all_inclusive | Sitting on the sand is a box. What's in the box?

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Sitting on the sand is a box. What's in the box?

Simmons has managed to find the most wonderful, impossible thing.

In the midst of everything happening back home that she's not even close to ready to cope with -- whatever is happening to Skye, what did happen to Tripp -- she'd decided that she needed time before her mental shields broke down and she cracked and had a nervous breakdown fit to rival the very worst. One day had turned to two and then somehow has drawn out to just over a week, but she feels better and relaxed and now she's standing outside of a very blue, very locked, very real seeming TARDIS that just happens to be parked in the lobby of the Nexus.

"Excuse me," she asks the concierge. "When did this arrive?"

They rattle off something about how they've never noticed it and isn't it funny that they have a police box and would Simmons like security called. She shakes her head urgently and turns her attention back to the TARDIS as her childish heart sings with excitement. She tries the door another three times, opens the phone, looks for a key (or better yet, the man who owns this box), but nothing seems to be working. It almost seems like it could be a prank. Surely the Doctor couldn't be real. Surely this isn't actually happening.

She drags one of the comfortable lobby chairs over to set up shop right outside of it, chin perched on her hand as she stares up at the TARDIS and wonders whether this is another of those things where reality and fiction manage to merge and mix, creating a result that gives her this. And of course, that cowardly part of her heart can't help but wonder if she can't break in and manage to steer her and all the people she cares about away from what's been happening.

"Brave heart, Jemma," she instructs herself, a sad smile on her lips as she crosses her legs in front of the TARDIS and waits for an owner or an explanation or anything in between.

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Angelica Petrocchi had two gifts that no one else in World 12A had -- and lucky for us, her cousins often told her. They would do things as they had always been done in Caprona, carrying on the great traditions of Casa Petrocchi.

Angelica, it had been decided, would have to forge her own path. Her first gift -- she thought of it as more of a curse -- was that her spells always worked, but never as she intended. She had caused endless consternation, growing up in Casa Petrocchi, one of the greatest spellhouses in Europe.

But her second gift was even more mysterious. She, and only she, could travel to a new world that even the Chrestomanci hadn't known about, called the nexus.

Her mother and father and aunts and uncles had consulted with every expert on magic that they knew, and brought in the Chrestomanci himself, but none of the experts could replicate Angelica's second gift either. But Chrestomanci -- whose magic allowed him to be called into any world if the caller had a great enough need -- had been able to follow Angelica, not to the nexus itself, but to some of the additional worlds that the nexus connected to. That had been a great relief to the Petrocchis, who had been worried that Angelica could get lost.

The Chrestomanci had told the Petrocchis that Angelica's gifts shouldn't be wasted -- as if he needed to tell us that, one of Angelica's aunts had said. It's common sense, really -- and so her family had decided that she must learn to use both of her gifts.

That was how Angelica had ended up attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was a school of magic that she'd found in the nexus, and her family had agreed that perhaps a new way of studying magic would do her good. At the very least, it was unlikely to do any harm, and maybe she'd learn something that she could bring back to Caprona.

They'd corresponded with the head of the school and Chrestomanci had even visited to finalize the arrangements for Angelica's attendance as a first year student, with holidays to be at Christmas and Easter.

Angelica was supposed to be on her way there now. She had her suitcase clutched in one hand and her cat cradled in her other arm, but somehow she'd ended up in the lobby of the nexus instead.

Angelica had learned that when the doors here were being strange, frequently she could get what she wanted by waiting, so she looked around for something to occupy her for a while. The choice was easy: the big blue box looked far more interesting than anything else.

She marched up to Simmons, and asked forthrightly, with an admiring look at the blue box and all its accouterments (Angelica was exceedingly fond of blue) -- "Is that yours? Does it open?" She'd found that in the nexus, it never hurt to ask, and had come to depend on the other residents being friendly.

Simmons peeks out from behind the corner, flushing with mild embarrassment and the thrill of a lie on the tip of her tongue, in which she thought perhaps, just perhaps, it might not be an awful idea to claim that it is hers, but the truth would come out far too quickly as soon as the girl realized that Simmons had absolutely no way to get into the TARDIS and thus, couldn't even begin to call herself the Doctor of any kind (well, apart from her two actual PhDs, which did make her a doctor, technically). "No, it's not mine," she apologises, wishing with all her heart that she could have said otherwise. "I can't seem to get it to open, either."

Smiling brightly, she hopes that she hasn't put off the girl, glancing at the suitcase and the cat as she brightens. "Where are you off to? Can I help you get there, even if I haven't got a big blue box to do it with?"

