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Chapter Text

Chapter One: Squirrels

Surrounded by SHIELD agents, Loki gathered the power he needed, pulling deep on the ley line he was standing upon. He grinned broadly as hundreds of his doubles outnumbered the SHIELD agents, "Really, Agent Coulson? You think your weapons can take me down? Do you truly believe you have anything in your arsenal that could do anything to bring me to your earth justice?"

Coulson walked forward, his weapon, the last one SHIELD had ever invented to bring Loki down - back when he was considered the worst threat earth had ever faced - held at hip height, pointed toward his old nemeses.

"This gun was made with the co-operation of Asgard. Thor allowed us to test it on him before he left. Just a short burst and he was incapacitated for hours. Every single one of my agents is armed with one of these guns, and one of us will be able to hit you, and more than a few seconds pulse from one of these babies? And you are just a big green smear on the pavement.

Loki pulled his hands back, his grin turning positively feral, but before he could speak,

Coulson walked forward, raised the gun in the air, then, with great ceremony, never breaking eye contact with Loki, placed it on the ground.

Every agent followed, each of them putting their weapons on the ground and taking a step back.

Coulson walked forward, hands at shoulder height, palms forward. "We come in peace, Loki. I'm here on behalf of Director Fury. SHIELD would like to have a word with you, if you don't mind."

Loki stood, confused and baffled expression on his face, hands still at 'zap with eldritch powers' position, his whole body stance ready to shoot first and shoot later.

"I should have thought SHIELD had better things to do than waste my time," Loki sneered, bravado to cover his confusion at their behaviour.

"Yes, I'm sorry to have interrupted your shopping. One of our agents will take your milk and croissants to your apartment for you. We have copies of the keys so they can let themselves in. But right now we really need to have a discussion regarding your contribution to earth's security."

Loki dropped his hands and stood up straighter, his expression now purely WTF.

One of Coulson's agents sidled over, nervously side-eying Loki, picked up his plastic shopping bag, nodded respectfully, and sidled away again. "I'll just put this in the fridge for you, sir," he said, sidling quickly.

"What is going on?" Loki said. "What kind of foolish behaviour is this?"

"If you would come with me, sir, I'll explain everything. We are no longer carrying weapons that can harm you, but I must insist that you come with me."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I will continue to ask you politely until you acquiesce."

Loki stood and looked puzzled for a little while, then shrugged. "Oh, all right then." It wasn't like he hadn't spent years interacting with SHIELD in various capacities, usually violently, so it wasn't as if Coulson had any threat he didn't already know about or had already experienced.

Coulson didn't look at all surprised at Loki's quick capitulation, which disappointed Loki a little, but was to be expected. It took far more than Loki was capable of to discombobulate Fury's favourite agent.

Coulson walked back towards a SHIELD car, and while he did, another small group of SHIELD agents started pulling panels away from the car, rapidly expanding it until it was a neat little office, four times its original size, table and chairs and tidy windows. Another impressive bit of improbable SHIELD technology.

Coulson led the way inside and pulled up an office chair, offering another to Loki, and they sat at opposite sides of the table. An anonymous agent came in, put coffee on the table in front of Coulson, and a Coke for Loki. Real Coke, cold, from a bottle, no glass, no ice, just how he'd learned to love it. So sweet, so fizzy. Nothing on Asgard could compare.

"Now, Mr… how do you prefer to be addressed? I believe you consider Odinson or Laufeyson inaccurate?"

"Loki is fine," Loki said, with an expression like he'd smelled bad milk.

"One of your fake IDs has the name Skywalker, would you mind if I used that? I'd like to keep this professional."

Loki shrugged indifferently and wondered how many guns were secretly pointed at him, or if the whole office/car was rigged with explosives.

"Mr Skywalker, I would like to talk to you about the Jaeger initiative."

"From what I've heard, that does not seem to be faring too well."

"We've had considerable success against the Kaiju, but as you are no doubt aware, the attacks are happening with greater frequency and they have started to come through in multiples. Stark Industries has been able, with the help of various governments, to create the Jaegers we need to fight the Kaiju, but the difficulty is with the pilots."

"Surely you can find enough siblings and intimately married people to pilot the Jaegers as required?"

"Drift compatibility is not always guaranteed, even with twins. It's not just having a similar background to prevent dissonance, there are whole rafts of challenges. Their minds have to be powerful, compatible on every level of biofeedback, and they need to be great fighters. We can find fighters, and powerful minds, and we can find compatible couples, but we can't get every one of those attributes in the same people every time. Truly drift compatible minds are rare."

"So where do I come in? Why do you think any of this would be of interest to me?"

"It is of interest to you because you now make your home here on Earth. Like it or not, welcome or not, this has been your home for some years. You stopped, or at least stepped down your illegal activities some time ago and since you've hardly done anything to warrant intervention from the Avengers, we've left you alone. We have far bigger fish to fry than one lone lost god. While you keep your mischief to nothing more than petty shop lifting and minor harassments, we've let you be. Face it, compared to Kaiju attacks, you're nothing."

Loki raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn't react to the Coulson's small insult. He'd lost all interest in making trouble for anyone some time ago. He'd been a king, numerous times, and when he'd taken Odin's place on the throne he'd been a great king. Until he'd been so bored he'd abandoned Asgard altogether. Without Frigga, he had no reason to stay and no one to care if he left. Without anything to do, he'd just drifted across the realms until he'd landed on Midgard.

"You've been living here, more or less peacefully, for some time. This world is your home now. SHIELD believes you may be of use in our battles against the Kaiju."

Loki took a sip from the Coke bottle, letting the cold rim of the glass rest against his lower lip while, solely so he could look more disinterested in Coulson's conversation.

"Perhaps, but then again, I can always leave. There are other realms out there, many worlds where the Kaiju have made no impression. I could simply take my leave, spend the next few thousand years on Alfheim and think no more of your stinking little realm as you are ground underfoot of a greater force. Your world will end up as nothing more than Kaiju shit and I need not be here to see it."

"True, but did you read the news three weeks ago, about a Kaiju that washed up near a harbour on the California coast?"

"I care not for your 'news'. I have no love of screaming journalists or overly made up talking heads."

"It was a category three Kaiju. Not the biggest we've ever seen, but nothing to be sneezed at. Given free reign, it would probably have been able to destroy a city had it been able to make land. We saw it come through the breach but it was gone before our Jaeger's got near it."

Loki turned away, looking out of the window of the 'office' at the agents that loitered with intent nearby. He resisted the temptation to flick some imaginary dust off his trousers, but still pretended indifference to Coulson's words.

"Instead of trying to make land, this Kaiju went in the opposite direction, out into deep water. Our Jaegers didn't get to it before it disappeared, the thing just vanished, and the next time we see it, it's a corpse clogging up what remains of our shipping lanes."

"And?" Loki said, with badly feigned indifference.

"So we called in our team to take it apart, to see what killed it. Someone had this great idea that maybe our planet had built a defence against it, like War of the worlds."

"I have seen many wars between worlds. Be more specific."

"It's a famous old story. Aliens came to make war on Earth, and none of our defences could stop them, but eventually they all died of disease. Some virus got to them and wiped them all out. That's what we had hoped had happened here. Some tiny virus finally found the Kaiju and killed it, and we were hoping to harvest that. Weaponise it."

"And?"

"It's brain had been destroyed. Not a virus, but something mechanical. It's whole nervous system looked like it had been… burnt, I suppose is the best way to put it. Not with fire, though. Some kind of force. So, our technical people take it apart, they study it, and finally someone comes back and says it's magic. The Kaiju was taken down with magic. So, guess who we thought did that?"

"Dr Strange?"

"Yep, our first thought. For once he wasn't off soul walking in some other dimension, for once Dr Strange was making himself useful. That's what we thought, but no. He's not powerful enough. He claims he tried but couldn't even penetrate the raw power of the Kaiju brain. They might be stupid animals, but they are big and strong and he couldn't get through. Not the Scarlett Witch, either. None of our magic users have that kind of power. And none of them have the kinds of minds that can be hooked up to a Jaeger. None of them can drift with anyone, and they all fight the connection anyway."

"So then?"

"So then we were able to isolate parts of the damage around the brain stem, and at least Dr Strange was able to identify the signature. You have a very unique magical signature, Loki. Nothing else like it on this planet."

"Do you think I would be so foolish as to take on a Kaiju? Do you think I have the power to take down one of those beasts?"

"No. I know you don't," Coulson took a sip of his coffee, then waved to an agent for a refresh. "We know you can't take one down by yourself."

Loki frowned and glared at the table.

"What we know is that after that thing disappeared, so did you. For a long time. It was more than a month before you turned up again, and you were very, very quiet. We had an eye on every magic worker who is not affiliated with SHIELD to see who was involved, and you came limping out into the light weeks later, looking sick and wasted. You haven't even used your magic to steal a coffee since then."

Sneering, Loki said, "Do you think me nothing more than a common thief?"

"I think that's irrelevant. How much damage did it do? Taking that Kaiju down alone?"

Loki glared, looked as if he could turn Coulson into a toad right then and there, but then just gave up, his face relaxing. "It was foolish. I thought I could do it."

"Did you think you'd be lauded as a hero if you could kill them by yourself."

"I thought I could get some peace and quiet again. My home is quite near the sea," he sipped his cola, and wiped his fingers through the drops of condensation on the table. "I do quite like it here. My home is peaceful and quiet, I see very few people and speak to no one. I can read and spend time alone without the noise of the Aesir or the smells of Midgardians. I simply wanted the Kaiju to stop."

"We all do. What kind of damage did it do to you?"

"It is, as your other magic users have found out, incredibly powerful. It's not magical, and you're wrong when you say they are dumb beasts, they have a rudimentary intelligence and a goal. But when I tried to destroy it, I tried to burn out its brain, and it wasn't a matter of intelligence. Multiple brains, and brains the size of one of your houses. The sheer overwhelming strength burned back along the lines I opened up, and… burned me in return. I think that's the best way I can describe it. The electrical forces of its brain were able to… perhaps it is like your 'drift'? It came back along the drift and burnt my mind. Physically burnt my brain. I nearly died," Loki lifted his chin while lowering his eyes in a way meant to look both regal and encourage sympathy at the same time.

"You defeated it, though. You defeated a Kaiju alone. No one else, not any of our Avengers, not even Hulk. Not even some of the most powerful mutants we have been able to throw at it have been able to do that."

"So what?" Loki could look indifferent like no one else when it was important.

"We need your help."

"And you think I'll give it? You've spent years fighting me, we are enemies, Coulson. I have nothing to offer your world and no desire to do so. I shall leave when it becomes unbearable here."

"Who will feed the squirrels?"

"Squirrels?" Loki was wary.

"Every day you go out onto your balcony and feed the squirrels. You buy peanuts from the local shops regularly. When you were too sick to do so, you just left your window open and let the squirrels into your house so they could eat whatever you had lying around. If you leave, who will feed your squirrels?"

"You think I would put my life at risk for squirrels?" Loki didn't know whether to be outraged or laugh.

"When the Kaiju win, they will kill all life here. Not just the humans, but the squirrels, too."

"So, what is this to me? The lives of a handful of rodents are of no importance to a god!"

"What of Annabel? Isn't she pregnant? Didn't you help her raise her little squirrel puppies last year after that dog killed her mate?"

Loki ground his teeth, "Just how long have you been spying on me?"

"A long time, Mr Skywalker. You used to be considered a threat. Now we would like to consider you an ally."

Loki said and laughed a little, soft and a bit defeated. "Yes, I enjoy the company of squirrels – their intellect is far in advance of most of those with whom I have been acquainted in my life. But I will not put my life on the line for them. No matter how many generations I have helped raise. They are merely ridiculous little creatures who give me some amusement."

"Mr Skywalker, we need your help."

"In what way? I am not going to be drift compatible with any of your pilots, and although I have a reasonably good understanding of your technology, I am nowhere near the level of expertise compared to those you already have on your payroll. And as far as I am aware, I am the most powerful sorcerer on your realm, or any other yet known to us, and my magic cannot hope to stand against the sheer physical might of a Kaiju. When I killed that Kaiju, it nearly killed me. I was in the water for a week, unable to teleport or even swim to shore. I drifted, brain damaged, for days until I was able to teleport myself to a land mass. It took another week before I was able to return home, then, as you saw yourself, I was unable to do anything for a long time."

"If we can find a way, will you help us?"

Loki stared at the little human for a long time and thought of a possible list of demands. He could ask for the world. If he could promise them anything, they would give it. A kingdom of obsequious followers, but he'd had that and hadn't enjoyed it for very long. He could ask for a private island, but that would be destroyed by Kaiju very soon. He could ask for billions of dollars, but once the planet was gone, what could he spend it on? He could ask for his enemys' heads served to him on a silver platter, but most of them were long gone or he just didn't care any more. He could ask for anything he wanted, but he realised they had so very little to give. He should just leave. Take his suitcase and fill it with the few little treasures he'd found on this planet, and go somewhere else. Create a world where he and his squirrels, for he wouldn't leave them behind no matter what he'd said to Coulson. He could start again. Maybe the squirrels would enjoy Alfheim, despite there being no winter, no need to store their hoard of nuts. He could ask for anything or go anywhere and not have to listen to this drivel. The thought was just exhausting, and in a little way, another thousand years alone on Alfheim filled him with a hollow sort of dread. He just knew the squirrels would hate it, too.

"All right," he said, finally.

Coulson was quiet and puzzled, and Loki had to smirk, just a little, because in all of their squabbles and battles, he'd never managed to stump the man.

"You will help us?" Coulson asked, taken aback.

"I said all right, didn't I?" Loki said with fake irritation.

"Just like that," now Coulson was suspicious.

"Yes. What else am I going to do? Leave? Demand you hand over your country and worship me like a god? You have nothing to offer me, and I have nowhere else to go. I will help you. Just like that."

"Mr Skywalker, what is your angle?" For the first time, Coulson looked like he was thinking about getting angry.

"You came to me, Agent. You begged me for help," he hadn't begged, but Loki would take what he could get. "You are right, I do like it here. And… I owe you."

"You what?" Coulson looked puzzled.

"When I see what has become of your world, it saddens me. I see what these giant beasts do to your cities and your people, and think of what I have done and I feel… ashamed." Loki could feel the little tingles of shame, even now. "I did such damage myself, out of my anger and the madness of finding out my life was a lie. My anger was justified. My absolute fury at what had been done to me was righteous and good. But what I did to your world? For that I am ashamed. I should have taken my rage to Asgard, to those who hurt me, but instead I behaved as no more than a feral dog, tearing apart a family of squirrels. You did nothing to deserve my anger, and I've done nothing of which I am proud ever since. My behaviour has been vicious and petty and pointless. Even if I had achieved my goals, which were ill defined at best, what would it have mattered in the face of what your world has become? So, yes. I will help you."

Coulson was quiet for a moment, obviously not having expected such a quick capitulation.

"Well. Okay, then. What do you expect in return?"

"What do you pay normally?"

Coulson blinked in surprise, but didn't miss a beat. "We offer an attractive salary package, although most of our employees prefer to take their pay in food and goods, rather than money now. We offer medical and dental care. But I'm sure you have other demands."

"No. That will do fine."

Coulson gave a disbelieving eye brow. "No demand that we kneel? No demands for your own kingdom?"

"After this? What shape would a kingdom be in? Do you have any idea of the amount of work that would be involved in being a king of a ruined land? Agent Coulson, I may be a power hungry despot, but I have no interest in doing the work involved, or I would still be sitting on the throne of Asgard!"

Coulson almost couldn't hide a smile.

"Then, Mr Skywalker, I shall ask you to come with us as soon as possible. I shall arrange for someone to take care of your property and pets while you are with us."

"I still don't know what it is you think I can do."

"I will explain to you when we get to the Shatterdome."

"Why do you insist on such ridiculous names for everything?"

"I believe, as it was explained to me, that it's 'fun'". Coulson made air quotes around the 'fun' part, obviously not agreeing. "It gives people a feeling of confidence. Stark comes up with even more ridiculous names for the Jaegers he creates, so you'll just have to get used to it."

"So, when do we start?"

"If you'd like to come with me?"

An agent came running past with a suitcase Loki remembered. "That's mine!"

"We had someone pack some things for you while we were talking."

"You were confident I would say yes," Loki was pissed at being taken for granted.

"No, but we wanted to be prepared."

"And if I had said no?"

"Then I would have kept asking. We are very desperate, Mr Skywalker. I'm glad you said you'd help us so quickly, it did save a lot of time."

"How much torture would you have tried had I said no?"

"None," Coulson said, folding himself into the back of another car and gesturing for Loki to follow. "We need your willing co-operation. As I said, we are desperate. There are pretty much no lengths to which I, and the rest of SHIELD, will go to try and save our world."

"You will, what's the saying? Get into bed with anyone now?"

"Yes," Coulson said with a completely serious expression.

"I should have asked for something outrageous," Loki mused.

"What would you like? If it makes you happier to stay on and help us, then we are willing to accommodate your demands."

"I should think you would have nothing to offer me that I would want."

"We would try."

Loki paused a moment, "You offer food and goods in place of salaries, you said?"

"Money has little value when there is little to buy."

"Then I shall demand extra food rations. I find I need more to eat than most humans. I have always been a person of large appetites, so I will require more food."

"Of course. We have spent years dealing with Thor Odinson and his food requirements. We have already built into your contract that you will receive extra food rations as required."

"Contract?"

"Standard contract. You needn't sign if you don't wish to. But it will give you an idea of the basics we are offering, and we are prepared to give you whatever you desire as long as it's within our means. Whatever you need to make this happen."

"I'm almost disappointed. I would have preferred some…"

"Drama, sir?"

"Yes. Some drama. I do so enjoy some drama. Some… posing. And cackling."

"You have always done the most impressive posing and cackling of all of SHIELD's enemies," Coulson said accommodatingly, not hiding his own smirk.

Loki laughed in his stead, amused by something other than squirrels for the first time in a long time. "Thing is, there really is nothing you could offer me. And, as I said, I'm actually quite happy to help. It's better than doing nothing all day, sitting around waiting for my brain to heal."

"I'm sure you'll enjoy having a goal to achieve. And everyone will be very grateful. If you are able to help us, I think you'll enjoy the response."

"You think I'm so desperate for worshippers, that this is the reason I would help you?"

"No, I think you're lonely. And I think you're sick of being the bad guy. If you help us, a lot of people will be willing to overlook a lot of criminal acts. You'll be staying on base, in the same basic issue room as everyone else. You'll be given the same uniform as everyone else. Treated the same as everyone else. And you'll have a chance to mingle with people again. Perhaps we are little more than dogs compared to Aesir, but I'm sure we're better conversationalists than squirrels. You will have a chance to do something good for a change. And you'll also get extra snacks."

"That was both incredibly insulting and…"

"Accurate?"

"Yes," Loki growled and looked out of the window.

"If it makes you feel any better, the canteen in the Shatterdome does a great lasagne. Twice a week due to popularity. We don’t ask where they get the meat. No one wants to know. Could be Kaiju. I don't ask. I just eat. It's very good. Very cheesy. I have no idea where they get the cheese, either. Oh, and they make their own potato chips. Excellent. You'll like that."

"Is that how you motivated Thor to help you? With extra food rations?"

"No." Coulson didn't elaborate.

"That's one thing that will be non-negotiable. I will not work with Thor. I will not drift with Thor. If you think I will pilot a Jaeger with him, forget it. We would not be compatible, we are different species. And I refuse to acknowledge or talk with him in any way. You will keep him away from me or I will simply walk."

"We haven't heard from Thor in over six months," Coulson's expression didn't change. Still the same tiny smile he always wore. "He said he'd heard from Heimdel that the Kaiju had also been seen on Asgard and he had to go back and defend his home world. We haven't heard from him since. We have had no contact."

"Asgard is much smaller in physical size to Earth. It's just a crust, a platform, the remains of a world," Loki said quietly.

"Yes, I've seen the holographic maps Thor brought back to show us."

"It has only a small ocean, very close to the land."

"Yes, I know."

"It would be very easy for Kaiju to get to Asgard once the ocean was breached."

"As I said, we haven't heard from Thor in six months. We have no information for you. But we know that travel there, at least by us, is no longer possible. Even Professor Jane Foster has not been able to reach Asgard since."

Loki looked out of the window and went silent. The landscape slowly changed, and as they got closer to the coast, the car was forced to deviate several times to navigate scenes of destruction. Buildings destroyed, crushed under giant footprints, empty streets, the land torn and burnt. Despite the damage, they were on the boat to the Shatterdome in less than an hour, and neither he nor Coulson had spoken again.

Chapter Text

Chapter Two: Size Matters

The honour guard surrounded him, so reminiscent of the last time Loki had been walked into SHIELD territory, but this time there were no chains on his hands. This time he restrained his smirk, but he was no more comfortable now than he had been then. As he and his guards walked into the Shatterdome, all heads turned towards him. He raised his head and walked like the prince he'd been raised to be. He managed not to let his eyes slide side-to-side, looking for attack, but he had walked right into the den of his enemy. They hadn't disarmed him, or made some pathetic attempt to bind his magic, but there were a lot of them, surrounding him, and their nervousness was infectious. The fact this was a probable trap was never gone from his mind.

Chin up, arrogant expression in place, and hands twitching with magic – just waiting the first attack.

It didn't come, though. Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared, but no one attacked. No face was angry or aggressive, but neither where they welcoming or friendly. He held their gazes defiantly, but they neither smiled nor frowned.

"Get back to work! Kaiju ain't gonna stop attacking just because you all want to watch a freak show!" a strong, militaristic voice broke the spell, a foreman overseeing his workers, and everyone jumped back to what they were doing, and from then on any looks thrown Loki's way where surreptitious. They wouldn't feel guilty for staring, he knew, but no one who worked to stop the Kaiju ever took an unnecessary break. They knew their work was too important for wasting time. Soon they were ignoring him altogether as they got back into the swing of trying to save their shattered world.
The guards marched Loki to a small ugly room with painted metal walls. All green with orange words painted on with stencils. They meant nothing to Loki.

Fury was already seated at a table in the room, but he stood up, nodded to the guards who left and stared at Loki, a look of blank assessment.

"Mr Skywalker," he said, no emotion, just a simple acknowledgement.

"Why not just call me Loki. As much as I appreciate the rather hollow attempt at showing respect, I think we all know what you really think. Besides, I prefer to use no last name. I haven't acknowledged either father in quite a long time. Perhaps, like Cher or Madonna, I prefer to be mononymic."

"Just Loki, then. Please, take a seat."

So polite, not even a 'diva' joke about his Cher or Madonna comment, but Loki waited every moment for an ineffectual bullet in the head. One less enemy for the earth people to face. But it hadn't come yet, and he took a seat where he could keep both the door and Fury in sight.

"So, I assume Coulson has filled you in on why we requested your presence here?"

"You think I can drive a Jaeger."

"Yes. Stark and others have been working with various mutants. Those with inordinate strength of mind. He's been able to build the Jaegers bigger and badder than any before."

"But? Something has gone wrong?"

"Not exactly. The bigger the Jaeger, the better the performance. As you know, the Kaiju are also growing stronger and more destructive every day."

"They're mutating. The same as the human population."

"Yes. Everything we throw at them, they learn to overcome. So, we get bigger. More weapons. More power. We need stronger minds to pilot the Jaegers."

"So, I ask again. What's gone wrong?"

"We've run out of stronger minds." Fury didn't elaborate. The death toll amongst Jaeger pilots was well known. When a family watched their sons or daughters, or mothers and fathers, brothers or sisters, march off to become Jaeger pilots, they were already planning the funerals. A Jaeger pilot's pay was always given to the family. Everything they needed while they were pilots was provided. They were unlikely to live to spend it, after all.

"So, you need fresh meat."

"Exactly," Fury made no attempt to hide the raw truth. He'd long since learned not to lie to the god of lies.

"Have you killed every mutant and alien at your disposal?" Loki let his words become deliberately provocative.

"No. We still have many who have stepped forward. But this is a war, Loki. This is a war we are losing. I need everyone I can find to step forward. You know what I will do when I am desperate, Loki. If you need me to beg, I will. You know I gave up on pride a very long time ago. I need your help. Earth needs your help. You have battle training - a thousand years of battle training. You have a mind much stronger, at least physically, than the majority of humans, you have the physical strength that most humans lack, you have powers we still haven't been able to analyse and understand, and you should be able to work a Jaeger without a partner."

"So, if I die, I don't take anyone with me."

"That's one of the benefits of a single pilot Jaeger, yes. But keep in mind, if you are killed in battle, we will mourn the loss…" he looked into Loki's eyes, "…of the Jaeger. They are expensive and each one takes months to construct."

Loki couldn't hold back a small chortle at Fury's honesty and brutal humour.

"So, if you agree, here is the contract. It outlines any pay you receive. You can nominate your beneficiaries here. You will have the same type of room and utilities as everyone else here. You will eat with the team, train with the team, and obey all orders given."

Loki scanned the contract, pretending he knew what it all meant. Not really caring.

"Pen?" he asked, raising an eye brow sardonically.

"That's it?" Fury raised his one eyebrow, too, in disbelief. "No demands for special treatment or favours or pointing out that you are a prince and a god and we should all kneel."

"I said I would help you and I put no conditions on my offer. I will not change the bargain now."

"And that's it? Am I to expect some attack later, then?"

"You do not believe me?"

"Not one person chosen as a pilot just signed the contract without making demands. Not one pilot has sat down here and not displayed an enormous ego and made a series of childish demands. Bigger rooms, private showers, more money for their family, state funerals, parades, you name it. So, yeah, I'm suspicious that you'd just say okay and quietly sign that contract."

Loki was quiet for a moment. "Coulson knew," he said. "Coulson understood." He leaned forward, starting quiet, his voice getting more strained as he spoke. "Maybe I just want a quiet life where I can feed my squirrels in peace. I want to drink Coca Cola and eat chocolate without the world around me being destroyed. I want a life where I do not have to go into battle every day, as much as I may love it. I want to read a book, under a tree, and maybe, one day, I'd like to have a place I don't have to fight for. I want a home where I can have a cat, and an aquarium, and never have to see a single person ever again. No Aesir, no Humans, no one. I just want you mortals to go back to work and re-open the chocolate factories and go back to making stupid movies and stupid books and even more stupid television shows like the mindless self-indulgent animals you are. And... maybe I owe you. Maybe, if I do this. If I can kill a few monsters and protect your world, you'll leave me alone, with my squirrels, and I can finally have some damned peace."

"You're not a 'damned peace' kind of person, Loki," Fury said, not fazed at all by Loki's rant. "But I'll buy the part about the squirrels and the book and the tree. And if you manage to kill a few Kaiju, if you manage to help us, then I'll buy you your own fucking kitten and aquarium and all the coca cola you can drink. You know that most chocolate has been unavailable for years. No one can afford to import luxury goods like that. Shit, I think the last Hershey factory was destroyed last time a Kaiju made it inland. Chocolate's black market gold now. But if you do this, you help us and you survive, I'll get Cadbury to name a god-damned candy bar after you. Agreed?"

They stared at each other, both of them intense, both of them desperate, "Agreed."

Loki leaned forward, took Fury's pen from his pocket with the flair of a street magician, and signed the contract. "Remember, I did demand extra food rations. I will walk out of here if you expect me to get by on the meagre rations you feed your human workers."

"You will get everything you need and nothing you want. But I think you'll also find purpose with us here."

"You think I need that?"

"Yes. Yes, I know you do. You can find what you need here, and you know it. I know full well that's why you agreed to this. Candy bars and squirrels be damned. Work hard, don't kill anyone, lunch is served from 11 hundred hours."

Fury got up, contract in hand and snatched his pen back. He stood for a moment before walking out and put a hand on Loki's shoulder where he still sat. "Welcome aboard."
Loki nodded.

Fury stood in the doorway. "And thank you."

-oo0oo-

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Chapter Text

Chapter Three: Sugar Sugar

An anonymous soldier in a generic uniform took Loki to his new room. Just one soldier, hardly an honour guard, hardly a threat. Fury was already taking him for granted, or, Loki thought, making a point of saying he was taking the risk to trust Loki not to turn on them. Not yet, anyway.

"Key?" Loki demanded, putting his hand out and snapping his fingers.

"No keys. You get killed we'll need the room quickly. No point in locking it. No one's got anything worth stealing. And no one would, either."

Loki nodded. It was a dark and depressing argument, but not one he could argue with. As much as he often felt vulnerable in his sleep, there was no one here who could threaten his magic – as far as he was aware – and no reason, yet, to expect an attack. If needed, he could put defence charms around the room, around the door, enough to blow the skin off anyone who tried to sneak into his room for nefarious purposes while he slept.

He turned to inspect his new residence.

It was even grimmer than he'd expected, and he thought that maybe he should have done a prima donna act after all and demanded better accommodation. Tiny sink, tinier fridge, fluorescent lights, a small bed, army issue sheets and blanket, one flat pillow. Small and metal, ugly paint job, no windows. His prison cell on Asgard had provided more comfortable accommodations.

But the door didn't - couldn't - lock behind him, and he could leave at any time. He could teleport out, there was nothing stopping his magic. A couple of jumps and he'd be back at home and away from this claustrophobic cell. But he stayed. If he left, soon there would be no little house with squirrel stains on the carpet and magazine clippings on the walls.

He looked around and couldn't help a short bark of laughter. His magazine clippings had been removed from the fridge in his house and put up here. Pictures of mountains and seas and aquariums. Pretty and useless and exactly the kinds of things he never got to see when he was in a cage on Asgard. He'd once put up some lovely art, stolen from some of the best galleries in all of Midgard when he'd first made Midgard his home, but as Thor destroyed each and every home in his quest to capture and re-imprison Loki, Loki had started to feel guilty about putting the art in danger. He still mourned the loss of Van Gogh's 'Starry Starry Night'. He had a print cut from a magazine where the destruction had been reported. Van Gogh's 'Smashy Smashy Splinters' after Mjolnir.

The people from SHIELD who had been keeping him under surveillance had carefully removed each of his clippings, sticky tape intact, and put them up here on his walls. His little laptop was sitting on a small metal side table, charging from the wall socket, with the fish screen saver floated lazily in space.

Some of his clothes were in the metal locker that served as a closet and a few of his simple possessions were on a shelf. A few books, a novel half finished with a strip of leather from his old Captain of the Guard uniform used as a bookmark. He'd never had much in the way of possessions, so there wasn't much to move. Even as a prince, he'd never put great store in the value of possessions. Thor may cherish Mjolnir, but Loki had no such attachment to things. In fact he'd never had any things to which to become attached. Thor had broken so many of Loki's childish treasures, which had made him cry when they'd been tiny, but Thor had always been so apologetic, and then he would have dragged Loki away for some fun adventure, and whatever toy or treasure Thor had broken just wouldn't have been important any more. Loki trained himself not to want or need 'things'. He never collected the 'stuff' that humans accumulated, or treasure rooms full of stolen relics, like Odin. The few bits and pieces he had now were simply the things that made his life a little easier, and could be lost or destroyed without any heartbreak or expense. A few favoured daggers, books he'd not yet finished, magical trinkets, some shiny gems and interesting bits of wire, a handful of runes that he didn't keep in his inter-dimensional space pockets, It all fitted on the shelf provided.

On the back of the door was a metal frame, it had stencilled block print words, in white paint on the ugly coloured door, that said: 'Remember what you are fighting for!' It was an easy to construct frame in which the fighters and the mechanics who fought against the Kaiju could put pictures of their wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, children, families, parents, or their favourite movie stars in provocative poses.

Sticky taped within the painted frame was an A4 print out on ordinary printer paper. It was a surveillance photo, with time and date stamp on the bottom right-hand corner, of Loki sitting under a tree in the park near his home, book on his lap, grinning as he leaned forward to offer a peanut to a squirrel.

And placed neatly on his bed was a tiny bar of milk chocolate.

There was more welcome in that photo, and that tiny bar of chocolate, than in all of Odin's great feasts put together.

....

Chapter Text

Chapter Four: Better the Devil you Know

It took less than 10 minutes to put all the clothes that SHIELD had brought away in the cupboard. He had his own under garments, but even standard issue boxers and briefs, socks, and other personal items were provided.

The uniforms that were provided were simple, plain, and oddly elegant compared to what he had been expecting. There was no identification on them, no mark of the army or SHIELD or anything to do with the Jaeger program. It was just a simple set of pants, shirt, jacket. He slipped one on, it fit perfectly. There was only a small mirror to show his face, but it didn't matter what he looked like after all. He took a moment to put a simple spell on the mirror. It was too small to use for inter, or even intra-planetary travel, but it could be used to send messages and small goods around the planet. He could enchant it a little more later; perhaps use it for scrying.

It had been a very long time since he'd tried to see Asgard or his ex-family, but it didn't take a lot of magic or time to set up a scrying mirror, and he could just satisfy his curiosity re Asgard and the Kaiju. Later. When there were less important things. He didn't bother to lie to himself to say he didn't really care what happened to them, but he couldn't really decide why he couldn't face doing it immediately.
He laced up the boots that had been left for his use. They were heavier and stiffer than his own, the laces a pain to use, but they would give him a degree of camouflage amongst the humans. He wasn't so foolish as to think he'd ever blend in or be one of them, but he could make the effort not to rub their faces in their differences. His chances of making this work would be greater if they accepted his presence in their midst. There were ways to blend in with the elves, the fae, and the fire giants of Muspelheim. He'd been quietly blending in with the humans for years. At first, it gave him a respite between his attacks upon the Avengers and Thor, and then, when it seemed petty and cruel to attack their suffering world, just to disappear in the crowd. Shorter hair, a spell to cause the humans to turn their eyes away when he walked past, a soft voice, soft tread, and an easy manner, and he'd been invisible for a long time.

Well, so he'd thought. He'd underestimated Fury and Coulson. Again.

Here, they would know he was amongst them, his spells of protection would be a greater problem than an ease, so he had to rely on the simple disguise of wearing the human's clothing and adopting their manners. Give them no reason to give up on his assistance.

He was sitting, waiting, on his bed, when the knock came. He knew there was no way the humans would have left him alone for too long.

"It's open," he said, then sotto voce. "Obviously."

The door swung open, but the person at the door didn't come inside.

"Mr Loki."

"Captain Rogers."

"I've been sent to give you a tour."

"That must be very uncomfortable for you," Loki tried, but couldn't help the slightly derisive humour in his voice.

"Let's get this straight between us. Right now, I don't care about what you've done in the past. Coulson said you have agreed to help us, and he said he had every reason to believe you were genuine. If he says to trust you, then I will take his word for it." Rogers was as stiff as it was possible for a human to be, but his face gave nothing away.

"You're going to trust me? Just like that?" Loki allowed the derisive humour deliberately this time.

"Just like that. It's not like we have a lot of choice. If we don't start to turn this war around, this whole planet is going to be destroyed, and so far, we've been losing for a long time."

"So, despite years of fighting each other, you're happy to have Loki on the team."

"I didn't say I was happy. We're desperate. If I have to get in bed with the devil to do this, then I will. So will everyone else. Your fight was never with us, though. You were just fighting with Thor, and we were all just in your way. But Thor isn't here any more. There's us, there's you. There's no more Thor, no more Asgard, and you have nothing left to fight for but us, and nothing left to fight for but Earth."
Loki felt his humour drain away.

"So. You believe that Thor… that Asgard is lost, then?"

Steve dropped his gaze, looking at his feet. "I believe that he would have come back. He wouldn't have abandoned us. If he had any way to come back, he'd be here right now."

"Perhaps," Loki murmured, but he knew Rogers was right. Thor's honour would not have allowed him to abandon his allies. His pet humans came before anyone now, even Asgard itself a lot of the time, and certainly before family.

Thor had let his mother die to save his mortal lover. Thor put the humans before Loki. Thor put Midgard before his honour as Odin's heir. It fuelled his anger, but he refused to acknowledge the sick nausea in his gut when he thought of why Thor would not be here, protecting his humans.

"No way would Thor have missed out on such a big battle. If he was still here, he'd be out near the breach, shouting 'For Asgard', and smashing everything with his hammer," Rogers said, and his face was warmed by a sad smile. "I'm sorry."

Loki shrugged. "Thor and I have been enemies for a very long time."

"Thor would disagree with that, as you know. And so do you."

Loki stood, about to argue, the anger sending tiny tingles of magic straight to his fingers before he even thought of battle.

"I'm sorry, Loki," Rogers suddenly backed down, looking a little embarrassed. "It's not my place to make those comments or tell you what you should be feeling. I apologise. Your family issues are yours and I don’t have your insight, I've never experienced life from your point of view."

Loki was surprised into silence. That was the first time he could remember that someone hadn't just demanded that he forgive a thousand years of lies and magically 'love' Thor and Odin et al again, usually while pounding him into the ground.

"Would you like to take a tour of the base now?"

Loki took a breath before answering. "Yes. I would appreciate that. Do you have an idea of what you will require of me yet?"

"The same as everyone else. You'll train with us, eat with us, and help us in every way possible. I believe you've agreed to attempt to pilot a Jaeger?"

"I have some understanding of your technology. Enough to drive a giant robot about, certainly."

"And you think you can do it alone? Are you aware of the damage a Jaeger can do to the brain?"

"I believe that Fury believes I can do it, and if I can't, my death will mean I won't take one of you with me."

"Harsh, but honest. There have been at least three pilots who have successfully been able to pilot a Jaeger alone so far."

"How did they fare?"

"Two were killed in combat. We all expect that. But one was killed when her brain ruptured. Aneurism. Right after the battle. She was waiting to be collected after successfully killing a category four Kaiju, and the vessels in her brain just… burst."

"Nasty."

"Yes, and I'm not telling you this to scare you, or try to stop you from helping us. I just believe you should be in a team. I know that Fury believes that some mutants, or in your case, aliens, can handle this by yourself, but honestly? Even the best of us can't. The neural load is simply too much for any brain. You should be in a team, a partnership, and you shouldn't be going out there alone. I don't care what you've done. No one should die like that."

"I take it you argued with Fury and he knocked you back?" Loki smiled.

"Yes. But he said if I could convince you to find someone who was drift compatible, he'd support it."

"And, of course, If I drifted with one of you, you'd know for certain what my intentions truly are."

"There is that, yes. I'm sure that doesn't surprise you."

"Not at all," Loki said.

"But it's not just that. Trust you or not, you'd be better off with a partner. The chances of your brain simply bursting under the pressure of the Jaeger are too high, and you'll be no use to us at all if you're dead, and worse, you could end up as another disabled person we need to look after. Another drain on our resources."

"How caring of you."

Rogers frowned, the first true sign of annoyance he'd allowed, "You think I want to see ANYONE in that condition again? I don't care who you are or what you've done, I don't want to see another person reduced to… to that."

Loki shook his head, making sure to look chastened. "No, I suppose not. Has it happened to someone you care about?"

Rogers made to speak, stopped, started again. "No, not someone I've been close to. But I care about everyone here. And if you're going to fight on our side, then I urge you, in the strongest way possible, to find someone you can drift with."

They walked down metallic corridors, silent bar the echo of their feet on the metal floors, until Loki finally asked, "What's it like?"

Rogers didn't pretend not to understand. "Drifting is… it's not good. For me, anyway. Sometimes. I'm one of those people who can drift with nearly anyone. Apparently it's really easy for other people to drift with me. If they are forewarned about the ice-based nightmares, I rarely cause anyone to chase the rabbit. I make people feel good." Roger's gave himself away with a micro expression of mild disgust.

"And for you?"

Rogers stopped, pointed to the main dome, let Loki see the hundreds of people who worked there, busy like insects. Every person acting as if their actions would, single-handedly, save the world. Perhaps each one was right. The success of the hive depended on every single bee.

They watched for a moment, while Rogers collated his thoughts.

"It's not easy for me. It's… it corrupts me. I'm a universal drifter, like an O negative blood type, so I can partner with nearly anyone. Often if one in a pairing dies, I can step in and fight until they find a truly drift compatible partner."

"Corrupts you, how?"

"Oh, you've made the jokes, Loki. Good and honest and decent. That's me," Rogers smiled a little. "Anyone who drifts with me finds it easy because I never really lived that much. When I was bullied, or beaten, as a kid, or when I was sick and weak and miserable, everyone can relate to that. I make them feel like a fighter. I make people feel strong and justified, like all their petty hatred is just the result of being picked on by a bully."

"You're sweet and innocent and your life experiences are easy to relate to. You make everyone feel like a hero when they are locked inside your memories?"

"Yes, something like that."

"But they make you feel dirty? Is that it? All those petty hatreds and embarrassing secrets. All the horrible things they've done. I suppose you forgive every single nasty little thing you see?"

"I try."

"But you leave each drift feeling soiled. Maybe you don't want to believe in people quite so much after every drift?"

Rogers took a deep breath. "Yes and no. I still believe in fighting the good fight. But I don't want to see the man behind the curtain. I tried with Bucky. You've met him?"

"We've fought," Loki said, in the same tone one might say: 'We've met'.

"We pretty much grew up together. We both went through similar things. The war. The ice. Waking up somewhere new. Somewhere else. Someone else. I really thought we'd be drift compatible. If I can drift with nearly anyone, then I should have been able to drift with Bucky."

"But?"

"But I couldn't handle what he'd done. I mean, I knew. I knew it all. But knowing and living it, being it, that's different. I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle the reality of knowing that Bucky had been forced to do all of that. Murder all those people. I suppose I could have handled it from anyone else, but not him. So, no. But he's been great in the development team. He's a cyber-technician. Battle tactics. Training the fighters. He's one of the best. But no one can drift with him. Too many of us are like that. Great soldiers on their own, but too many of the old vanguard are just poison in a drift."

"I suspect I'd be the same. If I drifted with a human. I'm over a thousand years old, I've fought in hundreds of battles and done things – had things done to me – that no human could accept."

"I'm prepared to believe that. But nonetheless – you'll be training with our people, and if anyone comes up as potentially drift compatible, I want to know. I want you to try. Agreed?"

Loki shrugged. "I agreed to help you, but not to drift. If I cannot make this work, I'm sure I can help in other ways." Loki kept it light, non-committal. He found himself almost wanting to agree to what Rogers wanted. The Captain was so earnest, so transparent – he wanted Loki to be safe, but only because Loki should be a good weapon for his own people and the honesty did nothing but remind him of Thor. Rogers was everything Loki had thought he'd wanted Thor to be – a good man who thought before he acted, and everything he'd hated when Thor had grown up and become what Loki had forced him into. It made being nice to Rogers both too easy and too painful.

"The one that washed up dead? You think you could do that again?" Rogers looked hopeful.

Loki just shook his head, but didn't elaborate. "That was a one off. I won't be able to replicate that success."

Rogers nodded, accepting without argument. "Exercise room," he gestured to a room full of grunting, sweating, fighters. Loki and Rogers stood and watched them train for a while. They moved like ballet dancers, attacking and defending, but in such perfect synchronised harmony that they never hurt teach other, bruised, or drew blood, no matter how violent or swift their actions. Drift partners who knew each other's moves down to the slightest twitch.

"This is where you expect me to find my soul mate?" Loki said, lightly.

"I hope so, yes." Rogers said, without a trace of sarcasm, then turned and kept walking. "These rooms are the simulators. You'll probably start here. You'll need to learn how to pilot the Jaeger, take commands from the machine and from the controllers. They feel strange, at first. I'm strong, but I found moving the legs once you're strapped into one of those giant things to be very difficult at first. It's more than just fighting in a suit of heavy armour – you really do feel the thousands of tons of metal around you while you try to drive it and fight at the same time."

"Who do you drift with now," Loki asked, changing the subject.

"No one. Not now. Emergencies only. I can't handle the neural load any more."

"Can't handle the neural load or can't handle realising how horribly flawed your race is?"

