked in black and white it was even more depressing: ten days in my fishbowl, six since Asgard.
“Anything from Thor?” I asked, same way I asked every time she visited.
Tash shook her head. “It’d be nice if texting worked through the Bifrost. At least then he could check in.”
“Yeah.”
“I talked to Fury – he’s open to the idea of you getting out of here to at least work out.”
I started to make some kind of sarcastic reply, but the idea was way too appealing. “Thanks, Tash…not just for going to bat for me with Fury, but…for not judging.”
She leaned back on the wall, arms crossed, the way she always did when she was thinking about her past. “You can’t help who you fall for,” she said. “I know that better than anybody. Besides…time was I did terrible things, and I did it for money, not because I was damaged.”
“So you’re not damaged? At all?”
A flicker of a smile. “I didn’t say that. I said that’s not why I did things.” She stepped forward and put her hand flat on the glass for a second. “I’m off for a couple of days to Europe – want me to bring you anything? Belgian chocolate, maybe a beret?”
I shook my head. “Be safe.”
“Don’t go anywhere.”
I gave her a half-sincere smile and held up the calendar. “Hey, I’ll be here at least until Kitten in a Teacup.”
Kittens or not, Tash was true to her word – that afternoon Sam showed up. “C’mon,” he said. “Word is you need something to beat up.”
It was the first time I’d been out of the Zoo in a week, and I guess I expected something to have changed, but HQ was laid out just like it always had been, and the same people bustled around as always. I passed by Dr. Cho’s lab, and she looked up at me with keen interest but didn’t say anything. I wondered what all the lab and scan data were telling her that nobody was telling me.
There were a lot of stares. “Does everybody know why I’m down there?” I asked Sam as we reached the training room.
He shrugged. “There wasn’t a big announcement or anything. All the Avengers know, so do Selvig and Cho, but nobody lower on the food chain has the real story – word is you got hit with some kind of weapon that made you magically radioactive.”
I laughed at that in spite of myself. “That’s not too far from the truth.”
Sam was a great workout buddy, if not big on conversation. He kept up for almost an hour before he had to bow out, drenched in sweat and panting.
“Sorry man,” he said, leaning over to put his hands on his knees. “Not a superhero.”
“Sure you are,” I replied. “If Stark is, you are. Not everybody can be a walking talking science experiment.”
He waved a hand. “You keep doing your thing, I’ll just hang out – I’m not supposed to leave you alone.”
“Right.”
The reminder that I wasn’t here for a regular sparring session took away some of my enthusiasm, but I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity; I spent another hour with a series of unfortunate punching bags before finally giving up.
It felt fantastic to have actually done something with my body. Technically I didn’t need to work out, but I liked to keep learning new schools of fighting and anything else that would make me more effective in the field. Hand-to-hand combat had changed pretty radically since the 40s; it wasn’t just about punching things until they stopped moving anymore. I could see it on TV or in the movies as much as in SHIELD – Eastern martial arts had substantially influenced how we fought. I liked that it called for a lot more coordination and speed; I definitely had those.
I might even get to use them again if they ever let me out.
Another fantastic thing was the shower. It was big enough to turn around in.
Sam was apologetic when he locked me back in my cell. I was just grateful I’d had a chance to see any other walls.
“Fury said if nothing weird went down we could do this regularly,” Sam told me. “Every other day, if that’s okay. It probably won’t be me every time.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “That’s more than fine. Thank you, Sam.”
“No problem, Cap. I hope you can get out of here for good soon.”
“Me too.”
It was a lot easier to fall asleep that night without all that pent-up energy. I settled down on my side, as usual, with my arm up so I could see the fluorite cuff as I fell asleep.
I remembered what Thor had said about the dreamfasting working in both directions; I hadn’t tried creating a scenario myself, but why not? It couldn’t work any less than doing nothing.
Where would I want to meet him, if I could pick anywhere? I didn’t have the vast span of the universe to draw from, just a handful of places on Earth and those few glimpses of Asgard and Navaroth. I wanted to see more of both, more of everything. For now, though, I thought of places I’d been that would feel right. Military installations didn’t seem appropriate.
