Chapter 17: The First Test
Sage woke to the smell of linen and distant rain. For a disorienting moment, she expected the clank of a Sakaaran lock, the itch of coarse sand in the sheets. Instead, there was quiet. A gray, diffused light filtered through a single smoked-glass window. The walls were smooth, dark stone. The door was solid, with a heavy physical bolt thrown across it.
She was alone.
A spike of panic, cold and sharp, lanced through her ribs. She sat up, the blanket pooling at her waist. She was in soft, clean clothes. Her body ached with a deep, marrow-level fatigue, but the wildfire terror was gone. In its place was a hollow, tender emptiness, like a freshly cauterized wound.
The memories returned in a sickening rush. The lab. The hologram of her own face. Stark’s guilty eyes. The shattering of everything. Loki catching her. The fall. Then… Natasha. Clint. A quiet room. A lock on her side of the door.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, her bare feet meeting cool stone. The room was sparse, almost austere. A low table, a single rug, a chair where Loki must have sat. He was gone. The panic tightened. Had it been another trick? A softer, more convincing cage?
As if on cue, the door emitted a soft, chattering knock—a quick one-two, then a pause, then a third. It was awkward, unpracticed. Not the firm rap of a guard.
“Come in,” she said, her voice raspy from disuse and screaming.
The bolt on the outside clicked. The door opened just enough to admit Bruce Banner. He looked like he hadn’t slept either, his cardigan rumpled, his glasses perched on his nose. He held a simple tray with a steaming mug and a covered bowl. He hovered on the threshold, not entering.
“Hey,” he said, his voice low. “I, uh, I heard you moving. Brought some broth. And tea. It’s just tea. Chamomile. No trackers, no sedatives, I promise.” He offered a faint, tired smile. “I ran it past the spectrometers myself. I’m paranoid like that.”
Sage stared at him. This was not the raging beast from the stories. This was a man who seemed profoundly uncomfortable in his own skin, holding a tray of broth like a peace offering. “Where’s Loki?”
“Talking with Romanoff. Debating the merits of Midgardian plumbing, I think. He didn’t want to leave, but she insisted. Something about ‘establishing boundaries’ and ‘not smothering the patient.’” Bruce shifted his weight. “Can I come in? I’d like to check your vitals, if that’s okay. No scans. Just a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff. Old school.”
She studied him for a long moment. His eyes held no pity, only a deep, weary kind of empathy and a scientist’s cautious concern. She gave a single nod.
He entered, placing the tray on the low table. He moved with a deliberate, non-threatening slowness. He performed his checks in silence, his hands cool and precise. The stethoscope was cold on her back. “Your heart’s strong. A little fast. Adrenaline hangover, likely. The burnout you experienced… it was a complete magical and psychological overload. Your body shut it down to protect itself. You need calories. Rest.”
“I need to see it,” Sage said, the words coming out flat.
Bruce’s hands stilled. He slowly wrapped the blood pressure cuff back into its velcro strap. “See what?”
“What he saw. What you all saw. The footage. The scans.” She looked up at him, her blue eyes clear and hard. “I need to know the shape of the thing that was stolen.”
Bruce removed his glasses, polishing them on his cardigan. It was a stalling tactic. “Sage… it’s not a good idea. It’s raw neural data, interfaced with the tower’s scanners. It’s… graphic. And cold. It reduces experience to stimulus and response. It will hurt.”
“It already hurts,” she said, her voice cracking. “But this pain is mine. I own it. He took that. I want it back. Even the ugly parts.”
Bruce sat back on his heels, looking at her. He saw not a witch or a weapon, but a patient who needed to confront the injury to begin healing. He’d seen it in trauma victims before. The need to name the monster, to map the outlines of the crater.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay. But not here. And not alone. I’ll show you one file. The least… invasive one. A surface memory of the containment cell on Sakaar. It’s still not easy. And I want Loki here. He’s part of that memory.”
He fetched a slim, metallic tablet from the hallway. When he returned, Loki was with him. Loki’s eyes found Sage immediately, scanning her, assessing. He looked restless, his usual polished composure sanded down to something sharper, more real.
“The good doctor informs me you wish to tour the galleries of your own suffering,” Loki said, his tone attempting its old flippancy but falling short. It just sounded strained. “A uniquely dreadful form of self-punishment.”
“It’s not punishment. It’s reclamation,” she said, holding his gaze.
Bruce powered on the tablet. He navigated through several encrypted folders. “This is all that’s left. The primary servers were destroyed. This is from a secondary diagnostic buffer Friday isolated before the… incident. It’s heavily redacted. Only visual and auditory data, no emotional or physiological readouts.” He took a deep breath. “Ready?”