"I'm not denying the latter, but it wouldn't stop me from fighting to defend them. All of them. But nose bleeds and headaches are the real problem. I can fight in an emergency – when someone loses a partner, but I'm not on the front line often. Come on. I have someone who's specifically requested a meeting."

"Oh? Someone who's loved one I accidentally killed? Someone who wants revenge?"

"Maybe, but not someone who's so foolish that they'd try to kill you."

"Ah, another who is happy to make a deal with a devil?"

"Nope. The devil himself," Rogers said, and smiled, eyes twinkling in the incredibly attractive way the press and the public all loved, and maybe twinkle that was just a little bit ruefully fond. "The perfect example of exactly the kind of flawed human being no one wants to drift with."

-oo0oo-

Chapter Text

Chapter Five: Conforming

"Tony. Brought you a guest," Roger's introduced Loki with no fanfare.

Stark turned from the metal table where he'd been vivisecting part of some enormous robotic life form, and looked over his shoulder at them. He was dirty, greasy, and looked as if he hadn't washed or slept in days. Even his beard, usually as tidy as a well-manicured vagina, was scruffy and unkempt. Grease stains were all over his previously white wife-beater, his arms, and there was one long, black smear across his cheek.

He said nothing, but peered over his shoulder for a long time, expressionless as he took in Loki's appearance.

"So, Fury got you then," Stark's voice was flat, not quite challenging.

"He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse," Loki said, quoting something he'd once heard another human say, even though he had no idea of the quote's source. A little trick he'd used many times to appear to fit into various cultures. 'I'm one of you. I can speak like you. I like the things you like. I'm not a threat.'

"What was the offer?" Tony raised an eyebrow.

"Just an offer. It was just nice to be asked," Loki said in a smarmy tone of voice, and gave one of his most insufferable smiles. A truth that sounded like a lie.

Rogers walked away from him, circling around to look at some of the robot parts that decorated Tony's work area. It was nowhere near as nice as the work space Stark had back in New York, but then Loki was aware that the Avenger's tower had long been lost to Stark some time ago. Not by Kaiju attack, but by the desperate hoards of displaced people from the west coast who had all migrated to the east. In one of his philanthropic displays of peacock vanity, Stark had long since given up his own properties to those more needy. Hundreds of people could live in the properties he'd owned for just himself and Pepper. Now he stayed here, worked here, and hoarded his money while sharing his inventions. He did little for the relief efforts himself, but people loved him for the grand gesture of giving up his homes to the homeless.

Tony was staring at him with the same blank, carefully controlled expression he'd seen on most faces since arriving here. Wide-eyed, tense-jawed, so careful and precisely emotionless. The face of someone staring at their only hope, while trying desperately to disguise contempt.

How many times had he and Stark fought? How many times had Loki had his hands around this mortal's throat, only to be blasted in the gut by one of Iron Man's repulsor rays? Stark didn't give off any feeling of hatred; he never had and probably never would. Stark never took a battle personally unless it involved some sort of emotional betrayal. It took a lot more than Loki had to give to generate loathing in Tony Stark, but nonetheless Stark was looking at him like Loki was an untamed tiger, just waiting for the opportunity to kill him and feast on human meat.

"I believe you specifically requested to see me, Stark?" Loki asked.

"Yes. Well. Call me Tony, okay? We've known each other for years, after all, and now, it's a new start, right? So, Tony. I didn't really believe you'd agree to do join us. Rogers said you would because you have been living here for so long you'd want to protect this world now. Clint said you maybe you wouldn't, because you're a bastard but you probably would, just so you could be a dick about it. Natasha said you would, even if it was just intelligence gathering in order to take us down later. Bruce said you would help us, but he wouldn’t say why he believes that. Fury said you would help us out of the goodness of you heart, but I know full well he was shitting me."

Rogers came over and put his hand out, palm up, and Tony said, "Sorry, Steve. Left my wallet in my other mansion. I'll have to owe you."

Rogers turned and walked out, pausing to say to Loki: "I had ten dollars that you'd come. Nice to win one for a change."

"What can you spend it on?" Loki asked.

"Ten dollars is a down payment on a can of Coke from those of us who think that money will have value again one day. Real Mexican Coke with sugar, or the Kosher stuff. I never could get used to all the corn syrup people put in things nowadays. It's just not the same," Rogers shook his head.

"Yeah, that's the biggest problem the world is facing right now. High fructose corn syrup," Tony said, ruefully. But his voice was fond and Roger's smiled at him before he left.

"Ten dollars, Stark! Don't leave town!"

Rogers patted Loki on the shoulder, one sharp grasp and release before he left and it reminded Loki sharply, again, of Thor. Camaraderie.

"So. You agreed to help us."

"I agreed to help myself. I'm invested in your world now."

"Yeah, I suppose you've nowhere else to go."

Loki was silent and Tony turned back to his table sharply.

"Sorry. That was a low blow."

"So you too believe Asgard has been destroyed?"

"I don't know. It's just conjecture. If they're gone, no one will be coming to try and imprison you again. There's that, right? That's gotta make you happy."

"As you said, Stark. Low blow."

"Sorry." Stark didn't sound sorry. Just distracted, angry – but not at Loki.

"Why did you want to see me? I've seen on the Jaeger celebrity news channels that you cannot drift with anyone, that you have been reduced to nothing more than a mechanic. What use could you have for me, specifically?"

"I may not be able to pilot one of these beauties, but I build them. I may not have come up with the original idea of turning the anti-mutant Sentinels into Jaegers, but believe me, I'm the reason they win."

"It must burn you not to be out there, fighting and playing at the game of warriors, Stark."

Tony didn't lose his blank expression when he turned to look at Loki again. "Yeah, it does. And it burns me that Fury thinks a fucker like you can do it when I can't."

Now that he'd got the reaction he wanted, Loki backed down diplomatically, "I apologise. I didn't come here to fight with you, Stark, and it would be so easy to fight with you," Loki wasn't going to allow himself to be led. "Just tell me why you asked me to come to see you."

"Why, you got something better to do?"

Loki just raised his eyebrows and waited.

Stark took a deep breath and stopped fiddling with the bits of wire he had on his work bench. "As you know, we've had some big wins. We get every Kaiju. Eventually."

"As I said, I watch the news."

"I'm impressed. Thor couldn't even use the remote without smashing it."

Normally, dishing insults out to Thor was a quick way to get on Loki's good side, but after the theories he'd heard lately, he wasn't quite sure how he felt about his giant idiot of a brother. "He did the best he could in a world that was totally alien to him."

Tony whipped his head around in surprise. "Who the hell are you? What have you done with the real Loki?" Stark walked up to him, putting his face right against Loki's and giving him the hairy eye ball. Stark kind of stank – not an acrid body odour smell, but the heavy sweat of someone who'd been working hard for too long.

Loki couldn't restrain a surprised bark of laughter. "That surprised both of us, I'm sure. But you didn't bring me here to discuss my opinions on Thor."

"No, like I said, we always win. Eventually. But before we do, those things get closer and closer. And they're making it inland. Every time we think we've got a sure fire way to destroy them, they evolve. The bastards are evolving with every attack! Every weapon we throw at them, the next time they come through, they can defeat it. We build acid canons, they come through with acid proof skin. We built bombs with poison gas, the next time they are immune. For one thing, how the hell are they getting that information through the rift, and for another, we're starting to run short on ideas. We can't keep throwing nuclear weapons at them without leaving our world unliveable for us as well."

"I thought you were supposed to one of the greatest geniuses of this realm. Surely you haven't run out of ideas yet."

"Not yet. But I'm only human," Stark gave a smile that was more of a frown, and ran his hand through his hair, leaving a greasy trail of destruction.

"I never would have thought I'd have heard you say that. I thought your ego would be powering your mouth for many years to come."

Start rubbed his face, moving the grease streaks around until one covered the left side of his nose. He obviously didn't care any more.

"What I was thinking, we could use your magic to add to the weapons of the Jaegers."

Loki stepped back a little, letting his face go blank.

"If this is just another attempt to try to study my magic, so you can build more weapons to defeat me…"

"And you accuse me of having an ego? You think you've done ANYTHING to this world compared to those bastard Syfy channel reject dinosaurs? Your piddling attempts at chaos are nothing! A few hundred dead, maybe a few thousand, some buildings destroyed? You used to piss us off, waste our time, threaten and aggravate and posture while you danced for Thor's attention. You think that means a damned thing now? The damage you did is NOTHING compared to what Earth is currently facing. Those things destroy whole cities in an afternoon's romp. Millions dead. Millions, Loki! You think I give one flying fuck about what you could do to us now?"

That had not been good for his ego to hear, but Loki knew the human spoke the truth. There was such an edge of desperation to Stark's voice, and it shook and broke a little, but he stopped talking and took a breath before it became angry tears. A few breaths and he started again, more controlled. "We're just living Kaiju to Kaiju now. That's all there is. Living each day waiting for the next attack. We're winning every battle, but they are winning the war. Every time one of those things comes through it does so much damage we can't recover until the next one. Each one that gets past our defences and hits a city kills so many people, leaves so many more homeless, unable to work or feed themselves, it soon won't matter whether we can kill them or not. They are doing so much damage there won't be anyone left to keep fighting if this doesn't stop.

"You want to know if I want to study your magic? Of course I do! I want to find a way to suck all the knowledge of sorcery you have right out of your head and feed it into a machine so we can kill them. Do I want to use that knowledge to hurt you? No. I couldn't give a fuck about you. And you know that you can name your price. If you can help us, if you can help us defeat just a few of these monsters, there isn't one person in this base who won't line up to suck your dick. Do you get that? Whatever you want, you ask, and you'll get it, just as long as you have something you can offer us to keep fighting. Help us fight harder. And you know what?"

Loki shook his head, just listening to Stark's angry speech.

"You help us fight, you can ask for whatever you want from anyone. You help us win? I'll make you king of the fucking world, you got that?"

"I don't believe-"

"I don't care what you believe. You help us win, and I'll build you the fanciest throne of hand-chewed gold and get you a crown covered in diamonds, and a castle made of platinum and emeralds, and the whole world will kneel as much as you want and they'll be happy to do so. People will carry around little pillows called Loki-Pillows in the hope that one day they can meet you in person and beg for the honour of kneeling at your feet and kissing your balls. French fries on a silver platter every day served by 72 naked virgins, whatever you want. Got it?"

Loki was silent for a long time, unable to find a shred of sarcasm in the face of Stark's obvious pain and borderline insane rant. As much as Loki had always enjoyed teasing and tormenting others when he was younger, venting his frustrations and humiliations by making others angry - actual pain, as radiated off Stark now, did nothing to give him pleasure.

"I don’t think I can help you to win. I don't have the power. I tried to kill one, but it nearly killed me," Loki could only respond to Stark's distress with honesty, his voice soft. "But I said I would help you, and I will. I do not understand enough of your science from the practical side of things to know where to start, but perhaps you could build weapons that I could infuse with magic?"

Tony took a half step back and gave a half smile, as well. "That's a start. I want to know how to put magic into weapons. Thor said that the Dwarves could do it?"

"The Nidavellir are skilled in creating items infused with magic, yes, and I have some knowledge of the arts of the Dvergar but my knowledge of working with metal and magic and force does not compare to the creations of Midgard."

Stark just stood and stared at Loki for a long time, and Loki crossed his arms defensively and waited.

"They killed Pepper," Stark finally said, his voice soft, his eyes angry.

That was not at all what Loki had been expecting.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Loki's answer was automatic and meaningless.

"She was on her honeymoon, and I was so fucking angry that she'd moved on so quickly, and they went to Vanuatu. She wanted to go there before it got drowned under climate change. Climate fucking change. If there's one thing the war with the Kaiju have done it's reduce the population enough that we're not going to have to worry about climate change for a few more hundred years. Who the hell goes to Vanuatu any more?" Stark walked back to his workbench, and moved to organise the bits and pieces he was working on into separate piles.

"No one," said Loki, and regretted it because it sounded like he was making a joke when he wasn't.

"Not now, but it was after the first Kaiju had come through and we didn't think there would be any more. Too used to one off threats. Like the Chitauri. They come through once; we beat their asses back to hell, that's it. We never thought there would be more Kaiju. So she took her honeymoon in Vanuatu. Eighty islands, you know. But the one she and Happy picked... Efate. The whole island…"

Stark drifted around the table, and spoke as if to himself, "The whole damned island."

Loki watched him move things around, pat one of his robot children, 'Dummy' or something, which whirred in a comforting manner and nipped at Stark's shoulders. Tony's anger and grief were both buried under layers of purpose and control, and ready to erupt like a volcano at any time.

"I will help you."

Stark looked up sharply, and for a moment Loki wondered if he'd been manipulated, but Stark's sudden smile was small and genuine, the pain pushed down again. "Thanks. So. I'll need to get some ideas from you, what you think will work. I've got a lot of designs for weapons we can install into the Jaegers, but they've got to be of use to the humans inside. Between us we should be able to build something good. So, I think the best way might be if we tried drifting together. Not in a combat Jaeger, but in one of the simulators."

"No."

"Ah, you've heard. Well, Rhodey is all right now, and who knew that trying to drift with me would blow people's minds like that? Well, I suppose I could have warned them that no one could match the power of my mind, but yeah, even I couldn't see that coming. Not, not," Stark waved a hand near his head as if that explained what had happened to Rhodey. "Not, you know. Not everything that came out. Who could cope with that? He's okay, he'll be fine. It's just that I'm a mega genius, bit too much for the normal human mind to handle. I mean, I knew I was smart, but not… not that different," Stark waved a hand to make humorous something else that obviously ate at him. "But you're not a normal mind, human or otherwise, so I think maybe I should be the one to be worried about surprise neural break downs or strokes."

"No. When I agreed to this, I made it clear I would not drift with anyone. I will fight, I will put my life on the line, but I will not have some horrid little mortal rummaging around in my mind!"

Stark looked at him like a drag queen in Walmart. "Bitch, are you kidding me? You think that anyone here doesn't feel like their mind is being raped by that machine? Having someone else crawling around in your mind, thumbing through your memories like an old style library card catalogue? It's horrifying. I've tried with twice and it didn't get better. But I do it. I do it knowing that I'm likely to give the other person palsy or an aneurysm. I do what I have to do to get the job done. And to be honest, after everything I've been through in my life, believe me, having someone see your soul like that, it's not that big a deal. Not compared to everything else. Not compared to torture or dying or being squashed like a bug by one of those monsters when you're supposed to be drinking cocktails on a beach with your new husband!"

"I understand," Loki said when Tony paused for a breath, "but I will not do this. I will fight for you and put my life on the line for your ridiculous little planet, but I will not drift. If you need me to put magic into your weapon, we will do it manually. You will not be taking the memories or the knowledge directly from my mind. I've had enough of mind control to last a thousand more of your life times."

Loki could feel the anger rise. He'd been here just a few hours and already the humans were going back on their word, so he turned on his heel and left.

He heard the loud thunder of a heavy piece of metal hitting a wall as Stark expressed his frustration, but he just kept walking.

At the first crossed paths he came to, hollow metal tunnels in four directions, he realised he had absolutely no idea where he was going. After Rogers' tour, he couldn't even find his way back to his own metal cell.

He walked back to the Stark's workroom and knocked on the metal door frame.

"What? What do you want?" Stark was headfirst into a huge piece of machinery and didn't sound like he wanted to be disturbed.

"I'm lost."

Stark pulled his head out, leaving him squatting on the ground, "I guess you should have left yourself a trail of magical bread crumbs, Hansel."

"Yes. I suppose so. Whatever that is."

Stark stared at him for a moment, stood and grabbed a dirty rag, and using it did nothing to improve the grease situation.

"I'm hungry. Think I've been working about 20 straight hours now. Lunch?"

"Yes. That would be nice, thank you."

"Well, aren't you the polite one. That's royal manners right there, that is," Stark said. "I suppose I should go wash up first." Stark stood and looked at his hands, then down his front, then back to his hands. "Yeah, that'll take hours. Let's go see what's for lunch. I think it's nuggets today."

"Nuggets of what? Gold?"

"Kaiju, I think."

"Aren't the Kaiju an ammonia based life-form? Surely that would be poison to humans."

"Yeah, it's a joke. Get it? Yeah, okay, it's not really funny. It's easier to pretend the food's awful because it's Kaiju, not just that it's just… awful."

"It's very difficult to prepare food for so many people all at once, and your servants are doing the best they can under the circumstances. You have never had the full slave contingent as we had on Asgard."

"Okay, I said it before, I'll say it again. Who the hell are you and what did you do with sass mouth Loki?"

Loki smiled indulgently. "I am "fitting in"," and in the spirit of fitting in, Loki made "air quotations" to match.

"Riiiight. The nicer you are, the more nervous I get. Steve Rogers you ain't. Come on, let's go get some horrible food.

Tony took him to the mess hall, which had been in the opposite direction to where Loki had been walking. Loki took the tray he was handed when they walked in the door.

"This is uglier than anything used even in Aesir prisons," he said, not even exactly sure why the segmented metal offended his aesthetics so much, other than, once again, it reminded him of prison life. "It would make a great weapon – the edges once sharpened could surely remove a man's head - but it looks like something given to the worst of your society, not to your heroes."

"Yeah, whatever, you can put an enormous amount of food on this bad boy right here," and Tony went up to the food line, skipped over the 30 or so people in front of him, handed the metal tray to the man behind the counter, and the anonymous man went to one of the enormous industrial fridges and took out a more delicate silver serving tray with several porcelain plates, nicely decorated with crudités of vegetables, and a lightly grilled chicken breast. Sauce on the side. Tony took it with his filthy, grease-stained hands.

"You have no idea how much black-market stuff I have to trade to get decent food here, but there's no way I'm eating the slop they serve to the rest of the people here," Tony said. "I mean, I know it's not cool, I should be, you know, showing solidarity, but I'm only mortal. The kind of beatings I take? I need to keep the bowels in good condition, know what I mean? Be good to your bowels and they'll be good to you. So, you prove useful, I'll arrange to get something really nice on the tray for you, too."

"I'm sure I'll be fine with what your slaves have prepared," Loki gave the woman in the white hairnet who faced him his most charming smile. "I'm sure the food will be fine. It is merely the tray that offends."

"Yeah, well, you might regret that. And don't call them slaves."

The woman gave him a nervous half-smile, as if not sure if she should give Loki food, or if she was to be food herself, and started heaping piles of coloured slop on the tray. Some sort of pasta slice, the promised nuggets, a glop of corn and peas, two slices of buttered brown bread, an unidentified square of some sort of sweet cake, some chopped up canned fruit salad, and a very small, spotty apple. It was unattractive, but plentiful.

They turned and took seats at a table near the counter, and Loki sampled a little of everything, slipping the apple into his pocket. "This is actually very good," he said, and the pasta slice, even if it was possibly Kaiju lasagne, was truly one of the most delicious things he had ever eaten. He looked up and gave a salute with his fork to the people who had prepared the food. "Excellent, thank you!"

The servants smiled, still looking a little scared, but obviously happy to get a very rare complement.

Stark looked at Loki and just shook his head. "If you're faking it, you've got no taste. If you've got taste, you're a fake."

Loki took a mouthful of the chopped bits of fruit in syrup. "No, this is honestly delicious. Very sweet."

"Fruit cup? Well, if you wash the syrup off and pour in a bottle of Grey Goose vodka, you have a dessert my nannie used to serve to me when I was nine years old and being too rambunctious. She said it was healthy for both of us: fibre and a nap."

"Surely that was not a good choice for the health of a small child?" Loki wrinkled his nose, trying to mentally compare a nine year old mortal to a nine year old Aesir and when they should start drinking. Most Aesir would be at least a century or two before anyone would try to get them overly drunk on Meade.

Stark laughed loudly, "Oh man, you sounded just like Thor, then!"

Loki frowned angrily and turned back to his food.

"Sorry man, wasn't making fun. Just, you know, he could be kind of-"

"An idiot."

"Trusting. Sweet. That's not always a bad thing, you know."

Loki ignored him, and nearly spat something at him about Pepper having been 'sweet' to make Stark be quiet, but even at his worst he would not have sunk that low. Stabbed Stark, perhaps, or tried to poison him, but he'd never mock someone who'd suffered a great loss. He had standards. He stabbed the last piece of food on his tray instead, knife on metal echoing throughout the room. He looked up and realised just how quiet the room was. There would have been more than 500 people in the room, but they were all eating very quietly, and he realised nearly every single one of them was giving him the uneasy side-eye. He sensed no aggression, but he could feel the sudden tensing up at his aggressive motion, and he put the knife down slowly and gently, watching their eyes as they followed his motion.

The enjoyment of their nervousness made him smile a little, and he had to fight hard not to give him his best evil, manic grin. They were nervous like a field of stallions waiting to be gelded. He had to breathe deeply to let go of the frisson of pleasure their fear gave him.

He had to remember he had once been a prince. Or, technically, he had been a prince twice. Perhaps he had spent the last few years as the worst kind of monster he could bring himself to be, but, once upon a time, he'd been royalty, and here, in this court, he thought it was time to remember that. He was a guest in the court of another king. There was a way for a prince to act and it was not terrifying mortal creatures that were little more than animals. The humans around him had the lifespans of mayflies, gnats, they were little better than insects. Little better than the squirrels that lived and died in the trees by his house.

Loki watched them, the way they watched him with that awful mixture of fear and hope, and thought that perhaps being cruel to such tiny, short-lived creatures was a petty thing. A petty thing indeed. Petty, and cruel, and that even a monster should hold himself to better standards.

"You okay? Your face went through a whole lot of weird expressions then," Stark said, one eye half-shut, "You having some sort of weird alien fit or something?"

"No. I am well. I am not entirely sure I should be here."

"Running already?" Stark said, his voice suddenly turning into a sneer.

"No. I've given my word. As long as you all keep your honourable bargain, so will I. I just need to remind myself of that," Loki stood and took his tray back to the counter.

The woman who took it from him trembled a little – she was one of the ones who looked at him with fear. He guessed her age to be around three or four thousand years old, or she would have been had she been Aesir. On her way to being an honoured elder. Her hair under a net silvered grey and pulled back in a tidy bun. He had no way of knowing how old that made her in mortal years. Dog years. Squirrel years. "Thank you, kind lady, for the wonderful sustenance. Your skill and generosity in feeding so many, so well, is to be commended."

"Oh, I, oh…" she said, discombobulated. "I uh, oh…" and she giggled a little, still somewhat terrified, and gave some sort of awkward curtsy before backing sharply away.

"Okay, Loki, stop flirting with Doris, you'll give her a heart attack," Stark called, and walked away, leaving his plates on the table for someone else to clean up. "Time to get you to training."

"Already?" Loki had expected… he wasn't sure what. Certainly not to be rushed straight into the training part of his indoctrination.

"First, hours of paperwork. You get to study a book. You like books, you'll be fine with that. Once you pass a written test, they'll put you on a computer to see if you can answer written questions. Excited yet? Most people would get more training. Or they'd arrive already trained. We took the best fighters we had, anyone who could drift, gave them what we could on the machinery. Some pilots run hundreds of simulations before they go out to fight. But you can already fight – you've had a thousand years of training when it comes to just fighting. You don't need to learn how to drift. You just need to learn how to work with our computer systems. You won't get weeks or months."

"How long will I have?"

"This afternoon. Agent Coulson will be taking you through the paperwork and computer tests now. If it works out, he'll be bringing you to me this evening. You get to run through your first simulation, get your mind raped by a machine, fight a fake Kaiju, then…"

"Then what?"

"Then more awful cafeteria food. Which you apparently love. And, to be honest, if you can handle that crap, a Kaiju should be nothing."

Loki snorted, not really understanding what Tony had against the food. The fruit cup was truly delicious.

Coulson met them in the corridor, giving them that smile that covered the fact he was basically one of Fury's weapons. One of the most pure and dangerous weapons at Fury's disposal.

"Mr Loki, if you'd like to come with me, I have three months of intensive homework to give you, and less than two hours for you to get it done."

Loki nodded. "I'm sure it will be no problem."

Coulson smiled softly, that expression that said he'd known exactly how Loki would respond, and that he was fully prepared to use Loki's ego as a weapon to drive him on.

"This way," he led Loki to a room with rows of computer consoles, handed him a thick wad of paper pinned together with metal rivets. "Now. We get to work. First, the weapons that are installed in all Jaegers…"

Three hours, Coulson gave him, but by the end of it Loki could recite every weapon, every type of Kaiju, which Jaeger weapons worked against which type of Kaiju, and had a very good idea that they could never expect exactly what was going to come through at any time, and that at least 60 per cent of every defence was based on pure guesswork. Better odds than he'd ever faced before. He absorbed all the information they gave him like a thirsty sponge, and sighed with the satisfaction of good learning. Pouring the knowledge into his brain felt like pouring cold water down his throat on a hot summer afternoon in Asgard, and there was a comfortable joy in the learning that allowed him to turn off the ever present anger for at least a while.

Coulson was smiling, a real smile now, not just the natural upturn of his mouth, by the end of the evening.

"Time to take you to meet the machines, Mr Loki," he said, and stood up, gesturing politely for Loki to precede him out the door.

-

Chapter Text

Chapter Six: Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head

"Have you ever been in a simulator before?" Tony asked, as they stood in front of the giant robot, or at least most of one. Coulson had explained it was the remains of a Jaeger that had been damaged badly in battle, but was doing duty as a simulator until it had been refurbished. The legs were good, but disabled, enough machinery attached that that a pilot could get a feel for the machine. The arms were partly missing, just bitten off stumps at the wrists, and it had been completely disarmed of armed weapons. It had been a mighty machine once, a later model, sleek and gorgeous, with a paint job in blue and white. Sue Richards and Johnny Storm had ridden it into battle, and it had been called Force Fire, although the name was scratched and damaged from an attack with giant claws, water jets, and whatever it was the Kaiju's had evolved to destroy Sue's force fields. The remains of the machine were still kept as an honour to their fallen pilots. And because no one could afford to waste anything any more. One day she would rise again, as long as there were pilots prepared to die in her.

Now Coulson stood by with a clipboard and a gentle smile while Tony stalked around Loki and the machinery.

"Not exactly, although basic warrior training on Asgard often involves the use of what you would call holograms. We have machines that can be used to generate illusions for those untalented in sorcery.

"Yeah, Asgardians do everything better than we mere mortals, blah blah blah, so you're not going to freak out when you get into the giant robot head, then?"

"I would assume not. Is that usual?"

"No, but I don't know how you're going to react. Thor freaked out and tried to tear the simulator to pieces, even after telling us how he'd been through this many times as a child on Asgard centuries ago."
"He's never felt the presence of another in his mind."

"You never tried your mind control whammy on him?"

"My powers of telepathy and telekinesis are limited, as you know from our own battles. And no, I never felt the need to use that against him. We were not enemies growing up, merely competitors."
"Hmm… probably feel totally creepy to do that to your own brother, too, I guess."

"Mayhaps. And keep in mind Thor has never felt his own self subjugated. His strength could be tied or bound, but that would merely be something against which he could fight. A superior physical strength is merely a challenge for the mighty Thor, something against which he can prove himself and find honour. To have something invade his mind, touch him so intimately in ways he could never hope to fight - that would be a horror for Thor. The fear of it would drive him to actions beyond his control."

"Yeah, I think I get what you're saying. But you don't think it will bother you?"

"I am not going to make any promises, but I have spent a lifetime under the boot of those more powerful than myself. I have lived a life of petty humiliations and subjugation. I believe that, to me, this will feel like merely one more insult in a long lifetime of dishonour."

"Okay, that sounded really shitty, Loki. It's not supposed to be like that. Piloting a Jaeger is the greatest honour that Midgard can bestow on anyone right now, you get that? You get that if you can do this you will be saving a whole world?" Tony's voice raised in irritation.

"Yes, that is the result, but the initial invasion of the machines, that requires the quashing of personality and self-awareness. This is our concern, yes?"

"Nah, I think you'll be fine. Thor couldn't loosen up and take it, but you're nothing if not adaptable. That's your thing, right? Shape shifting, change, chaos, adaptability? Your whole milieu? Just think of it like that. You're putting on another face, another disguise, and this time it's something that's going to reach into you, but then you'll be the one in control. You'll be the one wearing the giant robot skin and telling it what to do, not the other way around."

Loki looked at the simulator. "Does it eat at you that you cannot take this honour?

Tony frowned at him. "You know it does." He obviously wasn't embarrassed to admit it, and Loki realised that wasn't going to be a way to get a rise out of the mortal.

"We are straying from the point of this exercise, gentleman," Coulson interjected finally. "Tony Stark is invaluable, as always, and, as always, a major pain in the neck. But this is not news to anyone."

"Hey! I'm adorable!" Tony protested at Coulson. "You love me, admit it!"

"Be that as it may, we are here to see if Loki can live up to Fury's expectations and pilot a Jaeger solo. We are not here to dissect anyone's ego. And we cannot guess what affect Loki's species will have on the process until we actually get this under way. Perhaps a little less conversation, and a little more action would be advisable at this time?"

"Pushy, pushy. Also, possibly speciesist. Come on, Loki. In the machine. Show us what you're made of."

Loki had already put on the trainee pilot suit, a close-fitting body suit in basic black with metal fixtures on the back, hips, shoulders, arms, and a long metal centipede down his spine that would allow him to feel what the Jaeger felt.

"I've been working on getting this baby back into battle," Stark said, watching as a small team of specialists got Loki attached to the spinal fittings that would allow the neural interface. "It's going to take a lot of work, but the structure is still good. The scaffolding is there for me to just add my own mark of brilliance."

Loki started to tune him out as the ants that buzzed around him helped him into his helmet, fitting all the equipment he would need to become one with the machine, but he could hear Tony's plans to rebuild and recreate and rearm the broken Jaeger murmuring through the earphones.

Once inside, he wouldn't just be piloting the Jaeger, the Jaeger would, in effect, be piloting him just as much. He would link with the machine, in the uplink, so the machine would be controlled by his mind, but the Jaeger would be penetrating his mind in return. He had to feel as much of the robot as the robot had to be able to mimic the movements of the pilots.

The armour felt alive. Parts moved independently as they were put on his body, everything clicking and wiring like living things. Like insects big enough to encompass his entire body. It felt, he decided, quite good. Supported by living armour.

It reminded him of Tony's robots. Living and sentient, even though Tony himself didn't seem to understand that his metal offspring had souls. Not intellectually anyway, although over the years Loki had noticed that, emotionally, Tony had long treated them as living children, even if he couldn't hear their wiring and chirping as the love songs they were.

He walked into the back of the giant head from the scaffolding where they stood. There was far less fanfare to get into this mostly deactivated Jaeger than the a real one.

It had been created for two. The other harness was tied back out of the way. Repairs had been done, but there were still visible signs of a Kaiju having ripped through the Jaeger's head and torn out the pilot on the left. The metal work seams were good, but the paint hadn't been redone. Blue paint gave way to unpainted metal like a bald skull with no regrown skin.

Coulson walked in with him, directing and aiding in getting Loki hooked up to the equipment. Loki allowed himself to be put into the harness, watching what was done, learning, and allowing his helmet to be hooked into the machinery.

"Can you hear me, Mr Loki?" Coulson's voice came through the helmet good and clear.

"Yes."

"Can you see anything?"

Loki took a moment, everything was different. His vision was full of information in ways so different to the input of magic and power he was used to. He put up a hand to try and touch the visual displays. He'd seen this sort of thing when fighting with the Avengers and SHIELD equipment, but it was quite different to be a part of it and he tried to stroke at the lights in front of his face. "How are you in there, Mr Loki?" Coulson's voice came through clearly.

"I am well. All the information is showing just fine. I cannot move the vehicle without being fully connected, though."

"Good. We are going to initiate the neural handshake now. Whatever you do, do not fight this!"

"I understand," Loki replied, and waited and listened to the voices outside the Jaeger as they counted down their equipment. He wondered if it would hurt, when the machine invaded his soul.
It hit with a thunk and rocked him back in the harness. He'd expected a headache as the link with the Jaeger took hold. He'd expected thousands of tons of metal to crush his brain, but it felt good.

It felt like an invasion.

It felt like power.

It felt, oddly, like getting fucked.

He groaned and rolled his head back as far as the harness and helmet would allow, letting it happen. He threw his soul wide open and let the machine inside. It felt nothing. It knew nothing. It was raw power with no expectation or belief or soul. It felt like a living thing just born, a new colt or calf but without even the nine months in a mother's womb to give it any thought, emotion, or experience. It knew nothing of Loki's histories and had no capacity to judge him or hold him to any standards.

It said, in its cold and empty way, 'I am here for you. I am power. I am freedom. I am strength. I am yours.'

And Loki threw himself back into the link with the machine, opening up everything that he was and giving the machine himself. He gave it his emotions and his anger and his excitement and it was magnified by the neural network by a thousand tons of steel and machinery, and all of it infused with the minds of the humans that had made it. It met him, it accepted him, and even though it had nothing, no emotion or thought or memory, it felt like it welcomed him in and they merged and he let himself become one with the machine.

He could feel the pressure of the neural link, but it felt like nothing more than a change in atmospheric pressure when flying, a solid force behind his sinuses, he certainly couldn't feel the pain that the humans who had tried this alone felt.

"Loki, can you hear me?"

"Yes," he whispered, still somewhat overwhelmed.

"How do you feel?"

"Great."

"Any pain? Any headaches?"

"No, it feels fine."

"Any blurred vision?"

"No, I can see all of the displays clearly. I can feel the machine around me. There is no pain. No headaches. All is well."

He could hear some muted, slightly subdued cheering in the background. Someone yelled 'Awesome', but he didn't recognise the voice. They'd been waiting for him to fight the link, but he'd spent a life time letting other people run his life, what was one machine compared to the god of gods when it came to subjugating oneself?

The humans had had too many failures, and even the promise of Loki's ability to help them was giving them a little cheer. That cheered him in turn. The same pleasure as throwing a treat to a well behaved hound and watching its pleasure.

"Good to hear, Mr Loki. Now we're going to start with the simulation. You will be fighting a category three Kaiju. Nothing too powerful, but it will feel like a challenge. Fight however you feel is natural to you. We expect you to fail this first one since you haven't been through the full training, but we will be adapting your final machine to suit your own style, rather than trying to force you to adapt to ours.

Count down in five, four, three, two-"

"KAIJU RISING!"

The resistance was strong and even though he'd been expecting it, it still took him by surprise. He could feel and yet not feel the thousands of tons of metal that moved with him as he moved. He raised his arms and could feel the Jaeger's arms move, too. They weren't really there, or connected, but he felt the weight as if they were.

The simulation ran like a movie in front of the Jaeger's face, and started with the helicopters carrying the Jaeger out over the ocean, and dropping him down. Mentally he ran through the list of weapons he had to hand. A sword, the gas, the cannon in one arm, Gatling gun in the other, massive missiles in launchers placed on his shoulders. The links to the helicopters broke and the robot plummeted into the ocean. He braced himself against what should have felt like a massive crunch of a landing, but he barely felt it. The harness supported him, and the Jaeger was built to take the impact easily. It was easy to lose himself in the simulation as if it were reality.

He hit the water, it came to his knees. Feedback from the Jaeger let him feel it as if the metal was his own skin. Cold water to mid-thigh. Not unpleasant. He ran forward, following the voices in his head, and the feedback on the screens to where his playmate was waiting.

It came roaring out of the sea, twice his weight, a huge, meaty lobster-like creature with tiny, glowing blue eyes, claws as big as his Jaeger's chest, its mouth a giant maw as it lunged toward him.

It was a good simulation, an exact recreation of a battle held once before between Kaiju and Jaeger, but it was still false, and Loki did not feel the excitement or blood lust of a worthy battle. He went through the motions, though, copying what he'd seen in Coulson's presentations. He launched the rockets before it got close, it roared and moved sideways, incredibly fast for something so large and he struggled momentarily against the weight of the Jaeger to move to block the Kaiju's attack.

He pulled the sword, a weapon with which he was most familiar, and met it full on when the Kaiju collided with him. He felt that - the full weight of the monster landing against his chest. It was so different from how he would normally fight. There was no way to run from this, to find a better ground, a better stand point to overview the fight. He couldn’t fight from a distance… He managed to get a good solid swipe of the sword down the creature's side, and its pain scream made his skull vibrate.

The Jaeger responded to his call for the cannon, but it took seconds to come to power, and the Kaiju was wrapped around him in those brief moments. It had its huge mouth against his helmet, and he used the sword to slice again, taking off its lower jaw before it could bite down. He could feel his heart start to beat faster. This thing was fast and dangerous, bigger and stronger and faster, at least in combination of those traits, than anything else he'd fought in the past. There were many monsters on all the nine realms, and between him and Thor they'd fought all of them, but always in teams, with armies, or at least with each other, and many were fast, or big, or strong, but none of them were this big, this fast, this strong, and never before had he been alone to fight such a creature.

The Kaiju's blood spewed over his suit, momentarily blinding him, leaving his machine no way to see past the spray of blue, but then sea water washed over them both. They were generating their own storm waters, which pushed him back, but didn't seem to affect the Kaiju. Part of its jaw missing, spewing poisonous blue blood from its wounds, it roared its anger and attacked again. It managed to get one of its lobster claws around Loki's left arm, almost tearing through the metal, but finally the cannon was in the right place, powered up, and Loki blew a massive hole in the side of its chest. It screamed and fell back, but only for a few seconds. Loki ran forward, meeting it in a clash of metal and flesh, pushing it backwards. He gained some ground, and called up the missile launchers on his shoulders. Again, it seemed to take an age for them to come to bare, and by the time they finally launched the Kaiju had backed down, bounded away, then turned back to attack him again. The first missiles did a lot of damage, leaving the Kaiju's side torn open again, ribs showing, entrails starting to drag behind the creature, but even that barely slowed it.

Loki knew it would not be stopped by pain, or fear. It had one goal, to destroy, and its own life was irrelevant. He'd touched the mind of one of these creatures, and he knew that nothing would stop it. Not until it had been torn into tiny, little pieces. For a moment, he remembered how it had burned, he remembered the pain and the horror of touching its mind. He'd thought his own rage all encompassing, but there had been nothing in the Kaiju but the directive to kill. No reason or thought. It was as empty in its own way as an unpiloted Jaeger. Just programmed to target population centres and destroy all life. So he attacked again, the next missile buried itself deep in the guts of the Kaiju, exploding inside the animal and taking out its stomach, blowing out most of a back leg. It still kept coming, heaving itself forward to snap at Loki's damaged left arm again. He swung the sword, embedding it into the thick, heavy carapace of its head, and bore down with all his strength.

The Jaeger responded eagerly, taking his alien strength and magnifying it a thousand times, and they kept going, the flesh and the machine, until the giant sword was inside the Kaiju's brain, and he twisted, hacked like an amateur, until the entire skull was destroyed.

He took a step back and nearly declared his victory, but then he remembered: secondary brain. Coulson had explained that these things could never be considered dead until both brains were rendered null. This one still had one working leg, one working claw, a tail covered in spines, and a secondary brain.

He stepped forward again, grabbing the claw with his damaged left arm, and used the sword to start hacking his way to the secondary brain. The Kaiju was, indeed, still prepared to fight. The tail wrapped around his leg, spines digging in, trying to rip it off, trying to use what bulk remained to push Loki over, but Loki's sword was swift and brutal, and eventually the Kaiju jerked and was still.

He watched it for a moment, and then used the sword to remove the remaining claw, and tear out its heart. Just in case. He hadn't lived for over a thousand years and not known how to make sure an enemy was well and truly dead.

He stepped back and waited.

The simulation ended.

The cheers were not tentative anymore. He had a small audience, just the technicians and his handlers, but they were celebrating. He waited patiently until they came to unhook him from the machine.
It took a minute or two for them to release him from the link to the Jaeger. He felt light. He could feel the loss. Like coming out from under a too hot, too heavy blanket. Like a clear day after too much atmospheric storm pressure. He felt good.

"Congratulations, Mr Loki," Coulson said. "You've definitely exceeded expectations already. Fury will be pleased."

Loki nodded, acknowledging his superiority.

"Very efficient," Tony nodded, his arms crossed.

"The weapons are too slow," Loki said, and although he addressed Tony, he made sure that the rest of those present heard his words. "The only weapon worth anything is the sword. Everything else takes seconds to become useful, and by then the beast has moved away and the situation has changed. I cannot fight with such slow weapons."

"You feel the need… the need for speed?" Tony said, quirking one eye brow.

"Yes," Loki replied simply, ignoring what was obviously a joke or a quote or something else he didn’t understand.

"I cannot fight with weapons such as these. They are next to useless."

"The Kaiju are so huge, we need weapons that have massive fire power. They need to have the power to destroy an animal that weighs hundreds, if not thousands of tons. The destruction of such a huge amount of meat takes a massive amount of fire power and those kinds of weapons can take a few seconds to come online."

Loki stood still as the technicians ran around him, checking his suit, looking for any damage he may have inflicted. "Not good enough."

"Not good enough. Not good enough. Do you know how many billions of dollars have been invested in this?" Despite his words, Tony's face was amused, eye brows lifted. His jaw was jutting forward with a hint of defiance, but his eyes twinkled.

"I do not care for your money. The weapons are too slow. My style of fighting, something Fury and the rest of you have gone to some lengths to obtain, requires speed. I need to be able to react to the changing conditions of battle with split second timing. I cannot spend time waiting for a weapon to become useful – I cannot stand around, twiddling my thumbs while your primitive weaponry warms up. You need to improve."

Tony turned to some of the other technicians, who looked as if caught between wanting to protest, glare angrily, or run in fear from Loki – who had proven quite skilled at impaling humans who gave him too much attitude. "You heard the man. He wants speed! None of our pesky, super powered weapons for Prince Loki!"

Loki knew he was missing something, but Tony laughed, turned, and almost ran out of the room before Loki got an explanation.

Phil Coulson came over, putting his clipboard on a console as he approached. "Tony's been saying the same thing for a long time, Mr Loki. He thinks we need more weaponry, more speed, more versatility. But he doesn't pilot himself. The existing pilots like the big power weapons. They like knowing that when they land a blow, the enemy takes a huge hit. They like knowing that one or two good blasts will take out a big Kaiju."

"I don't fight like that. I need things to be a lot more reactive."

"Good. That'll keep Tony busy. In the meantime, you have more simulations to run. Everyone?" he gestured to the technicians in the room. "Set it up again. I want to see how he fares against a category four. Take it from the top!"

Loki turned to get back into the partially disabled Jaeger. He caught a glimpse of Fury in the corner of the room and paused to stare. Fury stood, leaning against the wall like a man without a care it the world, his arms crossed. Loki just held his gaze. Fury nodded his head, just once. Loki broke off eye contact and went into the machine to fight a fake Category four.

Chapter Text

Chapter Seven: Titanoboa

Loki lay on his bunk. If his head touched the metal head of his bed, his feet were just on the end of the bed. If he slid down more comfortably on the thin pillow, his feet hung off the end. Staring at the ceiling, he was struck once again by the fact this room was smaller than most of the prison cells he'd occupied over the years.

His body was sore, but in a pleasant way. Muscle aches from having spent a day working hard, good honest labour, and places hurt where he'd been pushing machinery around in ways his body had never been used to, but it was a good ache. A good honest ache. He'd done well and been praised for it. The Jaegers were still too unresponsive for him, but he was learning to cope with the slow but powerful machinery.

This was probably, he thought, what Thor felt when he fought. Slow to bring the hammer down, slow to bring the electricity to bear in his fights, but massively, unstoppably powerful. Different to Loki who was quick, faster than the eye could follow, but never with the strength of his brother.

Loki and the Jaeger team had worked for hours.

Phil Coulson would get him out after every single simulation, and they'd spend a good half hour going through each fight, analysing Loki's fighting style, dissecting his decisions, scrutinising every move and motion.

"On Asgard there were no such discussions after a fight," Loki had said after the third hour, his patience wearing thing. "One either won the fight, or learned from one's mistakes."