Not long after the Battle of New York, Stark had invited all of us to his place outside of Rome, an honest-to-God Italian villa complete with courtyards, fountains, and a vineyard. I’d stayed there a week, enjoying a rare vacation with no responsibilities – there was a lot of wine, which I didn’t bother with, and a lot of food, which I definitely did. I remembered the room I’d stayed in: breezy and open, with an insanely comfortable bed and a view of the vineyard. I’d had quite a few fantastic pasta-induced sleeps in that room. It was the closest thing I had to a memory like Asgard or Navaroth – same general idea but not nearly as grand.
I imagined I was in that bed instead of this one, and that there were crickets and frogs calling outside instead of the quiet roar of giant air handlers. Even if it didn’t work, it was soothing, and I slipped into it gratefully.
The breeze was cool over the Italian hillside, bringing the scents of soil and green growing things soaked in sunlight. Closer in I smelled clean linens with sprigs of some kind of herb tucked in, and…
My eyes flew open.
Just like that, there he was.
“Where the hell have you been?” I demanded.
Loki looked like he didn’t know whether to flinch or smile, so he chose to smile, though the expression was brittle. “Missed me, did you?”
“Of course I have!”
He was surprised at my vehemence – and chagrined. “Forgive me,” he said. “I don’t mean to be flippant. I’m not used to being missed.”
I scoffed, “Then you haven’t been paying attention.”
“You’re angry.”
I just looked at him.
Another smile, this one gentler. “I missed you too.”
“Then why did you avoid me?”
“I thought…after what you had been through in the last few days, you would benefit from some quiet. Even at my best I seem to make your life more difficult. I don’t want that.”
“You don’t need to coddle me. I can make my own decisions. And believe me, the last few days without you have definitely not been quieter, at least not in my head. I kept thinking something might have happened to you, or after that day on Asgard you’d changed your mind about me for some reason…I don’t even know what.”
“I’m fairly certain that the dreamfasting would tell you either of those things. I cannot give you an absolute promise against the former, but the latter…not possible, Captain.”
I couldn’t help it – I grabbed his wrist before he could withdraw his hand and kissed the back of it. I loved his hands, and not just because of what they had done to me; he had such long fingers, and narrow wrists that had an elegance even without moving. That was the thing that reminded me periodically he wasn’t human – the way he moved. I hadn’t seen too many humans who could be that graceful and that powerful.
And as much as I wanted to be mad at him, just knowing our time could be up any minute made it feel a lot less important to argue. “You know, at this point you can call me Steve.”
He chuckled. “I rather like the title. It speaks of so many things I love about you: nobility, strength, power, intelligence.”
I held his eyes. “It’s still not my name.”
Slowly, he turned his hand in my grasp so he could weave our fingers together, and gave me a single, almost formal, nod. “As you wish…Steve.”
The reverent tone made my face grow hot. “I mean, you can use both if you want, I just…”
“You’re adorable when you blush,” Loki told me, echoing my motion and kissing my hand. “It’s almost as lovely as when you smile.”
“I do both a lot more with you than any other time,” I admitted. “And even when we’re in separate galaxies. I’ve been told I blush when I say your name.”
“Good. Whatever my history, whatever my egregious flaws, I want to see you happy, even if it is far away from me.”
I scooched closer, and he tucked my head under his chin and wound his arms around me. It occurred to me that even if we never had sex again, this would be enough. “My mom used to say that’s what love is…wanting someone to be happy no matter what.”
“Your mother was wise, then,” came the soft answer. “I love you.”
My heart thudded to a stop in my chest, and my right hand, in the midst of running down his arm, tightened. “You…you do.”
“I do.” There was a bemused smile in his voice. “Is that not strange?”
“I guess if it is then we’re both pretty strange.”
Our eyes met, and after a long moment he said, “For your own sake, Captain…don’t say it. Words have power—there is no taking them back, not even if you come to your senses. If you admit aloud that you care for something like me, it will mark you forever. Anyone who hears of it will think less of you. Your friends may never fully trust you again. I can be nothing but a stain upon your life.”
“I don’t care,” I replied a little unsteadily. “I don’t care what’s right or wrong or what’s going to happen. I don’t even care what the rest of the world thinks. Just a few weird nights and dreams of you have been more real than any normal relationship I’ve ever had. And…I love you.” I took hold of his chin, keeping our gazes locked, and added, “Also…I don’t take kindly to anyone saying cruel things about my lover. So cut it out.”
Sighing, Loki finally smiled at me, and said, sounding faintly awed, “You honor me.”