Sage nodded. Loki moved to stand behind the chair she sat in, a silent pillar at her back.
The screen remained black for a second. Then an image resolved.
It was the cell. Their cell. From a high, corner angle. Sage saw herself, huddled on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees. She was rocking, just slightly. Her face was a blank mask, but her eyes were galaxies of pain. The timestamp in the corner showed it was just after a “testing session.” The memory was a cold, high-definition ghost.
She watched as the cell door opened. A guard shoved Loki in. He stumbled, caught himself, and his eyes went immediately to her. On the screen, his expression was unreadable, but his body language was clear—a tense alertness. The guard threw a single ration bar onto the floor between them and left.
The silent, grainy footage played out. Loki slowly approached. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t speak. He just sat, about a foot away, his own back against the wall. He watched the door for a long time. Then, with a deliberate slowness, he used his foot to nudge the ration bar closer to her. An inch. Then another.
On the tablet, it was a tiny, almost meaningless movement. But Sage, watching, felt the echo of the moment vibrate in her bones. The absolute isolation. The crushing silence. And that small, stubborn act of defiance: I see you. You are not alone.
She saw herself on screen, her head turning slowly. Her hollow eyes looked from the bar to Loki’s face. He didn’t look back. He just kept staring at the door, his profile etched in exhausted resignation. But he stayed.
The footage ended, cutting back to black.
The room was utterly silent. Sage realized she was shaking. The clinical sterility of it was its own violence. Seeing her own hollowed-out face, seeing Loki’s quiet, pragmatic solidarity reduced to data points… it was like being violated all over again, but with gloves on.
“They analyzed that,” she whispered, her throat tight. “They… what? Measured the distance he nudged the bar? Timed how long before I looked?”
“Yes,” Bruce said, his voice heavy with shame. “Tony was looking for patterns of alliance. Threat assessment variables. It was…”
“It was despicable,” Loki finished, his voice a low thrum of anger. He placed a hand on the back of her chair, his knuckles white. “A dissection of a moment that required no dissection. The point of a whisper is that it is heard, not taken apart to see how the sound is made.”
Sage wrapped her arms around herself. The hollow feeling was now a yawning chasm. “Show me another.”
“Sage…” Bruce began.
“Show me.”
Bruce exchanged a look with Loki. Something passed between them—a understanding that denying her might break something else. Reluctantly, Bruce pulled up another file. “This is earlier. It’s… it’s from the lab. On Sakaar. It’s just a ten-second loop. Audio only. No video.”
He pressed play.
The sound that filled the quiet room was the clang of metal. A gasp. Then a voice, filtered and flat through a recorder: “Subject’s pyrokinesis remains linked to adrenal response. Pain stimulus amplifies output. Proceed.”
Another clang. A choked sound. Sage recognized it as her own.
Her hands flew to her ears. “Stop it.”
Bruce fumbled, shutting it off. The silence rushed back in, thick and suffocating.
Sage was breathing in short, sharp gasps. The sounds had unlocked the vault. She wasn’t in the quiet room anymore. She was back on the cold table, the straps biting her wrists, the probes, the laughter that wasn’t laughter, the impersonal, crushing weight of it—
“Enough.” Loki’s voice cut through the memory, sharp and absolute. He stepped around the chair, placing himself between Sage and the tablet. He looked at Bruce, and his authority was suddenly, unmistakably that of a prince. “That is enough, Banner. You have shown her the theft. Now you will put it away.”
Bruce, wide-eyed, quickly powered down the tablet, setting it aside as if it were radioactive.
Loki knelt in front of Sage’s chair, forcing her to look at him. Her eyes were wide, unseeing, lost in the past.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice softer now but no less firm. “Not there. Here. The stone is cool. The air smells of rain. My hand is on the chair. You are safe.”
She blinked, focusing on his face—the sharp lines, the vivid green eyes holding hers with an intensity that anchored her.
“They heard me,” she breathed, tears finally spilling over. “They all heard me make those sounds.”
“They heard a crime,” Loki corrected, his voice low and fierce. “They heard evidence of monstrous acts committed against you. Their hearing it does not change the act. It does not give them ownership of your pain. It makes them witnesses. Unwilling, perhaps. But witnesses nonetheless.”
He glanced back at Bruce. “Tell her what happens to witnesses of a crime, Doctor. In your courts.”
Bruce swallowed. “They… they are called to testify. To stand for the victim.”