"That's not the way we do things here, Mr Loki," Phil had explained patiently. "We don't have centuries to teach you how to pilot a Jaeger. We have weeks at best, hours at worst. Our technical team believe there will be another breach within a few days, and we have to get you ready as soon as possible. We don't have time to let you learn from your mistakes. We have to learn how you fight so we can adapt as required, and you have to learn how to fight alongside us, and with our machines. We only have days, Mr Loki. Days. That's all."

Loki had sighed, tried to ignore the throbbing headache that had been building up during the afternoon, and gone back into the machine.

And the entire time Tony Stark had been there, surrounded by a halo of holograms. He'd been talking all the time, but AT Loki rather than TO him. Tony's only real conversations were with his AI, a constant rattle of chatter with Jarvis and his robots. Loki learned that Dummy was actually DUM-E, which still seemed a rather cruel name for a child, and he'd learned that Tony was going to build weapons that would work with Loki's fighting style.

Now that had been pleasing. Loki had had weapons custom built on his own designs before, but it was still a satisfying feeling to have Midgard's premier blacksmith work alongside him to find his perfect weapons, and make absolutely enormous versions of them.

Tony had sworn that he could build throwing knives for the Jaeger. "Big as surfboards! No, wait, they'll have to be bigger to work with this. Maybe about 20 or 30 foot long. I'll put explosives in them so that as soon as they impact they explode. Or they embed and explode. Jarvis? Remember the Judas project?"

"Yes, Sir," Jarvis's long suffering voice had echoed through the room.

"Right. I need that. A megaton Judas bomb in a giant surfboard shaped knife… throw me some specs…" and Tony had gone away with his holograms and his robots and his invisible best friend and started putting more brilliant designs together.

"How long until he collapses," Loki had quietly asked Coulson.

"He had at least five hours sleep last night. Well. Not so much sleep, as sedation. But even artificial sleep is better than nothing."

"You sedated him?" That seemed like a violation of trust to Loki's way of thinking. It was exactly the kind of thing Frigga had been known to do, but she would always be forgiven, with her wicked smile and sweet face, so one just learned to watch one's food when one was particularly exhausted after a battle, but not yet ready to sleep.

"He knows that I will sedate him if he refuses sleep. This fact is not a surprise to anyone. If I go to the trouble of getting him illicit liquor, such as a fine Scotch whisky, then he knows full well it's laced with a sleep aid."

"Perhaps that is merely the excuse he needs."

"I choose to believe so. Mr Stark is no fool, and it's not the first time. And now you have been working for long enough, I believe it is time you also retired for the night. Do you need anything first?"
"Such as?" Loki wondered what Coulson was offering.

"A glass of fine Scotch whisky, perhaps?"

"Er, no, thank you."

"Pain killers?"

Loki looked at Coulson sharply, "Do you believe me so weak I cannot train for a day on your mortal machines without pain?"

"You have been rubbing your eye brows in a way that suggests a headache. If you are feeling any kind of neural pressure, then I will need to have you seek medication attention."

"No," Loki hid his concern. "Just frustration with learning so many things in such a short period of time."

Loki had said his good nights to Coulson and Tony – who had totally ignored him in favour of his machinery - at that point and left before the perceptive agent started to question him further.

His head did throb, but it was no worse than taking an accidental glancing blow from Mjolnir, and he'd certainly suffered far worse head injuries in his life than the pressure the Jaeger link seemed to put on his brain.

He wondered if he should have taken Coulson up on his offer of a pain killer, but then he had no idea how Midgard drugs would affect his faux Asgard physiology. Probably not at all, considering their poisons and gasses had had little affect while they had been enemies, so a pain killer would probably do nothing, either. He missed the healing chambers on Asgard, although relieving pain had never been a huge priority – they were more about trying to stick limbs back on after battles, but it would have been good to have had access to their potions and medicines, nonetheless.

He let his fingertips freeze Jotun blue, and massaged his temples, until the throbbing faded enough to let him sleep.

The klaxons awoke him almost immediately, all the lights came on in his room instantly, making sure he couldn’t sleep, and his door slammed open. Captain America was at the door, in full Uniform, even his shield, "It's time to fight!" he said, his voice full of confidence, his back ramrod straight and proud.

Loki was up, in the uniform in which he'd fallen asleep, and they ran towards the Jaeger's together.

It was the simulator, and Tony shouted "It's ready for you – I fixed the damage already. We don't have time to test it! You'll have to fight as it is!"

Loki ran inside, slipped in his now-familiar harness. The spare harness on his side swung back and forth as if pushed by an eager ghost, even though the Jaeger was not yet moving. They were at sea, helicopters dropping him in the ocean, but he didn't land smoothly as he'd done in all the simulations. The Jaeger hit the water hard and he slipped under, his machine submerged in a way he had been lead to understand couldn’t happen at these depths. Water came in through the badly repaired Jaeger's head, not enough to worry him yet, but it dripped down the inside of the equipment and over his harness. He could feel it trickling through already, and in front of him an invisible Kaiju screamed.

Loki ran toward the Kaiju, or he tried to, but he felt like he was trapped. The Jaeger wasn't responsive enough, it fought him every step. He couldn't move it, and no matter how much he struggled, he couldn't get the Jaeger to run as it was supposed to.

"I don't have a name," Loki thought, as he tried to run through water that clung harder than liquid iron, "I don't have a name and without a name I can't fight!" he and Tony Stark had never even discussed naming the Jaeger. How could he fight anything without a name?

He was Loki not Odinson, Loki not Laufeyson. Loki son of no one. Loki without a name. Jaeger without a name. They'd never named the Jaeger and it would be as ill-fated as Loki. It was beyond bad luck. He couldn't fight for Asgard if Asgard didn't exist. He couldn’t fight for Loki if Loki didn't exist. He couldn't fight with a Jaeger that had no name.

The Jaeger hadn't been repaired properly. It didn't work, it didn't respond, and it was quickly filling up with water, Loki could feel it running over his helmet, through the harness, and he choked and gasped as it spilled and sprayed into his face with his struggling.

The Kaiju was out of sight still, but he knew it would not be far from the breach. He struggled forward in his crippled, half-useless, nameless Jaeger. It had to be near the breach, but none of the displays made any sense. He'd had it all that afternoon, he'd understood all of the technology, but now it was meaningless, and the more he tried to read the displays, the less sense they made. He tried to focus on the holograms, but they were always just out of sight.

He kept going, kept pushing and struggling and choking, and in front of him he finally saw the Kaiju. He could only catch a glimpse of it moving in the dark. There wasn't enough light from his failing Jaeger to show him the monster, but he could see the movement of a giant in the water.

There was something wrong, it was so different to every Kaiju he'd seen before. It wasn't the strangely beautiful monsters, glowing blue and iridescent, but a deep emerald green. It wasn't all muscle and weaponry, but he could see by the sheer size of it that this was not something that belonged on earth.

He screamed commands at the Jaeger, things that didn't make sense to his own ears, but he knew he'd armed a weapon, and in the darkness he thrust his arm forward and fired something that shot out in the dark.

It took a long time to hit its target, and Loki strained his eyes, the Jaeger's giant head not even appearing to be there any more as he tried to see the monster in the dark. It swam in front of him, straight into the path of the bomb, green and sleek and scaled, a huge serpent deep in the Midgard oceans.

Loki whispered in horror, "Jormungandr…"

His son. His son so long banished. Innocent and monstrous in equal measure. His baby. His child lost to him centuries ago. He'd never seen his son after Odin had cursed into the Oceans, banned and forbidden from Loki's eyes, but he knew, somehow he just knew...

He screamed, "JORMUNGANDR!"

But it was too late. The bombs of the Jaeger, slow as they may be, were still powerful enough to destroy giants, and he watched as his baby opened his mouth and swallowed the bomb, blew apart, screaming in agony as the light took him, filling the ocean with the blood of his child.

Loki kept screaming, and screamed until he realised he was standing in a corridor, back at the Shatterdome, his uniform soaked with sweat and his face wet with tears.

He stood a long time in the empty corridor, trying to control his breathing. It had been centuries since he'd last sleep walked, centuries since he'd had nightmares, but only days since he'd thought of Jormungandr, who was trapped in the Midgard oceans, hidden from Loki's sight by Odin's curse, but out there, where the monsters could get him.

He whimpered as the last of the dream finally left him with nothing but the sick memory of drowning as his child died by his own hand, murdered by his own fear and blindness and ignorance of human weaponry.

He walked the hallway, found a bathroom and stopped to piss and wash his face. His eyes were red, blood shot, and he looked for any sign of burst blood vessels, but other than appearing tired, he didn't think he looked too far from normal.

He couldn't' face going back to his cell, though, so after washing his hands he just wandered the corridors a while.

There were very few people about, and those that saw him took a wide berth when they recognised him. The flight suit gave him a degree of respect, but his face gave him a greater chance of a knife in the ribs. It was a balancing act on behalf of the humans, but they valued their own lives over their distrust of him.

He pushed open doors and snooped around. He could have used magic to cloak himself, or just transported himself into the various rooms, but he felt that if he was going to be here and snoop, he should at least be honest about it.

Sleeping quarters, storerooms, technicians working through the night startled when Loki stuck his head in, stared at them for a moment in silence, then backed out quietly. He made sure to keep eye contact with them as he backed away, his face expressionless, deciding to give up on fitting in in favour of being weird and creepy. Just for now. Just for tonight. It gave him just enough amusement to take the edge of that dream. He could go back to being their tamed god tomorrow, when the artificial lights were brighter, when more important people were watching. Just tonight let him be a little creepy. Let him disturb their peace as his was disturbed.

It had been a while since he'd teased someone just for a spot of harmless fun, rather than tormented them cruelly to lance the boils of his own pain.

Tormenting and hurting Thor had been his main source of entertainment for quite a few years. Every time justified. Every petty cruelty a payment for the petty cruelties Thor had inflicted upon Loki when they had been younger, and Loki had adored Thor too much not to forgive him every time. But not forget. Never forget. Never forget the hurt inflicted by the one he loved above all overs. He'd forgiven, but hoarded every hurt, and when Odin's lies had been revealed, he'd uncovered every hurt, brought it to light, un-forgave, and hurled each one back at Thor a thousand fold.

And now he wasn't sure if he was disappointed that he'd never get to continue to torture and punish Thor for the hurts of their youth, or that he'd never see Thor alive again, and if Thor was dead, then Loki was not only alone, utterly alone, but without hope of any family or future.

He kept walking and tried to ignore the squirreling circles of his thoughts, just wandering the metal halls, trying to keep the clank of his own booted footsteps to a stealthy, soft thud.

Pushing open doors, exploring his new territory, he found a room at the very end of a tunnel. It wasn't as large as some, but larger than his own cell. There was a desk, the usual ubiquitous Midgard computers, but, most enticingly, a huge open portal. The portal was set back about ten feet from the edge of the sea, and Loki could see the moonlight on the waves. The lights were off in this room, but the reflected moonlight lit it just perfectly, giving everything the room a black and white crispness.

Loki settled in the portal, it curved to support his body, although his long legs meant his feet were rather awkwardly high. Inhaling deeply the smells of the ocean; sea water, rotting fish, and ozone, he gazed out into the open for a long time. He wondered if Jormungandr was still out there. It had been so long since Odin had cast him into the oceans, and Loki and not been able to see his son since. Not by magic or scrying or searching. He wondered if the Kaiju had killed his little boy, if his son had the sense to swim and hide far away, or if Jormungandr was now big enough to take on a Kaiju himself and win. Perhaps he could. One day Jormungandr would be big enough to kill Thor, or so had been prophesised so long ago. Maybe he would be big enough to kill a Kaiju. Now that would be a sight to see.
The oceans of Midgard never fell off the edge of their world, it all just heaved and moved like a giant jelly fish, and all that trapped water had taken Loki a long time to get used to. He wondered: if the waters could fall off the edge of the world here, like they did on Asgard, would the Kaiju have fallen with them?

He counted falling Kaiju in his mind, hundreds of them tumbling down a waterfall off the edge of the world into the void, as he had done, falling into the darkness of space, flailing and dying.
One Kaiju falling into the void. Two Kaiju falling into the void. Three Kaiju falling into the void… somewhere around Falling Kaiju 56, he finally fell asleep.

Chapter Text

Chapter Eight: Jim Jams

He woke up, stiff and a little uncomfortable from the curve of the portal, but the cold wet air of the ocean had refreshed him considerably in his sleep. The headache that had plagued him had faded away.
He realised that a sharp knocking had woken him, and it was Fury, squatting opposite, knocking his fist against the edge of the portal.

Fury frowned at him and took a sip from a steaming cup of coffee substitute, sneering a little at the unpleasant taste.

"Want to tell me what you're doing sleeping in my window like some kind of lost pigeon?"

Loki blinked at him, and looked Fury up and down. Instead of his ubiquitous black leather, Fury was wearing a grey flannel shirt and matching trousers, neatly tailored, with a long, dark grey flannel coat over the top.

"Are you in your pyjamas?"

"Of course I am. It's 4 in the morning. I get one cup of this crap, then shower, shave, and shit before I have to make sure the rest of you lazy bastards get to work. And why are you sleeping in my office?"
Loki continued to stare, not answering the questions, "Is your eye patch… also pyjamas?"

Fury's eye patch was a soft, fuzzy grey felt.

"You think I sleep in a black leather eye patch like some kind of pervert?"

Loki frowned, mouth slightly open, then just shook his head.

"I'll just uh… go… then," he said, knowing he was copying Tony Stark's speech patterns, and left Fury, Fury's great open window, and his soft fuzzy pyjama patch behind.

Chapter Text

Chapter Nine: The God in the Machine

It wasn’t quite ready yet, but Loki’s Jaeger was certainly taking shape. The old broken machine that he’d trained in for simulations was being rebuilt, piece by piece, with Tony Stark and his team’s expertise. It still had huge patchwork sections where raw metal met damaged paint, but it was already well-armed.

Loki could hear technicians talking about it being bad luck – re-using some other team’s Jaeger. They knew that the Jaeger program needed to re-use and recycle every single thing it could, that the world simply didn’t have enough left to give in the way of natural resources, but the huge, obvious wounds on the Jaeger made everyone superstitious and uncomfortable.

Loki liked it.

Every plan he’d ever made he’d thought perfect. He would plan and scheme and plot until he thought nothing could go wrong, and then there would be his usual fumble into chaos, betrayal from his cohorts, or bad luck, or Thor would ruin everything. No matter how perfect everything had been beforehand, it would all turn to crap as soon as he put his plans into action.

But this? This was a mess right from the start. The top right quarter of the Jaeger’s head didn’t match the rest of it. The arms were shiny and new and welded against the old battered metal of the original machine. Welts of welding looked like keloid scars across the body of the Jaeger.

It was, as the humans were saying, 'a hot mess', and Loki decided that the only way from here was up. He’d take this messed up, bad luck, cursed Jaeger and know right from the start that it was never going to be perfect. He had no real plans that could be ruined; he had no goal other than to fight. Looking at the giant machine from his place on the scaffolding, he decided that, even in that condition, his Jaeger was just perfect.

Tony didn’t look too happy with it, though. “In time I can get rid of all those scars,” he said. “I don’t need a better workshop, it’s just, you know,” he waved a hand at the machine. “…time. And working to this scale. I’ll be able to replace most of the damaged material soon and make it all shiny and new. Give it a great new coat of paint.”

“It’s fine, I don’t mind the scars. Besides, those will be the strongest points on the machine, like a break in a bone heals stronger than the original.”

“Yeah, for now. But look at that face, the mess around its eye. It looks like Fury!”

Loki put his head to one side. If Fury had been blue, some 500 feet tall, and made of metal, then, yes, Stark was right, the Jaeger did, indeed, look just a little like Fury. If one cocked one’s head and squinted hard.

"I should weld a patch on it and call it Magic Fury," Tony said. "I think Fury would like that." Tony had been trying to think of a name for Loki's Jaeger for a long time and had been coming up with increasingly stupid possibilities. "Furious George? That's what we'll call it. Furious George. For today, anyway. Tomorrow may be something different."

"I do not wish to pilot a Jaeger called Furious George!" Loki said, but he was far more amused than annoyed.

"Why not? That's a great name. Wait until I tell Fury. He's been trying to get all lovey dovey with you since you came on board, he'll think you're starting to reciprocate his affection!"

"Lovey dovey!" Loki wondered if Tony was talking about the same Fury. "He does nothing but hurl insults and obscenities at me!"

"I know! You lucky, lucky bastard!" Tony stated loudly, shaking his head as if jealous, and Loki couldn't help a short snort of laughter at the tiny mortal's antics.

Tony turned and winked at him, and Loki couldn't help but grin back, even if he didn't quite get the joke.

"We could call it Magic Giant?" Tony said to himself, squinting slightly. "Because you're a frost giant, right?"

"Frost giant is a derogatory term," Loki said, nodding his head to himself.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. The Aesir call Jotuns ‘Frost Giants’ as a mark of disrespect." That wasn't entirely true, but he just didn't want to drive a Jaeger called Frost anything.

"Well, learn something every day," Tony muttered. "That kind of ruins half the names I was going to suggest. I had a whole bunch based on Frost this and Frost that. How bad is it?"

"It is like your Midgard N word."

Tony looked at him sideways, "Do you actually know what the N word is?"

Loki thought of lying and saying he did, but then just shook his head. "No, but 'frost giant' is always spoken as if spitting."

Tony held his gaze for a moment. "Fair enough. Your race. Your species. You get to decide what's racist and what's not. No more frostie jokes."

"Just like that?" Loki couldn't believe Tony would have fallen for that so quickly.

"Yep. Just like that. I can't respect a dickhead or a douchebag, and I reserve the right to give you as many stupid nicknames as I can come up with, but if you say that Frost Giant is racist, then I'll give you that. So… Jotun's okay, then?"

Loki said nothing and just stared up at the giant suit of armour that Tony had been customising for him.

"I thought you hated the whole Jotun thing?" Tony put down what he was working on, and started with his holograms again.

"I do."

"So, are you trying to embrace your roots, then?"

"No," Loki could feel the bile at the back of his throat. He didn't ever want to hear Frost Giant. He didn't ever want to hear Jotun. He wanted Tony to drop the whole topic of conversation. He regretted having brought up anything to do with frost giants at all. It was just that lately, constantly wondering what had happened to Asgard led to thinking about Jotunheim and all the rest of the realms. What of Vaneheim and the rest of Frigga's people? His thoughts squirrelled around and around all of the possibilities.

"Then maybe you belong to us now, Maleficent. You could be an honorary human - should you prove yourself worth the investment Fury's made in you."

Loki frowned, his patience wearing thin. He may be here to defend this worthless ball of mud, but he belonged to no mortals. Before he could give Tony a good smiting, Tony threw down his tools and said, "Come on. I've done all I want to today. You can take that baby into battle right now if you need to. We can work more on custom weapons and your colour scheme, but she's seaworthy and solid. And now? Breakfast time."

Loki didn't dread eating at the shared tables in the humans’ mess. They could stare and point at him, but he'd noticed they did that when Tony Stark was in the room, too. Or Steve Rogers. Any of the Jaeger pilots. Any of the old Avengers team. Coulson walked into the room and people parted around him like water around a boulder in a stream. He was utterly serene, but, nonetheless, Coulson commanded their distance and their respect. So, when they parted around Loki, staring at him with the same blank, controlled faces, he took it as nothing but a compliment.

Tony never noticed when they got out of his way – he took their worship or their fear or their contempt as his due. All attention was good attention as far as Tony Stark was concerned, and Loki followed his lead. The easiest way he could blend in was by emulating the human who stood out the most from his fellows. Act with an insanely over-the-top ego, and no one would look twice because no ego could compare with Tony Stark's.

"You'll probably love breakfast today," Tony was rattling away. "It'll be facon, probably. No real bacon until you make your first Jaeger kill. Do you know what Facon is made from?"

Tony continued talking before Loki could say he didn't know. "Of course you don't. No one does."

"Kaiju?" Loki hazarded a guess.

"Ha, probably," Tony gave a short bark of sarcastic laughter as if Loki hadn't copied Tony's own joke. "So it'll be Kaiju Facon and whatever that crap is they make pretend eggs from, and more of that crap tinned fruit. Your favourite!"

Loki nodded amicably, "I do, indeed, enjoy that crap tinned fruit," and then realised he sounded exactly like Thor.

Before either of them got a chance to indulge in 'potentially Kaiju' Facon, the alarms went off, and the corridors filled with people running to their posts.

Loki had run this simulation plenty of times and knew the pathway to the Jaeger off by heart. He ran and he could feel the excitement building. His first true fight against one of the monsters that was tearing the realms apart. He made it to the preparation room and stood calmly as the team dressed him. It wouldn't be long before he could recreate this new armour in the same way he created his own Aesir armour before a battle, but right now it comforted the humans to get him dressed and ready. The helmet filled and emptied with the artificial neural fluids, the spinal interface snapped into place, and he walked forward into the Jaeger, snapping the harness into place.

He could hear Fury's voice giving instructions to himself in the rebuilt blue and silver Force Fire, and to the Jaeger who would partner him in this fight, Raptor Assassin.

He could hear the other team talking as they made their neural handshake. Clint Barton complained, as he always did, about having to live through Natasha Romanov's endless horrors, but there was affection and tolerance in his complaints. She had nothing to say, but Loki could imagine the amused half-smile on her face, narrow-eyed and not quite affectionate, entertained by her partner's performance, as he intended. There were so many ways Natasha could have chased the rabbit, and for every rabbit hole, Barton had a rabbit chasing hound to bring her back. And vice versa.

Raptor Assassin was still one of the best Jaeger's on the force, with more than eight separate fights, and ten kills to their name. Natasha and Clint had tried the drift when most of the early, purely human Jaeger pilots had been chewed up by Kaiju in the first years of this war. Not many had originally wanted mutants or 'specials' to be given the enormous power that came with the Jaegers, but as human pilot after human pilot fought, won, lost, died, the governments soon accepted that they would take anyone who could drift.

How desperate they were now that they would take anyone. Even sworn enemies of the earth, if it would give them any chance to fight against the Kaiju.

Not many had been surprised when Natasha and Clint had turned out to be drift compatible, though. They had nothing in common. No shared childhood history. Nothing in their backgrounds, fighting styles, or personalities that would have led anyone to believe they'd be able to pilot a Jaeger, but somehow they could get inside that giant robot and move together like one single being, just as they had always done in battle. They weren't soul mates, they were simply two parts of the same person. And their kill rate was formidable. They hadn't won every battle, but Romanov made it a personal philosophy to back down rather than die. She'd let other Jaeger pilots take the brunt in a battle, step back, hide behind their compatriots if necessary, then use Clint Barton's unnatural ability to kill anything he aimed at to take out the enemy from behind. It wasn't a style of fighting that made them popular with the other pilots, but it kept them alive. Not showy. Not flashy. But they always won – eventually - and they always lived to fight another day.

As far as Loki was concerned, her ability to kill someone by stabbing them in the back made her the greatest of all the fighters on the human side of this war. She was totally untrustworthy. Loki appreciated that. He always knew where he stood with Romanov. As far away as possible.

It also meant that other Jaeger pilots did not really want to have Raptor Assassin on their team during a battle. Even Loki wasn't sure how he would fare when fighting alongside someone who would fight so like himself. He was so used to Thor being the one in front, taking the brunt of the battle, while Loki stood to the side and protected Thor's back and picked off everyone who was a threat from the safety of the sidelines. If Raptor Assassin did the same, then who was going to be taking point in this fight?

He took the force of the neural handshake with the Jaeger, almost used to it now, breathing a sigh of relief and pleasure as the Jaeger joined its power to his, and enjoyed the lift from the 'copters that took the two Jaeger out into battle.

"Force Fire, Raptor Assassin, we have two Kaiju coming through the breach, a double event!" Leo Fitz sounded excited and scared as he started sending instructions.

"Understood," Romanov's voice.

"Category?" Loki asked.

"Both category four, they are coming through one after the other, with about four miles between them. Try taking the first one together."

"You think Force Fire can't handle a Kaiju alone?" Barton sounded amused. "I thought you were banking on our Second-hand Rose being the new star?"

"I think you'll have a better chance of taking them down if you team up, as you have been trained," Fury took over the line and his tone brooked no jokes or arguments.

"Yes, sir," Barton said, not at all chastised.

They hit the water, knee high to a Jaeger, and both started to run towards where their screens pointed them.

Loki could feel his blood stir. For the first time, in a long time, he felt something better than apathy – he felt the stirrings of the old blood lust. The thrill of battle, as he’d been trained to feel every day since his childhood. Fight and kill, for glory and honour.

Something huge was coming towards them, fast, and Loki put his head down and ran, adrenaline pumping. It was still hard to get the Jaeger to move as quickly and as fluidly as he wanted. It still felt like Force Fire was fighting against him very slightly, as if she was slightly reluctant to fight, but he pushed her like he would a slightly skittish horse, and she let him put her head down and they rushed towards the Kaiju.

His breathing filled his ears, and he could hear the thunder of his own heartbeat - almost drowning out the noises of the ocean and the instructions from the Shatterdome. This was the first time in his life he could feel the absolute weight of expectation of success, not failure. When Odin would send them into battle, with orders to his son to be a hero, to be a great warrior, and admonitions to Loki not to let his brother down, the expectations of the all father would weigh like lead in his gut.

This time, he wondered if this was what it felt like to be Thor. To know that everyone hoped for him to win.

If he'd failed when he was Loki, Son of Odin, that was just living down to expectations, and when he won and brought honour to Asgard it was such a surprise to everyone that they assumed he'd cheated and tricked his way to victory. This time, he was Loki No One's Son – Fury's frightening gamble – and everyone was on tenterhooks, eager for his triumph. Their hopes were pinned on him being a success, and it felt weird and strange and far more terrifying than merely facing a Kaiju straight on. It had been many, many centuries since Loki had felt any fear going into battle, but it wasn't fear of the Kaiju, but a fear of letting down the tiny, indomitable humans and allowing their world to take yet more damage and harm. They were so fragile and for the first time in many, many centuries, he was fighting to protect those that needed him, not just fighting for the pleasure it gave him to hurt those who hurt him.

The Kaiju came roaring out of the ocean towards them.

It was beautiful, in its own way. The head was split strangely down the middle, not quite like a hammerhead shark, but more like a great white that someone had split with a mighty axe. Rows of glowing blue eyes, tiny on its massive head, lit it up like neon buttons against the darkness of its hide. To the mother of monsters, there was something quite beautiful, quite artistic about the monstrosity that screamed and galloped through the water towards them. Its mouth was open, displaying not only teeth longer than the average person was tall, but a long tongue that it whipped around like another weapon. From head to the tip of its long tail, there were savage spikes, and instead of the lobster claws he'd seen on his earlier simulations, this one had massive hands, tipped with sword-like talons, and it ran on its back legs like a human, or a tyrannosaurus. It was truly horrifying, and Loki was impressed by the power it displayed over every inch.

"Thing looks like a shark fucked a gorilla!" Barton's voice echoed in Loki's ear. Barton sounded neither horrified nor disgusted. Simply a commentary on the same monsters he’d been fighting for the past few years.

Loki came to a stop a few hundred yards before the Kaiju, water spewing forth in waves from the motion of his Jaeger. Normally one Jaeger would directly engage the Kaiju to stop it getting closer to land, and any other Jaeger would attack from the sides, but neither Force Fire nor Raptor Assassin would put themselves directly into the path of a Kaiju.

Loki started up the slower weapons that he still carried, getting them online and ready to fire, aware the other team were doing exactly the same. The Kaiju made a heading turn, and went for Raptor Assassin, and was blasted by a plasma bomb before it got close. Of course, the Kaiju was too fast, twisting to avoid the blast, and taking only a glancing blow. It was bleeding heavily, though, blue trails flying through the air and staining the dark grey water. It's ribs were exposed, but it wasn't slowing down. Loki fired his cannon at the same place, taking enough of the soft meat out of the side of the Kaiju that its entrails started to leak out like wet blue ribbons, but even that didn't seem to faze the monster at all. It reared up and took a swing at Raptor Assassin, who caught one giant paw in its robot hand, and used the split second pause to blast the Kaiju in the chest again.

It swung its body sideways, twisting up until it was on Raptor's back, getting its tail around Raptor's chest, trying with its free hand to rip the Jaeger's head apart.

Loki had never had a chance to use Tony's new weapons, not in practice, but he lined them up now. If the arrogant mortal was worth half of what he said he was worth, this was the time to find out. He pulled a throwing knife from the left sheath in his Jaeger. Tony had fitted the machine with approximately fifty of the small blades, each lying like scales against his forearms, with a warning to Loki that he'd built them to be sharp, plentiful, but not strong. They would be single use, rely on Loki's ability to hit a target, be sharp enough to pierce a Kaiju's skin, but they would not be a high damage weapon. Tony had not been happy – he liked his high damage, big power weapons, but these knives fitted into Loki's Jaeger's hand perfectly. They were made for him after all. And he hurled it at the Kaiju's head.
The first knife hit its mark perfectly, right into one of its eyes. Loki shouted, "Yes!" excited, and the Kaiju screamed, shaking its head, but not trying to pull the weapon out.

Loki didn't expect it to try. These things had no sense of self-preservation. He'd felt that when he'd touched the mind of that first Kaiju. They'd kill anything in their path, with no concern to their own lives or safety. They were not like animals, not like anything the humans could understand. They were more like machines – built to kill.

Or maybe they were like the Aesir – trained to fight and die for a higher purpose. The Kaiju makers had their minds set on their own version of Valhalla, and nothing was going to stop them.
Loki hit it with another knife, taking out another eye, and it screamed again. Raptor Assassin were firing everything they could from their shoulder launchers, hitting the Kaiju in the neck and upper body, and it shook as huge chunks of flesh were blown off. It had its tail embedded in the chest of Raptor Assassin, though, and was tearing into the metal and guts of the Jaeger, not letting it escape.
Loki started throwing the knives with rapid fire precision. Into its remaining eyes. Into its mouth. Its jaw came loose, then broke away under his blades, blood pouring and the Kaiju's tongue came unmoored from its throat and hung loose, like a poorly tied scarf. It was grotesque, but Loki laughed at the mess he'd made of the creature's face.

Raptor Assassin had their sword out, and cut the tail away, and then Loki came in closer. He ran past, came up behind, and stabbed it in the back. It arched back – reminding him uncannily of when he'd done exactly the same thing to Coulson, and he stepped away.

"I've cut through its spine, it's going to be paralysed, Raptor!" The Kaiju wasn't standing, but it's upper limbs were still trying to tear chunks out of the Assassin.

"We've got this, you go for the other!" Romanov's voice came back. "We'll catch up when we've finished this one off!"

He still had thirty four of Tony's knives, his sword, and the other heavier, more useless weapons.

Following the directions in his head piece, he intercepted the second Kaiju. It was no bigger than the first, but it had far more limbs. A similar design to the first, but instead of a split face, it actually had two heads, and four extra arms growing out of its side. Again, each arm was solid muscle and claw.

"I have visual," he called back to the Shatterdome. "They've sent through a conjoined twin Kaiju!"

For a moment, that just seemed incredibly funny, and he couldn't help his surprised laugh. He wondered if it had been created in error, or if they had deliberately tried to double their fun by forcing the Kaiju to conjoin the womb. He smiled, feeling the lust for battle and blood thrumming through his veins.

The numbness he'd felt for so long, the apathy, all faded away as his enemy's blood started to splatter and spray. He'd been fighting against his false family for too long. He'd turned his anger on the mortals when they'd never deserved it, and all of those battles had left him empty and ever angrier. His victories were hollow, his defeats meaningless. But now he had a true enemy. Now he could fight something that deserved all the violence that Loki could provide.

He blasted it again with his slow but powerful cannons. The blast tore through the animal, but hardly slowed it down. He braced forward, launching what remained of his shoulder cannons, satisfied when some of the arms were blown off, but it just roared and came straight for him. He wanted to flyte with the enemy, send insults so bizarre and humiliating that it would enrage his opponent and throw them off their stride, but what was the point with a creature that spoke no language? And now he missed Thor with a sharp sudden pang, knowing that during a fight, Thor would always have been there to laugh joyfully at Loki's sharp jests and playful quips.

There was no way he could believe what the humans said, that Asgard was gone. Thor would be taking down these creatures with Mjolnir and his friends and warriors by his side and he would be victorious. Thor would not let these creatures take down him or his kingdom.

Loki ran to the side, fighting against all that metal to make his Jaeger as fleet of foot as he would have been in this battle without the suit.

He started throwing his knives, again concentrating on the eyes, and the joints of the jaw. It tossed its head and tried to throw off the pain and the damage, but he ran backwards in the water, letting it chase after him, making it blind, leaving it unable to bite. "Nothing more than a particularly savage bilgsnipe", he told himself, then emptied the cannon against its chest and shoulders.

This was going to come down to close quarters fighting, which he'd always hated.

It got its remaining arms around him, ruined mouth over his face plate, blinding his Jaeger.

"Vent coolant!" he screamed at his machine, listening to her voice calmly obeying. The sudden cold froze one of the Kaiju's hands, the flesh freezing solid and snapping, but that didn't stop the creature.

There were enough teeth in the upper jaw that he could feel the Jaeger's head starting to buckle and he had a horrible thought he was going to die just like the previous pilot. Just like the superstitious humans had predicted. He laughed again, excited by the fight to the point of losing his common sense.

The blood in his veins was on fire, the fierce joy of the fight set his soul alight.

He called up the sword, watching it slide into place and stiffen and used it to gut the creature. It screamed and tore at him even as he carved away its limbs.

He couldn't help a startled yelp as teeth penetrated the head of his Jaeger, one giant tooth tore away the spare harness where his co-pilot could have been. The frozen flesh fell in chunks around him, cold enough to freeze his own flesh as it landed against him, and he realised without horror that his skin was turning blue in reaction to the cold. He had no time now to feel the usual disgust at his heritage. Right now, in this moment, the only important thing was using every weapon he had at his call.

He called on his own magic, the magic he was born with, not what had been taught to him by the Allmother.

Coolant. He had that in his soul. Ice and frost.

Monsters.

It took monsters to fight monsters.

The Jaeger was powerful, even damaged, and there was magic to draw upon. He put his on flesh and blood hand on a chunk of deep frozen Kaiju meat, and watched the very air around him, salty and wet, start to crystalize into ice.

He pulled on the power of the Jaeger to supplement his magic, his strength, and his inner core, and let the ice flow.

The cannon in his chest, no longer full of fire, blasted ice deep into the Kaiju. Not just from the outside, like the Jaeger's coolant, but he froze it from the inside, from its bones, into the creature's very cells. It froze, slowly, it screamed, it tried to pull away, but its very core became ice, it's cells started to explode, and as it screamed and tried to pull away, it left bits of itself behind. It left limbs wrapped around the Force Fire, and by the time it got away from him, there was very little left.

Loki took the sword and brought it down again and again, until there was nothing but frozen chunks of Kaiju floating on the surface of the ocean.

"Woah," Barton's voice came over his head piece as Raptor Assassin came up behind him dragging the last remains of their Kaiju.

"Well done, Loki," Romanov's voice joined Barton. "How much coolant did that require?"

Loki looked at the frozen chunks floating around him and felt the joy of battle drain away. "All of it," he replied, knowing his voice was oddly flat.

The thought of what he'd used to kill the Kaiju made him sick and he fought the urge to vomit into his helmet 0 for a second he almost felt faint with horror at what he'd done. He'd called on Jotun ice. In all his fights, he'd never done that. Not even to destroy Thor. When it would have mattered, he'd never used ice, and now, like this, surrounded by the anonymity of the Jaeger, he'd called on the ice and used it to destroy an enemy.

He felt another little bit of Asgard slip away.

"I don’t think there's much we can take back to R&D," Barton said. "Unless they like their Kaiju as a frozen treat?"

"If you are not too compromised, Loki, would you mind bringing back some pieces?" came Fitz's voice over the intercom. "Our research team appreciate all the input material they can get."

Loki nodded, wondered if anyone could see it, and realised the Jaeger had nodded along with him. He grabbed a few of the larger pieces, trophies to take home to the court. The head/s, he tossed over his shoulder, hanging on to the exposed spinal column. In his youth, it would have a made a great prop as they would have told the tale of the battle, and Thor would have taken all the credit. And, if Jotun ice would have been involved, Loki would have let him. He tried to breathe deeply to stop himself from being sick.

They trudged back to the pick-up point, and Loki steadfastly ignored the blurring in his vision and the throbbing headache that followed him the entire way.

Chapter Text

Chapter Ten: Ice, Ice, Baby

Loki unhooked himself from the harness before the human attendants came into the Jaeger to do it for him, trying to exit the machine before they could grab him, but they were too practiced and efficient. He was ruthlessly stripped and brushed and he barely got his glamour in place before they were helping him with his helmet and checking him for injuries. The medical team were fussing at his every bump and bruise, and he had to go through the full check list of any possible injury he could have sustained. They followed him all the way to the bathroom with a barrage of questions, before he finally used a flick of magic to lock the door to the toilets and get rid of them.

He stared at himself in the mirror. He'd won. He'd proved himself. He could take on one of those monsters and win! A thousand years of battle training, and a handful of years battling Thor and his friends had honed his skills so that even a Kaiju fell to his skill and might.

But the way he'd done it… he felt the sick horror all the way from his stomach to his knees.

He let the glamour fade, staring into his own eyes, and saw the blood flooding one eye ball. Green surrounded by burst blood vessels.

He let the glamour slide a little further and both eyes turned bright scarlet, the skin around them starting to turn blue.

He waved his hand again and the blue faded, the red faded, and then the blood receded from his eye again, leaving nothing but the Aesir blue-green he'd grown up with. Layers of other people's lies that he'd lived with every day since he was an infant.

He could be sitting in the park near his house. With Annabel, her babies from last year. This year maybe her babies would be having babies. They'd be running around the trees, up and down and squittering up to him to take a nut. They'd sit on his knees like he was nothing dangerous, like squirrels had no concept of monsters or murder or chaos, or maybe squirrels were mischief personified themselves and truly knew he was no danger to them. Maybe he was the god of chaotic, mischievous squirrels. He could be there, with a book, with his silly little friends, and not staring into red, red eyes.
Shaking himself, he tried to push off the sluggish feeling of still being underwater and still carrying the pressure of the Jaeger connection, and walked back out into the small crowd of humans who were waiting outside the bathroom to continue their questioning and prodding.

He made a few steps before he saw Tony Stark standing in the middle of the corridor. Tony stood with his arms crossed, legs spread, and the smuggest look on his face that Loki had seen in over a millennia of being alive. Smugger than Odin after he'd conquered a new realm. Smugger than Fandral after he'd conquered a new woman! Smugger than his own face when he'd managed to pull a particularly well done 'make Thor look stupid' trick.

Loki simply gave him an arched eyebrow in return as their eyes met over the buzzing hoards of SHIELD and Shatterdome teamsters.

"So, am I a genius or am I a genius?" Stark asked, although it wasn't really a question.

"Your weapons worked well. Was that ever in question?" Loki asked.

"No, I guess not. You've been on the receiving ends of enough Stark Ass-whoopings to know I know what I'm doing."

"And vice versa".

"I think you're right, though. The weapons we've been using are too slow. Less power, more speed."

Loki did a slight double take, very unused to being told he was right about something to do with battle, but rallied quickly, "I have had many centuries of fighting experience."

"Which means you're probably set in your ways, too used to doing the same thing over and over. I mean, not that we can't learn from that, but we need to build your style into our Jaegers, and you need to learn the way of the Jaeger," Tony paused to make some sort standing on one foot, cat-clawing hand gesture, which Loki interpreted to be another movie reference, possibly something to do with martial arts, and just pretended to 'get it' again.

"I was successful. I was able to destroy one Kaiju alone, and assist with the destruction of another. I am satisfied with that, as should you be. I believe I have proved I am worthy as a warrior."

"You certainly have!" Tony agreed cheerfully, which, yet again, left Loki somewhat wrong footed. "The whole Shatterdome was cheering. Did you hear it? Probably not, that gets filtered out, too distracting, but I gotta tell you, you've given a lot of people hope today!"

Loki just walked alongside him, ignoring the other mortal that buzzed around him like insects, taking readings, trying to get answers to questions that were beneath his notice. "I… yes..."
"I mean, that was great. My looks and my brains and your… whatever it is about you that makes you able to pilot one of my beauties alone, I tell you, we're going to be great. We'll take down some of those bastards before-" He stopped suddenly.

"Before I get killed like the other pilots?" Loki finished for him.

"Well, yeah, good chance. You know it, we all do. But I think you'll take a lot of those bastards down with you as long as you stay with us."

“I do not intend to leave until this war is finished.”

“Any idea of when that will be?” Tony walked briskly beside him, leading Loki somewhere with purpose, and his question was both a throw away as if ‘I’m just making conversation’ and also a carefully delicate interrogation, just in case Loki actually knew.

Loki looked at the floor, wondering how to answer. “The Kaiju that I killed-”

“Today?”

“No, before. The one you found on the beach.”

“What about it?”

“I touched its mind.”

“Yeah, I heard. You burned out its brain. Everyone was very excited when Fury worked that out. But you said you couldn’t do it again…?”

“No, they are not intelligent in any real sense, but their brains are so large the sheer power damaged me.”

“So, what of it?”

“They intend to destroy this planet.”

Tony stopped walking. "Explain further."

Loki watched, "I don't know how much you are aware of why they are coming here…"

"Nothing. They come here, wipe out major population areas, we kill them. There have been no demands or contact from any kind of intelligence. We don't know what they want or why they are killing everyone."

"Killing everyone is their only goal. They want to kill you all so they can take over the planet and consume all resources. They have no interest or even understanding of human life. The creature I touched was of very primitive intelligence. It has orders to kill and destroy and die fighting, that is all."

"So… no chance of being asked to kneel so they can rule the planet as gods, then?"

"No. They are not that advanced. They just see you, and all organic life, as fuel."

"Have you told Fury or Coulson this?"

Loki looked away. "No. I had assumed you would already have found this out. You enjoy bragging of your genius, I had thought you would have seen that the Kaiju have no interest in negotiation or conquering your insignificant world," Loki walked on, annoyed at being questioned, annoyed at his own shame as he tried to give Tony the information he'd discovered, but not why he'd discovered it.

"Why didn't you bring this forward?"

"What difference does it make? Knowing they see you as nothing. They don't understand that you are sentient creatures, and if they did, they wouldn't care. They care as much about humans as you care about the feelings of the petroleum you mine from the ground. They are drilling down past the resistance to get at what they need, and your attempts to defend your world mean nothing. My understanding of this makes no difference to our ability to fight."

Tony walked behind him quietly for a few steps.

"Coolant."

"What of it," Loki said, a cold coil twisting in his gut.

"I build those machines. I know exactly how much coolant is in a Jaeger. How much a pilot can vent during a fight, how much damage it will do."

Loki didn't answer.

"Coolant like that, it came from somewhere."

Loki put his head down, walking faster, but not so fast that it would appear he was running away.

"Thor used to talk, you know. About you. About what was done to you. I mean, he never got it. He called it 'adoption', but here on Earth we refer to kids stolen from their cultures as 'the stolen generation'. Kids taken out of their culture against their wills or without their knowledge. Happened to American indigenous people, Canadians back in the day, happened to Australian Aboriginal kids, happened a lot. Conquering race comes in, takes the native kids to raise them 'civilised'. Never did anyone any good. Thor couldn't understand why anyone would get pissed about being made Asgardian, even against their will, because he saw Asgard as the be all and end all of everything. He saw us humans as just amusing pets sometimes, too, so I get it that he was not the brightest, but he still loved the ever living fuck out of you, and sometimes he'd talk about what Jotuns could do and what he thought you should be able to do, if you, you know, embraced your culture. I mean, he phrased it like he thought you could possibly become a dangerous, feral Jotun, but I thought it all sounded pretty cool, if you could be like, you know, that chick from that Disney movie and make everything into ice palaces, and ice bridges, and become your own personal Zamboni-"

Tony squawked as Loki turned and pinned him against the wall, a hand against Tony's throat. Loki was careful to do no harm, but pulled back his strength only at the last moment, realising that Tony spoke more from ignorance than malice.