"I know a spell for opening things," Angelica said cheerfully. She was coasting on the excitement of being off to school, and this minor delay in her journey hadn't tarnished the day at all, just made it that much more of an adventure. "But you probably don't want me to do it. You never know what will happen when I do a spell." She'd been planning on using this talent to impress her new classmates and make sure they respected her, since it was her major distinction when it came to magic. She thought she'd try it out on Simmons as well; the opportunity was too good to pass up.

But she wanted to be helpful as well, so she offered, "Would you like me to tell it to you so you can try it?"

She shook her head at Simmons' offer, shrugging in a way that was meant to be very grown-up and resigned. "I'm waiting for my door to come back," she explained. "I'm sure it will be back soon, because I'm supposed to be going away to school."

Oh, well, isn't that honestly just adorably precious? Simmons does her best not to look chuffed because she remembers being that age and having adults fawn over her and she distinctly recalls being put off by it, so she tries to remain as neutral as she possibly can, keeping an even look on her face as she regards the young girl. "And what exactly happens when you try spells?" she asks, just a touch cautious given the way that she'd said those words.

"And which school would that be?" she asks, already immensely interested. "I've been to a few schools myself," she boasts. "Having two doctorates and all."

"When I do a spell, anything could happen!" Angelica said grandly. She tried to come up with something sufficiently dire. "I might open every door in this whole place twice as wide, and who knows what might come through then? Or I might break the box in two like an egg, or turn it into something else, or turn you into something else..." She peeked at Simmons to see if she was impressed yet.

At least Simmons looked interested, so she continued blithely, "It's a school called Hogwarts. They do an unusual kind of magic there, I had to buy a wand! Imagine that!" So far, it made a really good prop for threatening her cousins with destruction, but deep down, Angelica had great hopes that the wand might help her learn to do magic properly, without anything going wrong.

Angelica could tell that Simmons was bragging too, but she only had a vague idea of doctorates; it had something to do with the University and Great-Uncle Luigi. "Have you?" she said, trying to sound impressed, since that was only polite. "You don't look nearly old enough."

"Well, I certainly don't want to be turned into anything else," Simmons confesses, like they're just standing around sharing secrets. When she goes on and mentions Hogwarts, Simmons has to blink as she clasps the TARDIS a little tighter with her hand. Of course! Why wouldn't it be a possibility if all the other doors are endless possibilities. While she didn't necessarily believe in magic in her own world, someplace like Hogwarts was built on a whole new set of physics and Simmons yearned to explore them.

Her breath caught in her throat, she suddenly sees the whole world open up with potential. "And I know I'm not very old," she confesses, "but I'm fairly smart," she admits with a shrug.

"I'd love to hear more about your school, though!" she encourages, both for her own sake and that of the child's. "What sort of wand are you hoping for?"

Edited 2015-06-28 22:38 (UTC)

"I was turned into a puppet once, and it was awful," Angelica confided. "But I probably wouldn't mind being a cat," and on that thought she set down her white cat and her suitcase, since it seemed like she'd be talking a while. "Would I, Vittoria? You'd show me how to get about," she said, as the white cat flicked her ears and started grooming.

Angelica laughed happily, as if in response to the cat and turned back to Simmons. "You'll have to forgive me, I've never been to university," she said politely. "Maybe if I do well at Hogwarts I'll go some day. What do you want to know about Hogwarts? I've only visited once, so I might not be able to tell you everything yet, but I've already got my wand. It's in my suitcase."

"Oh dear," Simmons remarks, trying to think of the logic of how one would even become a puppet and what sort of cardiological and respiratory system would be in place to sustain life. Then she realizes she's thinking about puppet-science and begins to question herself. "So you're going to Hogwarts and you need the way."

Right, Simmons can do this. Fictional worlds are separate from her own, which means that she can absolutely believe them possible. Yes. "Shall we start trying some doors?"

"Thank you," Angelica said. She hadn't expected help, only distraction, but she would take it when offered. "I'll show you where the proper door used to be, we can start there," Angelica said, picking up her suitcase and leading the way back up the stairs. Her cat followed on her heels.

Angelica counted the doors on the right-hand hallway, ignoring the numbers, and then frowned at the door she stopped in front of. "It was red earlier today," she said. "And it went to a place with a lot of frogs. I wonder what it is now." Cautiously, she opened the door. It seemed to be rather dark inside.

"Right then, on we go," Simmons says cheerfully, eager to be up and moving, as much as she is to find a place where she can perhaps investigate magic as a scientific construct. She really would like that. "I've been investigating the doors for some time, but I can't honestly say that I've ever discovered quite how they work."

