Magic | Steve Rogers

11

Loki grins.

" Hello, witch."

Lauren shoves her palms towards Loki's ship, causing him to be blown away. He scrambles for a little bit, but lands on a roof top. She teleports down to him. He creates a blade in his hands and tries to stab her with it, but she grabs his wrist, twists it so he drops the blade and punches him in the face.

He chuckles and tries to get up.

" What are you?"

She kicks him back down.

" A witch?"

Kicks him again.

" Surely not of Midgard."

She punches him in the jaw.

He chuckles.

" You have fire... not only literally. I wonder how it ignited."

Lauren grabs him by his collar and lifts him up.

" Shut... up," She sneers.

Loki grins.

" I'm terribly sorry... that must be a painful memory."

He's able to reach his hand forward and place his palm on her forehead. He forces her to relive the memory as he sees it.

He sees her as a young child surrounded by floating lights.

He sees her mother giving her medicine.

He sees her father carrying her.

He sees her sisters trying to protect her.

He sees her as she cries out for her mother.

He sees her as she performs her very first harmful spell to cause a fire.

Lauren falls to the ground, sweat dripping down her brow, tears threatening to fall and panting heavily.

Loki's demeanor slightly softens.

" Your fire... came from your mother?" He asks as he stands up.

Lauren pauses for a moment, but uses her ankles to grip his leg and flip him down to the ground. She does a kip up and grabs his scepter.

" You're damn right."

She lifts her arm up then balls her hand into a fist. Black chain then appear on Loki. They wrap around his entire body and keep him still.

She teleports to the top of Stark Tower, and shortly after Natasha lands there after jumping off an alien ship. Natasha rolls and falls before she finally stands up.

" Nice landing," Lauren teases.

" Like you could do better," Natasha replies.

As Selvig comes too, Lauren rushes over to help him. She's able to take away his pain by transferring  it to herself. He begins to ramble about the portal, including the fail safe. Natasha picks up the scepter and shoves it into the forcefield surrounding the Cube.

"I  can close is. Can anybody copy? I can shut the portal down," Natasha says.

"Do it!," Steve says.

No, wait," Tony says.

"Stark, these things are still coming."

"I got a nuke coming in. It's gonna blow in less than a minute."

"And I know just where to put it'."

Tony flies towards the portal with the nuke on his back.

"Stark, you know that's a one-way trip."

He skims the tower and goes flying into the portal, out of sight.

Soon enough, all of the aliens fall to the ground.

"Close it."

Nat then drives the tip of Loki's scepter into the Tesseract, immediately closing the portal. All of a sudden, Tony falls out of the portal. He doesn't fly, but he falls.

"He's not slowing down," Thor says.

Before Thor can fly up, Lauren teleports to him midair and safely flies him down to the ground. Steve and Thor come running over, Thor going as far to rip the mask off of Tony.

Tony's eyes remain closed.

" Is he breathing?" Steve asks as he checks for a pulse.

The arc reactor has no glow.

It seems like they lost him.

But when Hulk roars, Tony wakes up.

"What the hell? What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me," Tony gasps.

" We won," Steve responds.

"All right, yay! Hurray. Good job, guys. Let's just not come in tomorrow. Let's just take a day. Have you ever tried shawarma? There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I want to try it," Tony says.

 "We're not finished yet," Thor says as he looks up at Stark Tower.

"And then shawarma after," Tony says, then looks over at Lauren, " Thank you."

" How'd you know it was me?" She asks.

" I have a feeling."

She smiles, and then teleports everyone to the Stark Tower living room, Natasha included.

Loki struggles to get up, but once he does, he turns around and faces them. Clint pointing an arrow at him, Tony, Steve, and the Hulk just standing there, Nat holding Loki's scepter, and Lauren holding her bo staff.

"If it's all the same to you, I'll have that drink now."