“Careful – all we need is ‘cherish’ and it’ll be matrimony.” At his quizzical look, I changed the subject. “You know, your brother’s on Asgard right now looking for some kind of history about dreamfasting – everyone wants to break it, and they assume I do too.”
“And do you?”
“I thought I did. I thought I’d never be able to live my life unless we broke it and I could go back to normal. That they’d just let me out of the Zoo and I’d forget everything…now I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do or how long I can stand being in a cage, but the alternative isn’t any better.”
“I agree.” Loki kissed my throat, just under my ear and then downward, but then stopped and looked at me. “Thor is looking in the Hall of Lore?”
I frowned. “Yeah.”
“My brother is in a library.” He laughed quietly. “Wonders never cease.”
“Hey,” I said, poking him in the ribs. “Your brother’s not an idiot. He’s just not—“
“An intellectual,” he finished for me. “I know. For once I wasn’t so much mocking as I was remembering – the only time he ever went in the Hall was as a punishment, when he annoyed one of our tutors or our mother sent him. He found it a dreadful torment.”
“I like your memories of him as a kid. The closest thing I ever had to a brother was Bucky – he looked after me the same way, although we weren’t night and day like you two.”
Something I said made him start, then look away from my face. Before I could ask, he said hesitantly, “You know my true origin…in any of my memories, did you see…”
“Your actual face? Yeah. In fact in the first dream I had about you, when I came to help, you were blue.”
At my matter-of-fact tone, he gave me a look like I’d gone stark raving mad. “You were not disgusted.”
“Why would I be?”
I heard the thought even though he didn’t say it aloud: Because I’m ugly. Unworthy of your love. A monster.
“You are not,” I told him firmly. “Is it strange? Kind of. But not ugly. Just different. In fact I was hoping sometime you might show me--”
“No.” There was real fear in his eyes. “No, I won’t do that. I won’t.”
“Okay…hey, it’s okay.” I touched his face, stroking it, putting all the reassurance I could into that one touch. “You don’t have to do anything. I just want you to know it’s all right. I don’t care if you’re blue or white or plaid.”
He let out a shaky breath and then kissed me.
“We are ridiculous, you and I,” he said after coming up for air. “The supervillain and the superhero conducting a torrid imaginary affair – think of what the press would say.”
I snorted and wrapped one leg around him to pull us as close together as possible. “I don’t know if it’s been torrid enough to convince anyone,” I said. “We should get on that.”
I circled my hands down and around his face, thinking that only moments ago he’d been near panic…all because of how much he hated what he was. That kind of poisonous belief never just stays put – it seeps out into every part of your life until everything you do is tainted with that feeling of ugly, monster, unwanted, not good enough.
I’d felt like that once, or at least the same kind of thing, back when I was scrawny and weak. The world around me was full of strong men who could change the world, and I was left behind every time…I fought against that self-loathing every day, and channeled it into getting into the Army. But it would have been really easy for me to lose the battle and spend years where Loki was now, longing for something good but not for a second believing he was worth it.
“Just lie back,” I told him in a low voice. “Let me show you…”
“What?” I could hear faint tones of apprehension, but no real hesitation. He trusted me, I realized. My mind reeled for a second.
“How beautiful I think you are,” I managed. “How loved you are…how every inch of you is perfect to me.”
A smile with a glint of mirth. Much better. “Yes, I think you should show me all of that. Repeatedly, and all n—“
He trailed off, eyes going unfocused for a minute. “Loki?”
He frowned, shook his head, but it didn’t seem to clear. “Memories…hold on, it will pass.”
“Good ones or bad ones?”
“War memories…difficult to say. It is hardly unfamiliar. Battle all blends together, but…time is moving forward and back in jumps and turns.” He clamped his eyes shut in sudden pain. “That’s what they did to make you…?” Loki laughed a little, but it was almost more of a sob. “You claim you were weak as a youngling, but no ordinary human could have survived their little experiment. Did any of them even realize what a treasure they had among them? Fools…ah, yes, only two…the doctor, gunned down before you could even thank him…and the woman with the courageous eyes.”
“Peggy,” I said softly. “Peggy Carter, one of the founding agents of SHIELD.”
“Which she did in your honor,” Loki replied vaguely, eyes still closed. “After you fell…” I felt his hands slide into mine. “The ice rushing up, her voice the only thing to hold onto, fear, and then…darkness.”