“Exactly.” Loki turned back to Sage. “They are not the audience. They are the jury. And you, Sage, are not the evidence. You are the one who gives testimony. You control the narrative now. The footage is just… notes. Bad, ugly notes taken by a fool. They are not the story.”
The logic of it was a lifeline. She clung to it. Her breathing began to slow. The room solidified around her again. The ghost of the cold table receded.
She looked past Loki to Bruce, who watched them with an expression of profound sorrow and dawning respect. “You saw it all,” she said to him.
“I did,” he admitted, no deflection. “And I am sorry. Not as a scientist. As a man. It was wrong.”
The raw honesty deflated the last of her hysterical energy. She was just tired. So tired. She looked at the tray. “Is the broth still warm?”
A wave of relief washed over Bruce’s face. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” He fetched it, handing her the mug. His fingers brushed hers. They were warm, steady. “It’s just chicken and vegetables. Salt.”
She took a sip. The warmth spread through her chest. It was simple. Good.
“The burnout,” she said after a moment, her voice more stable. “You said it was a protective shutdown. Is the magic… gone?”
Bruce shook his head, sitting cross-legged on the rug like a grad student in a dorm. “No. Not gone. Think of it like a circuit breaker. It tripped to save the wiring. The wiring’s fine. We just need to figure out how to reset the breaker without causing another surge.” He tentatively offered a small smile. “I’m good with unstable energy signatures. We can work on it. Slowly. On your terms.”
She studied him over the rim of her mug. He was different from Stark. There was no ego in his offer, just a quiet desire to fix what he could. “You’d help me.”
“If you want.”
Loki watched the exchange, his posture slowly relaxing. The immediate crisis was passing. He rose and moved to the window, gazing out at the distorted view of the city. A sentinel again, but a different kind.
“I think,” Sage said softly, setting the mug down, “I would like that. To understand it. To control it. Not just be controlled by it.”
Bruce’s smile became more genuine. “That’s the goal. No more cages. Not even the ones inside.”
From the window, Loki spoke without turning. “A noble sentiment, Doctor. Let us see if your tower’s architects share it.”
But his tone lacked its usual bite. It was merely a statement of fact. The battle for the day was over. A fragile, uneasy trust had been built, not on promises, but on shared witness and a simple bowl of broth.
Sage leaned back in the chair, the exhaustion returning, but it was a clean fatigue now. She met Loki’s reflected gaze in the dark glass of the window. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
The footage was a wound. But it was her wound. And for the first time, she was not alone in the room where it was kept.
Bruce returned the next morning, and the next. He brought a small paper cup of pills—antibiotics for lingering infections from neglected wounds, mild painkillers for the deep ache in her joints that she’d stopped noticing. “Just ibuprofen,” he’d say, shaking the cup. “Nothing fancy. Swear.”
His visits became a rhythm. He didn’t just scan her. He talked. He explained how the drugs worked in a straightforward, non-condescending way. He brought books—real paper ones, on geology, on stellar physics, on anything but magic or pain. “Something to look at besides these walls,” he’d mutter, placing them on the low table.
Sage began asking questions. Not about her magic, at first. About his work. About gamma radiation. He answered, his eyes lighting up behind his glasses, his hands sketching shapes in the air. She learned to trust the quiet steadiness of his hands, the lack of expectation in his eyes.
Natasha Romanoff appeared on the third day, leaning in the open doorway. “Heard you’re rejecting the pudding. Wise choice. It’s terrible.” She held two steaming mugs of black coffee. “Figured you might prefer this.”
She entered without waiting for an invitation, setting a mug near Sage. She moved through the space with a predatory ease that was utterly relaxed. She didn’t look at Sage with pity or clinical concern. She looked at her like she was assessing a potential sparring partner. “Banner says your reflexes are shot. Muscle atrophy from containment. Bored yet?”
“Terrifically,” Sage said, the corner of her mouth twitching.
“Good.” Natasha took a sip. “We’ve got a gym downstairs. No one uses it at 5 AM. I’ll show you.”
It wasn’t an offer of therapy. It was an offer of work. Of rebuilding herself with her own hands. Sage took the mug. The coffee was bitter and strong. “I might burn the equipment.”
“It’s survived the Hulk. You’re not that scary.” Natasha’s smile was a quick, real thing. “Besides. Fire’s just kinetic energy with a bad attitude. Control starts here.” She tapped her own temple, then her core. “And here.”