"Be quiet. You know not of what you speak," he said, eyes slit with menace, his face right against Tony's.

"I'm just saying, if you could channel this whole 'coolant' talent of yours-" Tony knew no fear, and feared no knowledge, and used air quotes with abandon.

"I wasn't trying to save your world when I tried to control the Kaiju," Loki said, sick of Tony's attempts at being 'friendly'. "I thought, if I could control its mind, it would be mine. I could make that beast dance to my tune the way I made your friend Barton into my own personal… what do you call them? 'Flying monkeys'?"

"I really hate it when you do that to people," Tony said, wheezing around Loki's fingers where they pressed into this throat.

"I thought, with the power of the Kaiju at my command, not only Midgard but all the realms would bow to my rule!"

"Well, you fucked that up, didn't you! How long did you float around in the ocean like some particularly unpleasant turd until you washed ashore after that?"

Loki stepped back, surprised. "You knew?"

"It wasn't hard to guess. I mean, I figured that you might have been either trying to control them - keep your own pet Kaiju on a leash - or kill them so that we would all worship you as the Kaiju-killer god and we'd love you and bow down and worship you with candy bars or something. Amirite?"

Loki stepped back, wondering where to leave the body so he could make Tony's death look like an accident.

Tony kept on talking, rubbing at his throat absently, "Thing is, I don't give a shit. You want us to worship you for killing Kaiju? No problem! I'll get down on my knees right now. We all will. Wasn't that Fury's deal? Didn't we already discuss that? I'm pretty sure I've already made that offer. You get what you want, whatever we can give you, as long as you kill those fuckers. It's all good, right? The fact you thought you could control one? Talk about Hubris! I mean, that's exactly the kind of stupid shit I would expect you to pull, but man, you got your butt kicked but good, so hey, all's forgiven, and now? You're here and you're working with us, and even if you won't drift, which, face it, is suspicious as hell, because, what are you hiding, right? We'll take what we can get."

Loki stood back. He appreciated the human's honesty. Loki believed what Tony said because it tied in so perfectly with Nick Fury's original offer. The only way Tony would agree with Fury would be if they were both in perfect agreement.

"It was coolant," Loki said, his voice perfectly smooth.

"Coolant," Tony said, looking up through his thick, lush lashes, like a child seeking a way out of trouble with big innocent eyes. "Okay, it was coolant. A whole lotta coolant. So… they'll be having a celebratory lunch. Two Kaiju dead. No pilots dead. Both Jaeger's returned with repairable damage. Our new pilot turns out to be a bit of a rock star. I bet we'll even have real food today!"

"Since when have you been so food motivated?" Loki said, accepting the change of subject to something meaningless. "In all the years I've known you, you've eaten little other than crudités, steamed chicken, stir fried vegetables with no sauce… and scotch."

"Yeah, well. I get tortured, beaten, burned, shot by aliens and gods and monsters and mutants. I throw myself into every god-damned dangerous situation ever, but I'm never going to die of a heart attack!"

"So, why do you now eat facon and Kaiju lasagna?"

"Because Pepper," Tony's voice shook just a little, which gave Loki some satisfaction after Tony forcing his confession as to his own acknowledged hubris. "Because Happy. Because there's something in my brain that means I'm too powerful to drift with another human, and not powerful enough to put on a giant fucking robot suit and beat those bastards to death with my own hands. Because I'm just building suits for other mother fuckers and Pepper's still fucking dead! Because if I want to eat fake cheese burgers until my heart stops so fucking what? Because fuck it all, fuck everything, that's why," Tony said, gasping for a breath at the end, and there it was and Loki dropped the topic immediately. He realised that it didn't matter if he went down fighting or he went down with a hamburger, Tony had made the decision to go down somehow. Like falling off a bridge, sometimes these decisions were inevitable.

They walked towards the mess in silence for a while, but Tony wasn't good at silence. "You know, I still think we should get ice in the name somehow. You know, for your Jaeger? With all that… 'Coolant'," Tony made finger quotes again. "Ice giant, well, that's out, racist I get it, but… frost fire? Frozen… something? If we were drifting together we could be Iron Frost, which would be cool. Frost Iron," he held up his hands in a fake 'surrender' style at Loki's glare. "No frost, got it, Iron Giant? We could be Iron Giant. No, wait, that's a movie with Vin Diesel, probably copyright or something. Iron Mage? Iron… Magic something? Iron Magician, that sucks, Iron-"

"Why should Iron be first?"

"Because it's cool. I'm cool. I'm the ultimate in cool. But we're not drifting. Frost… Frosty the snowman, no, that's way out. Ice… Ice… Something… Ice Ice Baby? God no. Ice Bucket. Giant Metal Ice Bucket of Death!"

"Be quiet, you ridiculous creature," Loki said, but his threatening tone cracked a little with laughter at the foolish mortal's antics, which was probably exactly what Tony was going for.

"Vanilla Ice. Ice T. Ice Cube."

"I happen to like the music of Vanilla Ice."

Tony stopped walking, Loki walked on. Tony was glaring a hole in the back of Loki's neck with such ferocity Loki could swear he could feel the hairs there curling up in self-defence.

"Oh, I did not hear you say that!"

"Admittedly, his music did not reach the artistic peak of the greatest of all of your Midguarding musicians, the great Rick Astley, for example, but-" Loki was cut short as Tony's hands hit him square between the shoulder blades, making him stumble forward.

"Oh, dem's fighting words!" Tony said, and Loki took one look over his shoulder at Tony's exaggerated 'hands in the air, Imma kill you' gestures, and ran ahead a few steps, not hiding his giggle.

He was happy, he realised. Something he hadn't felt in a long time. He'd killed a Kaiju. Alone, with the support of people fighting on his side, and even though he'd done it in the worst way possible, and his head still throbbed, Tony's deliberate attempts to break the spell of his own self-loathing brought back to him the feeling of victory. Tony was as mercurial as himself – fire and pain one moment, laughing at the pain the next. It felt natural. Victory and a weird kind of acceptance. And it was good.

Chapter Text

Chapter Eleven: The journey is the gift.

The entire crew of the Jaeger program were gathered in the mess hall. The room was built to take around 500 people seated uncomfortably, but there were close to a thousand standing and staring at the food preparation area. They all stood in near silence, only the occasional murmur breaking the cathedral-like thrall. It was like a state of prayer, or as if they'd all rushed in to watch someone defuse a bomb instead of doing the sensible thing and running away.

Loki and the other pilots, by sheer force of their status, were allowed to walk to the front of the room with only a minimal amount of elbowing and shoving to see what had the Shatterdome so focussed.
The kitchen staff was preparing a meal, but they were doing so in almost utter silence. Any clank of cutlery or equipment was quickly shushed. They were using trivets and tea towels to muffle every sound.

In the middle of all of this, still dressed all in black but minus his signature long leather coat, and plus a white apron covered in caramel coloured stains, sleeves rolled up but still covered in white flour, was Nick Fury. He was stirring a small metal saucepan with a wooden spoon, a look of absolute and intense concentration on his face. It was the expression of someone lining up a sniper shot from a thousand yards away, testing the saucepan for wind direction, turning the spoon for maximum accuracy. Fury's breathing was carefully controlled, the hand not stirring just hovering, perfectly still in the air as if to maintain his balance. His back was hunched as he leaned over a hot plate not made for a man of over 6'2" in height in thick-soled black leather boots.

He had a computer tablet in front of him and was frequently referring to the pictures thereon, but he was working in absolute silence.

Loki and the others stood and watched, and there were a hundred questions on Loki's tongue but he took his cue from the others and bit them down. What was Fury doing? Why was he cooking? Why was he making cooking look like an absolute agony of concentration and pain? And what was that glorious smell?

There was bacon. Real bacon. Not facon. Actual, crispy, fried, streaky bacon. Loki's favourite Migardian food. He could smell it and he could feel the hunger burn. And something else.

Something sweet, something warm, something with a heavy handed spice filled the air. Loki's mouth filled with saliva. Whatever it was, he wanted it. Who would he have to kill to get it, and would Fury still let him stay with the Jaeger program after he'd killed them and eaten whatever it was that smelled so good? And the bacon.

Fury turned and opened one of the industrial ovens. The oven was huge, but he brought out only one small tray. Upon the tray was one large bun, swirled with brown spices and smelling like Valhalla.

Fury took the tray to a counter, and with a flat bladed tool that looked like a small shovel to Loki, he neatly removed it from the tray as if performing a swift decapitation. Fury put the bun in the exact centre of one of Tony Stark's precious china plates.

With precise movements, Fury started to ladle out the white sauce from his pan. Each dose measured as if Fury was measuring out just the right amount of poison to kill a man. He drizzled the sauce over the side of the bun in decorative, carefully careless motions to create maximum aesthetic beauty. Blood splatter, if blood was white.

He walked back to his work space and took a handful of nuts – toasted pecans Loki thought, one of his favourite Midgard nuts, nuts he'd shared with the squirrels on occasion – and started to chop them with the motions of a man who had been using knives to torture and kill for many, many decades. He then took the knife, scraped the nuts from the board and used them to decorate the bun with absolute precision.

The whole room moved forward, drawn by the smell, the spectacle, the tiny drip of stress-sweat on Fury's forehead as he picked up the plate, held it to the height of his face, and eyed the bun from every direction. He turned it this way and that, considering its perfection, before putting it back on the table, laying a few strips of perfectly fried streaky bacon decoratively to the side of the bun, and ceremoniously removing his apron, handing it to one of the mess chef's behind him.

Fury stepped out from the kitchen area, carrying the bun like Mimir's head being presented to the Thing on Asgard. Fury's audience sighed in want and desire.

Fury stepped up to the pilots, and with all due honour, presented the plate to Loki, who took it with ceremony – taking his cue from Fury's mien, his puzzlement at Fury's actions overcome entirely by the smell of whatever it was on the plate.

If Fury had decided that Loki's job was now done, and he was going to poison Loki before Loki could become a further problem, Loki would accept that without protest just to eat whatever this was.

"Loki. You have no idea how much I hate cooking," Fury said. "I do not like anything which I cannot control, so this is no pleasure to me. Getting the ingredients for this, the real butter, the processed flour, white sugar, took weeks."

"What is it?" Loki asked, but didn't ask the real question - why are you giving this to me?

Fury raised his only visible eyebrow. "This… is a Cinnabon. Trademark of the now defunct Focus Brands. This is one of my country's greatest delicacies."

Loki looked at all the faces around him. He was surrounded by hungry wolves. They would kill for this. They would kill for just one bite. It was obviously something that humans held in high regard. More than a celebration on Asgard with a fresh-killed wild boar taking pride of place on a spit. This was something the humans greatly, deeply desired. And, by the smell, so did Loki.

"I found the recipe online. I've hunted down the ingredients over the past weeks. I prepared this with my very own hands. I can give you no medal, no ceremony, no higher honour, than to allow you to have what may be the last Cinnabon prepared on earth."

Loki's lips moved in silence for a moment, confused and baffled. Fighting was his job, it was what he did, and he was pleased to be here to offer the only real skills he had to these people. On Asgard there were honours and ceremonies. Great weapons were handed to great warriors. But the weapons were made by Dwarves. Feasts were prepared by thralls. Odin never prepared anything himself. Never! Odin would not sweat in a kitchen, or seek out ingredients, or humble himself like a common kitchen slave. Not for Loki, not for Frigga, not even for Thor would Odin have made something like this.

Fury was honouring him with his labour, with his own hands. And with ingredients rare and precious on this dying planet. There was more honour in this bun than in every ceremony Loki had ever witnessed on Asgard.

He bowed his head respectfully, over the bun, to Fury.

"It is an honour and a privilege to serve you and your world," Loki said, with great formality.

Fury relaxed, quite sharply and suddenly, and a tiny but genuine smile quirked at one corner of his lips. He eyed the bun, "I hope you like it. Really, that was a fucking pain in the ass to make. One stuff up and I couldn't start over, not enough cinnamon. Anyway. Enjoy."

Fury turned and went to wash his hands, and Loki got the insane notion that maybe Fury was a little bit embarrassed now, maybe under that huge, angry shell, he was concerned Loki wouldn't actually like his cooking? Or maybe he'd just humbled himself a little too much in front of the other humans? Then again, this was Fury, and everything was calculated and everything was bad ass and everyone was just a bit too afraid of him to ever dare see him as humble.

The room moved around him like waves around a stone as he turned to sit at the table.

He had no cutlery, but he tore a tiny bit of the hot, fresh, soft dough, dipped it in the soft white sauce, and put it in his mouth.

It exploded in a world of sweetness and spice and goodness, and he closed his eyes and moaned a little as the sugar dissolved on his tongue.

The cinnamon was amazing, and he regretted every year he'd spent on Midgard and not eaten everything made with this spice. He'd wasted so much time fighting a pointless battle against Thor for an end he could never even conceive, and then spent so many years sunk into his own despair and apathy. He should have been spending it eating such exotic delicacies instead.

He chewed the warm soft gooey dough and took another piece, including a few pecans now, savouring the way the delicate crunch contrasted against the softness. Savouring the salty goodness of the bacon and how it worked so beautifully with the soft, sweet, gooey bun.

It tasted like victory.

It tasted like success.

It tasted like respect.

It tasted like favouritism.

It tasted like approval.

It tasted like being equal...

The whole room watched him. He could hear them swallowing their saliva and someone groaned with desire not far away.

He sat in front of a thousand hungry eyes and slowly, very very slowly, ate his way through Fury's honourable bun, taking as much pleasure as he could. Oh, he could taste every molecule of manipulation that Fury had baked into that bun, and he knew that Fury was making a huge production out of this just to give Loki the honour he thought Loki wanted.

But Loki did want it.

They both knew it. They both acknowledged it, and it was honest. Fury's manipulations were right out there where Loki could see it, acknowledge it, accept it or not, renegotiate if needed.

Fury didn't lie like Odin. Fury was far too smart for that. He knew that Loki would walk away at the first hint of deception, but something like this?

A childish, silly attempt to appeal to Loki's childish, silly need to be acknowledged? Loki was going to eat that up. Every single bite.

With a side of bacon.

He tried not to watch the faces of the humans. If he'd been a better person, he would have offered them some, and something in him said if he wanted to make friends, maybe he should offer a little bit to someone, but it was so good. So very, very good.

He heard a noise from Stark, just a shuffle, and when he looked at Stark he appeared so nostalgic. Not longing for the bun like the others, but longing for a world where he could walk a few blocks from his castle and grab a Cinnabon box to go. And share them with Pepper.

Loki tore a small piece, soaked it in the sugar, and offered it with his fingertips to Stark.

"No, it's yours," Stark said, hand waving it away.

"It was your modifications that helped me win the battle," Loki said, still offering.

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right, absolutely," Stark said, and grabbed the bit, but he swallowed it too quickly, not savouring it, and then looked a little regretful. Like a Labrador being thrown only one piece of beef jerky.

"Where's our Cinnabon?" Hawkeye said, voice both whiny and annoyed, as Fury came out, drying his hands on a tea towel.

"Yeah, we've been fighting the Kaiju and winning all along, why does he get a bun?" said the widow, although her voice was more amused and knowing than actually jealous.

"I don't have to bribe you mother fuckers," Fury said, back to his usual Furious self, and, after checking that Loki was enjoying his bun sat down with a standard metal tray of cafeteria food. "You're here to protect your own fucking planet. Him? Not so much. Shut up and get your trays filled and I don't want to hear any complaints. Oh, and there's some real bacon left, if you hurry."

Loki looked at his plate. The bun was gone. The bacon gone. Just the sugar sauce, trails of buttery cinnamon goo, and a few nuts left. He picked the nuts out of the goo. Licked his fingers clean like a commoner, stared at the goo on the plate, stared at Fury who met his gaze unfazed, then shrugged, picked up the plate and licked it clean, too.

He didn't care how much like some common thrall he looked, this was too good to waste.

He swore he heard Fury give one quick, surprised bark of laughter, but when he looked up Fury was frowning down at his tray again.

At least it was lasagna day. That was possibly the only thing that had stopped them from mugging Loki for his bun. He sat at the table as they ate, eating nothing else himself, full of sugary, bacony, happy goodness.

Rogers had found a seat on Loki's other side. He had fake eggs, a huge pile of them, but it looked as if he'd been one of the lucky ones to snag a pile of real bacon. He was making a tiny satisfied moaning sound with every bite as he worked his way through the huge amount of food he'd piled up.

Bruce Banner wandered in and grabbed a tray of food, but didn't stop to eat with them.

"Does the beast avoid me?" Loki asked, and both Tony and Steve looked up in surprise.

Clint and Natasha were arguing over some bacon they'd scrounged, but it was a short lived-spat that was solved amicably. Loki had heard that drift partners rarely argued, because truly hurt feelings would well up in a drift and cause ill feeling if allowed to fester and then magnify.

"No, I don't think so," Clint said, stuffing the last bit of bacon into his mouth before Natasha changed her mind, and apparently didn't notice or ignored the way Tony and Steve made meaningful, subtle eye contact over Loki's head in some way Loki was apparently not supposed to notice. "Why would he?"

"I attempted to control your planet, I have-"

"None of that matters now," Natasha said. "I think we've told you that?"

"Yes, but I find it hard to believe. Do you not want revenge? I have caused your planet great harm."

Clint laughed through his nose, "Really? Ego much? How much damage have you done? Think about it. A few thousand dead? How much have the Kaiju done? Do you think you're even in the same arena?"

"Look, Loki," Natasha interrupted. "We fought together today. Do you really think we have a problem with you still? Bruce is… in another world, that's all. His own world in his head. He's fine. He even fights sometimes. Even Hulk isn't big enough to take on a Kaiju alone, and he certainly can't pilot, but he can study the Kaiju in the labs, and he can be a great distraction in a fight. He got inside one of them once, pulled out all of its teeth from the inside. One of the best and most horrible things I've ever seen. He has no problem with you being here. None of us do."

Loki looked at Clint. "I took over your mind."

Clint chewed slowly, a slight look of menace. "I haven't forgotten."

Loki huffed in annoyance, "So you are truly telling me…"

"Look, a-hole, what do you want? You're here now, right? You're working with us, right? You think we think you can't change? You think I can't get past something like that? How weak do you think I am? You think I'm some sad little pussy who's going to run off all 'wa wa big bad alien messed with my head!' and collapse in a pile of snotty weeping? I'm a fighter, man. I'm a fucking super hero!" His voice got louder but more in pride than annoyance. "I'm one tough mother-"

"Clint, you're not Fury"

"-Fluffer. I'm happy you're here. And you forget, Loki, the mind control went both ways. I know full well what you went through with Thanos, and one thing we all learned from our battles was you couldn't give a shit about any of us. You were there to solely piss off Thor, and he's not around any more, so if you're fighting on our side now, then that's for your own reasons. And you think I can't handle an enemy turned friend?"

Loki opened his mouth to speak, but Clint cut him off.

"You know full well I was the one who turned Natasha," he stabbed himself in the chest with a self-congratulatory thumb. "She was killing everyone - the greatest assassin ever produced! I was sent to kill her on behalf of SHIELD, but I saw her and I saw greatness. Me! Everyone else said 'kill the bitch' but I saw her and thought, man, she's awesome and I'm going to make her a good guy and she's gonna love me! And she did. And so will you, so get used to it, okay?"

They were all silent for a moment.

Steve handed a $10 bill back to Tony who shook with a moment of silent laughter.

"Is there any one here who thinks I should not have seen the worth in a bad guy and not brought over Natasha? Anyone here want to question that decision?" Clint leaned back in his chair, arms thrown wide, and gave everyone at the table a challenging look.

Fury shook his head, but in exasperation as their antics, not in answer. Coulson shook his head to say he was perfectly happy with Natasha Romanov.

Tony and Steve both just smiled.

Bruce wandered past in the opposite direction from before, muttering to himself, ignoring everyone, a juice box in each hand. Both grape.

Natasha gave them a smile that was too self-satisfied to be dangerous. Clint hadn't been the sole reason she'd changed sides, and they all knew it, but she didn't mind if they all believed it. It was a good story, and her entire life was all about finding the best story.

Loki recognised that. Sometimes the best story is the only truth worth a damn.

"Right. So. We're all grown-ups, no one's some sad little wuss, and we're enjoying victory and bacon, and everything's cool, right?"

"Everything was Jaeger and nothing Hurt," Tony said, and Loki wondered if he was quoting something. It sounded like he was.

"So," Clint went on, crowing about his own prowess at converting bad guys, "You might think you're about as popular as a faecal transplant, but I, for one, am happy to have you here!" and he gave Loki a toast of his coffee substitute.

Tony toasted with his own coffee substitute. "To Loki! More fun than a faecal transplant!"

Everyone at the table toasted Loki in the same horrible, but amusing way, and he grinned, and sucked cinnamon sugar from his teeth.

….

If you don't already know, Thing means court or counsel on Asgard. The start of diplomacy and quite interesting to read about if you want to see how power can go from kings to people. Not, you know, a thing, like things and stuff.

Chapter Text

Chapter Twelve: Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

The adrenaline wore off quickly – and Loki retreated to his cell-like room to ride out the crash alone. There had been some tentative invitations to stick fight, or attend an exercise class in something called, he wasn't sure, yoghurt, but that didn't sound appealing. The offers of the humans to socialise were nervous, expecting rejection, and he had expected relief when he'd turned them down but there was a smell of disappointment to them. Steve Roger's yoghurt class almost tempted him when he'd seen how crest-fallen Steve had looked when Loki claimed exhaustion. Perhaps, next time, he'd go stretch and enjoy diary with Rogers, or whatever it was meant to be. Perhaps he could find something different here than he'd found on Asgard. Perhaps here, they weren't polite to him because he was their prince and he saved their lives, all the while they would revile him for his tricks. Here, it was just because he was useful, he saved their lives, and nothing else was important. Skill was king. Tricks were fine, cowardly methods were fine, as long as lives were saved.

He looked down at his hands – the slight tremble that always followed the excitement of a great battle. His belly was full of sweetness, but his limbs ached to fight again. He needed to find his stillness.

There was such a longing for the company of his old, false family, even though they had long ago betrayed not only his trust, but his very soul. He could have gone to Thor, obtained his advice, and ignored it for the stupid nonsense it would be. He reached one, long fingered hand to the mirror on the wall in the tiny washing area of his cell.

For a moment his hand hovered, and he nearly reached to see Asgard, but then he leaned back again and left that a mystery. He couldn't stand to see if the world of his childhood was gone, but neither could he stand to see that the world of his childhood had abandoned Midgard, had abandoned him, to this fate. His children had been lost to the 'wisdom' of Odin – perhaps this world, too, was just another sacrifice to Odin's omnipotence.

There was a knock on his door, two sharp raps abruptly stopped, and he walked slowly before opening the door. It would not do to appear eager to greet guests. Royalty always kept others waiting. Whoever it was, though, was long gone by the time he opened the door.

They'd left a shoe box by the door. A Skechers 'Go Walk', women's' US size nine, in the Kaiju pattern: Baba. There were no green scaly patterned shoes in the box, though.

More tiny, strange little gifts from the humans: half a bag of M&Ms held closed with an elastic band. A slightly used jar of black nail polish – a cheap brand, but obviously someone remembered Loki's black nail polish period, and that had an emery board attached with another elastic band. Some cold bacon in a sandwich bag – someone had put it aside from their breakfast. A couple of used paperback novels, their backs so broken they'd obviously been passed from person to person for some time, and a brand new late model Stark Pad still in the box.

"Huh," a voice from just down the corridor. "I wondered why they wanted another Stark Pad." Tony grinned like a shark. A happy shark.

"From you?" Loki showed him the box with a questioning eye brow.

"Nope. Well, the pad, yeah, by proxy, but not the rest, looks like someone's done a dump and run with those. Baby on the door step. But if you'd wanted a new tablet, I still have quite a few. Weird how we can't get sugar or chocolate, but we can get all the tech we want. I suppose because there are plenty of poor people willing to wade through garbage tips and salvage old tech for recycling, but not a lot we can do to recycle food. Bring on Star Trek replicators, right?"

Loki nodded, knowing just enough about Stars Trek and Wars to get the reference. Something to do with self-replicating robots that mimicked humans and killed everyone. Or was that Gate? Science fiction had never really thrilled him – not when he lived it every day of his life. He'd walked the pathways between the stars and spoken to people from other realms his entire life. A few Midgardians with artificially lumpy foreheads were never going to be that enticing.

He turned back into his room, holding his box of new little treasures carefully and sat on his bed.

"So, know how to use the Starkpad?" Tony followed him in without invitation, looking around curiously, and frowning at the lack of anything other than the standard Shatterdome pilot's rooms.

"Yes," Loki wasn't offended at the question. He knew Tony was more used to dealing with Thor. "I've always enjoyed your internet. All the common people talking to each other – communication outside of the control of their social betters. There was nothing like that on Asgard, despite Aesir technology being more advanced."

"More advanced'? Seems that most of your tech back up there was just very old magic that people had forgotten how to use."

"You are correct for the most part. Magic is not well respected, despite the lives that depend upon it."

"Yeah?" Tony was derailed from his expected argument about Midgard vs Asgard superiority, a favourite debating tool on Loki's behalf, "Well, yeah, I'm right. Thor expounded on that at great length. He had long since decided that making fun of you for using magic was one of the reasons you turned on him and the others."

That was no great revelation – he and Thor had argued about just that so many times, hurling invectives and hammers and knives and regrets. "It only took him a thousand years to realise that tormenting his inferiors would cause them to resent him."

"Yeah, well, at least he's pretty." Loki realised that on Midgard, calling someone pretty was a quick shortened speak for calling them stupid.

"You still talk of him in the first person. Do you not consider him dead?"

"I really don't know, Dynamo. It's hard to think he just deserted us all, though, right?"

Loki nodded cautiously, and Tony continued, "You most of all. I mean, he loved us, like a big old Labrador loves a bunch of Weiner dogs, but you he adored. I mean, he hated you with a burning passion because he couldn't understand why you turned on him, but he loved you, too. And he loved this whole world. I think, sometimes, despite everything he said, he loved Earth more than he loved Asgard."

"Speaking of such is treason. You, and maybe even he, would be found guilty of turning against Asgard if they heard you say such things."

"True, though," Tony said, with the nonchalance of one who had survived life-threatening torture for saying much less. "And Thor never exactly had a problem with committing treason, not from what I heard."

"True. He knew that Odin would always turn his blind eye to Thor's behaviour."

"Not yours, though, right?"

Loki didn't reply. Old arguments. He'd spent the last half decade hurling these complaints at Odin and Thor, his cries falling on deaf ears. "Why are you here?" he asked, thinking he probably should have asked before letting the human into his room.

"No reason. Talk about girls? Weapons, maybe? So… anything else you'd like added to your Jaeger? Giant metal boobs? Horns? Flame throwers?"

Loki pondered a moment, looking up from his box of treasures to the ugly metal door with all of its struts and supports.

"I was always good with a whip. It was my favourite method of answering Holmgang. I could rend the flesh from men's bones with every strike. I could keep the blows light enough that they wouldn't die quickly, but heavy enough that they couldn't move or defend themselves. It could take days for them to die. Thor said he'd never heard such screams."

"Bundle of laughs, Loki. You're always a bundle of laughs. I mean, that's a story you could tell at a children's party," Tony said, clicking his tongue with amusement. Loki was just a little disturbed at how undisturbed Tony was at Loki's comments For a hero, Stark was a just little too blood drenched to be considered pure in the manner expected of Earth heroes. "JARVIS, so, what do you think of a whip for the Jaeger?"

Holograms filled the room, and Loki hadn't even noticed that Tony's watch was also a hologram generator. He resisted the urge to reach out to the displays. He'd seen these before, and there was always an accompanying desire to bat and paw at the light particles, to make them dance to his own tune as they danced to Tony's. He didn't, though. It would be embarrassing to try to move or manipulate the light images only to be ignored by JARVIS by basis of his molecular make up.

"There would be a degree of accuracy lost – based on the sheer size of a whip once increased to match the size of a Jaeger, sir" JARVIS intoned.

"Hmm… but if we bring in the same technology that we used on the swords, breaking it down into segments…" Tony's hands were busy in the air, even as he made himself comfortable lying on Loki's bed. "It needs more power than just rending flesh, though. Perhaps there could be jagged edges, to really rip into the Kaiju. Or a poison we could deliver. Bruce is still working on his poison and virus ideas – perhaps there's something we could add that would make this even more effective."

Loki turned to sit cross-legged on the bed to watch Tony construct the weapon, listen to him talking out loud to his invisible friend the entire time. He'd watched the smiths when he'd been a child, fascinated with the construction of armour and swords, and had been able to make his own daggers by the time he was tall enough to see over the tables in the dining halls. He'd worked with alchemists to learn their craft, and had sat with the scholars to create any weapon or spell as would be required in battle.

Watching now, he wondered how long it would take him to learn the war craft of Tony Stark. He knew that Tony was a genius, not only that Tony had told him that often enough, but Loki knew that Tony was the only one on his world able to create what he did. Loki estimated that if it took a human a life time to learn these skills, it would, with concentrated effort, take him at least two or three years to become expert in these wonders of light and matter. That would rely on Tony's willingness to let him apprentice, though.

"So, what do you know about Asgard tech?" Tony asked, propping himself up on his elbows. "Anything we can use?"

"Did Fury ask you to question me on Asgard's defences?" Loki let a trickle of suspicion poison his mind.

"Nope. Just looking for anything I can get. Fury's pretty happy you're here. You'd think more humans would be able to pilot a Jaeger, but it's the sheer size," Tony waved a hand in the air to indicate something or other. "Almost no one's got the power. So… we're happy with you so far. Hero. Saving lives. Turned yourself around. Redemption, blah blah blah, have you seen the news reports yet?"

"No?" Loki was puzzled. "Have you been promoting me as a pilot? Surely that would panic the populace?"

"Nope, not at all," Tony grabbed Loki's new Stark Pad and fiddled with it, then started loading Youtube videos. "I'm surprised you haven't been googling yourself a bit more since you got here!"

Tony brought up a few video clips, and they watched them together, the tablet on Tony's thigh. Loki opened the M&Ms and offered them, but Tony waved them away, saying the bit of faux Cinnabon he'd had earlier was all the white sugar he'd eat that month. The videos were clips of the battle, mostly, filmed by the helicopters that followed every Jaeger, and narrated by a man with an annoyingly excitable voice.

Each video was interspersed with photographs of Loki himself. The photograph they used was possibly a mug shot, but it had been cleaned up and made to look like a wrestling collectible card instead. It was decorated with his name in a gold ribbon, and patterns that made him think of the Harry Potter collectible card he'd seen in a movie once upon a time. The Wizard in the Jaeger. The God in the Machine.

"They'll be sending photographers, soon, to get a shot for your actual card. Gotta get you monetised!" Tony said, firmly, pointing to Loki's face. "Also, let them take measurements so they can make an action figure of you. That's kind of cool. I mean, there's already some from the old days, but they are from the shitty 'Enemies of the Avengers' series, and they were crap. The joints kept breaking. Not that we all played with our figures or tried to take the clothes off to see if they had plastic junk or anything like that. We'll get you something really good. Have you seen the ones that have come out for Jaeger pilots? Do you have any idea how much those figures go for? Apparently a Black Widow is worth nearly a whole side of beef! They are pretty cool, actually. Except they insisted on them all being accurately based on our actual height. I told them I was five foot ten, damn them!" Tony pouted. Loki knew that he was only five foot eight, but that it was also a sensitive subject, and Pepper had always had to stand on a lower step, and Tony had so many lifts in his suits they were almost an inbuilt elevator, so Loki didn't tease. He did give Tony a disbelieving look, though. "What? Hey, I funded that line of figures originally. If I say I'm five foot ten they should believe me! Every other damned Avenger doll towers over mine! I have about 14 different action figures, all in different armour and they're all height appropriate, but would Hot Toys allow that? Noooo… The only ones I'm taller than are Bruce Banner, and that didn't sell well anyway because everyone loves The Hulk, and Natasha!"

"I would hardly think, considering your accomplishments, that you would care about the height of a doll."

"Well, you're right, I don't," Tony looked appropriately mollified, "But I prefer it when the figures are sold in the armour, and not out. It's the principle of the thing."

"And the three inch lifts you have in your boots."

"Jets! They're jets! Don't be a dick."

Loki laughed and listened to another one of the videos. It showed his fighting alongside the Raptor, and told a quick version of his heroism. The narrator gave a story about his seeking redemption by protecting the world he'd come to love, and he gave Tony a look of total disbelief.

"What? Give the people what they want, right? They want to believe that you're here to protect them from the big bad because you've come to love them because of puppies and rainbows and chocolate and shit, not that you're bored and fighting with us because of some nebulous reason that no one can quite grasp and maybe you'll turn on us again at the first opportunity. People don't need to hear that. Gotta give them some hope." Tony sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, then got up to pace a little. "I don't know if you're going to take off when this gets too hard or when we've got nothing left to offer, but hey, while it lasts, right?"

"Tony… in all honesty… I have nowhere else to go."

Tony was facing away from him, pacing, and stopped, his shoulder slumping down a little. "Yeah, I figured. Still…"

"The videos are not… they are not offensive. If that's what it takes to calm the populace, then so be it. I was raised in the public eye and am fully aware of the necessity of 'public relations'. I am not entirely sure about the action figures, though. Surely your world should be focussing on food production, rather than dolls?"

"Not dolls. Action figures. Never call them dolls. Marketing suicide. Sorry about that, but this is a misogynist's world. Food production is still going, but it's the factories and processing that's worst hit. The Kaiju head for the highest population densities, so factories get destroyed. The only food that we get now is… healthy," Tony spat that last word like it was poison.

"I have only ever seen you eat healthy food."

"Again, it's the principle of the thing. It's all great when it's my choice, but when we can't get coffee because the shipping routes got some giant dinosaur eating boats? That's just not on! And anyway, it's un-American! We're supposed to be eating nothing but white bread and processed crap. All these 'organic because the pesticide factory was destroyed' food is just un-American."

"I have never really developed a taste for your over processed food," Loki stated.

"Except for anything with sugar, right?"

Loki stuffed a handful of M&Ms in his mouth and grinned around the cracked candy that stuck in his teeth. "How are the repairs on my Jaeger?"

"Fine. Everything inside is fine – all mechanisation, servos, etc., all good. The damage is superficial, and we'll have it sorted out by…" Tony looked at his watch. "now. Should be fine by now. Despite the size, it's not like this is something new. Repairing the outside is easy. I've got hundreds of little worker bees on scaffolding welding all the bits and pieces back together as soon as a Jaeger comes back from a fight, and it'll be finished by now. We don't have the luxury of time between attacks. Hey, have you thought of your paint job, yet? We need to think of some good colours. I mean, are you going for the whole Australian thing?"

"Australian?" Loki queried.

"Green and gold. Their national colours. Despite their flag being the ol' Red, White, and Blue. I never got how that works. So, green and gold? Your colours, right?"

Loki chomped another couple of M&Ms, trying to make them last. "My colours are the colours of the Captain of the Guard. Odin declared these…" He trailed off.

"What?"

"It just occurred to me that green is the colour the Jotnar wear. Their horns and… I don't know what it is; they seem to have patches of jade on their bodies. Could be natural or armour, I don't know, but all of their clothing is green. I don't know if that is coincidence or…"

"Or if big daddy was conditioning you right from the start."

Loki's stomach turned. "Thor said I was mad to believe such things of Odin."

"Yeah, well, welcome to the daddy issues club. My father was a drunk and a braggart who couldn't give two shits whether I lived or died, or at least that's the way he made me feel, and I spent my entire life trying to live up to his standards to get him to love me. Still do, much as I hate it. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in therapy and I'm still trying to make daddy proud. Natasha's family sold her like so much meat. Clint ran away to the circus to get away from his troubles. Bruce murdered his father – totally justified from what I understand. Steve's the only one who doesn't have major father issues, and that's because he grew up without one. So… you want to bad mouth big bad daddy? Feel free. No one here's going to contradict you and say you should forgive and forget and buy the old man some slippers for Father's day."

"Are you speaking honestly, or are you trying to manipulate me into sympathising with you more deeply?" Loki asked, and ate the last M&M, trying to hide the irritation behind his question.

Tony turned to look at him in some surprise, but then smiled brightly. "Both? Neither? Using you as cheap therapy since Bruce won't let me spend hours telling him all my woes anymore?"

"I should think Bruce Banner has enough to worry about without playing amateur therapist."

"Yeah, that's what he said! As if listening to me was some kind of chore! But seriously, his idea of weaponising some sort of virus to attack the Kaiju hive mind? I'm not sure that's where the money is."

Loki pondered the idea for a moment: "How would you transmit a virus back to their point of origin?"

"Exactly!"

"If there was a way to send the virus back through the breach…" Loki mused.

"Yeah? You got an idea?"

Loki shook his head, and Tony paced harder. "So, how you fitting in?"

Loki couldn't quite get what was happening with Tony. He was almost manic, as if he was itching to get back to his machines, but so unsettled.

"It is not my goal to fit in," Loki said. "It is my goal-"

"To rule us all with an iron fist? Force us all to kneel? Something like that?"

"Maybe one day. There is not a lot left here to rule, though."

"No, there really isn't, you're right. You're an asshole, but you're right. Not a lot left to rule." Tony's voice got a little distant and softer, "Not like it used to be. I miss the way it was. When I was the Merchant of Death we used to laugh in the press about bombing cities in the Middle East back to the Stone Age. When you live in those places, it's pretty horrible. People dying around you from the lack of things we all take so much for granted. I had some pretty bad experiences in the Middle East, but I never blamed the day-to-day people there. They really had nothing. It took me a lot of pain to see that. And now I'm seeing my own city like that. Like the Kaiju bombed us back to the stone age."

"You're a long way from that," Loki said. "You're being over dramatic. That's my routine, not yours.

"I miss being rich," Tony said, facing the inside of the cell door with its metal struts and dirty orange paint. "I miss being rich. I miss 'being rich' meaning something. I've got billions of dollars and nothing to spend it on."

"It means something to Steve Rogers."

"He likes living in the past. He's into Yoga now. Did you go to his class? I always hate saying no, he gives me those eyes, you know?" He turned and gave Loki a pretty passable impression of Steve Roger's puppy dog eyes. "Maybe next time he asks I'll go and stretch and bend a little."

Loki made a mental note that Yoga was probably an exercise, not a dairy product.

"Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. I'm sure it'll be better than the disco he's been talking about arranging." Tony shook his head sadly, just continuing on his conversation all by himself. "Disco… all the last 70 years' worth of music and he decides he likes disco best. Seriously, next time Steve invites us to a yoga class, let's go. We can muck around at the back of the class like assholes and maybe prevent him perpetrating the horror that is Disco."

With no idea to what he was agreeing, Loki shrugged acceptance. He wasn't sure if Tony was genuinely inviting him to something, or just making noise. If there was one thing Loki had learned about Tony over the years of their 'acquaintance' it was that Tony liked making noise. Huge explosions more than his own voice, but he'd take his own chatter if he couldn't make something go bang.

"So, how do you handle this tiny little room?" Tony asked, eyes flitting around. Loki knew that Tony had spent time trapped in a cave. If anyone would get that Loki wouldn't appreciate this tiny room, he wasn't surprised it was Tony.

"I go for walks. In the night," Tony didn't need to know where Loki would end up. If Tony found out Loki liked to stare through the giant port hole in Fury's office, there would almost certainly be yet another rant about misplaced daddy issues.

"Not many places to go. Couldn't you teleport out? Go visit your squirrels?"

"I could, but that would not be in the spirit of things. Besides, how would you contact me if there was a fight?"

"You've never heard of a mobile phone?"

Loki cocked his head to one side, "I'm not entirely sure why, but although I live in your midst, I am not yet ready to give you my phone number."

"You think S.H.I.E.L.D.'s gonna start pestering you for a date? Fury's going to make 3am drunk phone calls? Coulson's going to butt dial you?"

Loki laughed, "I think that a 3am drunken phone call from Nick Fury would be greatly amusing!"

"Hey, you, mother fucker, why you dump me? Get a haircut and a job! I got my eye on you!" Tony did a horrible impression of Fury, but Loki laughed anyway.

Loki then shape shifted himself into Fury, and gave Tony a one eyed glare, "Get back to work and make sure Loki's Jaeger is perfect before he goes into battle next time!"

Tony jumped back, "Woah… okay, that's spooky. Also? Totally unfair! My impressions are great! How can I compete with that?"

"Your impressions are great?" Loki gave Tony a sardonic side-eye as he morphed back into his own form.

"Hey, you haven't seen my Hulk!" Tony started to puff himself up and flex his biceps, but then the alarm went off.

"Kaiju!" they shouted in unison.

And they both headed out at full speed, Loki ran his fingers over the picture of him feeding the squirrels in the park as he left, and he still didn't know why Tony had even been there in the first place, but as Tony ran towards the hanger he shouted out, “Loki – I loaded up the coolant reserves for you!” and Loki forgot to keep wondering.

Chapter Text

Chapter Thirteen: "Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it."

Loki was in the Jaeger, moving smoothly with his team while Fitz excitedly called out it was a triple incident. Loki's Jaeger was now even messier than it had appeared before. During his fight, the Kaiju had pulled away the same panel on the Jaeger's face that it had pulled away when the previous pilots had been in charge, as if that pilot side was cursed. The welds were huge and jagged and to Loki they looked like battle scars of great honour. An Aesir warrior with such scars would be telling his story for free ale at every inn on Asgard! Or covering them with a gold eye-patch.

As they walked out from the helicopter drop to the Kaiju sighting, he reached up and scratched at the scars. He could almost feel giant metal fingers against his giant metal face through the neural link as the Jaeger’s fingers probed the wound. It was almost satisfying.

Kerberos Panzer was loading up next to him. It was the smallest and lightest of all of the Jaegers currently in circulation, and the pilots, Tomiko and Takeshi were tiny to match. Compared to Loki, anyway. He'd only spoken to the twins briefly in training, and found them to be delightfully cheerful, with an absolutely irrepressible, almost gleefully savage attitude towards battle. In that way, they were like Thor. Battle was glorious and gave them great joy. Although it would take both of them squashed together, plus a triplet, to make up Thor's size. Their Jaeger was the same. A beautiful creature, quite sleek and pale, and the huge rising sun on its chest was loaded with at least ten major rocket launchers. Small, but sharp and deadly. Loki was looking forward to seeing them in action, to see if they had the speed he was failing to find in his own Jaeger.

Skua Anetia, the unimaginatively committee-named Jaeger jointly funded through the UN by all of those countries who wanted to help but could not afford their own Jaeger, was taking point. Loki hadn't met the team yet as they were prone to keeping to themselves, but his understanding was that the pilots, both survivors of the Lord's Resistance Army, survivors again of a Catholic charity rescue compound, were brutal and efficient fighters. They weren't related nor had they even been raised in the same village before they'd been taken, but the girls' experiences had been almost identical, and rumour was it was their fury and their anger that drove them in battle. The humans who acted as Loki's team spoke of them with a quiet reverence, and said that the girls, Masani and Kissa, mentally painted the faces of their tormentors on the faces of every Kaiju they fought. They were another of Fury’s gambles, and they had paid off beautifully. They should have had time to train together before going into battle, but they would have to rely on Fitz to guide them in the fight instead.