“Sounds about right,” I said, trying to sound unaffected. “Heroes on Ice, now at your local arena.”
Blue eyes, ringed with green, opened and fixed on mine. “Please don’t,” he said quietly. “I told you…you don’t have to be a hero with me. It was a horrific thing to endure, worse yet waking up to find the world had left you behind. It is no weakness to mourn what was taken from you.”
I smiled, then chuckled. “You do realize that’s basically what I told you last time.”
“It would seem you and I are broken in some of the same ways, then. Perhaps if this lasts we can be each other’s mending.”
The thought of that made me almost absurdly happy—people had been offering themselves as “someone to talk to” since I’d woken up. I’d never really believed any of them. They always meant well, but I never felt right burdening someone with problems they couldn’t understand. Something about his immortality, maybe, or our shared memories, made me hope desperately that this would be different. “Are you back all the way, or still memory-swimming?”
“I believe I am back. It’s just difficult to shake some of the emotions…as you well know…what’s wrong?”
I felt a familiar, sickening pull on my mind – not memories, but something just as much a death knell for the plans I’d had for tonight: reality. “Damn it, someone’s waking me up,” I said apologetically. “Maybe it’s nothing and I can come right back…”
I woke up halfway through the sentence, which immediately turned into a couple of decidedly un-Captain-American curse words. I sat up and saw Nick Fury standing at the foot of the bed.
“Language, Cap,” he said mildly.
I just glared at him.
“Sorry to interrupt what was probably a very disturbing scenario I’d rather not hear about, but a situation has come up.”
“So?” I asked grouchily, rubbing my eyes. “I don’t do situations anymore. I’m a Zoo animal.”
“Not tonight you’re not.”
Fury was never what you’d call chipper, but his demeanor this time was deathly serious, and it set off warning bells in my stomach. “What happened?”
“Nineteen hours ago there was a terror attack in London. The Vice President and his family were on a state visit to the Prime Minister. A bomb went off outside 10 Downing Street. The Vice President was killed. The Prime Minister sustained serious injuries. The Vice President’s wife and seven-year-old daughter vanished.”
“How did anyone get a bomb close enough? Basic security would have checked anyone on the scene.”
“Security can’t check for magic,” Fury said.
I lowered my head. “Enhanced?”
“Definitely. But whoever they are they’re not acting alone.”
Now I shut my eyes. “Hydra.”
“We think so. Maximoff says the video of the blast reminds her of someone else who went in and out of the base she was held at – not someone mutated by the Scepter, but someone who already worked for them. She picked him out of a photo array of known Enhanced. They call him Niemand.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Basically German for ‘nobody.’”
“As you might expect we don’t have much on the guy.”
“Do we have any idea where he took the family?”
“Yeah. That’s kind of the problem.”
“What does that mean?”
“We had the location and sent in an extraction team – only the best for the VP’s family. Ellis was damn near beside himself – aside from the fact that there’s a kid involved, after what happened with the last VP it’s an even bigger blow. He wanted to send in the Iron Patriot, but Niemand and his people made it clear they’d kill the wife and kid if he didn’t get what he wanted.”
“Money?”
“Political prisoner release. Three guys we detained last year in the last big Hydra raid. So we went in covert, had the politicians keep talking and sent in our people. It went badly.”
“Bad intel, sloppy agents, or what?”
“None of the above. That’s why we need you.”
“I don’t understand.”
Fury took a deep breath and crossed his arms. “We sent in Romanov and Barton,” he said. “They never came back. Niemand is holding them hostage.”
Something must have gone very, very wrong for them to get caught. They didn’t get caught. I felt steely determination wrap itself around me; whatever this guy Niemand’s powers, I’d bet a broken neck would work as well on him as it did on most bad guys.
“I need to know that you can do this without breaking down halfway through and having flashbacks,” Fury said flatly. “There’s no time for doubt here; we have to get moving. Can you do it?”
I touched the cuff on my wrist with the other hand. I hadn’t had to test it yet, but if I was very, very lucky and could stay focused on the mission I might not have to. “I can.”
Fury stared at me for a moment, then slowly nodded. “I took the liberty,” he said, stepping to the side.
Over on the chair were my uniform and shield.
*****
It turned out I was right. With my objective held firmly in mind I didn’t have so much as a flicker of Loki’s memories.
That wasn’t much comfort when the ambush opened fire.