[1] Skipping Stones - Pietro Maximoff

Chapter: 13 [Edited]

Willow's POV

I sigh as Bruce and I walk through the halls of the helicarrier. We spent hours in the lab and only realized that Steve and Natalia left until they got back. We walked into the command room and I sat myself in the farthest chair from where everything was going on and Bruce positioned himself standing behind me. We'd bonded quite a lot and I've decided that I trust more than every other person on this boat aside from Nat. Nat sat to my right while Steve sat to my left making it slightly difficult to focus.

I didn't pay much attention when Fury was talking with Loki, I was just trying to memorize his face, at least until Bruce started speaking. "He really grows on you, doesn't he?" he asked and looked at everyone in the room, searching their faces for their opinions on the god.

"Loki's going to drag this out. So," Steve looked to the other blonde man in the room, "Thor, what's his play?"

Thor came out of his daze, "He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard or any world known." He looked around the room and met each of our eyes, "He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth, in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

Steve looked at him skeptically, "An army?" he glanced at the rest of us, "From outer space?" Poor Steve only got out of the ice two weeks ago and now he's already being thrown back into the mix.

"So he's building another portal," Bruce says and the wheels start to turn in my head, "that's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

"Selvig?" Thor questions, making me glance up from where I was watching my hands yet again. It's a terrible habit I'd gotten myself into.

"He's an astrophysicist," Bruce says, but it's clear that Thor already knew who he was, he knows the man.

"He's quite brilliant actually," I mumbled to myself as I remember the fly over here and reading through his notes, "his work on the Tesseract is unlike any I've seen before, wouldn't you say so Captain?" I asked and he looked taken by surprise for a moment and the tips of his ears turned red before Thor started to speak again.

"He's friend," Thor stated and his demeanor seemed to somehow become more serious if that was possible.

"Loki has him under some kind of spell," she glanced at me and we held each other's gaze until she looked away, "along with one of our own."

"I wanna know why Loki let us take him," Steve said, "He's not leading an army from here."

"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him," Bruce said.

I chuckled and nodded my head, "Amen to that," I turned to Nat and smirked, "Maybe if we put him in the bag and then threw him in a black hole. Maybe the smell would go away."

"That's cold, I like it," Natalia muttered to me in Latin, our personal go-to language when we were talking together.

"Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard," he glanced at Bruce and I in particular. Maybe he knows Latin...oops. "And he is my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days," Natalia said bluntly and we both looked at Thor expectantly.

He hesitated, "He's adopted," he mumbled and everyone paused for a moment and Nat looked at me.

My immediate response was to burst out laughing, "So am I and I only commit mass murder every few years," I could feel Steve's judgemental eyes on me and Nat smirked at me when I looked at her, "however, eighty people is a slow day for me," I said leaning over to Steve with a wide smile on my face. I knew he disapproved but seeing him blush when I ever so slightly flirted with him was worth it, I hope.