Loki grinned, two men and three women heading into battle. The Aesir would not be happy. They tolerated Sif because Thor tolerated Sif, but they had never liked that the Vikings, those that had modelled themselves on the Aesir ways, had allowed their women to be warriors. Odin had declared it primitive, and over time the Aesir women had followed, settling into being wives and mothers in a time of gentle peace under Odin's all-encompassing tyranny. But from Loki's point of view, any Aesir. Any warrior anywhere, would be lucky to have the girls at their back, and the twins at their side heading into battle.

"Three Kaiju sightings at 2 o'clock to your current position, about a quarter mile," Fitz's voice came over their comms, tight and excited as usual. He had plenty of personal reasons to see the Kaiju gone, not just his world but his friends and family. He watched like a hyperactive Hawk each step the Jaeger's took, and did his best to make sure the metal giants never put a foot wrong. It surprised Loki, on a visceral level, just now quickly he'd come to trust Fitz's directions, the man still seemed like a silly child to him, despite the scars on the mortal's face and the scars on his soul, but he could trust the blood lust in Fitz's voice. A child who'd spent a childhood sheltered and cared for because of his brilliance, but had found his maturity wading through the blood of his comrades. Loki knew that voice, he'd heard it in the warriors he'd fought against. The Aesir never sounded like this – they were protected and cosseted. Since Odin's wars they had known nothing other than the occasional skirmish, well-armed and so far ahead of the enemy it was nothing but fun. The Aesir had never known loss or tragedy. Their losses were in the training field, the tavern against the rakehell, or against the occasional bandit in the woods. But Loki knew loss and defeat. He knew that anger and that fierce burning need to see the entrails of the enemy. He knew it well. He recognised it in Fitz and strode across the Earth's ocean now, turning himself into a blade for Fitz and the other humans to find their vengeance. Loki was happy to make this battle personal on behalf of the fragile humans, since his own personal enemies were so far beyond his reach.

He grinned. He knew this smile. All teeth, savage. If he'd been Jotun his teeth would have been pointed and stained blue and he'd watched them fight before. The Jotun's always smiled. They smiled like Earth's baboons, a display of teeth, 'I will rip your throat out' written across their lips. This was Loki's smile and he wondered if it had been his father's smile. No one could see it now and be disconcerted by the display, like they had before, and he wondered if Stark would agree to painting huge, pointed, savage teeth across the face of his Jaeger when they finally got around to deciding a colour scheme.

"Good luck, Mulogo. Good luck, Babirye and Magomu," Masani whispered over the comms, and her voice was tight and angry. Loki could hear the blood lust in her voice. He grinned at the nickname, heard her language as it was through the Allspeak. She'd heard of him, then. Wizard. How long until Tony added to his collection?

"Good fighting," Loki said back, and laughed with anticipation, adrenaline coursing through his blood. He started to run, heaving his machine forward, hearing the crashing waves of the others running behind and beside him, and panted with blood lust, not exertion.

Two Kaiju lumbered through the oceans together, almost in step as they cleared the water with ease. No sign of the third. The two Kaiju they could see were both broad and almost squat, like jagged hippos: all mouth and muscle.

Kerberos: "Where's the third one?"

Fitz: "It's on my screen. I can see all three swimming together, all category four!"

Loki: "Two running towards us. No sign of the third."

Skua: "It's swimming!"

Fitz: "Confirmed, we have a swimmer. It's coming up on your starboard side!"

"I'm stopping here, shoulder rockets launching," Loki planted his Jaeger solidly on the sea floor and let three rockets from one shoulder go straight to the Kaiju in the middle. Two skimmed its belly, opening it up in a broad shallow line, ribs showing, but not tearing out its belly, and one going deep into its shoulder, blowing out the joint.

Skua planted in the same way, throwing back her arms and launching the top row of rockets straight into the Kaiju's face. It was a good hit, all five rockets making contact, three of them ripping into the meat around the Kaiju's eyes and cheeks. It roared and threw its head around in pain, running towards the Skua in giant, bounding strides. Skua screamed, one or both of her pilots, a noise Loki could not decipher as either joy or rage, and ran forward to meet it head on.

The Kerberos was scanning the water, looking for the swimmer, so Loki ignored them both and headed for the Kaiju in the middle. He put his head down and ran, pushing back the Jaeger that fought against him.

"Come, monster," he whispered, "Come grapple with me in this sea so alien to us both. I stand between you and all the insects you would crush beneath your feet, so come to me and let me vent my rage upon you."

And it did. It was the biggest he'd seen yet, and it hit against him as his second round of shoulder rockets hit against it, and the impact drove him back in the water, tearing through the sea bed with his giant metal feet. It screamed and slammed against him again, and he loaded the weapons in his chest to blast it. It swung to one side at the last moment, taking most of the impact against its shoulder, reared back and slammed down full weight against his chest. This brute was using sheer strength, rather than the speed and agility of his previous conquests.

Its head opened up, more than just a mouth opening, but again Loki was reminded of the earth animal hippopotamus as it opened up almost entirely, wide enough to take in a twenty story earth building, or one of Asgard's golden towers. That massive mouth was wrapped around Loki's head and the Kaiju wrapped its arms around Loki's chest, pinning one arm before he could get away from it. He fired his plasma canon directly into the Kaiju's body, but it just rocked back, screaming and raining blue blood all over the Jaeger.

Blinded by the mouth over his face plate, Loki pulled his sword and started carving at the Jaeger.

He ignored the shouting that came over his comms as the Shatterdome shouted instructions and information to all three Jaegers. The arm that pinned him dug claws in deep, trying to tear the plates away from the back of his Jaeger, and he desperately tried to cut away the other hand, the two of them dancing an obscene and ungainly waltz in the water as they tore at each other in close quarters.

He could hear Skua fighting with the other Jaeger, but nothing from Kerberos. The Shatterdome was still giving instructions, it sounded like Kerberos was hunting the Swimmer and as yet unsuccessful in intercepting the fast moving monster.

Loki wasn't sure, but it sounded like Fury was calling to get a fourth Jaeger out into battle. He ignored it all, trying to get free of the death hug from the behemoth that gripped him, as it tried to push up and use its back legs to climb him, too. If it could get all of its broad, massively clawed feet into Loki's Jaeger, it would peel him like a grapefruit. The arm he was stabbing tried to get hold of his shoulder, tried to rip his own arm off, and his sword scraped bone ineptly. It took another stab, awkward and inefficient at such close quarters, to finally get the Kaiju's hand off, but only at the wrist. It continued to use its hand like a club, and Loki could feel the impact of each blow like thunder.

The weight of the Kaiju pushed him back and down, and he struggled to hold up the weight of the Jaeger as well as the Kaiju as it tried to push him under the water. He could hear his own voice grunting, and screamed in anger himself as he realised it was winning like this. By sheer weight and strength it was pushing him down.

His skill had never been sheer brute force, but that's how this Kaiju was forcing him to fight. Close like this, his head actually in the Kaiju's mouth, he couldn't get any impact with his tiny knives, and it was taking only the sword blows that he could land by feel. He needed to bring his speed to bear. If this had been a fight on the ground, in his own skin only, he would have been using illusions and doubles. If he could throw another giant Jaeger illusion, perhaps he could distract this creature, but he had barely enough strength to push this huge machine along, never mind make doubles.

He knew that if he tried to pull away, he'd probably have his head torn off, so instead he pushed forward. Like when Freya's cats would grab and bite at a too-trusting hand, it was never a good idea to pull away from those teeth and claws, but to push in and make the animal gag, so that's what he did this time. He got his feet firm, and started to push forward, jamming his head right down the throat of the Kaiju.

He pushed forward as it gagged, and he could feel the teeth grinding against his Jaeger's neck. For a moment he considered releasing 'coolant' against the creature, but at such close quarters he would possibly freeze his machine as well. He needed more distance before he could unleash that particular weapon.

As it tried to push him back he started firing the cannon in his wrist. No finesse to the shots – he just blindly pushed the gun against whatever meat he could find and knew he'd scored a hit each time the Kaiju roared and its body jerked. Its feet were digging claws into the metal of his knees and thighs, and he just let himself lean forward into the monster, and let the weight of the Jaeger take them both forward. This thing had hundreds of tonnes of extra weight on him, so he tried to use that against it. It gagged and released his left arm so that it could try to push him back, and he used the opportunity to grab hold of its jaw and just start pulling away handfuls of its jowls and flesh. Enormous teeth were ripped away with its gums and bits of jaw bone, and finally Loki could see what he was doing again.

He kept hacking with the sword. This felt like a training match from his childhood, awkward and painfully unskilled, hacking at another child with wooden swords, leaving each combatant bruised and sore and embarrassed and trying not to cry. The Kaiju got its feet back under it, and launched forward again, but Loki reached deep into its throat before it could bite his head again, and grabbed hold of the base of its tongue. He threw his whole body backwards, and the tongue ripped away, the Kaiju too big and heavy to follow his motions fast enough. Blood sprayed, and it screamed, tossing its head and covering half a mile of ocean in blue ammonia.

It was choking on its own blood, but that didn't stop it – it sprayed the blood at Loki, still trying to blind his Jaeger. It drew back, like a drunken prize fighter, and made to hurl another blow, but Loki met that with the last juice from his plasma cannon, blowing off its other hand, and it just came forward, once again trying to crush him through its sheer size. Loki grabbed a protrusion on its head, not sure if that was decorative or another meaty weapon, but used it to hold its head while he hacked at it with his sword. It pushed forward again, using the power in its hind legs to try to get Loki down. Half of its jaw and the claws on the back of its legs all it had to fight with now, but it was still enough to hold Loki in place, stop him from fighting alongside the other Jaegers, and he just kept hacking at it, shoulders, rib cage, using the sword to empty it of its entrails with trailed behind it, luminous and oddly beautiful in the dark ocean waters. The phosphorous leaked and stained the water, lighting up the depths enough that Loki could see its feet and aimed well, finally, taking its leg off at the knee.

It fell into the ocean in front of him, and he stood back, breathing heavily, and laughed a little. It was a wet and exhausted laugh, and this had been a wet and disgusting battle. He raised the sword again, and just kept hacking at its head until it stopped moving and the message came over his comms to say it was dead.

He hadn't been in such an awkward and unskilled fight in a millennium, and his trainer would have been furious, and Thor and his friends would not have spoken to him at any victory feasts, for fighting like an English monk and embarrassing them so, but Loki didn't care. He'd won, and his enemy was literally in pieces, and now he could breathe again.

"Great work, Loki!" there were some cheers from the team and Fitz sounded happy, "Skua is winning, but could use a hand, and Kerberos is still chasing the swimmer. Help Skua now!"

Loki turned, feeling very single ounce of metal that encased him drag him back towards the water and the chunks of blue, bleeding flesh in the water behind him. He growled under his breath, forcing the Jaeger to move, making it run towards where the Skua was facing a similar battle. The monstrous Kaiju was trying to overwhelm the Skua by weight, but the Skua was holding off its head with one hand, while pumping rounds of ammunition into it side. They were doing well, better than Loki, as they'd managed to keep their vision clear. Loki stopped a good distance away, and used some of his throwing knives, severing its spine so that it would fall backwards, sending them into its neck and its one remaining eye.

It didn't take long for the Skua pilots to finish and stand back, and the remains of the second Kaiju to fall into the water. The Skua made a double fisted gesture of victory.

This is what he should have done from the start, Loki thought, stood back and fought from a distance as he'd done most of his life, rather than trying to revel in the weight and might of the Jaeger and use it to bludgeon an enemy at close range. He wasn't Thor, and he couldn't ever pretend to be, not when it put his life, or the lives of his fellow soldiers in danger.

Fitz came over the comms, "Skua, Force Fire, the Kerberos needs help. The swimmer was also a flier and it's made it inland. The Raptor Assassin can't get ready in time, and it's taken too long for Kerberos to shoot the Kaiju down where they can stop it."

Loki had never seen a flier before, although he'd heard rumours from the biologists that one was coming. They were predicting the evolution of these creatures at astonishingly accurate levels. One that could swim by them, then fly onto land was possibly a game changer. He wondered if Tony Stark would develop a Jaeger that could fly, too. He'd noticed none of the Jaegers used arc technology, although he'd seen some of the holo-sketches in Tony's workrooms that showed the possibilities. How long until Tony built a Jaeger with the same flight capable technology as in the old Iron Man suits?

He missed being able to throw magic into his battles, but it was always such a fight just to get the Jaeger to move. He could fight slightly better than the human pilots, but only just. The metal giant took too much out of him to let him throw a spell. If his magic was strong enough, he could teleport himself and the Jaeger to wherever he was needed. He could make doubles, both illusionary and solid, of the Jaeger. He filled his head with all the impossible fantasies of fighting, grinning like a maniac under the Jaeger's mask just imagining it, but the smile slid as he thought Thor would probably have been strong enough to still wield Mjolnir in this form, maybe Thor would have made an even better pilot, but maybe there was no Thor anymore.

He banished the thought and concentrated on fantasies of a magically powered Jaeger instead. It distracted him from the difficulty of the run back to the location of the flier and Kerberos, and his smile returned. It took what seemed an age to pick their way through the damaged city, victim of so many Kaiju attacks, to the scene of the fight. Loki recognised many of his favourite restaurants and one really lovely library, all of which were still standing, but a cinema where he had wasted many an afternoon was missing the entire front of the building, crushed under one giant foot. His battle joy became annoyance and anger as he realised this battle had been taking place too close to his favourite stomping grounds. He'd teleported into this part of the city many times as it was so close to his own apartment.

The flying Kaiju was badly injured by the time Force Fire and the Skua Anetia arrived. The Kerberos had already ripped off its wings to ground it, but the two giants were fighting hard and they were fighting in populated territory.

"Go carefully, guys!" Fitz called out. "Loki, you've never fought in an populated area, tread carefully! Skau, same deal!"

They ran through the streets. By the trail of destruction Kerberos had been fighting the Kaiju through the city and out the other side. Most of the city had been vacated – the population used to running, hiding, evacuating, or burrowing into the ground whenever the sirens went off – but they all still stepped very carefully.

The Kerberos had planted herself in the remains of a building site, long since abandoned, a hand wrapped around the leg of the Kaiju, which beat against her with both arms and the free leg. Both the Kerberos and the Kaiju were badly damaged, both covered in sprays of blue blood, the Kerberos not using her left arm and her weapons obviously depleted, but she hung on until the other two Jaeger's got within range, anchoring the Kaiju until the others got closer.

The Skua stepped carefully through the buildings, Loki not far behind. The Skua blasted what had to be her last shot from the plasma cannon, the blast destroying the kneecap and tail of the Kaiju, and Loki used his sword to sever its spinal column, the Kerberos being able to hold it steady enough for both attacks to finally bring the creature down. Kerberos reached down into the wound left by Loki's blade and pulled out a handful of lung and other assorted viscera, just making sure.

Kerberos held the guts to the sky in a gesture of victory and Loki mirrored it. When Kerberos put up one huge metal hand, Loki mirrored it and the huge machines carefully gave each other clanging high-fives.

In single file the three giants walked back through the city. Skua Anetia never missed a step, picking her way as delicately through the city scape as if each building was made of spun sugar. It was a beautiful and delicate ballet. The Kerberos Panzer, both pilots talking to each other and command in adrenaline-fuelled excitement, followed in her footsteps exactly, over reaching slightly to make up for their shorter stride.

Loki smiled softly at the idea of one of these metal giants being 'smaller', since they all towered over the sky scrapers they'd just protected.

"Well done! Well done!" Kerberos was laughing. "Well done, all!"

"We are a formidable band of warriors," Loki agreed. "None shall stand against us. No monster shall get past!"

Skua was quiet, one of the pilots responding with a voice soft yet pleased, "Be careful, you challenge the gods."

"I am a god!" Loki corrected. "Or, I was one, once. Now we wear the armour of gods, do we not? We walk in the shoes of giants and we slay dragons. Does this not make us gods yet again?"

"Yes! Gods!" The Kerberos pilots were excited and buzzing on their adrenaline, and stepped past and out into the water to trudge to the pick-up point. Skua waited to follow, trying to step straight from the hard edge of the harbour rather than step on the delicate piers and marinas that laced worked the edge of the water, but her steps caused tiny tidal waves that threatened the swamp the boats as she followed along towards home.

Loki waited his turn to step off at the strongest point, and looked down at the people who milled around. They should have been evacuated, but had hidden instead. No time, no funds, no chance to get away before the Kaiju came, but they had survived. Thanks to Loki and the other Jaegers they had a chance to live another day and witness another attack. They were waving at the Jaegers, cheering, but their voices were too far away to be heard.

He looked down at the tiny people below. Ants. Everyone one of them. He could crush them by the tens under his giant metal boot. He wondered if any of them wore his face on a T-shirt, rushed into mass production although Tony Stark had said the quality was high. American made by American Apparel since there was no more shipping of goods from China or India. The Kaiju destroyed every tanker in the ocean. Every fishing boat and dredger. The oceans were teeming with a life they'd not seen in years – the return of sharks and sardines - but of course the people were starving. Loki wondered if they had plans to buy his action figures instead of tuna. He moved carefully, kneeling down, peering at the tiny, tiny little faces. Some of them waved. He waved back, huge metal hand, and the crowd went nuts. They all started to jump and wave and he could hear the names as they shouted to him. 'Force Fire' and then 'Loki'. 'Loki' was easier to shout and they all called out in unison, chanting and cheering. He peered at them and smiled and wished the Jaeger could smile with him, because this was worship. If he'd shouted at them to kneel now, they would do so willingly, and laugh and wave and cheer. Guilt stabbed through him once again, but he ignored it. These humans were fickle and strange, and although many would lynch him on sight, those whose lives he'd saved today would buy him drinks and pester for autographs and if it wasn't so difficult to get out of the Jaeger, maybe he'd join them and have sweet cocktails made with sugar and lime juice and pose for photographs and enjoy the way they worshipped the Jaeger pilots as they had worshipped their gods of old.

He focused the Jaeger's vision in with a quick verbal request, looking more closely at their faces. All colours and styles, but they were all a little grubby – perhaps they had been too close to a blast and picked up ash and dirt, but they were all healthy looking. Very few had cuts and bruises.

A small boy, human age around eight or nine, was leaning against a wall. His grey T-shirt had a picture of The Hulk roaring at the sky, and he had smears of dirt and a little blood across his face but no visible wound. Thin as a child of that age would normally appear, pale faced and a little afraid still, shaking from the shock of it, but he waved up at Loki tremulously. His hair was black, and fell back from his face, a little too long, messy and dusty.

The pain ripped through Loki's chest like a blow from Surtur's sword, agonising, sudden, burning. The child looked so like one of his own. Full of innocence and purity and the prophecy of death.

The boy looked up, face tilted towards the giant that had saved his city, not smiling, still afraid and white with shock, but he waved up at Loki anyway, a half-hearted acknowledgement, and gave a little hop in place. Excited? Unspent adrenaline? Loki didn't know.

The face, small jaw and big eyes, could have been any of Loki's children. The children who had been prophesised monsters, or killed as punishment for Loki's indiscretions. Those that had to die to ensure the safety of Odin, Thor, Asgard.

Odin had long since erased Loki's memories of his children – or at least he'd tried. A moment of pity in the face of Loki's relentless, unceasing grief.

Only vague impressions remained. And Loki had been grateful! He could almost feel the overwhelming distress and horror of his lost children, but Odin's fingers, stirring his mind and memories like a bowl of porridge, had locked it out of reach, and he'd been so thankful. The relief of his grief. The loss of his children – it had to be done. They had to go. So Odin had said. So Frigga had prophesied. So Thor had demanded.

But now he reached for those memories and tried to grasp the broken, tattered threads of all that remained of his lost babes. They'd been stolen from him, just as he'd been stolen from his own family, and the ripping pain in his chest told him it had been because they would have given him away. What if the babes he'd had with his mortal lover all those centuries ago had grown too tall? What if Eisa or Einmyria had turned from flame to ice? What if Narvi or Vali had developed Jotun skin markings? What if Frenris or Jorgi had turned blue? What if little Hela…

But what if she had frozen people? Wouldn't that look like dead flesh, gangrenous and black…? Half dead, half alive, that's the way Frigga had described her, Loki remembered what he'd been told, when they'd told him why they'd taken her away. He'd seen nothing but perfection, half dark and half pale. But if her touch caused death, so she'd had to go where people would be safe… but… but what if her touch had been the touch of cold? With every brush of flesh Odin's lies would have been laid bare. Every child Loki had had, and had forgotten, and every child he'd had when he'd forgotten to stop having more children to fall victim to Odin, every one of them would have been a chance that Odin's theft of his enemy's child would have been revealed.

Loki didn't know if that was the why, if that was the fact, but he made it the truth.

He reached down his hand, a finger bigger than a human bus, and held still while the little boy with the wild black hair and Laufey's cheekbones reached up and placed a hand against his finger tip.

The child that looked like his own. And it became truth to Loki that Odin had destroyed Loki's children to protect his own honour.

And it became truth that Asgard deserved the Kaiju.

Chapter Text

Chapter Fourteen: Verzweiflung

The boy haunted Loki all the way back to the Shatterdome. His tiny hand an imaginary imprint of warmth against Loki's finger. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together thoughtfully on the way back, still going over and over in his head, what he remembered, what he misremembered, trying to chase down the truth. Whatever it was, it was long gone and so badly damaged that he was just filling in the gaps with fantasies and poking at them like poking his tongue into a broken tooth. The noise of giant metal fingers grinding together irritated him, but he didn't stop.

It didn't help that the usual headache was burning from the struggle of pushing the Jaeger along, and his vision blurred across the left hand side of his view. There was a fading numbness around the left side of his mouth, his upper lip, and he would have liked to have rubbed it but he would probably smash a giant metal hand into his giant metal head if he tried.

The Kerberos Panzer was almost dancing to the pick-up point, the pilots laughing and cheering along with the Shatterdome staff who tuned in over their head sets. Skua was quieter, but she walked tall and proud. There would be celebrations, and trading cards already being print, ready to go and help fund the Jaeger program, and calm and inspire the population.

Loki wondered if his action figures were designed yet, or in production, and wondered how many people would buy them. Would children play with them? Would Tony take the trousers off to see what it looked like underneath. Would the little boy with the wild black hair play with one and would Loki's avatar win or lose against a tiny plastic Kaiju. Or would other humans burn the figures in effigy for all the horrible and cruel things he'd done?

He distracted himself with thoughts of his squirrels. He should go visit. He could teleport out and check on Annabelle. He'd helped with her babies, who were grown and scattered around the park, and she'd probably have more this season. He should grab a book and some food from the cafeteria, tiny blueberry pancakes with genuine fake blueberries, and sit under his tree and feed his squirrels. The would come and run all over him, he'd throw the ridiculous creatures in the air and they'd come back, pretend bite at his fingers, snatch bits of food and run away to hide them and come back again. Little silly lives full of little silly worries. Their park was close to the area where the Kaiju had been this day, and he should go back and check. In the time he'd been gone, new babies would have been born. Maybe the exodus of people from the area of the Kaiju landing would have been through their park and that could have caused damage, or if people had evacuated, who knows when the squirrels would find hand outs and scraps again?

Loki made up his mind. After the celebrations he'd put a few faux blueberry pancakes into his inter-dimensional pocket and go visit his silly little friends.

But first, there would be celebrations. And unlike celebrations on Asgard, they would be about him. And the other pilots. And their mighty deeds. And they would all be worthy. No one in the shadows. No one told their contribution hadn't been of value because the battle had been won with magic or giant robots. It would be all warriors, pitiful, scraped together meals, and absolute approval. Loki shook off the ancient thoughts of long lost children, letting them fall into the well of lies that Odin had made in his mind, sinking beneath the water like they were drowning alive in Midgard's oceans, but it was easy to let them go, yet again, and focus on the here and now and the easy and the bright and the silver. That's how he'd survived in the past, that's how he'd survive now.

There were horrors under the water. Kaiju and drowning children, but there were simple things to draw focus instead, sparkling and simple, and the Sky Walker knew how to fly away from problems, rather than smash them, and this time he was ready to soar.

He was ready to ignore the headaches, the blurring in his vision, the black spot in front of his left eye and the fact that it was harder than usual to lift his left leg in the giant metal suit.

He had squirrels and parties to worry about instead.

---]====>

The party was in full swing by the time they all returned. Well, by party… a few people were cheering and the mood was light and non-alcoholic drinks were flowing. Everyone else just looked tired and relieved.

"This is sparkling grape juice," Tony pushed a red plastic cup at Loki. "Non-alcoholic. Have you ever heard of anything more horrifying?"

"Yes," Loki answered honestly, and took a sip. It was delicious and he gulped it down to quench his thirst. The weakness in his limbs was making him shake and he dropped into a chair to hide it as simple post-fight exhaustion.

"What is it like?" Tony leaned in and asked with the desperate urgency of long-term alcoholic, but his breath smelt of nothing but cheap, fizzy grape juice.

"Sweeter than expected and quite refreshing."

"What? No! What? Hey, you're not an idiot; you know what I'm talking about, dumbass!"

Loki peered at Tony in genuine confusion. He was exhausted, and he was still seeing things through a red-toned blur, even though the fight had been a mere few hours and in battles on behalf of Asgard it was not unusual for fights to go on for days, or weeks, or months, or years.

It was hard to focus, and he had an idea he was missing the obvious – something he never usually did. He was the smartest person in all of Asgard! Although, something he'd learned since being on Midgard was that didn't really count for much. The Asir were not great thinkers, and Asgard's best was Midgard's upper-average. He looked into his cup, wondering if the answer was there, wondering if he could have a refill, although he'd prefer something non-non-alcoholic.

"Being in the suit, the Jaeger. What's it like?" Tony asked, dragging a metal chair over so that they were sitting knee to knee.

In the midst of his confusion and exhaustion, it did take Loki a moment to realise why Tony was so focussed, but then it clicked. "You miss it."

"Of course I miss it, you dumb bastard. Are you only just getting that? Everyone else knows it! You think they don't all look at me with pity? It's pathetic! Iron Man, the one who created the world's greatest suits of armour and made his fame fighting evil in a metal suit can't pilot a fucking Jaeger because he makes his partners' brains pop like a squashed grape! Every single one of you comes back elated and excited and you're the only one who doesn’t look at me like…"

Tony faded away, and Loki looked at him, head cocked, then to the ground before any sign of sympathy showed in his eyes. Tony was looking away, though, passing his red solo cup from hand to hand. "Of course I miss it. I hate their sympathy. And no one wants to talk about it because they feel sorry for me and they don't want to be seen to brag. Steve will, sometimes, but he can't wait to change the subject. He's the only one who doesn't go on and on about how great it is, because he genuinely hates it, so it's okay, you know?"

Loki nodded. "It's good. I won't lie. It's powerful. It's a second skin, but a giant second skin. But it limits my power, too."

Tony frowned. "It's not supposed to limit your power; it's supposed to enhance it. Why is it limiting you?"

Loki looked around, looking for another drink. His throat felt dry and parched, he felt dehydrated. "I can't use my full magic. I'm used to being able to create doubles, change shape, disappear and reappear behind the enemy. But I can't do that while wearing the giant Jaeger suit. I'm powerful, but I'm only as powerful as two humans in a Jaeger. Outside of a Jaeger suit, I'm as powerful as a hundred of you!"

"A hundred of us is nothing against a Kaiju."

"No, but I still miss being able to move quickly. Full frontal attacks based on weight and muscle may have been a part of my training, but they were never the best of my skills. I am having to go back the very early training of my childhood. But…" he'd gone off track, and wasn't answering Tony's question.

"It feels good, Tony. It feels powerful."

"I bet… you're very isolated in there. Listening to us. You wouldn't feel the outside world."

Loki narrowed his eyes, considering. "That is what appeals to you? Being locked in away from everything that could hurt you?"

"Everything could still hurt me. I'm made of meat, after all."

"Yes, but you enjoy the feeling of being locked in a suit of metal."

"Yeah, obviously," Tony rolled his eyes as if to say 'duh'. "You think I'm going to deny that? The suit, my first one, got me out of the worst situation of my life. With Yinsen's help, I got out and learned a whole new way of living. I was born as Ironman just the same as I was born as Tony Stark: screaming and covered in blood. The only difference was the first time around I was naked and the second time I was born I was wearing a huge metal suit. I miss fighting and winning and being in the suit."

"You're still using metal suits to win wars against Monsters, Tony."

"Yeah, yeah, don't try to pacify me. I'm not looking to be told how great I am, and how worthwhile my contributions are even though I can't drift with anyone, I just want to know what it feels like! Torture me, go on, tell me how great it feels."

"Have you never been able to take a Jaeger out?"

"A drift hasn't lasted more than a few seconds. It feels like hours, and the damage I do to other people lasts a very long time. Brains are slow to heal. I'm a bit…" he grinned with false modesty. "Special."

Loki nodded. "It feels good. Fighting the Kaiju. Worthy."

Tony didn't look happy with that answer, unsatisfied, but before he could pursue it more, Nick Fury came up to them and handed them half a bottle of good French Champaign. Looked like Nick had drunk the rest from the bottle himself, but he was far from compromised. Tony grinned and divided up the remains between his and Loki's red cups and they toasted each other and dropped the subject.

The lights flickered and went out, and Loki was on his feet, ready to run to the Jaeger, ready to fight again, but then they came on all broken and flickering, like stars, lights reflected from a shimmering mirrored ball in the ceiling.

"Oh, hell no!" Tony said, his voice full of horror.

But then the music came on, and it was truly terrible. Tony stormed off, arms over his head in a fury of indignation, but the rest of the crew in the room all just laughed and started to dance around. Terribly. Loki slurped down his champagne quickly, in readiness for some kind of battle.

Loki over heard the words: "Steve's disco!" and wondered if this was some terrible ritual or death rights that he could have prevented had he only indulged in Steve's Yoga instead. But some people were laughing and drinking non-alcoholic fizzy wine, and others were actually dancing. Badly. No one seemed to know the steps, until Steve came in, with a face serious with the concentration of a true leader and led them through some very set steps. They all lined up, circled their hands, gyrated their hips, and laughed along with Steve's attempts to create some sort of camaraderie.

After watching for a moment, he dropped his now empty cup and joined the end of the line. He had no idea what he was doing, but then it appeared that no one else did, and they all just followed along after Steve, laughing, dancing badly, and celebrating another win. Once again Loki was reminded of Asgard, but they were not drunk or assaulting each other, or trying to play games of one up-man-ship to see who could do the most harm, drink the most, destroy the most. They were joyfully expressing their victory, staying sober for the next fight, and yet still safely letting off steam. It wasn't as if Loki was unfamiliar with making a fool of himself, either, and this time everyone was equally silly.

It didn't take long for Loki to pick up the steps, and he danced along with everyone. Someone yelled, "Hey, this is line dancing! Aren't we meant to be doing disco?" but no one really cared. It was awful and it was fun and Loki soon started to laugh along with everyone else.

Natasha and Clint danced past – but they were waltzing. Perfectly in time to the disco music, but on Natasha's terms, and apparently Natasha only ever waltzed. Yet she did it perfectly, and made it look as if they were doing the correct steps, while everyone else was wrong. She led Clint around the floor in immaculate tempo with such confidence, that soon several of the Shatterdome engineers were following them in exactly the same way.

Banner was in the corner, by himself, his shirt over his head, having a great time all by himself. Then again, maybe Bruce was never all by himself, no matter how much he wanted to be, and maybe he was dancing with his inner Hulk. Looked like it was a good dance, though.

Fury walked back in. Stood for a moment. Shook his head. Muttered something that looked obscene. Walked right back out again.

"I tried to override the music!" Loki was pulled aside mid dance step by Tony, who frowned like thunder and screamed over the noise. "I tried to get the music changed to metal, but I think Steve got JARVIS to override me! That traitor listened to Steve instead of me! It's disco all the way down!"

Loki shrugged. He liked it. "My baby moves at midnight," he sang to Tony and circled his hands and gyrated in time with the others. "Goes right on to the dawn!"

Tony glared at him, pursed lips, hands on hips. "Well, if you're going to do it, at least do it right!"

He stepped to the front of the line, facing them all, glaring, arms crossed, and his glare had such power that for a moment some of the dancers stumbled, cowed by the disapproval that faced them. Tony stood, pointed abruptly to the ceiling, and promptly schooled them all in how to disco properly. Steve Rogers laughed with joy at Tony's joining in, and they all started to follow Tony instead.

They danced for hours, they danced until they dropped, laughing, until Steve was the only one left on the floor, Bruce was asleep in the corner – shirt still over his head, and Tony had finally, after making sure they all knew he was the greatest dancer, gone back to his workshop. They were all sweaty and silly and exhausted, and Loki's own physical exhaustion matched what he'd felt when he came out of the Jaeger, and he dropped back to his room, finally able to rest.

He lay on his bed, wondering whether to have a shower, happier than he could remember being in a very, very long time. He pushed the worries about Asgard and Thor away, and concentrated on being a part of this new kingdom. He was not a prince here, but he was a fine warrior, and they all recognised his contribution and he looked after them in return.

Their one-eyed king looked upon him with approval for his actions, even if he hadn't brought the magic they wanted. And if he ever looked on Loki with disappointment, it was no more than he bestowed on the rest of the disco-line-dancing fools and no one would be punished or humiliated for making fools of themselves.

"You should be dancing," Loki sang, softly and slightly off key, under his breath, and hauled himself off the bed, forcing himself towards the metal tube of his shower.

The water pressure was thin and weak and did little to pound the exhaustion from his muscles, but he sung stupid lyrics under his breath anyway. He could transport back to his flat. He wondered if it was okay? He hadn't seen if the Kaiju had come too close to his home, didn't seem to, but he could sneak back and check soon. Have a good long hot shower. The thought reminded him, just for a moment of the hot springs and waterfalls on Asgard, of spending the days with his brother, when they'd been boys, pretending to be on great quests, but really just fooling around in the water, playing at being mermen, annoying the actual real-life mermen and getting thrown out of the rivers. Turning into an otter, a salmon, hiding until Thor would cry, then feeling guilty and bribing him with sweet cakes until his brother was happy again. He shook off the memory, washed his hair, and made a date with himself to go back to his Midgardian house and check on his Netflix and his squirrels. Must remember the pancakes...

Finishing his weak shower, he magiced his hair dry and sat on his bed in borrowed pyjama pants and a T-shirt. It amused him that the T-shirt was a Captain America shirt, pre-Kaiju, sold to New York tourists, not official Stark Merchandise, but a cheap Taiwanese knock off. 'America' was spelled 'Wolverine', but the shield was perfectly rendered and it was comfortable. Stark would be angry if he saw it and Loki imagined he'd strut and threat until Loki replaced it with officially authorised merchandise, or, more likely, an Iron Man shirt instead.

There was a battered paperback he had yet to start. It looked like it had been passed around many of the Shatterdome personnel over the months. The cover was broken, the ink slightly smudged in some places, and when he held it to his face and inhaled, the pages smelled of the oil of hundreds of fingers. Books on Asgard were never like this. Books were expected to last for thousands of years so they would be spell protected and handled like great treasures. And then, so few would read them that they would not come in for such damage in the first place. The humans didn't treat the books like something precious – it was only the message contained within the pages that was important, not the pages themselves.

"The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat", read the title, and Loki assumed it would be amusing. Like everyone else in this place, he'd read whatever came along and be grateful.

Before he could get into the book, there was a knock on his door, the dull thunk of knuckle meat on metal. Polite, precise, purposeful.

"Come in, Agent Coulson."

"Phil, please," Coulson said, opening the door. "We're not actually called Agents anymore. Not since SHIELD was dismantled and we set up this program instead."

"Phil, then," Loki said with a well-practiced royal smile. "What can I do for you this evening?" Loki was still on a small high from the dancing and foolishness of the evening, on top of their victory, and his smile was almost genuine. He would have been happy to see the other man if he wasn't also suspicious.

Phil Coulson stood, hands clasped in front of himself, his face set and serious enough to hide the small smile he usually held naturally. Phil was wearing the face he wore when he told the families that the Jaeger pilots had died in battle. Or the face he wore when he told the pilots their families had died.

The only thing going through Loki's head, 'They heard from Asgard', and all the times he'd wished Odin dead, and all the ones who'd hurt him or betrayed him, and all the times he'd cursed them and struck out at them in his anger and his fear and his betrayal he found himself crumbling inside because he didn't want to know and he just wanted Thor back…

"The park, near your house," Phil started.

"The park?" Who cared about the park, if it wasn't about Thor… "The park…" Loki said again, realising. He squinted to hide his expression, knowing it was coming on sharp and uncontrolled.

"The Kaiju, the sheer size of its stride… before you or any of the other pilots could get there; it crushed everything in the park."

"The park?"

"I'm sorry, Loki. Your apartment was lost, but I know you probably don't care about material things, or Earthly things, but the park…"

"Annabelle?"

"There's nothing left. Most of the people were evacuated; there were very few human casualties, but the trees… The Kaiju bled heavily as it died, and you know what Kaiju blood does. It wasn't just that the trees that were crushed, the blood-"

"Thank you for telling me," Loki turned away, abruptly dismissing the human.

"If you need to talk to someone-"

"Thank you for telling me. I appreciate that you took the time. I would like to go to sleep now."

Phil opened his mouth to speak, thought again, and closed it, nodding in his deceptively kind way, his small, dreamy, ever-present smile understanding and thoughtful. "Good night, Loki. If you need to talk to anyone, we're all here for you."

Loki just frowned. "They were merely rodents. Their deaths would have been swift, their lives little shortened by the invasion of the Kaiju. I appreciate your attention, but I am weary. Good night."

Phil turned to leave, his hesitation at the doorway almost imperceptible, but he did Loki the honour of not trying to offer comfort again.

Just rodents. Like the human beings that bred and bred uncontrolled and spread across their planet, mindless and greedy. That was all they were. Stupid little animals that demanded hand-outs and couldn't cope as the human population that had supported them started to die off when a better predator moved in and showed them how meaningless their little lives really were.

Loki used his magic to turn off the lights, and sat on his bed in silence for a long time. Eventually he just rolled over and went to sleep.

After everything he'd lost. His life. His world. His family. He wasn't going to mourn for rodents.

For once, sleep started to come quickly, but he was just under when the next Kaiju battle started.

He's striding across the ocean in seconds, but the suit isn't dragging him back like it normally would and he realises it's quite manageably small. The Force Fire is barely larger than one of Ironman's old suits. He looks around for his backup Jaegers then realises he's alone. As he scans the ocean, he realises the normal horizon of Midgard is missing and he's looking over the waters of Asgard and he can watch the water fall over the edge into eternity. Eternally falling. Eternally replenishing. He remembers his own fall into eternity from this place and falls again, into the water, which closes over his head and he fights, struggling to get up before he goes over the edge and falls again into Thanos and Chitauri and pain and fear and torture, and then breaks free of the oceans and sees his fellow Jaeger. The Kaiju had come to Asgard and Loki knew he was the only one who could stop it, and he paused. The other Jaeger turned to look at him, and he could see it was enormous. The biggest he'd ever seen. It towered over Loki, painted silver, and Loki could see the cape that flew out from behind. It occurred to him that a red cape, big enough to cover a city block, would be a huge disadvantage in a battle, but then Thor would not be Thor if he wasn't surrounded by red. The red of his cape, the red of his enemies' blood.

The Jaeger turned, but it wasn't Thor, and Loki realised what he'd thought was Thor was nothing but another Kaiju, and the red was indeed blood, the blood of the Asir, pouring over it like rain, and the Thunder filled the sky, and anger filled Loki's heart. Anger at the Asir who turned their back on him when they saw what he was, and the father he'd trusted, and the brother he'd loved, but who hadn't loved him enough to forgive him, and the mother who died still speaking her lies, and anger at the Kaiju, too, that came to this world to destroy it when it was Loki's to destroy or protect, not some monster from another realm. He was a hundred feet high, he was made of iron and hatred and grief.

Glorious battle would come, and Loki braced his feet against the shallow waters of Asgard's ocean, then ran towards the monster, ran into the blood storm that surrounded them both and started to tear at it with hands, claws, teeth. It roared and screamed as he tore its flesh, and reached one enormous hand to the sky to call down Thunder upon them both. The Thunder lit the blood, burned it, but there was no smell of burning flesh, just more blood. Loki fought the creature, tore at it, and both he and the creature screamed, and Loki realised he couldn't move his feet, that both he and the Kaiju had become mired in the mud that bubbled up around them, red and boiling, and Loki threw gobbets of meat into the mud that swelled up around their legs, to their hips. The creature tore at him in return, its claws rending chunks out of his arms and his sides, but he felt no pain and they kept fighting, kept tearing at each other. It bared its teeth, long and flat, and Loki grabbed it by the back of its head, and it was in his hand, and he realised he'd fought so hard that he'd become a giant, and he'd made the monster into the runt, and he held it in the palm of his hand and crushed it. Blood and fur oozed out through his fingers and he looked down in horror at a blue hand crushing a tiny squirrel… the tail spilled from the side of his hand, and the tiny little animal squealed in terror and pain at the giant monster that crushed the life from its defenceless body…

"Annabelle," Loki choked out, horrified. He'd killed another of his loved ones, his mother, his family, everything he'd ever cared for gone and he looked down at the tiny body in his hand and realised it was Thor lying in the palm of his hand. His brother just the same size he'd always been, full of muscle, blond hair, and armour, all red with blood, pouring down like his cape, and it was Thor in the hand of a Kaiju, so tiny by comparison, crushed and broken, his eyes dull, his body crushed, and the bones-

His own screams woke him and he just started running. The door in his way was blasted off its hinges and he ran and ran the path he already knew until he saw the ocean and collapsed on the ledge, dropping to his stomach so that his arms were in the cold, cold waters of the Midgardian sea, and let the blood wash away.

There was no blood.

He knew there was no blood. He hadn't killed Thor. Or Annabelle. Or a Kaiju. Thor.

He sobbed, then bit savagely into his own tongue to stifle the urge.

He kneeled on the edge of the Shatterdome where it touched the water, then threw handfuls of sea water into his face to wake himself up and hide the tears.

He missed Thor.

Not just in his heart, he didn't just miss the brother he'd known, that he'd lost to Odin's lies and his own foolish mistakes. Mistake up on mistake upon mistake until even Thor, with his massive heart could no longer forgive, but he missed every cell of Thor.

He missed his stinking body when he'd been fighting and sweating for weeks and the body was rank and Loki would shout at him to get away and take his foul odour and leave. He missed the sweat that flew from Thor's head when he would shake it at Loki, laughing at his own cheek while Loki hurled serpents and scorpions at him in punishment and cursed him and they would laugh and wrestle. He missed Thor's arms that would hold him while he squirmed and complained and swore at Thor to let him go, but Thor wouldn't let him go because he was drunk and too affectionate towards anyone who came within range and loved his stupid little brother with all of his giant heart.

The sobbing didn't stop and blood dripped onto the floor where Loki knelt. He didn't even know where this blood was coming from.

He missed his stupid rodents and their innocence and their demands for food, more food, and scratches behind the ears, and games of toss and catch, and the way they would fight anything that endangered their lives and families and the way they would chatter and threat, then, when they had seen off whatever it was that disturbed them would come running to their favourite people, run up their legs, and demand their due sacrifice. Muffins or sandwich bites.

Annabelle had demanded her due like a god, and had challenged Loki to provide it and it ripped a rat-sized hole in his chest now that he would never pull a bit of pancake out of his pocket for her again, or ensure that Thor had an entire boar to himself at a victory feast and laugh at Thor's mighty appetite and his mighty hugs and he would not see his brother again.

Tears diluted the drops of blood on the ground in front of him and he could not stop them.

He'd wanted them all dead, all the Asir. He'd wanted them punished.

He wanted them back.

He couldn’t stop the choking. It wasn't crying, just gasping and gagging, and even when he heard footsteps behind him he couldn't stop. And so what if they saw him like this? They needed him! The pathetic humans and their pathetic world. They needed Loki and they would just have to deal with him like this and maybe he'd kill whoever it was if they mocked him and there was nothing they could do about it because they needed him to pilot their war machines.