"Which only proves to be more mystery for me to look into," she says, opting to look on the bright side as best as she can.

"Do you like mysteries?" Angelica asked, opening the door across the hall from the dark door. She thought maybe it would be a bright sunny beach, and light up the hallway and the dark door, but it was just a snowy day in Paris. Angelica could see the Eiffel Tower, but she was used to seeing all sorts of things on the other side of doors by now, and slammed the door before the snow could drift onto the carpet and melt.

"My aunt said they probably work like my magic, and that's why I'm the only one who can come here," Angelica said thoughtfully. "So if they work like my magic, then I think this might be Hogwarts after all," she said, wandering back to stand just this side of the dark door. If she squinted, she thought she could see battlements, and it smelled faintly of heather and the kind of damp that comes after a lot of rain. "Maybe it's Hogwarts at night on top of one of the towers? Or maybe it's a castle under siege during the Middle Ages? I'm not sure how to tell."

"Only ones that I inevitably solve," Simmons says firmly, given that she doesn't like mysteries that linger on and tease and taunt her. Mysteries without a solution are perplexing and make her head ache and for a genius of her calibre, it takes quite a bit to do. Unfortunately, the doors here seem up to the challenge.

"I'd like to imagine there's some sort of physics in all this," she says, still hopeful of that. "Do you think magic and physics can co-exist?"

"So you only like them when they're not mysteries any more?" Angelica said. She paused to look at Simmons with a puzzled expression. "Why wouldn't they?" She had a very vague idea about physics, but she was almost sure it was something that her older cousins studied in school. And then she remembered something her cousin Carmina had done once, not exactly for a school project...

"Have you ever tried to fly a kite in a thunderstorm?" She bounced a little, remembering how impressive Carmina had been that night -- before they'd been found out, at least. She could still remember squinting up into the rain and seeing the kite dancing so crazily at the end of the string.

"If you try to do that without a really good protection spell, you could get hurt," she said with an air of distant regret, because a good protection spell put a repeat of Carmina's feat well out of Angelica's reach. But the danger had been well drilled into all the Petrocchi children in the aftermath of Carmina's "experiment".

"Me? No, I already know that's far from the smartest idea," Simmons assures, given that Ben Franklin had already conducted that experiment and had written down the conclusion well enough that she doesn't need to repeat it. "I wouldn't want to cause you to do extra work on my behalf, though," she insists.

"I could rather just try and not get hurt?" she says brightly.

"It probably wouldn't be as much fun the second time," Angelica said with a casual shrug.

She opened another door -- a tropical beach, boring -- and then returned to the dark one with the looming battlements. "I'm going to go through and ask where this is," she told Simmons. "It smells like Hogwarts... You can come if you want, but I'll be fine by myself too."

Simmons was interesting company when she wasn't talking about physics, so Angelica didn't mind either way.

Loki was moody and his interest in other people often seemed to go the same way - sometimes he cared, sometimes he didn't. He was more even and tolerable when it came to those who had already gained his favour, though it couldn't be said that he found this woman to be one of those. It was clear she came from a world similar to his own - possibly even the same - for when he had first run into her some time ago she had recognized him, though her response had been less than favourable.

He was tired, bored, but strangely skittish. He found moderate breaks from the Tesseract here, but the sceptre he kept concealed in his room still drained him. Wandering away from it sometimes made things easier on him. So, whether she liked him or not was not something he cared about. He was just wondering what she was doing; he was bored and, therefore, was looking for anything to distract him from it.

"What is this?" he asked, idly, standing at her shoulder and looking at the blue, box-like formation. It might be something of interest. You never knew.

At the sound of his voice, Simmons grips the edge of the TARDIS a bit harder than she normally would, but the truth is that threats like Loki have somehow become not as terrifying to her, in the wake of all the madness she's seen since. It's a strange thing, not to be scared of someone who had been so terrifying before, but she has to be grateful for it. "It's a TARDIS," she supplies, thinking that if it's locked, it can't possibly be a danger to the world, even if Loki were to figure it out.

"Sort of a way of travelling through time and space, though it's a bit fictional in most places," she continues on cautiously. "Not here, I suppose."

At another time, Loki might have been very intrigued by that. But he had the Tesseract, and he was already far more than accustomed to such travels. As for time, it was already a complicated enough weave at the hotel that he didn't find much wisdom in trying to unravel it further.

"And you're guarding it?" he asked. If one listened closely, just the hint of a tease could be detected in his voice.