They didn’t talk about Sakaar. They talked about footwork, about breathing techniques to manage adrenaline spikes, about the different tensile strengths of synthetic fibers versus leather. Natasha spoke of her own past in vague, metallic terms—red ledgers, wiping out stains. It was enough. Sage began to understand the woman was offering a manual, written in blood and experience, on how to reassemble a shattered weapon into a person.
Tony Stark was a ghost in the tower’s systems. His absence was a palpable thing. No drones, no witty announcements, no unexpected upgrades to their quarters. When necessary, communication came through Friday’s neutral voice. “Mr. Stark has approved the requisition for new training attire.” It was always Mr. Stark, never Tony.
He was, as Bruce said once with a sigh, “marinating in his own guilt-bouillon.” He couldn’t face her. The wreckage of his lab was still being cleared, a constant physical reminder.
His solution, a week in, was characteristically indirect and emotionally clumsy. The door chimed one afternoon, and a young man with tousled brown hair and anxious eyes stood there, holding a large cardboard box. “Hi! I’m Peter. Peter Parker?Mr. Stark asked me to, uh, bring you this? It’s a thing. From him. But not, like, from him from him.”
He looked about eighteen, drowning in a worn science pun t-shirt. Loki, who’d been reading in the corner, lowered his book slowly, one eyebrow ascending into a perfect arc of disbelief.
“A herald,” Loki murmured. “How regal.”
Peter flushed, shifting the box. “It’s just… stuff. Books. Some really cool adaptive fabric samples Dr. Banner requested. A neutral-tone puzzle? He said you might like puzzles. I don’t know if that’s patronizing. It feels patronizing now that I’ve said it out loud.”
Sage watched him fumble. There was no calculation here, no hidden agenda. Just a kid shoved into the emotional crossfire by a guilt-ridden billionaire. She almost felt sorry for him. “You can set it down, Peter.”
He scurried in, placing the box carefully on the table. He looked at her, then at Loki, his nerves visibly sparking. “He’s really sorry. Mr.Stark. He’s… he’s not good at this. The whole ‘being wrong’ thing. It short-circuits him. He builds things to fix things, but you can’t build a fix for this, you know?”
His earnestness was disarming. It was the opposite of Tony’s performative charm. “I know,” Sage said, her voice softer than she’d intended.
Peter brightened, just a little. “Oh! Also, Karen—that’s my suit’s AI—she says your localized thermal bloom patterns are, and I quote, ‘fascinatingly non-destructive to ambient air particles.’ Which is awesome!” He caught himself, stammering. “Not awesome that you… you know. But awesome that you have such control. When you want to.”
He left in a whirlwind of awkward smiles and half-finished sentences, leaving a box of peace offerings and a strangely lighter mood behind. Loki stared at the closed door.
“A child,” he said, tone unreadable. “He sends a charming, babbling child as his ambassador of contrition.”
“It’s harder to hate a messenger who looks like a lost puppy,” Sage replied, pulling a puzzle from the box. It was a complex image of a nebula. She huffed a quiet, surprised laugh. It was actually a good gift.
Through it all, Loki kept his vigil. He was the room’s unchanging fixture, a silent column of dark leather and watchful green eyes. He read every book Banner brought, sometimes aloud in a dry, theatrical voice that made Sage roll her own eyes. He analyzed Peter’s ‘adaptive fabric’ with a critic’s disdain, pronouncing it “adequate.”
He watched Natasha drill Sage in controlled stance exercises, his expression neutral but his gaze missing nothing. He said little during Bruce’s visits, but his presence was a quiet pressure gauge, constantly measuring the room’s emotional temperature.
His relief was a subtle, slow-melting thing. He saw it in the new ease of Sage’s shoulders when she laughed at one of Peter’s ridiculous stories. He heard it in the steady, strong rhythm of her heart when she slept, no longer racing with phantom terror. He felt it in the air itself—no longer thick with the threat of ignition, but warm, stable, like a banked forge.
One evening, Natasha had just left after a grueling session. Sage was dripping sweat, leaning against the wall, but she was smiling, really smiling, at some crude joke Natasha had made. Loki handed her a towel without a word.
She took it, her fingers brushing his. “You don’t have to stay in this room every second, you know,” she said, mopping her face. “I think the assassin and the scientist have me covered.”
He looked at her—the healthy flush on her skin, the clear, focused light in her blue eyes, the absence of that flinching shadow in her gaze. The hollow creature from the cell and the shattered avenger from the lab were receding, replaced by someone sharper, warmer, more solid.
“I am aware,” he said, his voice quiet. He looked toward the window, at the city’s electric night. “But the view of your recovery is far more compelling than anything out there.”