Hands on his shoulders drew him up and back, and arms enfolded him. Loki didn't open his eyes, but he recognised Fury's smell. Flannel pyjamas under a sleek black robe, Old Spice, sleepy skin. The hug wasn't right. Thor's hugs had been enthusiastic and bruising, an expression of pure love and joy and power. Fury was just holding Loki together, as if letting go would mean all the parts of Loki would be crumbling onto the floor of Fury's office. Fury was just holding one of his pilots so that he wouldn't be cleaning up the mess later. But Loki took it anyway, and pushed his head against Fury's shoulder.

"Just a fucking squirrel." The human curse word was the only one that came to mind.

"I know," Fury said, voice soft.

"Just a fucking squirrel."

They sat like that for a long time. Fury kneeling, neat and tidy other than the blood smears Loki left on his shoulder, despite having been woken in the middle of the night. Loki slumped against him, not returning the hug but not moving away, either.

"Sometimes the death of an animal can have a greater impact than that of a friend or relative. There's just a greater unfairness about it, or perhaps other losses are so huge we simply can't process them."

"I don't need to hear the pathetic reassurances of some mortal insect – I will mourn or not as I see fit. If I chose to mourn the loss of a rodent over that of the people of Asgard then that is my right as one who was stolen and treated with nothing but lies and contempt for millennia. You have nothing to offer me in this regard; you and your world are nothing but a petty entertainment to me!" Loki snapped, but didn't move.

"That's fair," Fury said, simply, and rubbed Loki's back in small circles.

They sat like that for long minutes, and Loki let the horror of his dream fade. Frigga had once suggested his dreams were like her visions, but he had always desperately hoped her wrong.

After a while, Fury pushed Loki back a little, and took his jaw in hand, turning Loki's face so they were looking eye-to-eye.

Loki was puzzled, frowning, wondering why Fury was staring at his face so intently, but Fury just said, sadly, "I thought so. Nose bleed, but worse than that - there's red in your left eye."

Loki pulled backwards sharply, looking at his hand, but his skin was still pale, not blue, so why would... He felt the cold shower of horror as blood drained away from his face and realised he'd let his new glamour fade. It wasn't the red of Jotun eyes that Fury was seeing, but the blood of haemorrhage.

"Neurological damage," Fury said softly. "How long? No, don't bother. It's been right from the start hasn't it? That's probably what's triggering these extreme nightmares, too. The Jaeger's are so powerful, they can cause psychological damage as well as aneurisms."

Loki took a deep breath to deny it, but what was the point when Fury could see the evidence right in front of him. He still sat on the floor, the weakness of yet another loss leaving him too drained to even stand and walk out before Fury sent him away. Loki was losing. Again. Losing his chance. Losing his place. Losing his victory. He was going to lose his chance to prove himself and his world and his family and his stupid, useless squirrels...

"I was watching. I expected so much. Too much. You were as good as two humans, better, but we thought that you could use your magic in the Jaeger, but that never happened..." Fury trailed off.

Failed. Failed again. Failure. Always. Always wrong. Always the one that was looked upon with scorn. Too different. Too strange. Never strong enough. Never good enough. Never Thor. He was going to have to leave. He'd lost even his position here, amongst these stupid mortals.

"You're going to have to find a drift partner."

That had not been the response Loki had been expecting, his head snapped up to stare at Fury, and for a moment he didn't reply, then drew breath to shout, 'No!' before Fury beat him to it.

"Yes, Loki. You need us. Just as much as we need you. You need this. Don't make me psychoanalyse you for all the ways you need to do this because it'll just embarrass us both, so shut up, listen. You need to be in this fight, you need to be in a Jaeger, and in order to keep fighting in a Jaeger, you need to find a drift partner. And before you tell me all the reasons you can't, I'll tell you. You're a killer and you're ashamed of it. You're a monster and you're ashamed of it. You're weak and you're ashamed of it. And before you get angry and smite me, let me tell you that there is nothing in you, NOTHING in you, that isn't in every single one of us. Every single person in this place has killed someone, or tried to, or wanted to. Every single one of us knows the killing hate."

Loki shook his head, but Fury continued.

"Every single person on Earth thinks they are a monster sometimes. Every single human is weak. Scared. Lonely. Depressed. Alone. Every single one of us has thoughts so evil, so shameful, we'd rather die than share those thoughts in public. Do you think that the Jaeger pilots are any different?"

Loki said nothing. "It's hardly the same."

"I tried to drift. You want to guess how many murders I took into that drift? Don't. Don't try. But that didn't matter. I can't do it. I don't have what it takes. I still tried, though. All my lies and secrets: secrets that I swore I'd take to the grave, I was prepared to share them. And don't you think that every single Jaeger pilot has had to deal with every other Jaeger pilot's sick, disgusting masturbatory fantasies? Rape fantasies – both ways. Bestiality fantasies, weird sick sex stuff. We've got people who have had to reveal the criminal acts they got away with because they had to fight, because they were drift compatible, and now they rely on their drift partners to hold those secrets. And it's not even the big things, Loki. How many Jaeger pilots shared the fact they are secret nose pickers?"

Loki snorted but didn't try to answer.

"All of them. And butt scratchers and ear miners and those who eat food that's fallen on the floor as long as no one's watching. Made fun of the fat kid at school 20 years ago and still feel guilty. Stole a wallet once. Experimented with drugs. Experimented with sucking dick. Trying to hide the fact they're a mutant. Stood by while someone died and did nothing. I don't care, no one cares. All that matters is that you can fight. Do you understand."

"I'm over a thousand years old, Fury. It's more than just the human propensity for nose picking. It's more than murders…"

"It's about being vulnerable. You think I don't know?"

Loki looked up at him, unable to even articulate why the idea of drifting with someone terrified him so.

"We all do it. I tried. I laid myself bare and failed. Steve does it over and over and over until there's nothing of him left. Tony tried and caused an aneurism in his partner and now he's terrified to try again and don’t you think he'd cut off his own left nut if it gave him the chance to get in a suit again? You're finding a drift partner. I'll put the call in tonight – tomorrow we start auditions."

Loki tried again, opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded. He'd lost this round of lies. Now he had to decide if he was going to be here in the morning, or just start running again. He stood up, pleased that he showed no sign of weakness despite the vile disappointment than flowed through him.

Fury's hand on his shoulder directed him towards a room off the side of the office, away from the big window.

"What are you doing?" Loki asked, instantly suspicious.

"You're going to run. I can see it in every line of your body. So. You sleep in my bed. I read and watch. Or, you sleep in my office on the couch. I read and watch."

Loki stood still, unmovable. "Do you truly think you would have any ability to stop me should I decide to leave?"

Fury stared at the floor, his hand on Loki's shoulder still. "I had a son, you know…" Fury said, then stopped.

For a moment, Loki had no idea what Fury meant, then he leant forward, hissing into Fury's ear, "If you think you can fit yourself into the role of my father figure, I suggest you think again – I murdered my father. My real father. Do you want to know what I did to Odin?"

"Bed or couch, Loki. Your choice," Fury said, absolutely ignoring Loki's threat. "Bed or couch. I read and watch."

"I'd rather you didn't watch me sleep," Loki said, suddenly just too tired to keep fighting.

"Okay. Bed. I just read. Deal?"

"Deal," Loki signed deeply, shrugged, and walked to Fury's bed. It was unmade, messy, and it seemed distasteful to get into the sheets, so he simply flipped the sheets back over the pillows and flopped down. He turned his back on Fury, who settled on a chair next behind him, feet on the bed, picked up and started to read a thin paperback novel.

"By the way. When you drift… try not to think about sex."

Loki turned his face towards the ceiling slightly.

"It's just…" Fury turned a page. "It all comes out, you know? You'd be surprised how many guys like a finger up the butt and are embarrassed their drift partner finds it out. So… they kind of shout it out in the drift. Just ignore it."

Loki couldn't stop a short snort of laughter. "I'm over a thousand years old, Fury. I'm ten times your age, and yes, I know you are very old for a mortal, but I am far older. If you are trying to shock me, that is not the way to go about it. A 'finger up the butt' as you put it has not been a surprise to me in many a century."

"That's disturbing. But my point is, not only do you need to forgive and forget every stupid embarrassing thing that a drift partner is going to shout at you during the link, you're going to have to forgive yourself when you do the same. So, if you're a nose picker or a butt scratcher or you spend hours in front of the mirror squeezing zits or if you're murdered hundreds of people out of anger and spite, just get it out there and get over it. Move on. We've all had to do it."

"I don't have acne," Loki said, so exhausted he just fixated on the wrong thing.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. Now go the fuck to sleep," Fury ordered.

Loki did.

Chapter Text

Chapter Fifteen: I’ve Got The Moves Like Jaeger

He looked at the wannabe co-pilots who had turned up to try to drift with him. He'd expected four or five. Ten, tops, those brave enough to want to share their minds with an ex villain, with an alien, with a monster, but they queued down the corridor, bunched up in the doors, and each and every one of them was looking at him with the hopeful eagerness of the ancient humans, the Vikings, who'd thought him a god and thought him the answer to all their prayers. He had a feeling there would be yet another large number of deeply disappointed humans today.

Stick training. Loki span the long staff in his hands, letting it whir faster and faster, until it sounded like the blades of a helicopter. He'd been fighting with staffs for centuries. There was nothing the humans could teach him about killing, impaling, crippling, or maiming an opponent with a stick.

But that wasn’t the point. “This is a dance” or something or other. He hadn’t really been listening to Coulson’s instructions, just enough to pick up that the goal was not to kill the enemy, or just lightly maim a fellow warrior, as he’d trained to do over many centuries, but to see how he could work ‘with’ another warrior. As if he hadn’t fought back-to-back with Thor, or protected other warriors while they were so busy focussing on the enemy in front of them, they ignored attacks from the side or behind.

He spun the staff again, listening to the sound as it whistled through the air, and stepped towards the first victim. The young man, who didn’t give a name, bowed deeply from the waist, and Loki used the moment of inattention to reach forward, grabbing the man by his left arm so that his defences would be blocked, flipping him up and over to land on his back, leaving him staring in stupid surprise at the ceiling.

“No, wait,” Coulson stepped forward. “This is not a competition! We are trying to see who will be able to fight beside you, not who you can beat in a fight. We already know you can beat every human and most mutants in hand-to-hand combat, but we need to see who you can fight with! With, as in, alongside of, not with as in against, do you understand?”

Loki stepped back and felt his face pucker up as if he’d sucked a lemon and was about to spit something spiteful when he realised that no, he didn’t understand. How do you fight with someone without fighting with them?

Coulson was helping the young man up, and helping him slink off in disappointment.

Another stepped forward, a tall wiry woman, bowed but never took her eyes off Loki, and dropped back into a defensive position, stick over her head as if to bring it down sharply upon Loki. Loki moved faster than the woman could even see, grabbing the stick and using it to send her into the wall behind them. She hit with a hard thunk and slid down, and again Phil ran to check she was okay.

“Loki! You are here to find a drift partner. Not kill prospective pilots!”

Another stepped forward. Fearless. And Loki felt a stab of guilt as he realised that each and every one of them was just as desperate to fight in a Jaeger as himself. He was their hope and their chance and they wouldn’t care if he was the bad guy or a Jotun or an alien menace – he was their chance to fight and defend their planet and become heroes.

For a moment he realised he was the King Maker. The Hero Maker. The Thor Maker all over again. And again this pilot hit the floor with a hard smack, lying dazed for a few moments before getting up and walking away, shoulders slumped and dejected, and Loki felt a little bit bad. His mouth filled with saliva as he enjoyed beating each opponent and he swallowed hard, but there was a tiny bit of guilt there, too.

Steve Rogers stepped forward. “It’s not about the fight. The fight is the excuse. You need to find someone who can move with you,” Rogers made a few steps, like dancing, but using his arms in an aggressive manner, jabbing forward and pulling back with his own stick. “Like Phil said, it’s not about beating any of us, but seeing who you can move with, who can predict your moves and stay with you. You don’t need to win, you just need to be able to walk with them and move with them, and learn how to act as one being.”

Steve moved forward, taking a similar defensive position to the first, stick back, prepared to 'dance'.

Loki looked at him and didn't see the urgent desire to be drift compatible and get into that Jaeger again… but fear. Fear they would be compatible and Roger's would have to drift with yet another poisonous mind. Loki realised he could do it – they'd be fine together and Steve Rogers wouldn’t judge him, but would hear his confessions and forgive him utterly, just as Steve Roger's human-invented Christian god would have done for him.

Loki just put the end of his stick to the ground and refused to step into position. He very gently shook his head and gave Steve a small smile.

For a moment Steve looked confused and a little angry, but then understanding and relief washed over his face and he stepped back. Just quietly, he mouthed, 'Thank you' at Loki before he moved to the side. He could hear Coulson and his ducklings quacking in annoyance, but Loki couldn't, he just couldn't, add more spoilage to the mind of Steve Rogers. He couldn’t pour his poison into that poor man, who was so obviously clinging to his humanity and his beliefs. Perhaps he simply couldn't handle all the 'nose picking' as Fury had warned, but it would have taken a lot more than that to shake Roger's faith in his fellow man. How many callous murders had Roger's experienced? He wouldn't experience Loki's, and Loki gave him that mercy with willing generosity.

Another fighter came up, took a deep breath before taking position. Loki tried. He tried so hard… but again this frail human hit the ground, hard, and he could hear Coulson's teeth grinding. He wanted to say that he was taking this seriously, that he wasn't swatting the humans like flies on purpose, but they went down so easily. Each one, no matter how much he pulled his blows, they hit the ground and did their best not to cry out in pain or disappointment and no matter how carefully Loki trod, he could not fight against them or 'with' them, without hurting them.

There was a way, he knew. If Thor had been able to have a relationship with a human woman, there was a way to do this. If Thor could fuck a tiny, frail little human who barely came past his chest, then Loki could fight one of these frail little creatures and not send them flying into the walls or the floors or through the door. There had to be a way to win this fight without injuring or killing his opponent. It would take a lot to overcome a thousand years of training, though.

Stark stepped up. Black sweat pants. White 'wife beater' shirt. His face clean of grease and his hair freshly washed.

Loki took a deep shuddering breath and shook his head. "No offence, Tony. I know you train hard, still, and you have been a great warrior, but you are not anymore. The ones that have come to attack me so far today have been half your age and they have all walked away limping or concussed."

Stark frowned and grit his teeth, and brandished his stick. "I have the right, Loki. I have… I have to. I have to fight again."

"You can't fight me. You may have been an Avenger, but as an ordinary man I would destroy you with a single blow. Step down, Tony."

"I can't… no, you're right," Tony stepped back, and grinned broadly. "You're right and you're wrong. This isn't a fight!"

"Yes, I know, it's a dance. That's what everyone tells me. This is a dance where we fight."

"And you don't get it, do you? You don't get how you can dance with someone to find a partner by fighting against them."

"I…" Loki paused and his shoulders slumped. "No. Maybe it's just a human thing, but no. I cannot see how attacking each other with staffs, fists, kicks, or punches shows that we would make good comrades in arms."

"Yeah. Tell the truth, I never got that, either. How can they test if anyone's drift compatible by how they fail to beat the shit out of each other? I mean, all the others who come in here already knowing – it's because they were raised together, lived together, shared a womb with a view, spent 20 years married, you know? They already knew. And not one of those husband/wife teams came in here and said they knew they were drift compatible because they tried to beat the shit out of each other with a pair of garden stakes and somehow failed to kill each other. So, you know what I was thinking?"

"We should get married, see how it works out, come back in 20 years?"

"What? Well, sure, that could work if the Earth was still here and not converted into billions of megatons of Kaiju poop in the meantime," Tony called Loki's bluff, but I think we need to look into the words the trainers use."

"Stop trying to kill your opponent?"

"No, smart ass, it's 'the dance'. I mean, look at it this way, you hit with me a stick, what happens?"

"You die," Loki dead-panned.

"Exactly. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Or a life. And we all know you're a bit too good at that. So, we try something else.

"I do not wish to kill you, or even maim you, Tony. You have made yourself quite useful during my sojourn as a soldier in this fight."�

"And I don't want to be killed or maimed, either! But you're missing the whole point of this exercise."�

"To find a compatible fighting partner. Although I do not see how hitting each other with sticks is supposed to show mental compatibility."�

"Exactly,"� Tony smiled, head on the side, like he was sharing a secret joke with Loki. Loki didn't get it, but he schooled his face to appear as if he did.

"We have to find someone with whom we're drift compatible, right?"�

"Obviously," Loki couldn't help a small sneer at the idea of being compatible with a mortal.

"So. You can't fight someone without trying to disembowel them."�

"True."�

"And I can't fight you without being disemboweled."�

"Also true."�

"So, we don't fight. We dance."

"Dance." Loki gave Tony a look of utter disdain, and the others in the room just gave him the usual look of tolerant confusion.

"Dance! That's what the trainers say, right? This is learning how to dance with an opponent. You're right when you say that trying to attack each other is a stupid way to find out if you can fight side-by-side. All the years you spent fighting against Thor – that didn't endear you to each other, did it? No, don’t answer that, I'm not trolling, I'm just saying that all the sitcoms where the man and the woman meet and they hate each other on sight and make each other's lives hell then at the end of the show they fall into bed are all bullshit!"

Loki just stood and waited for the human to run down and stop talking. Which had never, as yet, actually happened.

"People don't do that. They don't hate each other and then, for no adequately explained reason, fall in love with each other. Life's not like that. It's got to be adequately explained. Boy meets girl, moon explodes, I forget the rest, but the point is, we have to learn to fight WITH each other and it is, as the trainers say, a dance. So…"

Tony took a step forward, put one foot out and bowed over it, holding out one hand toward Loki.

"What are you doing."

"Asking you to dance. But you know, old fashioned style."

"Shakespeare style? Isn't that how you addressed Thor and his speech? As Shakespeare? You do know that Thor and I were many centuries old by the time your Shakespeare was born."

Tony rolled his eyes, "Old is old. JARVIS?"

"Sir?"

"Requisition me a beat!"

Tony didn't take Loki's hand but moved away a step and started to move. He kept his eyes on Loki's – never breaking contact. His eyes were huge and focussed on Loki like a laser and Loki realised this wasn't about dancing or fighting, this was Tony's chance at redemption.

This story, in this moment, was not about Loki. For the first time in a very, very long time, Loki had to look outside of his own ego and his own pain and his own selfish self-indulgent suffering, and realise that this was Tony, the tiny fragile mortal, desperately looking for his chance. Loki could see it in Tony's eyes – not only the fierce, laser point of intelligence that Tony put into everything he did, but the desperation, and he could see Tony looking at him with, not fear, but an almost trembling hope.

In this moment, maybe his last ever chance to get into a suit again, to fight again, to see vengeance, it all rested on Loki's shoulders, and on Loki's ability to follow him, step by step, not to fight against him, but to be able to fight with him, at his side and in sync. Like they'd done at Steve's disco.

Loki stepped forward and moved in step.

The other people in the rooms, the ones who'd come to fight but hadn't been so badly injured they'd left on stretchers, the ones who'd just come to gawp and stare, all laughed and sang along.

"I've got the moves like Jaeger!" they sang, changing Jagger to Jaeger, and went along with the odd whistling chorus.

'That's wrong,' thought Loki. 'Jaeger. Not spelled the same. Soft J, softer, like a Y, like in Jotenheim, not a hard J like jagged edge of a blade.' But the phrase was close enough for the humans who sang along, and Tony moved like… like one of his war machines. It was enough just watching Tony for Loki to appreciate the humour behind the choice of song.

Every step was precise, like every muscle of Tony’s body was involved, but the movements were tiny and so utterly controlled. He bumped his hips just a little, and raised his arms and hooded his eyes to lead Loki along with his steps, and it was easy to follow. Loki never felt he had that kind of controlled sexuality, but it was easy to move like Tony, and he did. He let Tony lead him in this dance that was so unlike those of Asgard - which were all about exuberance and strength - but he followed, and as Tony added more steps and started to gyrate and turn and really hit the floor in time to the music, Loki learned to spin and turn and follow his steps exactly.

"Moves like Jaeger," the humans sang and laughed, getting the words deliberately wrong. "We've got the moves like Jaeger!"

Tony spun again, arms up, and Loki took a turn the opposite direction, their arms, bent at the elbow, almost but not quite touching, until they moved away again. Tony put his arms akimbo, Loki took a strut, they stepped in time with ease, and never took their eyes off each other.

Tony was so in the moment, Loki thought. Always. As if every second he lived had to mean something. The humans were quite vital, with their tiny, fleeting little lives, but they were on, then off. They would be busy, a hive of industry and burning ambition, and then everything stopped to watch television. All mental activity switched off to just absorb someone else's productivity through the internet. It seemed to Loki that it was rare for a human to be truly productive for more than an hour or two in any day.

He'd mock them for that, but it was better than the Aesir. Far better. The Aesir with their thousand year life spans would be truly alive maybe once or twice. And then only really during battle in most cases. Laugh, dance, drink, eat, sleep, awake, fight, laugh, drink, eat, sleep, fuck, sleep, fight… nothing ever new. Nothing ever created. Dragr. Or, as the humans would call them, zombies. They lived such long lives, so immature and unchanging, that they were nothing more than the living dead, and in this moment he realised that the humans lived more in their few snatched moments than the Aesir did in their many centuries.

And Tony a lived a thousand times more again. Loki thought that not since he was a child, had Tony stopped. There was always something to learn. Something to create. Something to prove.

This time he was proving he could step with Loki, they could fight together, dance together, and get into that huge metal suite and take the war out to the monsters together. Tony was proving he could fight, that he wasn't just a tech. Not just a brilliant, billionaire, playboy technician, but Iron Man again. Whatever it took. Acting the fool in a room full of people who'd seen him fail over and over again meant absolutely nothing to Tony because he was living in the moment. Every moment. Every single precious moment Tony was alive and proving himself.

And Loki realised that maybe he could learn a lot from that. Instead of just mourning what he'd lost, an endless cycle of misery, anger, vengeance, that maybe he should, too, step into just this moment and come alive.

He reached out his arms to his side and started a step similar to the dances of his youth. When they would circle and step while drinking and singing, and Tony took to it in a heartbeat.

"Like Zorba!" he said, and some of the other humans were stepping along with them. Not exactly in time, but they were disappointed at not being able to seduce Loki into being their fight partners, and channelling that into silliness and stress relief and they danced their various interpretations of Loki's ancient dance. Only Tony kept time perfectly, and never took his eyes from Loki's.

Loki felt trapped by Tony's expression, and he realised that this was exactly what Coulson had been trying to get him to do. Watch, move with, feel, reach out, find the other, get out of his own head and into that of another and see that person as an extension of himself.

Like creating the perfect weapon, Tony had solved the problem again. Loki let himself be led around the training room, and fed on Tony's happiness and victory. Tony had reached his goal, and Loki hadn't even felt the manipulation. If this had been something that Stark and Fury had worked out together, then he hadn't seen it coming, not exactly, not clearly, but although he felt that Fury would certainly be the one to put something like this in place, Tony was nothing more than cleverly opportunistic. Perhaps it was a manipulation on the part of the humans, but Loki didn't think so. More like Tony Stark's patented 'by the seat of his pants' fighting style. Living in that moment, always on fire, always a live wire, and always looking for the next step, the next achievement, and the next possible way to prove himself to his long dead father.

The whole thing, from the moment Tony decided that he and Loki were going to be drift compatible, to their making their way out of the door of the training room like a newlywed couple, took only a few minutes, but it was enough for the dread to settle in Loki's stomach. He felt like he'd drunk too much mead and it settled nauseating and hot in his belly.

It had been fun. Forgetting for a moment the loss of the damned squirrels, Thor, finding out the humans knew he couldn't pilot a Jaeger alone. Just beating the humans with a stick and being out smarted – or had Tony out smarted Coulson's compatibility tests? – had all been amusing. Now he had to face the drift. And that was terrifying.

To lay himself open like that. To be flayed alive by the penetration of another person's mind. He'd been through something like that many times. When Odin or Heimdall would look upon him like they saw into his soul. When Thanos and the Other had taken his mind and bent his will to their own. It was a horror he was never going to be ready to face again.

And the shame of his own actions, time and again. He didn't care if the humans scratched their butts or picked their noses. He just didn't want them, Tony or any of them, looking into his own mind and seeing the flaws and faults that made up the entirety of his being. To be seen. To be judged. To be found wanting by these unworthy life forms was more than he could tolerate and he knew, down in his colon, that he was not going to walk this. He'd rather face years of small, neurological haemorrhages than face anyone looking into his soul and seeing what he really was, under the false shape of the Aesir.

Loki walked behind an over excited Tony Stark like a man going to his execution.

Once the humans were happy they'd made a match, they wasted no time at all in getting Loki and Tony into the head of the Jaeger.

Tony took the side that had been ripped away. Twice. He didn't even twitch.

"An Aesir would be too superstitious to take that side," Loki said.

Tony looked at him with puzzlement.

"A pilot died there," Loki explained. "And even when I took this Jaeger out, that part of the head has been torn away during battle."

"Well, look at it this way, it's hardly likely to happen a third time, right? Like surfers who get bitten by sharks – straight back into the water – not going to happen again!"

"If I may interrupt," Coulson stepped in front of them. Fury was standing at the door, grim expression cracking under a slight smile. Probably picking up on Tony's overabounding enthusiasm. "You are about to share something very intimate. Our concern is that as you life experiences have been so very different, it may be very difficult for you to drift. Never mind the fact you are of different species. There is a high chance of neurological compatibility according to our tests, but you will still have to share your memories and experiences in the drift."

"Don't focus on any one thing, I know," Tony interrupted. "If anything seems off, don't focus on it until Loki has an aneurism, I swear I won't do that again, you think I don't see that droop on Rhodey's lip every time I close my eyes? But I'm going to say that Loki and I are pretty much guaranteed that we are going to be chasing the rabbit, okay? I mean, he's lived for thousands of years; it's pretty much a sure thing that I'm going to find something interesting and want to watch, okay? And I'm pretty dammed fascinating let's face it, if Loki wants to explore my memories, who can blame him? I've slept with, er, I don't even know how many people, he's gonna get his own private porn show, so we can just let it go and get on with this?"

Coulson looked at Tony, totally unmoved. "When I was a child, I wanted a dog. But our family didn't have the room for it. So, instead, I asked for a rat. My parents agreed. Rats are small, cheap to care for, and they assumed it would die very quickly before becoming a burden to our family. I was very excited, though," Coulson said, utterly deadpan, as if he had never experienced excitement in his life. "I did a great deal of research and realised that I would need to have at least two pet rats as they need company – they are herd animals. I wrote a report, on the care and upkeep of rats – food, bedding, medical aid, toys and mental stimulation aids - submitted it to myself for approval, stamped it, and filed it in a shoe box, so that when I finally made my choice, I would be a good guardian to my pets."

Tony frowned at Coulson, "I'm not sure if this story is pathetic or just weird."

"When I finally picked out my rats, I sat them on my desk and told them that I was very aware that rats chewed all the time in order to keep their teeth under control, since their teeth never stopped growing. I had read plenty of anecdotal evidence that rats would destroy everything they came into contact with. Clothing, electrical equipment, furniture, anything of value that they could use to keep their teeth in good condition."

Tony looked at Loki, but Loki was as puzzled as Tony and just raised his eyebrows in shared confusion.

"I told them that no matter what they destroyed, no matter how valuable or irreplaceable, I was aware of their need to chew and they were pre-forgiven for any damage they caused. Pre-forgiven. From that point on, we never had any problems. They destroyed my shirts, my Walkman ™, my homework, and whatever else they could get their teeth on, and they were never in any trouble because they were pre-forgiven. Do you understand?"

"If… If I chew your iPod you'll forgive me?" Tony hazarded a guess.

"No. If you and Loki see anything in each other's minds that you deem to be unforgivable, no matter how terrible or vile, you must forgive and move on. From this point on, you must assure each other that you are pre-forgiven for anything that you see. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, touching story about a little boy who played with rodents," Tony said, full of sarcasm, but then he dropped the smile. "Yeah… I get it. Loki?"

"I don't believe I'm the one who's going to have to do most of the forgiving," he said, his stomach churning with nausea.

Tony whispered, sotto voce, "If you get me into that suit, and let me fight and kill some mother fucking Kaiju and get revenge for Pepper, you have no idea just what I can forgive."

"Tony…"

"Ever eat a baby?"

"No!"

"We're good, then," and he stopped whispering, "Coulson, hook us up!"

Tony was so keen – he was leaning forward to grab the helmet and leaning back as the spinal pieces of his suit were set in place. It was Tony's suit, too, custom fitted to his frame. And totally brand new, unscratched, perfect. That suit had never seen battle. Tony was breathing fast with excitement, but his eyes were cold and clear and utterly focussed.

Loki dragged, and he could feel the slightest urge to hyperventilate. Someone was going to know him. Know his thoughts.

How could he lie when another being was going to be in his mind?

How could he hold on to his half-truths and his obfuscations and his obstructions and his tricks if someone was seeing his life roll out for them like one of his mother's tapestries?

His self, his being, his whole and his entirety would be there for this mortal to see, to paw over, to walk through… to know. To know him.

Loki tried to hide his panic and control his breathing. He had to fight. That's all he had. Fight and vengeance and anger and if he didn't go through with his and let the humans take his soul apart and rape his mind then he wouldn't be able to fight and then what? What was he? What did he have left if he couldn't take his rage and vent it on the nearest target?

And how could Tony allow a stranger, an alien, a being from another realm, a god, walk through his mind in the same way, and if Tony was breathing hard it was the keen excitement of a dog going out for a walk at the end of the day, not Loki's own animalistic panic, because as much as Loki had nothing if he couldn’t' fight, right now Tony just had nothing. Nothing and Loki was his first hope of something.

And Tony was going to allow nothing to stand in the way of his vengeance and if he had to close his eyes and think of England and let Loki look into his mind in return, then he was going to do it and kill whatever stood in his way. Loki could hear it in his voice as he chattered away to his servants, excited, nervous, but joyful with it.

The humans hooked them up and they were talking rapidly of the neural link and Tony Stark's excitement was palpable – even more than usual. He was yelling instructions to the team, to JARVIS, to get specialised equipment brought in, better helmets, new equipment he'd designed, and Loki went along with it as he would with his servants helping him prepare before a battle, but not with the calm sweetness he would feel before a fight, but with the sick dread of someone who couldn't escape. Should just transport out, right now, back to the park… the park isn't there… Annabelle isn't there… Asgard isn't there, there is nowhere else to go but here, nowhere to belong but here, and here is where they will open up his mind like cracking a hard-boiled egg and scoop out his ever thought and feeling and every misgiving and see exactly why he accepted his role fighting alongside the humans after all this time.

"I can't…" he finally said. "Tony, I can't go along with this," and he started to pull at the equipment, feeling the metal and tubing give under his super human strength. "I can't go into a drift with you. I can keep doing this alone. It doesn't matter if I have the neural overload incidents – with my better-than-human healing, I can keep going."

"No, you can't," Fury said. "I was waiting for you to break and ask, but the damage isn't healing all that fast, Loki. The dreams you've been having, and the blood on your pillows – do we need to do tests to see what damage has been done?"

"I can handle this! I am not some mortal weakling!"

"Do you want me to pull you off duty altogether until we can test the damage done to your brain?" Fury let anger slide into his voice. He was not bluffing. He wanted this drift, he wanted Tony and Loki, or Loki and someone else, in that Jaeger and fighting, and he was prepared to make that threat.

Loki opened his mouth to call Fury's bluff. Let them call him off, let them send him to their tests, they would beg him to come back and fight as soon as the next double or triple Kaiju event came through.

"Please…"

It was so soft, so quiet, and so unexpected and out of character for full speed ahead, full power Tony Stark and it took Loki totally by surprise.

"Please… I can't do this without you… Help me, Obi Wan Loki, you're my only hope."

Loki just stared and remembered 'Know your place' and loss and humiliation and being underestimated and humiliated and simply taken for granted, but Tony wasn't doing that, he was asking… begging… with huge brown eyes and a look of pure desperation. And need. He needed Loki. He wasn't telling Loki. He wasn't taking credit for Loki's achievements. He wasn't arrogant or assuming or laughing or mocking or teasing. He was asking. He needed and he was asking.

He needed Loki.

And Loki needed.

Loki needed to be needed.

"Please…"

Tony won.

There was something in these people: in Coulson's relentless professional politeness, Fury's brutal honesty, Steve's unending decency, Tony's brilliant focus that left Loki disarmed every time. Every weapon he'd honed to vicious edge on Asgard was meaningless here amongst people whose lives were too short to care and who's world was too threatened for ego or arrogance to have any value.

But Loki needed to warn him, "This will be horrible."

"Yeah. Sorry about that. Brace yourself."

"That's not what I meant…" but then the link lines were connected and the countdown started… "have the weapons been deactivated?" he asked, but the answer wasn't clear before the interface equipment was in place.

"You've heard the speeches, right? Don't follow any memories, don't 'chase the rabbit', just let all the images go past you, don't latch on to anything".

"I've heard the protocol, yes. But I have to warn you that I have been alive a very long time compared to you. I have experienced things that may be difficult for you to simply ignore."

"Yeah, well, that goes both ways. But for every horrible thing we see, we just need to keep going and keep our eyes on the goal, right?"

'Engage pilot to pilot protocol.'

Now they would find out if they were truly drift compatible.

'Prepare for neural handshake.'

Now the humans would find out all of Loki's secrets and realise that they were meaningless and that Loki had no place here. No place anywhere.

'Handshake in 15 seconds.'

He could sense the excitement on his left, Tony was positively vibrating. He should have used the toilets before coming here.

'Neural handshake initiated.'

He was running behind a man so much taller than himself, tall and scary and brilliant, father… Father? Father? Listen to me, look what I have created! Father! But father was annoyed and made a sharp, abrupt swipe of his hand, go away, and no, father listen to me, listen to me, look at this! A small child's hand holding up a wonderful creation, it shimmered and shone, 'What the hell use is that?' No, father, look… dad? Dad? Listen to me, look what I made! I'm busy, son, go bother your mother, where's your brother, go outside, where's your nanny? But father, listen… No, I'm busy, I have a company to run I have a world to run I have a court to run I have to find Captain America I have to oversee my empire, there are bandits, there are wars, there are shareholders calling for answers, I have to take care of this, I have other things to do, go bother someone else… But father… I said no!

And the slap was sharp across his face, sending him onto his butt, knocking him to the side, onto the hard marble floors, onto the hard wooden floors and his mother looked sad but did nothing and the staff frowned at him and the court frowned at him shouldn't he know better to annoy father Allfather? Shouldn't he know that dad had better things to do? His head hit the floor and…

"The link has broken!"

"What?" Fury was leaning over a console, they could hear him talking over their microphones, he was probably standing behind Fitz.

"I think that… either they shocked themselves out of the link or there's something genetic preventing the drift."

"It's not genetic," Tony answered for both of them, his voice angry and desperate. "We're compatible. We're compatible! Just try again."

"If you're not compatible-"

"Wait, Loki?"

"What?" Loki just looked at the floor. Drift memories weren't supposed to blend like that. One dominant memory at a time, not a blended mash of badly healed scars and flesh.

"You okay? Any headaches."

"No headaches." Loki was surprised that his voice wasn't shaking with… anger, shaking with anger. The one he'd called father had never cared, never cared for a Jotun, never cared for a small boy… not for a small human boy all alone in a tower built of gold, built of concrete…

"I, um, I'm sorry. I said it would be horrible."

"It was… your father."

"My father was a single minded dictator with no human skills and an alcohol problem."

"Mine… could hold his alcohol."

Tony laughed, which was a surprise. He'd seen Loki's humiliation as a small child and just laughed at it.

"Told you it wasn't going to be a picnic, didn't I?"

How many times had Loki humiliated himself in defeat after defeat before the Avengers anyway. But Tony was apologising to Loki for what Loki had seen and experienced in Tony's mind, not the other way around. Loki realised that Tony was laughing at himself, apologising for being himself, not telling Loki he feared Loki's memories.

"How long were we together?" Loki asked Fitz.

"About 1.9 seconds. Want to try again?" Fitz sounded optimistic. "Sometimes this can happen. Mostly with married couples. Sometimes there are secrets in their histories that they never shared, old relationships or things from their childhoods that can cause the link to snap. It happens. If you have no pain or damage we can try again."

"I'm fine," Loki said.

"You'll excuse me if I don't believe you," Fury's voice was strong, but not loud.

"When Rhodey blew a gasket in the link, it was pretty obvious," Tony said, his voice wheedling, but Fury ignored him.

"Loki's a better liar, and a lot physically stronger than Rhodey. Loki… drop any disguise you are using to hide any damage."

"There's nothing. It was just… a shock. We… had some similar experiences. I wasn't expecting things to be so close."

"Close?" Fury frowned.

"Our experiences merged, it was difficult to tell who was remembering what," Loki mused. "It was almost as if it was the same experiences, just in different settings."

"Unusual," Fury didn't sound worried, not quite, but concerned. "Normally, if any of you end up chasing the rabbit, it's into one set of dominating memories, you shouldn't be merging your memories together-"

Tony interrupted, having heard it all before, "Ready to go again?"

Fury stopped asking questions, his concern could only go so far when it came to getting the job done.

Pilot to pilot, neural handshake, Count down, handshake initiated…

The same little boy, little boys, running after a father who wanted nothing to do with them, why? What's wrong with me? Mother? Mother is kind and sweet and useless and what's wrong with me?

"Daddy? Can I have a puppy? May I have a horse?"

Father turns and sneers, his white beard almost hiding it, How would you control a horse at this age, Loki? You're half the size of your brother. Wait until you have spent some time in the training grounds, build some muscle. Daddy turns and sneers, how will you look after a puppy? You can't even look after yourself? Do you expect your mother to help look after it? She has her own responsibilities; she can't be running around after a little boy or cleaning up after a dog. You need to learn to take responsibility for yourself and stop interrupting my work. Build my own, I can build my own puppy, I can build a robot, I'm six now I can build anything and it will love me just like a real puppy would! I can build something just like daddy! I can make myself into a horse, and I can show them that I don't need them to give me anything I can use magic and make a horse of myself, I'm almost 60 now I can do magic just like father! See? See? I'm just like you I'm like you look at me look at me… I'm just like you and I can do what you do and I'm smart like you and I'm smart like you…

And you will be proud of me! Proud of me?

Shame and shame and shame and failure and shame…

"Loki," he could hear Tony's voice, "Don't let it get hold. Okay? I mean… it sucks, I know, but don't let it… Don’t chase this rabbit…"

A small boy, fist full of money, "Daddy? I have money…" a father looking down in confusion. "Mr Kelso said that if you want someone to play with you but they don't really want to, you have to give them a hunned dollars…" "Mr Kelso, the maintenance man?" "Yes, I axed him how to get someone to play with me and he laughed an said that you can only get someone to play with you if you give them hunned dollars and you make a lot of money so I got a lot more than a hunned." "You are offering me money to play with you?" Why did father look so angry… "Mummy said your time was valable so I got this money" "Where did you get the money?" "I got it from mummy's purse but I can pay it back but will you play with me?" "Give that back to your mother. I'm firing Mr Kelso."

Loki asked: "You tried to hire your father like a whore?" They both stood, as adults, watching the movie of Tony's life play out.

"Shut up, Loki. I was like four years old – I had no idea then how great whores are! And anyway, like you wouldn't have given your pocket money or whatever little baby godlings get to have Odin even give you a pat on the head!"

"I'm not judging. He should have played with you," Loki could hear the soft, sadness in his own voice, and blamed the drift for being unable to hide his sorrow. Not even for money would a father play with a son, and in the drift Tony couldn't hide the bitterness that accompanied the memory. "You just wanted attention from a father you loved – that's understandable."

"Yeah… I uh, yeah, he should. But he was busy," Tony's voice was sharp.

"Really? You're going to lie to me in the drift?"

They watched a heart broken little boy with a handful of useless paper watch his father walk away, stiff backed and angry, and knew the little boy realised that his father wouldn't play with him, not even for money.

"I had no idea what offering the money meant, but all I knew at the time was that he didn't like me enough to spend time with me. Not for love. Not even for money. When I got older and realised what had happened, I thought that maybe it was just that he was angry about one of the help making hooker jokes, but he never did come back or spend time with me. It got worse later. Just so you can be prepared."

The little boy stood, stoop shoulders, and turned and fell on the training fields, hair longer, dirty on his knees and his hands, blinking hard to hide tears, "Loki?"

"I was trying to keep up with Thor. I couldn't understand why I was never able to keep up."

"You were younger, smaller… The guy you're fighting there is twice your age!"

"No, my age. Just twice my size. If Thor did not tell you, I am a runt. Odin said that I was born deformed, and that my family rejected me for my small size. So it matters not that he was larger, if I am the runt then I needed to learn to fight like a son of Odin and take down those twice my size with ease."

Loki hit the ground again, getting up full of rage and swinging blindly, only to fall again as his opponent knocked his legs out from under him and laughed at his attempts.

"It didn't matter that I was small. I was better than them in battle, but not allowed to use my weapons. I could not hold up against one so large."

"Where your weapons magic?"

"Yes, as were theirs. What do you think Mjolnir is, if not magic? Anyone's magic was worthy and honourable but mine."

The boy hit the ground again, and this time stabbed out without standing, swinging wildly and catching his opponent on the leg, making him leap back and cry out in shock.

Gasps from the audience, and Thor's voice, not booming but a boy's voice, still full of self-confidence, "Brother! You battle Hundr without honour! A warrior does not attack from a position of weakness."

Loki stood up, blood trickling from his nose, anger in his eyes…

… but the scene changed and they were standing in a field of golden grain, from horizon to horizon, nothing but gold…

"What happened?" Tony asked, "Where's this place?"

"Nowhere. There is no reason for you to watch centuries of my petty humiliations. You say you spoke to Thor, that he has spoken of my upbringing."

"Yeah… so… you took control of what we're seeing? How did you do that?"

"You know that I was not a happy child, I'm sure he's told you of his guilt and heart break."

"Sort of. I mean, mostly he blames you for not being grateful enough about having been adopted by the great and powerful Oz, but it's pretty easy to read between the lines that you were pretty much the shit kicker of Asgard."

"Shit kicker? Not a phrase with which I have familiarity."

"Doesn't matter. Thor's a good guy, but not the most observant. I don't think he understands things like internalised racism and what a life-time of being second best can do to someone. Thing is, I get it, I do, and I still don’t think that we deserved you taking all that shit out on us. But we could spend a life time in therapy, am I right?"

"Probably." The humans had never deserved his wrath, but they had a phrase that was most fitting: shit rolls downhill.

"Right, and it won't get either of us anywhere. The only thing that matters is getting our brains in gear with each other, getting all the nasty crap out there in the open so we don't have any surprises in battle and end up chasing the rabbit when we should be chasing Kaiju, and seriously? How the ever living fuck did you change the landscape like this? I mean, where the hell is this Field of Dreams?"

"I cannot maintain this very long, there are too many memories pushing in, but I truly want to spare you hundreds of years of my being pushed into the ground and being told, over and over, that I was not worthy to be Thor."

"So… if we go into battle, am I going to have to listen to hundreds of years of whining about you not being Thor under battle situations?"

"No, I will control it."

"No, you won't. You'd better stick a pin in that boil now, get the pus out while we are in a safe environment."

"Truly, Tony? Is that what you want? To witness my humiliations?"

"I've humiliated you plenty! How many times has Iron Man smashed you into walls and locked you in cells? And, let's be honest, you kidnapped me while I was wearing nothing but my little red Iron Man brand panties and left me stranded in the middle of Disney Land for a joke!"