He moved to place his hand against it, curiously. To him it seemed to thrum, but that could be anything.

"Not really," Simmons admits, a strangled laugh in her words. To think that she could ever be capable of guarding the TARDIS was a mad thing, no matter how much she longed to pull it apart and understand how it worked, though maybe it's more Fitz's wheelhouse than hers, but that doesn't mean she can't be curious.

"I mean, in order to guard an object like this, I think I'd need training for years and the sort of knowledge that..." She trails off, narrowing her eyes, and parses what he's said again. "Wait, was that meant to be joking?"

This is really not any part of Simmons' life that she's been expecting, parsing a trickster god's words for humour.

Loki didn't really laugh; he did exhale sharply, like he might have been about to, had he been feeling more generous or, perhaps, more cruel. "That was definitely meant to be a joke," he said, giving her the kind of smile that showcased most of his rather white teeth. "You don't look like a guard dog. More like a pup, scratching at a closed door."

He took a step away, but not to leave; instead he hooked his hand around a lobby chair and dragged it, unknowingly in the same manner that she had moved her own chair before he had arrived, and parked it right next to hers. "How do you know about it?" he asked. If Frigga had been there, she might have scolded him for his lack of manners, but luckily for him she was nowhere to be seen. Actually, the fact he could see no one he knew and would therefore have to be accountable to gave him a sense of freedom which was incredibly refreshing in the stifling halls of the Nexus. "You said it was mostly fictional. Have you read about it?"

He was, in fact, very interested to know. He had no interest in feigning knowledge, as if to prove something; he didn't care one jot what this woman had to think about it, so admitting ignorance was easy enough.

She stays standing, her back as straight as possible as if Simmons is going to run away at any given moment, though she hardly wants to give Loki the pleasure of scaring her away (though yes, she is, in fact, somewhat frightened). "Not read, so much as watched it," she says, her eyes sliding to that wonderful blue box with all the wonder of her childhood self. "When you're a kid too advanced for nearly everyone, it's rather nice to watch a show about a man who's just the same, struggling to find his place in the world."

"It helped to make me feel less alone."

He propped his chin up on his fist. "Are you advanced?" he asked. Which could have been construed as a mocking question, of course, but really he was curious. Loki himself was more intelligent, more skilled in science, than almost anyone else he had known. He could definitely understand what she was talking about, and he was wondering about her. He doubted she was equal to him in knowledge, of course, but she easily could be in regard to other Midgardians.

She gives a small shrug, not entirely sure what an Asgardian's mind would look like when compared to hers and she hasn't had the chance to take one of their brains and look at it, despite how much she'd really like to. "I was fifteen when I started my first PhD. For Earth, that's fairly young, considering most people don't start with that until a full decade later. I've got two of them, now. PhDs," she clarifies.

"So presumably you had nothing better to do than receive said PhDs," Loki mused. That spoke of a lack of social life, an insatiable itch for knowledge, or both.

"You're not still afraid or me, are you?" he asked, tipping his head to the side. She hadn't taken to their first meeting very well, but she seemed fine now. "You seem quite mellow." Of course, whether she feared him or not was not of great concern - she could feel what she liked. But sometimes old threats seemed pale in comparison to new ones, and he was curious if something bigger and badder were to come along in his future, should she have experienced it.

"Somewhat," she concedes, but the truth is that while Loki's actions have made her somewhat fearful, it's not really him. "It's more what you're attached to. You were the reason the Chitauri came to Earth and they're the reason I almost died. Only, I've almost died many more times since then and I've learned that there are far worse villains out there than you," she says, somewhat frank even if she feels a touch bad for saying it.

"I'm afraid to say you pale in comparison," she says sadly, thinking of Ward and how much she'd like to see that man dead.

Ah, the Chitauri. The ones that Loki was very heartily ignoring. Why shouldn't he? He didn't want to take over Earth anymore, and he certainly didn't want to hand off his infinity stones. There were more important things to concern himself with. Besides, he'd learned to like Earth. Thor, its so-called protector, was doing a terrible job policing it. Someone had to do it.

But while he recognized the Loki this woman new was a bit different, that still didn't stop him from taking some offense. He tipped his head to the side. "I'm a villain," he stated, but with a questioning lilt to his voice.

"You never pretended otherwise with me," she says firmly, and that makes all the difference. Ward's betrayal had been hard and aching and had nearly cost her Fitz, all the while he had pretended so furiously that he'd been their friend. "You are what you are," she insists. "But you never pretended to be otherwise."

"That makes a difference, even if only a small one."

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Sitting on the sand is a box. What's in the box?

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