"You liked it. And it's not the first time you've been naked in public, by force or by choice. We you and Banner not arrested for indecent exposure some time back?"

"Yeah, well, let's face it, I do have a great ass and it doesn't hurt Bruce to get some good exposure, but the point is, we can't have secrets. Anyway, let me go first, okay? I'm going to share something horrible with you."

"Another panty run?"

"Hah, you wish! Your choice, your royal highness, the worst moments of my life, or the even worse moments of my life? We can… there are… you know I get PTSD, right? I can't go into that when we're fighting. You have to be ready to pull me out."

"You think I have the will or the desire to try to assist you if you are so weak you end up chasing your cowardice in ever tightening circles until you disappear up your own arse?"

"I think you will just have to do just that, yes. Prick. This is a sensitive issue! I'm very sensitive about it!"

Loki laughed in the link, standing in their field of gold, knowing that Tony's sarcastic flounce about Loki seeing his fears was there to cover up Tony's very real fear of Loki seeing his fears. Layers of pretence over very genuine horror. And Loki could feel that horror, it ran like a river, deep and sluggish, under every word and thought and emotion that Tony threw at him. They were standing on a very rickety bridge that Tony had built out of bravado and swagger, but under ever missing plank in that bridge they could sense the thick black waters of the horrors that Tony trod over every day. And now Loki was trying not to add his own waterfall of self-loathing and hatred to those waters, because if he did, he believed they both would drown.

"Okay…" Tony said, and Loki could hear Tony girding his loins in the voice in Loki's head. "Okay. Okay, I suppose we need to go there."

"Of where do you speak?" Loki asked.

"The worst things for me. I mean, I had a horrible childhood, and from what I picked up from Thor, reading between the lines, your childhood was hardly all skittles and peanut butter cups, I guess we can take that as read, and hey, why is this always chronological order, anyway? Have you ever wondered why a drift is always in chronological order?"

"I-"

I mean, the brain doesn't work like that, right? So why is it always rolling this Life-time movie out from birth onward when it seems to me we'd have the 'Don't Think About Elephants' rule instead – you know how when you're told not to think about elephants, that's all you can think about? So when you're in a drift with someone, I'd have thought that all you'd want to not think about would be all the really embarrassing things you'd done – which you can never stop thinking about, particularly at 3 in the morning – and yet it's chronological instead of embarrassment order.

Suddenly they were both at a party, watching a drunken Tony demonstrate how he takes a piss in his Iron Man suit.

Loki laughed at the sudden break in the tension.

"Yeah, like that! So, do you think the machine controls the timeline in the drift? And if it can do that, why can't it be powerful enough to control when people chase the rabbit and stop it?"

"My understanding is that it connects two minds from the basic subconscious upwards? Perhaps that's part of the process?" Loki grasped at his understanding of the human technology.

"Meh, I bet I can fix this but not right now, we need to work out our issues and get this show on the road. So, talking of shows, how about a horror film?"

Loki didn't bother to ask because he knew enough of Tony's past to know what Tony was going to show him.

Torture had never been one of Loki's favourite things, neither giving nor receiving, but it was even more horrible to experience it from the point of view of a mortal. In his own experiences, he'd always known the punishment would end. Horrific, yes: burns, amputations, starvation, but all survivable.

Now he would get to see the horror of the pain and the fear, but coupled with the mixed burden of hope. Hope it would end, hope of rescue, hope of death.

He held his own breath as he and Tony were held under water, gagged, choked as Tony shared the nightmare of drowning – over and over and over – day after day, and the beatings and the sleep deprivation, and all the while the hideous, unrelenting horror of the agonising pain and the gaping wound in his chest, plugged by a car battery. Tony shared it all like a flickering black and white movie with slashes of red blood and white-yellow pain.

Loki watched the blood leak around the magnet from the crude surgery, stolen antibiotics to hold back the infection, but no pain killers.

Tony tried to slide around the memory, and even controlled the chronology, but they both fell into the operation.

Loki could hear Tony gasping in real time through the link.

He watched a group of men holding Tony down in a cave. Cracking his chest open to start pulling out what shrapnel they could. Loki watched Tony's only pain relief come from passing into unconsciousness, when the pain and terror went beyond his ability to confront. More than the pain, it was the primitive conditions and the dirt that turned Loki's stomach. He'd watched men scream as they were taken apart before, often on the end of Odin's sword or at Odin's orders, and no one on Asgard cared about disease, but he knew the unsterilized hands and equipment being pushed into Tony's chest were probably a greater danger than the shrapnel itself. He watched, from Tony's point of view, as things went in and out of his body in ways a human should never be penetrated, and felt Tony's helpless horror.

He watched Tony scream and fight and be held down at feet and shoulders until he passed out again.

There was no noise from the present tense Tony, who stood next to him in the suit, just deep heavy breathing.

"Are you 'chasing the rabbit', Tony?" Loki asked, quietly, but Tony didn't answer and no one from the support team spoke, either. Possibly from their point of view, this had been just another few seconds.

Loki had to know this and forced himself to watch as Tony was plugged into a car battery and tortured and mocked and yet kept on fighting.

"That guy," Tony said at last, his voice small and shaky, "The guy helping me… his name was Ho Yinsen, and he kept me alive. He translated for me and helped me and lied for me. I'd be dead if not for him."

"He died?" Loki asked, already knowing the answer.

"He died firing a gun into the air to create a distraction so I could escape. Even after all that he'd been through, he still couldn’t' bring himself to kill anyone. He kept talking about his family, but I found out…"

Tony swallowed and Loki waited for him to continue.

"It turned out that his whole family had been killed by Stark-made weapons. I made the tools of war better than anyone in the world and those tools were used to kill the family of the best man I have ever known. The bullets that finally took him down were made in one of my factories. And he knew all of that that and yet he still kept me alive because he believed I could change things for the better. He gave me a second chance –to turn from being a monster to being a hero. I've tried, and I've fought and sometimes people have called me a hero. But I'm never going to be the man Ho Yinsen was."

"Is that how you see yourself? Or me? Do you see yourself as my Ho Yinsen?"

"Maybe. Maybe I'm your Ho Yinsen, or maybe you're my chance to start again, but either way, Yinsen is always there, instead of my mind, telling me the right thing to do. And then I ignore him and do what's fun, instead. But he's there, my own imaginary Jiminy Cricket, lurking in my subconscious, making me feel guilty, but then so is this…

And they were back in the tortures and the horrors and the pain and the blood and being dragged bleeding and weeping from one dark room to another by gleeful, angry men…

Loki could feel his gorge rising and swallowed to try to control the urge to vomit. He'd fought hundreds of wars, seen more loss of life and loss of limb than this human could even conceive, but experiencing it from this point of view was making his stomach clench and he coughed to hide his gagging.

Loki wondered, if he'd been made of fragile human meat, if he'd have kept on fighting the way Tony had kept on fighting, or if he'd given up long before…

Tony, face down in the water, face up as his captors performed CPR to bring him back to life again, waiting for him to cough and vomit until he was breathing well enough to say 'no', rinse and repeat, unescapable, head into the water, dripping water, crying, realisation, the water dripping…

… the acid dripping onto his face, into his eyes, over and over, unescapable, crying for help and crying for his children, crying for his little boys, screaming for his innocent, innocent children, innocent, the face of Vali, blank with shock at his own actions, Narfi's blood on his face,

"…it wasn't your fault, my son, my son…" Narfi's intestines turned to iron, holding him down, the acid dripping, Sygin's silence more damning than her accusations could ever have been… Vali, not long alive… screaming and howling in his madness and horror…

"Loki?" Tony's voice… but Tony hadn't been there then, when Loki's children had died, Tony hadn't been alive, his whole line of ancestry barely conceived when the Aesir turned one little boy into a monster, born of monster, bound Loki with the intestines of his own son, the acid dripping, dripping, crying, the inescapable, water dripping, acid dripping…

"Loki? Oh fuck… I thought that was just… just fucking myths or shit, fuck, Loki? Stop, come back! It's just a memory, don't get lost…"

Dripping acid and dripping blood and watching his son's die… head in the water, blood and an agony like he'd never known in his chest, shrapnel in his blood trying to get to his heart, a battery, a damned car battery the only thing keeping him alive, only the need for vengeance keeping him alive…

"Loki… don't follow it, don't…"

"I forgave them…" whispered Loki, "I thought… my children had to die," and Jormangandr and Fenris and Hel, all monsters, monsters in the eyes of Asguard the Eye of Odin and why? Why were they monsters? "It wasn't them," Loki said, his voice shuddering with hate. "It was me. I was my blood that made them monsters."

"NO!" Tony's voice was suddenly strong. This was the voice of the leader of the Avengers, the one who could convince the Hulk to obey, the one who convinced Steve that he was worth following. "Loki! No, you are not the monster. I don’t how fucking ugly you were kids where, no one does, I don't care if your kids a giant snake or a wolf or… or whatever the hell that little girl is, they were beautiful and perfect. I can see it in your mind and they were great and if Odin couldn’t' accept that then that makes HIM the monster. Not you and not your kids, you get me?"

Loki let his head hang forward, feeling the drift starting to fade. No… not fade, the link was still there, but their memories were not so blended. Tony was breaking the blurred lines and letting Loki go back into his own mind. Their tortures came apart to be their own separate tragedies, not a blended red velvet cake mix of blood and pain.

"Your boy, the giant serpent, he lives here now, right? On earth?"

"In your oceans." Loki waited for the condemnation. Monster. Too big for Asgard's oceans. Too shameful for the courts of Asgard. Too monstrous for Odin. Not worth the effort for Thor to speak on Loki's son's behalf.

"Good. Think he'd like to join the Jaeger program? Seems like we could use a giant magical snake on our side."

Loki just looked up at Tony, but Tony's face was obscured behind his full face mask.

"What? I'm not against immigration. Just saying. Giant snakes on our side? Could be pretty useful! You got his mobile phone number handy?"

Loki smiled at the picture of Jormangandr trying to handle a mobile phone, but perhaps if anyone could create a phone that a serpent big enough to circle Asgard's oceans could use, it would be Tony Stark.

"So, um… was that the worst of it? I mean… torture? You've had your mouth sewn shut and your kids murdered by your own family, fucking hell I can't even… and um, more torture. So, is that the worst of it?"

"Yes," Loki said. "No. There's more, but that's just the most obvious. My children died a very long time ago. But a parent never stops grieving. Even after centuries… my children…" Loki shut them down, all the memories. He'd wailed and cried and screamed and hated for so long, for so many hundreds of years, and only now had come to terms with the real reasons his children had been punished. He couldn't' go back there, not again. Not to dark caves and acid and grief. And he didn't want to go back to Tony's dark caves and torture and pain, either.

"Yeah, I've heard that. So, um. Yeah, that sucks. That really sucks. Remind me, if I ever meet Odin, I'm going to punch him in the Royal Jewels, okay?"

"I wouldn't stop you," Loki said, and laughed. The sound of his own sharp bark of laughter startled him a little, and the machinery from which he hung rattled with his jerking movements.

"There's one thing, though," Tony said. "One more thing I need to, um, share. Before we go out…"

And Loki can almost see it, unrolling like the opening credits of one of Midgard's movies, and he pulls the cables out. He yanks himself out of the drift and he can hear the sharp, pained gasp from Tony as the link is forcefully broken, and he stops fighting the machines and just… dangles. He hangs there, half in the suit, half in the wires, just dangling loose in the head of the giant Jaeger.

The team rush in then, fussing and tugging, checking their machines, checking their pilots.

Fury is there, and Coulson, and Steve and Natasha and Hawkeye are hovering in the background. No sign of Bruce. Quietly insane – Loki isn't really sure if Bruce knows what's been going on.

Fury strides past, checking on Stark as Stark peels himself out of the machinery.

Loki gulped air and allowed SHIELD's bondsmen to unhook him from the armour. Coulson supervised and fussed – in his quiet, no-fuss way – and Loki watched out of the corner of his eye as Fury checked over Tony.

"Well? Fury was asking.

"I didn't blow his mind, if that's what you're asking!" Tony said, and he sounded pretty pleased with himself. "Told you it would take the mind of a god to handle me."

"No, you didn't. You were both in the drift for minutes. Do you think you can fight?"

"Maybe… maybe not. I think there's a lot more shit in that pit to dig..."

Loki turned to glower, offended.

"… but we are definitely drift compatible."

"Good to hear it," Fury said, his voice gruff and mater-of-fact as he turned and walked back to where Loki had been unhooked from the machinery.

Fury grabbed Loki's face in both hands, leather gloves warm and smelly, and stared into Loki's eyes, pulling down the lid of Loki's left eye to check. "Are you hiding anything?"

"No. I wear no glamour. Tony didn't 'blow my mind' as he said. No mortal has that power."

"Yeah, well, I don't want to take that chance. Any headaches? Your eyes look red, but not with blood."

"No," Loki paused. "I'm fine. Truly. What we experienced was the same any other pairing. We saw some of the unpleasantness in each other's pasts, but we caused each other no physical or mental pain."

Coulson spoke to them both, "You were deep in the drift, neither of you were moving much. You were linked up for only a few minutes, so we wouldn't expect too much movement, but I'm not sure if we can tell if you're totally drift compatible in such a short space of time."

"A dream can write a saga in the space of a single heart-beat," Loki said. It had felt like they had been together in that non-space for hours, feeling each other's torture and pain, but the speed of thought took those hours and compressed them into the time taken for a micro-nap.

Tony spoke again, walking behind Fury and Coulson, locking eyes with Loki as he went past, rubbing his hands together. "We're drift compatible. You know it. I'm going out there, and I'm going to fight again. Loki and I are taking that Jaeger out and we're going to kick some Kaiju butt."

"Indeed," Loki said, aware of Fury's hand, warm and heavy on his shoulder, "Our powers combined will allow us to kick the hind quarters of many of those great monsters."

"Gonna have to give that machine another paint job, though," Tony said, talking to himself or talking to JARVIS, sometimes it was hard to know the difference, or if there even was a difference. "Can't be blue anymore. Green and Red? Too Christmas? What do you think?"

"I’m not fond of green and red together," Loki said as he made to leave the room also. Green leathers and red capes.

"Yeah, we don't want to look like a Christmas tree. Let me think about it. JARVIS has a good eye for colour. I think, in his electronic heart he secretly yearns to be an artist. Green… green and gold is too you. Red and gold is too me. Let me…" Tony kept talking as he went down the corridor and out.

Coulson moved to the door, watching him go. Hovering. Analysing. Always.

Fury stood. "You're sure, Loki?"

"Yes. I’m sure. Green and red are a horrible colour combination."

"You know what I'm talking about."

"Yes. We're compatible. Our memories are poison, but our minds slipped together easily."

Fury just nodded. "Okay, then. Go rest. First drifts can be traumatic."

Loki wasn't sure if that was true or a platitude, but he wanted privacy. A moment alone, to put up his shields again, to have his mind and thoughts be his own without someone watching his pain like watching a show on Midgardian television.

As he left, he thought he heard Fury and Coulson slap each other, then realised he'd overheard a high-five. Fury's voice, "Thank fucking Christ."

"Christ had nothing to do with it, sir. I think we should be praying to other gods."

"Whoever it takes to get the job done, Coulson. Whatever it takes."

Loki walked to his room, alone but for the memories of lost children, of the tiny bodies he'd held in his hands, who were scattered across the universe, or long since turned to dust, because they were yet too monstrous for Odin. Odin who raised a monster as his own, but could not face the monstrosities that his own brought forth. Dust and memories.

Chapter Text

Chapter Sixteen: "Don't waste it. Don't waste your life, Stark." – Ho Yinsen.

Loki ran the tip of the middle finger on his right hand over the photocopy of the photograph of the squirrel in the park on the back of his door and thought about loss. He felt the huge, gaping cavern of loss that lived deep inside of him open up once again. Children, Asgard, Thor, life, home, family, meaning, knowledge… squirrels. Everything he had lost, from the whole meaning of his life, from every important person, Frigga and Thor, to the realm of his birth. And right down to the small things – peacefully reading and learning in quiet sunlit corners. Berries, boar, mead. And squirrels.

It seemed to Loki that he had lost everything important in his life. And then he had given up on the hope or the idea of having important things and tried to content himself with meaningless, petty things. In the end he'd lost those, too.

Loki paced the small space, each way a few, unsatisfying steps, until he felt like he was spinning in a circle. He rubbed his temples, but there was no headache, no pain as he had experienced from driving the Jaeger alone, just a feeling of being utterly hollowed out.

The drift had not been what he'd been expecting. It hadn't gone to the places he'd tried to keep hidden. Some caves of memory had been explored, but many more remained hidden behind boulders and misdirection's, and there had been no judgement or pity or hatred from the mortal. There had been nothing but Stark's unending energy and drive – he didn't care at all what he'd seen in Loki's mind, he'd only cared about what he could get out of the drift: a partner to get him into a giant metal suit and out into battle again.

The knock on the door was not unexpected, and Loki didn't ask who before he opened it and let Tony enter.

"So," Tony said, and fidgeted, looking around with a feigned interest, as if Loki's room was somehow different from the hundreds of other identical metal boxes.

Loki stood silently while Tony paced back and forth, hands twitching as he tried to put his words in order, unknowingly following the path Loki had just been pacing.

"So," Tony said again. "That went well, didn't it! I mean, some drama, but yeah, you were hiding a lot of things and we didn't really go through my own mental filing cabinet of horrors, probably only files A through G at this point, so, yeah, lots to look forward to the next time we drift, but one thing that was disappointing, I didn't learn everything about magic which is really a major let down because I had this hope that once I'd tapped into the mind of the immortal Loki I'd be able to understand all of your magic and be able to wrap it all up in a bow and tie it together with my tech, and I admit that I'm concerned that when you really open up it's going to be so sick or horrifying or your guilt is going to overwhelm me, well, I’m not that concerned, not really, not after all the shitty things I've done myself, even though you've been around for centuries I don't think you can compete with some of what I've done, at least not on my scale, but who knows, I don't, because you didn't open up, so we've got some shit to work out, but yeah, overall, that went really well, right?"

Loki stood for a beat of time, his arms crossed, studying the mortal who looked up at him with eyes far too intelligent. "We controlled it. Far more than I had been led to expect."

"I'm a genius, you're a god. Godlett. Not a demi-god, that's a cross between a god and a human, so yeah, you're not a demi-god, but Steve hates it when we refer to you and Thor as gods, he's still hung up on his invisible friend, so… alien? Alien with god delusions?"

Loki huffed in annoyance and rolled his eyes as Tony's blather.

"The point is, with my brains and your… whatever you are… we can rule the universe together. Well, a Jaeger, anyway, and once you have the Jaeger, you have the power, and when you get the power you get the women…" He paused and stopped smiling. "When you have the Jaeger you have the power to destroy those creatures and take back our world. And your world, too, maybe. That's on your agenda, isn't it?"

"I don't know if Asgard still exists," Loki said, dryly, regurgitating everything he'd been told, and maybe just not wanting to commit to saving Asgard again.

"Yeah, but if it does, and if they've decided not to help us that's something you can rub in their faces, can't you. Loki helped the poor little mortals when Thor and his kind turned away. And if they have been attacked by the Kaiju as well, then you can go in there with an army of humans behind you, leading them in your own Jaeger, and bring the Kaiju to their knees, save Asgard when Thor and Odin failed, and all of Asgard will kneel to you in gratitude. Is that the plan?"

Tony looked at him with the power of a laser, searing right through any pretence.

"It's a good plan, Tony Stark," Loki faked a half-smile, "but I am not lying when I say I have no idea if Asgard still stands. And even if I did, do you honestly believe that your people would follow me into battle."

"Honestly? Yes. Yes, I do. If you can help us here, once we know Earth is safe, then yes, Fury would agree to send Jaeger's through and help our allies. If they are still there. He wasn't lying when he said we'd owe you one, you know. We sure owe Thor a few million favours."

Loki was quiet and looked away. "I don't know if they still stand, but yes, I don't deny it would feel good to be the one to rescue them, to be the hero for once. My motivations may not be pure, but to have them owe me their lives, their gratitude, there would be a satisfaction there. I would enjoy having them look to me as their saviour, for once, rather than with contempt."

"Welcome to being a hero."

"That's hardly a heroic way of thinking," Loki said, but couldn't help a small, cynical laugh.

"What do you think a hero is, Loki? You think any of us do this for any other reason than it feels good? It makes you feel a little bit better than anyone else. It makes them look up to you with big grateful eyes and you feel… better. That's all. The fire fighter than runs into a burning building to save a baby – sure, he's doing it for good and honourable reasons, but you better believe those reasons include feeling like a big man, feeling the gratitude of the mother and knowing he's got bragging rights that he saved a baby. He'll get free drinks and all the girls on that story for years!"

"And that's why you do it?"

"Yes," Tony said, honestly. "And… I don't have a choice. I have to do it. I used to set those buildings on fire, so now I have to be the one to run inside and save the baby. Don't look too close at the motivations, okay? Just look at the results. That's all that matters. Motivations only mean something when you're defending a criminal in course – no one looks too closely at the heroes. Everyone wants to feel useful, important, valuable. You want to feel loved and valued, just like everyone else. And if we can repay what you've given us, what you're going to keep on giving us, then we owe you and we'll need to do the honourable thing and stand by you, follow you to Asgard."

"If Asgard still exists."

"Yeah. I think it does. Thor, you know. He's… he's Thor. He's still there. I'm sure of it."

"What proof do you have?" Loki refused to accept the human's words without proof. Even if Thor "was Thor" and Loki knew exactly what that meant.

Tony shrugged. "He's Thor. And he's a hero for exactly the same reasons as the rest of us. Approval, from big daddy Odin and the rest of the Asgard crew. From you. He was always desperately trying to impress you."

Loki looked at the ground and felt the irritation of grit in his eyes.

"He wanted to save lives and have everyone look at him as the saviour and love him… well… maybe he'll have to look at you that way for a change. I think he'll like that. Maybe we all will. And what a party we'll have! Party in Asgard for everyone, you think?"

"Why are you humouring me like this?" Loki changed the subject quickly.

"Magic. I didn't get it. I'm disappointed and talking to cover it."

"Your mind couldn't grasp-"

"Oh, don't give me that bullshit," Tony snapped, and paced a few paces back and forth, mirroring Loki's earlier path. "My mind can grasp anything. I didn't get a chance, that's all. I want to drift again, but now that we know we can control some of what we see, I want you to focus on the basics of magic, the simple early learning parts, like you would have learned as a toddler at your mother's knee so I can learn it from the ground up. Just the basics, like a child, learning the alphabet and quantum mechanics, stuff I learned at kindergarten level."

Loki looked at the floor for a moment, and rubbed his cheek in thought. "I suppose it's not impossible. I've heard that your world has some magic users, at least at a rudimentary level. Once I would have said it a waste of time and an insult to the great mages of Asgard to attempt, but it seems that there may be nothing that you odd little creatures cannot do. You may be right, starting at the level of an infant… perhaps it might be possible to teach you… but it would take centuries to learn the basics. Centuries you don't have."

"This is me we're talking about, Loki. Genius, remember? If anyone on this planet can learn magic, it'll be me. I just need to get the basic physics involved so I can combine them with my technology."

"Have you ever created fire?" Loki gestured with his hands upturned, trying to indicate holding fire on his palms.

"Of course. In kitchens, living rooms, my lab, all the time, the bathroom once…"

"I'm not talking about a propensity towards arson, I mean, spontaneously. Have you ever ignited a flame in the palm of your hand? Or bent the wind to your will? Pulled a water spiral out of a still body of water?" Loki gestured one hand, sketching the motions that would accompany such basic conjurings.

"Yeah, of course, all the time! I'm a firebender, totally trademark Nickelodeon, didn't I tell you? No, I haven't, dumbass! Those things don't happen… well, er… I mean, you could probably teach me…"

"Those are the basic signs of magic in a child. If you have the ability, it would have manifested itself in such accidents," Loki didn't know whether to be disappointed or smug.

"So, unless I accidentally farted fire and set my diaper alight as a baby, you're saying I can't understand magic?" Tony frowned, preparing to fight over the principle.

"Do magic? No. Understand it? I don’t know. Maybe? I've learned not to see things in absolutes."

Tony paced a moment. "So, you concede the possibility?" It wasn't really a question aimed at Loki, but more of Tony talking to himself as he slotted some of the pieces together for whatever great invention he planned on unveiling. He spun on his heal and paced the three steps to the bathroom and back again. Loki could tell he was probably gearing up to work all night, or perhaps continue his interrogation of Loki on his various theories of magic. Tony was far from exhausted from the drift, just as full of energy and fire as he always was.

Loki sat on the middle of the bed, and gestured, "I have no chair to offer you, but if you wished to stay and talk…"

Stark sat beside him, on the end of the bed, and stared at the back of the door, at the photocopy of the photograph of Loki feeding the squirrel.

"We could win this war, you and I," Tony said. "You and I and all the rest of them."

"Perhaps. Although we don't really know what's on the other side. There may be a greater army than we are prepared to meet, even with magic and technology combined."

"True. We could win. We could lose."

"You've never lost a battle, have you?" Loki challenged. "You won't be prepared for loss."

"I've lost plenty of battles. I've lost everything over and over again. But you're right in a way; I've never lost a war. I've never faced my own Kobiashi Maru. I'm Captain Kirk, you know, pre Wrath of Khan, and I'm not talking about that dreadful, race-fail remake. Bobidoop Cunnysnatch. I mean, sure, he's hot, but he's no Ricardo Montalban!"

Loki had heard of Captain Kirk, but didn't grasp anything in the rest of the reference. Tony's sad expression made him not want to pursue it.

"If we lose-"

"We won't. You and me and the rest. We'll win. If we have to keep fighting until there's nothing left. You know that if we lose, there will be nothing left. We have no choice but to go down fighting. We either win or we die."

Tony turned to look at him, his face not quite sad, but intense, and his eyes flickering as if he couldn’t make up his mind which of Loki's eyes to look into. They were too close. He reached up and tucked a strand of Loki's hair behind his ear, his thumb stroking over Loki's cheek bone. It was a move honed on a thousand delusional hopefuls, Loki realised, a look that said 'You are the most important person in the world to me', a touch that said 'you are beautiful' and it was very well rehearsed. Tony had used these moves and those eyes on so many people before. Women who thought marriage would entrap the great Tony Stark into a profitable divorce, that a good fuck would lead to a bountiful paternity suit, or men who saw that look at thought 'black mail material'. And Tony Stark, veteran of all of them, saw 'you're an easy mark' and Loki leaned into the touch with a grateful sigh and let himself relax. It had been so long since someone had touched him with gentleness; he didn't care at all if it was a well-rehearsed smooth move or if Tony had some genuine reason. Loki would take that touch and be grateful for what he could get. It wasn't as if he hadn't fucked a thousand people himself in all his long life.

How old was Tony, Loki wondered. If he'd been Aesir, Loki would have put him at about 3,500 to 4,000 years old. Loki still couldn't accurately guess the ages of mortals, but he would be well past the full flush of youth. He was attractive, though, and Tony knew it, and he knew how to use it. He knew how to use his face, his body, and the force of his personality to seduce. He knew how to demonstrate the control he had over himself to show how he could guide another to their own pleasure.

When Tony leaned forward, pressing his lips against Loki, Loki offered no resistance or protest, but leaned down and met him half way, letting Tony's cool, dry lips brush against his own. It was a tentative touch, a careful knocking at the door, and Tony moved sideways to press a little firmer against the corner of Loki's mouth, leaving no doubt as to his intentions.

"Is this okay?" Tony asked, his lips brushing against Loki's as he talked, his moustache, neatly trimmed for once, tickled just a little bit.

Loki nodded. "It has been a long time since I have been touched with kindness," he said.

Tony's hand slipped around the side of his face, and he pulled back a little, "When you say 'a long time' are we talking, what? Years? Centuries? I mean, I know how long you guys live, but-"

Loki laughed softly, "No, not centuries. But I have been known for my prodigious appetite. When you are a Prince, there are many who want to get close. I have missed that."

"Yeah, I used to be the same. Before Pep… Before. But sometimes it's easier not to get close, not when you think you'll lose them."

"You're not worried about losing me?" Loki said it with a small sideways smirk, but he didn't want to hear that he was disposable to this mortal. Not when he'd been disposable to everyone else in his life. He didn't expect vows of true love, not when Tony had obviously come here hoping Loki would be open to a quick satisfaction, but he could at least do Loki the courtesy of pretending some care.

"I think that it's most likely if you die, I'm going to die by your side. So… nothing to lose, everything to gain. You say yes, we have a nice night, we drift tomorrow. You say no, we sleep apart, we drift tomorrow. Either way, if either of us die, we die together, too."

"Well, that's very true. And almost romantic in a horrible way."

"I didn't see much below the level you allowed me to drift, but I know the rumours. The mythology. I've heard all the… what's the word? Argrr?" Tony sounded as if he was chewing gravel.

"Ergi? No, that's wildly not how it's pronounced, but keep in mind I speak the Allspeak, so whatever word you use I hear what you're attempting to say. Just speak English."

"So, that reminds me," Tony mused, still stroking strands of Loki's hair thoughtfully, "Why is it that you talk like a modern day American, more or less - hold the fancy accent - but Thor is still all Verily and Thou and Man of Iron? I know that you're different species and all, and maybe you're a little smarter than Thor, but that's underestimating him I think, and Steve thinks it's because you're a shape changer, that you adapt better to new things, whereas Thor takes longer to learn, but the point is, why do you use modern idioms, when Thor's still all: 'Verily I shall wage glorious battle on your machine of toast!'?"

Loki grinned, "He is, I believe, what you might say: 'taking the piss?'"

"Seriously?"

"He is amused by your amusement, and not so concerned with his image that he cannot make fun at his own expense. I'm reasonably assured that every time he wages glorious battle for the honour of a pop tart, or, as you say, 'verily', he is quietly mocking himself for your amusement. He is not, as you intimated, unintelligent. Verily, it is so."

Tony smiled, broadly, "Hah, I kind of wondered. Advanced alien technology and still saying Verily when we know full well the Vikings didn't talk like that. Verily is what, 16th century English? You kind of ruined his joke, I think."

"Maybe, but it's his role as King to be what is expected by his subjects."

"Oh, so we're subjects, now, are we?"

"Subjects of Asgard, bow down to the king, kneel mortal scum, what is the phrase, yada yada yada?" Loki twirled his hand to demonstrate his nonchalance at the idea.

"Never yada yada yada again! So, you're okay with this, then?" Tony asked, a finger resting on Loki's lower lip.

"As I said, it's been some time. I would welcome another's touch. And as much as there may be no romance between us, courting is not the way of the Asir, and I have no idea of the ways of my own kind. You have always been honest with me, to the best of my knowledge. The lies you tell are merely your own personal shield – you hide the darkness and the loneliness underneath bravado and bluster, but you also don't hide the fact you're lying. You just put your lies out there and demand that we all go along with them. Your lies are the fuel of your life, and your life fuels the engines that give us the machines of war. Your mix of lies and honesty is a heady mix, and one I admit I find very attractive."

"Not my eyes, then? You like my lies and honesty? Not the eyes? Everyone else says I have beautiful eyes!" Tony fluttered his lashes, and deftly used humour to avoid addressing Loki's words.

"Yes, if that makes you feel better, it's your eyes. Your beautiful big brown eyes."

"Yes, that's better," Tony said, diving back behind his mask of bravado and bluster, and pressing their lips together again.

It was light and careful, and Tony put both hands on Loki's face to direct the kiss in his favourite ways. Loki leaned forward, putting his hands on Tony's thighs, feeling the hardness of muscle, the bone near the knee. Tony's body was solid from hard, practical work. Not the kind of muscle that humans built up in gyms, but the kind of muscle that came from hours spent building and burning and hammering metal. Millionaire genius Tony might be, but he worked hard, always had, and it showed in the firm strength of his body. Not a god, but a mortal who was doing the best with what little he'd been given, and it was pleasing to the touch. Loki moved forward, pushing more aggressively into Tony's kiss, his hand sliding up under Tony's shirt where the muscles at his core led Loki's hands up and around.

Tony's kiss was well practiced. He kissed like he had a Master's degree in kissing, like he was using Loki to work on his Ph.D. He kissed gently, the corners of Loki's lips, light and sweet and tender, like he actually meant it, and leaned back a little so that Loki had to lean in, proving that Loki meant it, too. At every point, Tony was giving Loki the chance to move away, change his mind, but Loki laughed a little, letting his laughter tickle Tony's lips, and grinned wide before moving back in. It felt good, it had been a long time since someone had touched him with kindness - not looking to be with a 'Prince of Asgard' or seduce him into offering more power, more favours - but Tony was seducing him for the joy of seduction itself. This was, perhaps, a little bit of Tony proving to himself that he could seduce anyone, but also just Tony offering himself, offering his honesty and his body and his time.

It was sweet and real and Loki enjoyed Tony's earthly solidity. "You showered before you came here," Loki observed.

"Just a quick one," Tony whispered against Loki's lips, "Don't think I haven't noticed the way you wrinkle your nose at my funk. I'm a hardworking man!"

"You do not smell sour, just the smell of honest work. If anything, I find it appealing. I appreciate the fruits of your labour, and do not begrudge the inevitable outcome of hard work."

"I could fake it for you, would you like me to do some jumping jacks?"

Loki grinned again, and cupped the back of Tony's head, "That will not be necessary. The other side of the smell of toil – it reminds me of the training grounds on Asgard and the labours of the Dwarves, neither of which hold pleasant memories. I am not aroused by your odour, but I do not resent it, either. I accept your taking the time to cleanse yourself as the honour you intended."

Tony laughed at 'honour' as Loki lifted him slightly and laid him down on the bed so they were face-to-face, eye-to-eye. Tony kicked off his shoes and twined his legs around Loki's. "I like this position better. You can't tower over me when we're lying down!"

For a brief second, Loki wondered if this was yet another of the humans' attempts to keep him at their side. If Tony Stark had come here as one of Fury's sacrifices to offer on Loki's alter. Food, acceptance, and now the body of their greatest genius, but then there was no way that Tony would be here if it wasn't of his own free will. If there was any falsity in Tony's seduction, it was only the demands of the human's ego, and if Fury had intended to offer sex, Loki believed that he would have been honest about it up front. A concubine of Loki's choice would have been provided if Loki had asked. Tony was here because he wanted it, and no other reason.

The heat that pressed against Loki's belly couldn't be faked, either, and Tony ground his body against Loki's, bringing up the urgency of his actions sharply, making sure Loki didn't misunderstand his desires. But there was just the tiniest hint of question in Tony's eyes. For all his bravado and grandeur, there was the smallest hint of uncertainty. At any moment, Loki could push him away. For a brief second, Loki wondered why, because he was sure that no prospective partner had ever said no to Tony Stark, not ever, but then Loki remembered some of what he'd seen in the drift. Tony had been rejected. He'd been rejected by a father too busy, too uncaring, by a mother too busy and too dominated, and had, far too many times, found that his relationships had been based on his money and position, not on his personality or genuine caring. If Loki had no desire for Tony's money or prestige, and they both knew Loki didn't, then Tony had nothing more to offer than himself. Tony was handing over an enormous amount of power to Loki, the power to reject and hurt, but Loki had no intention to abuse his position this time. It simply felt too good to be wanted, to be wanted not for prestige or gold, but for the comfort he could offer with nothing more than his own self.

The ultimate submission, to be so vulnerable with another, naked and open to all judgement, but Loki reminded himself that he had nothing to fear from this unarmed mortal, and if anything, it was Tony who was shorter, weaker, older… yet there was nothing but confidence in Tony's hands and eyes. Confidence, not arrogance. Tony was meeting him as an equal here. It was a unique and delightful experience.

Tony held him close, his hands sliding under Loki's shirt, stroking up and down his back. They caressed each other, just exploring each other across the arms, shoulders, back, never breaking eye contact. It saddened Loki a little – this wasn't just two comrades in arms coming together to give each other ease – because each of them watched and waited for betrayal, and even knowing that neither would betray the other, neither could quite let go of the fear.

They didn't kiss again, because to do so they would have had to break eye contact, and without that, they couldn’t watch each other, but there was an intensity there, too, that Loki found addictive. Normally he preferred eyes closed, or lights out, or to just not look his partners in the eye. He never wanted to see their truths, but he couldn't get away with that with Tony, and perhaps this was rather nice, too. Tony's eyes, big and golden brown, and rimmed with the lushest lashes Loki had ever seen in all of his thousands of years, were meant to melt the strongest barriers. The self-professed beauty of Tony's eyes was another weapon just as powerful as his technology and his fierce intelligence, and they were a weapon he wasn't afraid of using on Loki.

"Let's, uh, let's just keep it simple," Tony whispered, and his fingers were dipping down inside of Loki's trousers. "Great hip bones, Loki, very sexy. I'd say androgynous if you weren't 90% muscle and bone and close to eight feet tall."

Loki copied the motions, ignoring the more ridiculous of Tony's banter, nimbly flipping open Tony's fly button, and letting the zipper down. "No under garments?" he said as his fingers brushed against crisp, clean hair.

Tony just grinned. "Either you were going to say yes, and we spend a pleasant evening together, or I was going to go to bed alone, either way, no point in making more laundry."

"And you…" Loki didn't break eye contact, but couldn't help a short bark of laughter as he felt the tidy prickle against his finger. "You manicure your pubic area?"

"Of course!" Tony raised an eye brow as if Loki had stated the most obvious thing in the world, then wiggled his lips to make his moustache dance. "I firmly believe that the carpet should match the curtains!"

Loki couldn't help the explosion of laughter the image generated, but it was cut off quickly as warm dry fingers danced lightly from the base to the tip of his cock. He gasped, and broke eye contact as he put his head back, savouring long missed sensations.

Tony's breath whispered against his chin and throat, "Hold on, I have lube in my pocket… you know, in case you can't magic some up…?" Tony left the question dangling, but didn't pause to wait as he whipped out a sachet from his pocket, ribbed it with his teeth, and squeezed the butt-warmed gel over them both.

The hand was back, slippery and deft. Tony pushed them together, rubbing their shafts simultaneously, "Play with my balls," Tony whispered into Loki's ear, his sexy talk direct and to the point, so Loki did. He cradled Tony's freshly shaved balls, rolling them gently as Tony slid his fingers around, up, over, down again, his hand well practiced. Loki regretted having one arm trapped beneath them, and wondered if he should flip Tony on his back so they could both use both hands, but face-to-face like this they were on equal ground, and the expertise in Tony's fingers made up for any lack.

Releasing Tony's balls, Loki moved Tony's hand so he could take his companion's shaft in hand, and Tony followed his lead. They stroked and teased, leisurely and slow. Tony moved his finger tips to stroke over the head of Loki's penis, using the palm of his hand to rub the glans with gentle, slippery pressure, before sliding down, and circling his fingers around the base of Loki's penis and pulling up firmly, smiling a little as Loki couldn't stop his hips jerking forward, following those talented fingers. They gazed at each other, and Loki wasn't sure if it was intensely romantic or they were waiting for each other to be the first to betray, but it was getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open. He used his thumb pad to slide through Tony's slit, slippery and warm, and Tony lost the battle, eyes closing first.

"Oh, god…" Tony groaned.

"Yes?" Loki said, but he lost his humour as Tony pulled harder, jerking him faster, controlling Loki's speed and passion.

"Ah, fuck it," Tony said, and surged forward, capturing Loki's lips and throwing his leg over Loki's thigh.

Tony's kissing was firm and as well choreographed as his every other move, but he was starting to shake under Loki's experienced fingers. With hundreds of years of practice under his belt, there were few things that could surprise Loki anymore, but he loved feeling Tony's thrusting enjoyment, his soft moans, and the way his kisses became less and less practiced, the occasional nip on Loki's lips, and the way Tony didn't stop talking, even during sex, his soft litany of 'come on, yeah, come on, Captain Fucking Magic, keep doing that, yeah, like that, so good, love your hands…' and Loki whispered back to him between kisses, his lips getting wet with Tony's enthusiasm, his cheeks getting scraped by the short beard in a way he found an unbearable turn on, 'You're good at this, Tony, do it harder, pull harder, I am stronger than you, I need more, yes, squeeze me,' and Tony did, adjusting his grip to Loki's needs, harder than a human man could handle, but just perfect for Loki. Loki tapped his thumb against Tony's frenulum, rubbing it with quick circular strokes and watched Tony's eyes roll back into his head.

They kissed, messier and messier as they got closer, their hands slippery and faster, faster, until Tony groaned like a broken thing, and spilled over Loki's fingers. He barely lost the beat, merely the slightest hitch, and kept up the speed and motion until Loki followed him just a few seconds later. Loki couldn't help his own soft 'Oh' of surprise as his belly clenched and the orgasm throbbed up from his balls, rocketing out in hot bubbles of too long surprised pleasure. He groaned as his body relaxed, muscle by muscle, from the toes upwards, as his climax left him wrung out and relaxed.

Tony held still for a few minutes, his face pressed against Loki's, and they enjoyed the afterglow together, relaxing into the tiny bed, Tony's weight just slightly on Loki's chest.

Loki let out a long, slow, shuddering sigh of relief.

"Oh, fuck, was that a land speed record?" Tony groaned. "I can do better. I promise you, Loki, I can absolutely do better."

Loki hadn't minded that at all, and wasn't sure why the mortal's ego was so fragile, but there was an 'in' here. "Next time. Next time you can prove yourself."

Tony grinned wide and wicked. "So, you agree to a next time, huh?"

Loki just smiled softly. "Absolutely. We believe in second chances, do we not?"

They were quiet for a little while, enjoying the last twitches and spasms as they came down.

"Uh, I forgot wipes…"

Loki clicked his fingers and their mess disappeared. Just to show off, he clicked again and they were both clean and dressed again, although he replaced Tony's jeans with soft pyjama pants. He would have preferred to have felt Tony's balls stuck to his own thigh during the night, but it wasn't Tony's room, and Loki didn't know if he was going to take off running through a nightmare again. Better they were decently clad.

"Show off."

"I believe the human vernacular is 'takes one to know one'!".

"Absolutely. No one shows off better than I! I am the greatest braggart that there has ever been!"

Tony threw an arm over Loki's chest, pushed his face against Loki's shoulder. There was barely enough room on the narrow bed for the two of them, they would fall out if they tried to roll over. "I'm going to sleep here tonight." Tony said. Telling, not asking.

Loki wanted to make a snippy comment about mortals taking liberties, or tell him he should ask for permission, not just issue a statement, but he didn't. Tony's body was warm and a little sweaty, and he smelled very good. Clean, masculine, lightly salty. It was good and Loki shifted a little to let Tony rest more comfortably.

With a flick of his wrist, Loki turned out the artificial lights in the room, leaving a small glowing mage ball to bath the room in soft light.

"Don't like the darkness?" Tony asked.

"Unfamiliar room. I may need to find the bathroom in the night."

"I have to admit, we all wondered at first if you guys used the toilet like humans do. I mean, self-proclaimed gods and all. Gods aren't supposed to need to take a dump. But then again, not gods, just aliens… just aliens – who would ever have thought I'd find 'just aliens' to be blasé – and if you all eat, of course you need to take a crap. Obvious, really. Didn't stop us being curious, though."

"Did you not use cameras in your bathrooms to catch Thor taking care of his requirements?" Loki could actually believe Tony would have JARVIS make that happens.

"No! What do you think I am? Some kind of pervert? I mean, yeah, of course I tried, but Steve wouldn't allow it."

Loki couldn't resist the giggle, instantly having an entire mental picture of Tony and Steve arguing over cameras in the toilets and Thor wondering what they were whispering about and being oblivious.

"Thor was lactose intolerant, you know," Tony said. His voice started to sound sleepy.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Lactose intolerant. He couldn’t drink cows' milk. Well, I mean, he could, obviously, but it took us all ages to work out why he was running to the bathroom every time we had pizza, or Steve arranged a fondue night. Goats, you know."

"Goats?" Loki had lost the thread of the conversation. He guessed Tony was rambling as he drifted off to sleep.

"You only have goats in Asgard. Probably giant-ass goats the size of a city bus knowing you guys, but yeah, goats, not cows, so he hadn't ever had lactose before. Did you even know that? Lactose is only in cow milk, not goat? I have no idea what you know or don't know about Earth stuff. But it just seemed outrageous that he was immune to diseases and volcanoes and lightning and poison and everything, but a milkshake could give him horrible gas for hours."

"I didn't know that…" Loki frowned. He'd known Thor for over a millennia, there should be nothing new left to know, but towards the end he and Thor had surprised each other many times, and never pleasantly. If he ever saw Thor again, he was going to offer him ice cream, or eat a lot of it in front of him. Or maybe not. Maybe he'd just buy him some goats. Thor could keep them at Tony's tower again and keep them for their milk. Thor had always loved his pet goats when they had been young. In the future, when they had defeated the Kaiju and saved Earth and saved Asgard and Loki been hailed as heroes and he had his brother again.

Reminded of Thor again, with the small human beside him, Loki missed Thor's massive hugs with a physical ache that hurt him right down to the base of his spine, and he caught his breath before his distress gave him away.

"God farts…" Tony mumbled, nearly asleep… "Heh…"

The spell of pain broken by Tony's ridiculous thought, and with hot, wet breath being puffed on to his shoulder, Loki drifted off to sleep. This time his dreams were of Thor and ice cream and goats and squirrels and if strange, at least none of it woke him screaming.

-oo0oo-

Chapter Text

Chapter Seventeen: Jurassic Park Wonderland

He couldn't see past his hand, the ocean of Midgard was so dark, so deep, but the lights on his Jaeger created a sphere of false illumination and as he reached down into the waters, he could almost imagine the life that was spinning by in the blackness. The Kaiju had done some good for this world, really. The oceans, almost free of fishing boats, at least the larger boats, the dredgers that destroyed all life in the seas and the massive fishing fleets, were too much of a target for the Kaiju, so life was returning to the oceans. Sharks, tuna, a few cod, sardines were all breeding again, and the ocean floor was very slowly recovering from the damage caused by years of over fishing. Only the occasional stupidly brave, or bravely stupid fisherman would come near these seas now. Loki could see just the brief flash of bio-luminance as things came and went in his Jaeger's lights, or the flicker of a shadow as a fish went flitting past.

The massive loss of human life had taken the pressure off the planet, allowing wildlife everywhere to recover. Islands around the Pacific Rim had been denuded of human life, and the smaller animals that had survived had taken over and started to breed again. Domesticated animals who had lost their masters had either died of starvation or started their lives again, feral and free. Plant life recovered. Trees grew tall and farms returned to the wild.

The Kaiju were smart enough, just smart enough, to find the high density human populations and tear them apart. And what life remained profited from the loss of human predation and destruction. Long term, Loki thought, the Earth would benefit, the same as it had from the destruction wrought by Genghis Khan or the Black Plague.

Loki watched the new life that filled the oceans, and recognised the animals of Vanaheim in the mix and that wasn't strange at all. With the voids the Kaiju had torn in the fabric of space, animals from all over the nine were blending and mixing. So the oceans of Vanaheim and Alfheim bled their creatures into the oceans of Midgard and those animals prospered, free of the boats that had previously been cleaning the oceans of all life. All animal life was now free of the torment of the humans who destroyed them for food and pleasure, or the Aesir who hunted for sport, or the Vanir that hunted them to appease their Aesir masters, and Loki wondered if maybe the Kaiju were the good guys here. But then their destruction was centred on the humans now, and who knew where it would go in future. Would all life vanish in time? Would the Kaiju destroy and ruin this world until there was nothing left? Perhaps they would leave Midgard in darkness and desolation, as the Aesir had done to Jotenheim.

He reached down one enormous giant Jaeger hand and caressed the back of a whale that swam past his knees. They swam past in huge shoals. He could see thousands of them, massive and yet tiny from this distance, swimming around his metal body like a school of sardines. The whale arched into his touch like a cat and he stroked it, watching it wind and twist around his fingers, turning its cold eye up towards him to look at the alien metal creature that walked through its watery world with the wobbling steps of a toddler.

He laughed at the whale and at its playfulness, and didn't even notice as its body elongated and twisted, but as it looked up at him he could see it had been his son and he hadn't noticed. His Jormungandr, and the gaze was not playful as he stared up at Loki. Jormungandr's face was face twisted with bitterness. "You let them throw me away!" his son said, spiteful and unforgiving. "You let them throw me away! You let them throw me off the bridge like I was nothing! Like I was a failure! I was only defending myself when they called me a monster and you did nothing!" and he howled, like a thunderstorm, like a wolf, and put up a hand towards Loki, a hand of skeleton bone, cold and promising death…

Loki awoke with a yelp and clutched his side, holding in the muscle and guts he'd felt torn out, but finding only the outlines of his ribs under moist skin.

"Shut up," Tony said, voice muzzy with sleep and pissy with annoyance. "Stop screaming. Seriously. You think we don't all have something to scream about in the night? I need my beauty sleep. Not that I'm not already beautiful, but shut up anyway. We keep the screaming on the inside! Okay? On the inside!"

Tony nestled down again, unsympathetic and absolutely what Loki needed to hear. His hair short and fluffy and his beard prickling against Loki's shoulder. Tony rubbed the spot on Loki's ribs where he'd savagely jabbed him awake, and went straight back to sleep again. Not the sleep of the just or the righteous, but the sleep of one who has seen too much to care anymore.

Loki didn't follow him down, but watched the human in his sleep. He decided that Tony was out of line to wake Loki from his own nightmares, when Tony was twisted and frowning and obviously soon deep in his own misery. Tony was not someone whose worries fell away in sleep, leaving him younger and peaceful in the night. Tony's face aged terribly. Every line and wrinkle exaggerated as everything that Tony hid with his bravado during the day came out and tore him apart in his sleep. The force of personality that held Tony Stark's façade together in the waking hours was subsumed by his pain when he slept.

Loki watched the crease and pinch move across Tony's face, the lines tracing the path of his dreams, and marvelled at the survival instinct of the unbelievably fragile mortal life. A body that could be crushed by a Kaiju, by a motor vehicle, or destroyed from within by the bite of an insect or an infection from a virus – something so small even Loki couldn't see it – or even by Tony's own body. Stark's focus on his health and diet – other than his love of alcohol – had stood in him good stead in the face of heart disease or cancer, but it would take little more than a flick of Loki's wrist to end his already too brief life. Another fragile life, lost in a heartbeat. Like all life from this realm. Like squirrels.

This is what the Kaiju had seen, and what Loki had felt when he'd touched a Kaiju mind, easy targets – barely armed walking meat, and the Kaiju wouldn't stop until everything had been destroyed – they would annihilate the life on this planet right down to and including the viruses that the humans had battled so long. No 'War of the Worlds' here,: the Kaiju would leave this place as nothing more than slag in space, orbiting a dead sun.

The only thing the Kaiju hadn't counted on was the tenacity of people like Stark and his companions, and their experience at fighting such threats, but even so the Kaiju wouldn't stop coming. They were insensate to the idea of a pyrrhic victory, and would keep sending through warriors until they finally destroyed Earth by weight of numbers alone.

Loki put a hand on Tony's head and carded fingers through his hair, soothing him from his nightmares, but peacefulness was not a natural state for Tony Stark and he slowly oozed his way back to wakefulness.

"So…" Tony wiggled around a bit and scratched his stomach, "What was the nightmare about?" Tony's voice was very sleepy, but no less sharp.

"My children. Death."

"The usual, then."

"Yes, just the usual."

Tony switched from scratching to rubbing his stomach. "You haven't exactly done a lot to make this place homey," he observed. "I like the squirrel themed artwork, though. Who needs the Mona Lisa when you have squirrels, right? So, yeah, we all heard what happened, are you okay?"

"Why did you come here last night?” Loki asked, ignoring Tony’s question “You could have your pick of the humans, and you have already secured me as a drift partner, so why come here?" Loki wasn't concerned over Tony's choice, Loki had never had trouble attracting partners from any realm, but puzzled that Tony wouldn't seek one of his own kind first.

"What? False modesty, Loko Ono? You know full well you're easy on the eyes," Tony smirked, then caught Loki's expression and dropped the act. "Hey, you were either going to say yes, no, or kill me. Well, you weren't really going to kill me, I saw enough of that when we were drifting – you're not the kind of hold that kind of grudge or get all offended if a guy hits on you, so... 'Yes', great. 'No', whatever, we still drift. Nothing to lose, something quite nice to gain, right?"

Loki nodded, and got up to walk to the shower, "As you said. Nothing to lose."

"Hey, want me to join you?"

"These showers are far too small for two," Loki said, standing under the thin, dribbly stream. He could quite easily convert the showers into something luxurious, something lined with gold and a small personal waterfall, some leaping fish and wading birds and lotus flowers, but it seemed unpolitic when the rest of the Shatterdome also stood under these dribbly streams and timed their three minute showers.

“I’ll take that challenge!” Tony said, and stepped up behind Loki, squashing them both into the too-small space.

“Tony,” Loki complained and tried to push him out, but couldn’t really get annoyed when he knew Tony was just being playful – and not after Tony’s fear of rejection had gone through Loki like a hot knife during their drift.

They made a good effort at showering, and Tony in particular made a good effort at sexy soaping suds action.

Loki raised an eyebrow at Tony's increasing levels of pout and schmooze, eyes lowered, looking up at Loki with just the hint of smirk. "What are you attempting to do? Is that meant to be seductive?"

"Hell yes. Is it working?"

Loki had to think about it. He wasn't particularly aroused by Tony's actions, but then upon pondering, perhaps merely the fact that Tony was prepared to put in the effort was rather flattering. And being flattered was always just a little bit arousing. It didn't take much, and Loki felt himself harden, just a little, at Tony's attempts to seduce him.

"Yes, now that I think about it. Yes, maybe it is."

"Well, I'm not sure now. Not if you have to 'think' about it!" Tony gave an exaggerated eye roll, and made as if to get out of the shower, but Loki pulled him back with very little resistance at all, and gently pinned him to the metal wall, watching Tony squirm as the cold metal met his shoulders.

Tony looked at him through hooded lids, making an exaggerated expression of seduction, and pushed his pelvis against Loki's. Their skin was slippery and wet, and Loki shivered a little bit, despite the warm water, at the slide of prickling pubic hair and warm skin. The soft skin hardening against his thigh was a reassuring warmth, and he smiled and let his eyes close, enjoying the heat of Tony's body as they moved together, finding an easy rhythm.

"Hey, Skywalker," Tony used Loki's Midgard name, making Loki chortle with surprise, "Hey, Silvertongue… how did you get that nickname?"

"Oh, Tony, I have heard every possible variation of dirty joke about Silvertongue – there are no new ones left. Believe me, little human, there are no new dirty jokes left for you to make."

"How about comparisons? How about you let me show you what Silvertongue really means!"

Tony slid down slowly, using his mouth to nip and lick at Loki's chest, his hands massaging the muscles there, fingers teasing and pulling at Loki's nipples, rolling the soft buds until they firmed, just a little, just to the edge of pain then releasing them.

"I always wanted you, you know that?"

"Hmm…? Since we started drifting?"

"No. Right from the start. Well, not the real beginning," Tony took a moment to lap around the edge of Loki's belly button, pulling away when Loki stiffened, and Loki couldn't contain a tiny snigger – wondering if Tony had picked up Loki's distaste of having his navel penetrated from the drift or from his very well-honed sexual skills at reading a partner's desires, "No… you remember when you walked off my balcony into my building? Right back when you brought the Chitauri? Man, you were so sexy. Such an evil fucker, no doubt about that, but man, sexy, sexy alien…" Tony sunk his teeth into Loki's hip bone, making him hiss and jerk, Loki's penis hardening sharply and bouncing against Tony's throat at the little pain.

"Heheh, I remember."

Tony looked up, water falling on his face, leaving his lashes glistening with water droplets, blinking against the water in his eyes.

"I remember how you walked in, taking off your armour…"

"Sexy striptease."

"You made yourself physically vulnerable, but there was nothing soft or weak about the way you walked."

"Yeah, I've been told I walk like sex on legs."

"Mmm, indeed…" Loki broke off and let his head fall back as his penis was trapped between Tony's jaw and his shoulder, the roughness of his stubble a rough texture that bordered on the unpleasant, but had Loki's hips jerking almost helplessly at the oddness of the sensation.

"So…" Tony said, mumbling his words slightly as he used his lips to nibble along Loki's shaft… "Is that the moment you fell in love with me?"

Loki laughed again, his penis wobbling so fast Tony lost track and had to move rapidly to try to pin it down again. "No, I am not that foolish. I could see you were confident, and I wanted to know what gave you such confidence when I considered you such an unworthy opponent when not in your suit of armour, but no, I did not decide that you would make a good paramour at that time."

"So…" Tony said again, and gave Loki's penis a long slow lick, "When?"

Loki was silent for a long time, looking down at Tony's face where was so intent upon his task. "Soon."

"Heh, fair enough," Tony said, then swallowed Loki down whole, and Loki was incredibly impressed at Tony's ability to take such a length without choking, but then he started to lose his mind as Tony gulped hard, and pressed his mouth firmly around Loki's penis, the suction hard and the tongue very experienced.

"Uh…" Loki let his head fall back, hitting the shower stall walls with a dull thunk.

Loki felt Tony’s hand slide further back, fingers exploring and clamped down before an investigative finger could slide inside. He clenched hard enough to let Tony know he could lose that finger if Loki’s boundaries were not respected.

Tony responded by laughing and then choking, and then laughing at his choking, and the vibrations went straight through Loki’s cock. Loki shuddered, his teeth snapping together as the lithe shocks travelled up his spine.

“You’re surprisingly good, for a mortal,” Loki choked out, then amended, “and I mean no insult, but your ability to hold your breath is quite impressive!”

Tony pulled off with a tight-lipped pop, “I used to date this Australian guy – great skin, played the didgeridoo. They practice circular breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth at the same time. I thought that was a skill worth learning."

“Indeed. Perhaps you should return to your demonstration...”

“And they call you Silvertongue?” Tony laughed before returning to his task with great enthusiasm.

“Actually, you call me Skywalker, now,” Loki corrected.

Tony pulled off, again, and mumbled, “Goddamned Star Wars crap, some time I’m going to show you some Star Trek. Now that’s-“

Loki put a hand behind Tony’s head and firmly encouraged him to return to the task at hand, and Tony laughed again, making Loki hiss and shudder. "Skywalker, the name of my skill to walk between the realms, is a name that predates your moving pictures by a thousand years," Loki said, reasonably sure he had his numbers wrong, but not really caring. In return, he could feel Tony get ready to pull away again, and used the hand on Tony's head to gently hold him in place, but it didn't stop Tony from laughing again and Loki realised he'd been tricked, just a little bit, yet again, by one of these odd people.

He grinned again, "Pull off, use your tongue," he instructed, and Tony did, using one hand to fondle Loki's balls at the same time. Loki looked down and Tony looked up through his lashes, deliberately provocative. Tony made such a show of it, fluttering his lashes in the drip of the shower, using his lips to nibble down the length of Loki's cock, using his tongue lasciviously, making sure that Loki watched every single move. He made his face coquettish and pursed his lips teasingly, and Loki couldn't restrain his giggle, playing along with Tony's flirtatious game. Why not have some fun, after all, when they could be facing death at any point. Tony put on quite the show, slurping and kissing at the head, but now using one hand to slide the length of Loki's cock, faster and faster, jerking him until Loki finally found his climax as Tony used the stubble on his cheek to roughly stimulate the head of Loki's cook, Loki shooting across Tony's cheek and into his ear.

Loki leaned back against the wall and held Tony's hands as he stood up and complained about his knees.

"I am getting to old to kneel on the floor like that anymore," he said.

"You did just fine," Loki said, and pulled him closer, draping his arms around Tony's shoulders.

"Of course I did, I'm great. I'm always great. I'm the best!" Tony said, leaning against Loki's chest, his beard tickling Loki's collar bone. "But I do have come in my ear now."

Loki leaned down and licked Tony's ear clean with the point of his tongue, while Tony squirmed and complained and Loki held him harder to make sure he didn't wiggle away from his attentions.

"There. Never let it be said that the God of Fire and Chaos does not take care of his lovers," Loki said, releasing Tony and letting him step out of the shower.

"Fire, huh, hot stuff?" Tony teased, dragging a towel over his hair, letting it ruffle up in every direction. "Do you have any hair wax? Gel? I haven't been paying attention to my quiff and things are getting a bit out of hand," Tony fussed a little, and Loki wondered if his interest in his appearance was due to him being in a sexual relationship with someone again.

"Yes, do you not know your mythology? I was the god who brought fire to your people."

"Oh, hardly, Mr Pants on Fire, we had fire tens of thousands of years before you were born!"

"Well, I gave someone fire, or something. I can't remember, it was about a thousand years ago, but I'm fairly certain I remember that I brought fire to some dirty primitives and taught them how to cook their food and heat their homes and they promptly set their hovels on fire," Loki said, fairly sure he'd brought fire to humans, but then again, it had been a very long time ago.

Tony was looking at him with a pinched look somewhere between torment and laughter, "What the hell, Loki?"

"I have not always been God of Chaos!" Loki tried to explain without sounding grandiose. Again. "My first title, before I reached my manhood-"

"Manhood!" Tony sniggered.

"- my first title was God of Fire! My task was to aid primitives in harnessing the power of fire, to punish them with the dangers-"

"Douchebag!"

"No! People have to learn not to put their fingers in the fire or pull the pots off the stove or unleash fire upon thatched rooves."

"So, what you got fired, heh, pun intended, from being God of Fire?"

"No…" Loki squinted as he tried to remember back to his teen years, "I think I just gave fire to every group of people who needed it. So long ago…"

"Then what?"

"As a young god I was Sataere, God of Agriculture, protector of thieves."

"So… your claiming Saturday, right? I can see where this is going!"

Loki looked at Tony side-eyed and not quite exasperated. "You originally called it Laugardag, which is just a mispronunciation of my name, but it also kind of translated to 'wash day' and that's not flattering, so when I was using the name Sataere your people changed it."

"Now, I knew about Thor's day and Odin's day, but I always thought Saturday was Saturn…"

"Roman god. Entirely different pantheon. Nasty bunch of narcissists, every single one of them. Be thankful they've nearly all retreated. Zeus put his dick in everything!"

Tony laughed outright, "And you don't?"

"Never without permission!" Loki was quite offended.

"Yeah, and I get the feeling you never have to ask twice, Mr Saturday Night Fever."

"I fail to see why anyone would want to be with anyone else who was not, what do you mortals say… 'gagging for it'?"

"I suspect that's an English phrase, but yeah. So… you're god of Saturdays, which is awesome, lying, chaos, stealing, agriculture… what else?"

"Freyr is agriculture now. Boring job. It was a long time ago, but I have a feeling I was given that job as a punishment of some sort. Now it's chaos, not lying, that's just an insult some like to hurl at me, tourists – actually, I used to answer the prayers of those lost in unfamiliar lands - and, um pride parades."

"What? Pride parades!" Tony dropped his towel and gawked at Loki.

"Yes. I read somewhere that some humans decided I was the god of ergi, or gays I believe you would say, and I was not initially very pleased with that considering how it is considered such an insult on Asgard, but I witnessed a pride parade many years ago. Tourists were cheering and people were dancing, everyone was beautiful and covered in glitter and sparkles and I loved it," Loki smiled and he could feel the broadness of his smile, unfamiliar and strong, and it felt good. "I thought they were marvellous, so if they want a god of tourists and ergi, I have decided I shall preside over the prayers of those involved in pride parades."

Tony was laughing himself sick, sitting on the toilet, red in the face, "Oh, my god,"

"Yes?"

"So what does being a god of pride parades involve?"

Loki remained smug, not at all offended but amused by Tony's laughter, laughing with him. "Tequila, beads, boobs, making sure that those involved who pray to have a good time have a good time, make sure they have their glitter and their make-up looks good, that no one's tights run, making sure no one gets hurt or attacked by the biased or the violent, making sure that everyone gets home safely and no one chokes on their vomit at the after parties."

Tony's laughter calmed and looked thoughtful, "Actually, now you say it, that does sound like a pretty sweet gig!"

"Now that I am free of Asgard, I can decide for myself which prayers I will answer, and which I won't," Loki leaned forward to whisper, just in case Heimdall still watched, "Actually, Odin long forbade the answering of prayers, around," Loki paused to try to remember, "close to 500 years ago… but occasionally some of us sneak out to visit the faithful now and then. Although the fewer prayers we answer, the fewer are asked of us, and I think most of us eventually just stop. Answering prayers is something we all enjoy when we are children, but our duties at home… at Asgard…" Loki corrected himself quickly, "take precedence. Still… parades are fun."

"Well, I tell you what, Loki, if we win, if we finally get rid of the Kaiju, I will host the biggest fucking parade the world has ever seen. New Orleans, Sydney Pride, nothing will compare! We'll have the best floats, the best costumes, the best booze, and all the glitter you can eat, deal?"

"Deal!" Loki agreed quickly.

"You and I will be the kings of the parade, of course, and we can have a Jaeger themed float, and we can have a float for Fury – one headlight – and Phil Coulson dancing half-naked, he'll enjoy that, and all the Jaeger pilots, and everyone can be ergi and dress in pink, and hey, what about a float just for squirrels? A huge squirrel made of fun fur, animated tail and… hey, are you all right?"

Loki's knees almost gave way and he wasn't sure why, he grabbed his head in both hands as he felt a wave of dizziness sweep past, and Tony grabbed him, seating him on the closed toilet seat.

"Loki, what the fuck?"

Loki tried to say what he wanted to say, but he could only focus on Tony's words, and his mouth moved silently with unarticulated distress.

"Loki, seriously, what's going on?"

"I don't want a squirrel float," Loki said, and the words were stupid, possibly the most ridiculous words he'd ever uttered, but his voice shook as if tears were to follow. "I don't want a squirrel float." He couldn't explain more than that. He didn't want them making a joke of Annabelle's death, he didn't want to see a celebration of his failure, he didn't want to be reminded of every failure, he didn't want to remember that he'd failed his children, failed to save them, failed to rescue them, failed to avenge them, he didn't want a giant squirrel float…

“Jesus, Loki… I just thought you liked squirrels… I thought you’d like the idea,” Tony said. “This is far worse than Pepper and the 12%, isn’t it… oh, great, now I’ve made myself feel bad, too,” Tony rambled, confused and upset as he allowed the brief memory of Pepper. He squatted down in front of Loki, one knee on the hard, cold floor. “Fuck. Fuck, Loki, I’m sorry.”

“It’s just… they’re just squirrels…” Loki choked out, trying to head it off. “I’ve lost whole worlds, Tony Stark. Do you understand? Whole worlds! I’ve lost my children, my family, I survived losing my history, myself, I can certainly survive losing a handful of rodents,” Loki snapped at Tony, angry at his own weakness.

"Yeah, you lost everything – yourself and your family and your whole world, so you let yourself love some stupid little squirrels. Can you see what's gone wrong here? You can't stop loving something. Human hearts aren't like that, and I guess yours isn't either. You just can't cut it out altogether – it would be easier to just stop breathing, because you can feel the pain of no oxygen and you can feel it coming back, but you don't even realise when you've started loving again. Sometimes something sneaks in, even a ridiculous earth rodent, and it's so small and insignificant you don't even realise it's found a crevice. You don't realise it got its tiny claws into your heart until it's torn away again.

Loki squinted hard, and wanted to put his hands over his ears but didn't want to give Tony the satisfaction of knowing he was getting at Loki right now.

"I suppose they felt safe, didn't they? Squirrels. We call them rats in drag. Although I wonder if rats are just straight acting squirrels? Whatever. Anyway, you thought you couldn't come to care for something so insignificant, and you still pretend you don't care about them, but I read the file – you named them, you fed them, you cared for them. You needed something to love, and there they were. And they would never hurt you or lie to you. I get it, I can see why you fell for them, but-"

"What are you hoping to achieve with this performance, Tony," Loki interrupted.

"Nothing, really. I just… I’m not good at being sympathetic. I suppose I'm saying it's just fine to cry over a rat in drag. It's okay to feel sad because your squirrels died. I mean, you probably haven't been allowed to cry a lot, to mourn your losses, so let this surprise mourning take you. If you couldn't cry for your children or your world or yourself before, then let this unexpected grief be the divot that destroys the flood gates."

For a moment, Loki wished he really could cry. For all of his losses. He wanted to wallow in selfish grief, without someone who understood and had felt all the same pain, and would not judge, but once again all he felt was the hollowness, the emptiness, and he just shook his head.

"It won't come, Tony. I'm too tired, I've lost too many things, and I am not going to care about some ridiculous rodents."

Tony shrugged, he was no therapist, and Loki knew better than to try too hard for emotional support from that source,

Squatting down and putting his hands on Loki's knees, Tony said "This is a safe place."

"Nowhere is safe," Loki disputed.

But Tony nodded his understanding. "This is a safe place. Right here, right now, this bathroom, you and me, we make a safe place."

Loki put his hands over Tony's and they stayed still for a moment in time. Both of them safe, and yet both of them denying their grief.

For a moment Loki could feel the need for Thor. He felt the need for Thor to put his arms around him and give him one of his careless, rib cracking, selfish hugs, and the need was like a painful ache. If he ever saw Thor again, he was going to make sure Thor was pre-forgiven. For everything. He was going to apply Coulson's words to every arrogant, selfish, stupid thing Thor ever did.

"Tony… I don't want to care about anything else."

Loki didn't look up to hear Tony's reaction to that, but he had a feeling Tony smirked. "I think it's too late for that, Prince of Denial. But I'll let you believe it for now. Grab some toilet paper and blow your nose."

Loki looked around and realised there was none, and sniffed in annoyance.

"Here," Tony handed him a tissue he'd found somewhere or other; "Wipe off your mascara, Audrey."

For a long time, or maybe just five minutes, they sat in the quiet of the cool metal room, Tony occasionally scratching at the marks the rough floor left on his thighs.

Eventually Tony said: "We need to drift again. We need to practice."

"I know," Loki said, but made no move to get up or get dressed.

"You wouldn't let me in last time. Not fully."

"I know."

"You wouldn't let me know you…"

"I know."

"No, you don't."

"You lost everything, and you are a walking wound, Stark. I know what you are hiding and I don't want to live it! You think I care about your petty mortal loss? I've lived a thousand years! I've fought in battles between kingdoms and I have seen men lose an arm and keep fighting! I saw a warrior lose both his legs to an axe, strap himself to the back of another who's arm had had been mangled, and they still ran at the enemy, prepared to die. Your mewling complaints and petty whimpers mean nothing to me! I have seen whole planets fall; I have seen entire races wiped from the face of the nine! Do you believe for one second that I care about your meaningless mortal lives and meaningless little losses?"

Tony stared at him, blank faced for a moment, then turned to pull on his clothes. Without making eye contact, he said simply, "Then it won't bother you to go fully into the drift. I am not facing any surprises out there. I am not chasing the rabbit when we need to be killing Kaiju, and neither are you."

"Stark-"

"No. No more bullshit excuses. No more avoidance. I don't know what the hell you're so afraid of – if, like you said, you've seen whole worlds die – then you can just suit the fuck up and take the pain! No more prissy dancing around your inability to share your pain. You have nothing that can hurt me or embarrass me or scare me, Loki. Nothing!"

Tony's voice rose as he spoke, until he cut himself off with a short, sharp slice of his hand through the air. "Enough. Whatever your problem, suck it up, and suit up. Now."

"Tony-" Loki tried again.

"And if you try to tell me that you are trying to protect me from your shit, I will punch you right in the neck. Don't you dare try to protect me from anything, okay?"

It was a hollow threat, but Loki just looked down at the floor for a moment, then got up and got dressed. The joy he'd found in the human's body earlier was fading in the light of having to face another drift. But he had to. This was not an enemy he could turn away from, there was nowhere else to run and his own shame was nothing in the face of the monsters coming through the rift."

"Hey, don't look so sad, Lokes," Tony said, his mood turning on a pin head. "I know how much you like hurting the Kaiju! Soon you'll have their eye balls in your fists and you can wear their spines as fancy scarves!"

"Is that wrong?” Loki mused, curious, but not really concerned. “Your church goes on about forgiveness, right alongside an eye for an eye. Steve Rogers has talked to me of Jesus and his stories of forgiveness, but I have read your bible and it speaks of little other than death. And yet I have heard little more than how I should be soft and gentle and kind and…" Loki was being somewhat facetious and Tony probably knew it. Although there had been times in the past when Loki had wondered if the soft and gentle touch would be his path to redemption. He'd never followed it, though.

"Forget it. Lies. All of it. Kindness is for kittens."

"Steve's words seem to basically say that it's all right to fight, but not to enjoy it. It's fine to kill, as long as you regret it later. You can kill people, but you must hate doing it. I find it hard to grasp his brand of sweet hypocrisy."

"You wanna know something, Severus Snape? I like it." Tony stopped as they walked down the corridor, looked Loki straight in the eye. "I like it. I like killing. Don't you dare tell anyone because, like you said, we all buy into the 'sweet hypocrisy'. We all pretend to be the good guys, we all pretend to be so much better than anyone else, but everyone's the hero in their own eyes, and the Kaiju? They probably think they are on the side of right and good saving their own planet and all that's holy – that's if they think at all – so yeah, I like it and you're going to see that. I want to feel their bones break under my metal hands. I want to see their insides on the outside. And you know what? If it wouldn't poison me? I'd drink their disgusting blue blood and, hey, maybe I'd fucking bathe in it. Isn't that what humans used to say? Bathe in the blood of their enemies? So yeah, you want to go out there and enjoy the killing, you go for it. If that's what's embarrassing you so much, getting you so twisted, then I'm quite happy to go spit on Jesus for you because we have no cheek to turn here. We can be as kind as we like, and hey, I'll buy you a whole butt load of kittens if you want to get all sweet and gentle and good, but right now? I want you to think about how much you like hurting others. I want you to go out there and picture Odin's face on every single one of those fuckers. Do you think you can do that?"

Loki thought about a Kaiju with an eye patch and a big white beard and a face full of smug lies. "Yes. Yes, I think I can do that."

Tony pumped his fist in the air and resumed walking to the Jaeger bay. "So, we get the next Kaiju named after your faux father. We'll blame that poor Kaiju for the loss of Asgard or the fact that Odin kidnapped you from your family home when you were a tyke, or what-the-fuck-ever. Just get angry."

Tony looked at Loki expectantly. "Get angry!"

Loki looked at him for a beat, then pumped a fist in the air as he'd seen the humans do. "Grr!"

"Angrier! When we get in there I want you Hulk angry!"

"Rar?" Loki made finger claws, but he was too amused by Tony to feel any actual anger. "No, sorry, I don't think I can get quite that angry. Not on demand, anyway. But I can still certainly enjoy the death of the enemy."

"Bathe in the blood?"

"I will, indeed, bathe in the blood, should we draw enough to bathe a Jaeger. Although that sounds like a horrible mess to clean up afterwards."

"Don't overthink it, just get sadistic. Hey, does that rhyme? That almost rhymes. I'm almost a poet. Come on, let's do a hero walk to our Jaeger."

"A what?"

"Hero walk! Like in all the movies. The heroes all walk side-by-side in slow motion while inspirational music swells. Come on. Slower, like, no, in slow motion. Ah, you're too tall! Yeah, in step with me. Swagger more. See how I've got my swag on? You gotta… ah, who am I talking to, here, Prince of Swagger."

Loki couldn't help his brief giggle as he walked with a slowed down swagger, and matched Tony's chin up, eye balling the world in a challenge expression. Hero walk indeed. They walked side-by-side, as close to slow motion as they could go and still be deemed, by Tony, to 'be cool', and Loki could see the tiny smirk on Tony's lips, their brief sharp words soon forgotten. Or at least, temporarily repressed. Along with every other horror. To be dragged out and screamed over in the drift or in their nightmares. Or both.

It was late, the sun down, but most of the top level staff, Fury and Coulson, were in the control room, so when Tony asked one of the engineers to set them up with a practice drift, it was no effort for the support teams to scuttle around and get everyone notified that a Jaeger was going to take a test drift.

They walked through the hanger, both taking the time to look up at the metal giants awaiting their pilots, Tony still trying to break through Loki's calm façade and get him angry, but only in a half-hearted, joking way, making conversation going that Loki knew was intended to keep him distracted and still walking towards their drift practice. The giants were still rather magnificent. Even Asgard with its golden technology couldn't match these. The destroyer and its ilk were impressive, but not like these metal monsters.

For a moment, both of them failed to recognise their Jaeger, and came to a stop underneath, staring up at the behemoth in surprise, until Tony made a hissing noise and spun around, angry, looking ready to tear a strip off someone.

“Who painted it white? Why is it white with light blue trim? Those colours are weak! Weak, I tell you! Even the Fantastic Four had a better blue than that! What have you painted on the head? Is it leaves? Why is it white and blue? I never gave orders for the paint job!”

Loki stared up at it, and agreed, silently, that the colours were rather boring and bland. “At least the damage to the face has been repaired. It’s all very clean and shiny.”

“Don’t play the Pollyanna. You hate it.”

“I don’t-“

“You hate it! I’m telling you, you hate it!” Tony turned away from telling Loki what Loki felt about the new colour scheme, “Who authorised this!? Why is this boring? I don’t do boring! Tony. Stark. Does. Not. Do. Boring!”

Coulson and Fury watched in amusement, but Coulson merely gave a moue of disapproval and left. Fury wandered over to talk to them.

“Stark. Skywalker.”

“Light blue? White?”

Fury gave them an eyebrow, “The colours of the newly refurbished Jaeger, ‘World Alliance’.”

“World Alliance?” Tony stood in shock.

“You still haven’t given me the name you wanted for the Jaeger after all this time,” Fury said, his face patient and a look around his lips that displayed the endless torment of having to deal with Tony Stark on a regular basis, a look that spoke of sleepless nights and constipation, but his one eye glittered with humour and revenge. “We couldn’t wait any longer for the marketing opportunities, so it has been christened the World Alliance and painted white and light blue. We will be having a press conference in the next day or so. You will have your photographs taken, of course, and Loki? You will be getting a haircut.”

Loki did a double take and patted his hair self-consciously, while Tony almost danced with frustration at his inability to express his horror at the decorating choices.

“It’s blue and white... why did you have it painted blue and white?” Tony’s voice was vague, as if he’d been shown the greatest horror in his life. “Oh, god... it’s the UN. You’ve painted it the colours of the United Nations...” he trailed off into a slight gasp.

“You waited too long to come up with a good name. You gave me 50 possibilities, but you couldn’t stick with most of them, and Loki said that ‘frost’ anything was racist, and the UN have pitched in with a few billion dollars to help with funding. They’ve paid to have the head on this re-enforced and we thought that World Alliance was a good choice.”

“World Alliance? You let the UN name this thing in exchange for a new paint job? I have paint! I could have JARVIS paint this thing red and gold in two days!” Tony waved his arms around, prepared to throw down a mighty tantrum over the vaguely calming new colour scheme. “Or green and gold, Loki’s colours, or gold and gold, we can combine, I mean, anything but light blue and white!”

“I like it,” Loki said. His voice wasn’t strident or loud, but those closest all turned to him in shock.

“You like it?” Tony’s voice went up into a squeak on ‘it’. “YOU LIKE IT!”

“It is neither frost nor iron. It is neither Midgard nor Asgard nor Jotenheim. It speaks of neither of us, but it speaks to all of us. You and I are forging an alliance. Your world and... what may become my world one day. We are an alliance of worlds, an alliance of cultures, an alliance of strengths. We are working together to save this realm and possibly many others, and I like it, this speaks of all of us and none of us.”

“But it’s boring!”

“It has no history to it. Not for me or you. Light blue and white have never been my fighting colours, nor have they been yours. Yes, true, it is insipid and uninspiring, but it is free of the baggage of the past.”

Tony turned with one lip slightly sneered, although not at Loki, just in reaction to the nightmare he was witnessing. “But it’s boring... you’re not boring... you’re interesting... why are you liking this... this...” he waved a hand at their Jaeger “... it’s light blue! Light blue and white!”

Loki shrugged and smiled a little, “I like it. It’s clean, it’s simple, and it is free of the past. It is a good choice.”

“Hah,” said Nick Fury, stern, fatherly, yet triumphantly smug. “The emo kid likes it. Suit up, both of you. We have a world to save, no time for standing around crying over colour schemes like a couple of interior designers!” he shuddered a little on ‘interior designers’, then stalked off in a swirl of long black coat.

“Humph,” humphed Tony. “Our suits had better not be... Oh hell no!” He pointed at the suits they were being shown. “I am not wearing a white body suit! I’m a man of certain years and just because I’m in the prime of my life and physically a god does not mean I can carry off a white body suit!”

“Your body will be just fine in a white body suit, Tony,” Loki said, smiling. “You know you can, as you humans say, ‘work it’. And besides this is not about ego, this is about killing and, what did you say before? Veins in the teeth? Bathing in the blood of our enemies?”

“I’d better get some Kaiju blood on me, it’s the only thing that’s going to make this look work!”

Tony grumbled all the way through suiting up, bitched about the white suits, and huffed over the ‘World Alliance’ heraldry that had been added to his suit. “Someone’s going to pay for this. In money. When I’m a businessman again, I want Stark logos all over everything, not this Olive Leaf flower crown crap.”

“When you are a businessman again, you won’t need this crap anymore,” Coulson pointed out politely. “In order for you to be a businessman, you will need to have defeated the Kaiju and saved the world.”

“Again.”

“Again,” Coulson agreed.

“At least you haven’t put a flower crown on my helmet!”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“You know that you’re starting to sound like J.A.R.V.I.S.?”

“I take that as a complement, Sir,” Coulson said, in an impression of J.A.R.V.I.S. that was spookily accurate.

“Okay, you’ve been practicing that. I noticed, don’t think I didn’t, and now I don’t know whether to be flattered or really creeped out!”

Tony kept talking all the way through 'pilot to pilot, neural handshake, Count down, handshake initiated', a constant blather about the colour scheme and the name and everything he planned to do to get revenge, but Loki knew that it was all meaningless. Tony probably cared only slightly more than Loki about such things. Loki understood personal branding – he had always failed horribly at creating an image of himself for others that made anyone happy – but he really didn’t care about it anymore, and he certainly knew that Tony had much more important things to worry about. Still, talking about olive leaf flower crowns was probably a saving grace for keeping Tony’s mind off whatever was to come.

They blurred together, the same story of embarrassment and childhood failure. Going through it a second time made it seem sort of petty.

“Gentlemen,” Fury’s voice came over the comm link. “How goes the neural link?”

“Better,” Loki answered for the both of them. “I can feel Tony, and I think we just covered the same ground as before. It’s a lot easier this time.” He looked over at Tony for confirmation and received a nod. Tony was a silent for a bit, as he absorbed the same unhappy memories of neglect, alcoholism, and betrayal, but he shook it off with a shudder that shook his harness, and an exaggerated huff of breath.

“You’re getting used to each other, excellent. Now I want you to share...”

“Incoming!” Leo Fit's voice announced, backed by screaming alarms, his voice stressed, but calm with long practice.

“We’re not expecting Kaiju strike yet!” Tony shouted. “They are early... we had four days by the patterns!”

"Their attacks are evolving," Bruce's voice came over the connection, and Tony jumped, making Loki jump in turn, neither of them having heard from him in ages. Bruce had been working on his virus delivery options far too intensely to socialise. "They know we're waiting for them whenever they come through, and they're losing, so now they are going to start mixing things up."

"Hey, Bruce!" Tony called out. "How many?"

"Three. Three category four Jaeger," Coulson replied instead. "I'm sorry, Tony, Loki, but we won't have time for you to have another practice run. Either you fight today, or you sit this one out. We have the other teams, they will be ready in minutes."

"We fight," Tony said.

Loki wanted to advise caution. As he always had. 'Thor, wait.' Or 'Thor, this is stupid,' or, 'You'll get us all killed, you great oaf!' but he'd been cautious for a thousand years and what advantage had this ever brought? Thor was always the one who won, the one who was admired and feted, so yes.

"We fight," Loki agreed, and they let the drift flow between them, like a dark stew, unguent and bubbling with noise and memory as the other Jaeger teams came running to suit up and await the helicopters who would take them out to sea.

Loki braced himself for more of Tony's memories, and those few seconds that felt like years as they both disappointed their fathers and begged attention from busy mothers who were too involved with their husbands to spend enough time with children who were too needy, too different to their peers. "Too fucking smart, that's our problem," Tony said, groaning under another disappointment, another humiliation revealed.

"Tony!" Loki said, startled by an image shown.

"They were ignoring me! I was four, for goodness sake. I…" Tony faded away.

"You soiled the floor in your parents' grand ball room in the middle of a high society gathering!"

"Well… I was tired and I hadn't seen my mother in days… and… Ah fuck it, I shat on the floor. Deal with it."

"That's wonderful!" Loki said, laughing. "Their faces!"

"You shat on the floor?" Leo's voice came over the comms. "Is shat a word?"

"It's short for Shatner! I did a William Shatner impression!" said Tony, but his embarrassment had faded quickly with Loki's laughter and approval.

"I absolutely endorse the act of rebellion, Tony. You obviously had no choice. Your parents were failing in their duty to care for you, so you had every right… no, you had no choice but to soil their floor and show them the error of their ways!" Loki said with laughter and indulgence. The memory of the horror on Howard Stark's face was one to enjoy. "In fact, I wish I had done the same at that age. Oh, to do such a thing in front of the visiting coterie from Vanaheim or Muspelheim, it would have been an act to be talked off in hushed tones for eons!"

"You would," Tony said, but laughed. "Mischievous minx." He was a little miffed that Loki had shared that memory out loud but grateful he'd turned it into humour. "Mind you, voiding waste in public has kind of been a theme for me over the years."

They let the laughter fade a little, as the drift went deeper, until they could feel the full blending of their minds and memories. Tony tested by moving his left arm in the robot wave, and Loki followed it on the right, and they landed in the water, walking towards the Kaiju with giant, land eating strides.

"We've dropped you a few miles back, gentlemen," Coulson said. "The breach has opened up again. Two more. I repeat, the breach has reopened, two more Kaiju have come through. Category four. Please do not engage until the other teams are with you. Raptor Assassin is only a few minutes back, and we are suiting up Skua and Kerberos right now. I repeat, do not engage until the other teams are with you."

"Five? There's never been five…" Tony said, musing to himself, and Loki could feel all of the data that Tony was mentally processing, shared the knowledge as Tony turned it over, looking for reasons and any data he could extrapolate from this new activity. "How screwed are we?"

Loki didn't answer. He didn't know. He'd been able to fight one by himself, with minimal damage, but there were only two Jaegers in the water, two more coming, and five Kaiju. It was possible they were very screwed. The first time he and Tony had attempted a fight together, outnumbered and still possibly lumbering like an unco-ordinated toddler. They could be very screwed indeed.

They started to walk, towards the Kaiju, nothing on visual yet, waiting for the other teams, letting memories flow. Loki watched for the Kaiju, his mind churning over past fights, the weaknesses he had felt in their style, the best places to strike. The Kaiju relied on sheer brute force and their extraordinary biological weaponry. They had little in the way of distance weapons other than their acid, and little in the way of fighting skill. He couldn't underestimate them, though, having spent centuries sparring against Thor, who used brute force and little skill and yet still usually won. Loki could feel Tony absorbing all of his knowledge on fighting the Kaiju, anything that he hadn't picked up from watching fights and running simulations now being taken directly from Loki's mind.

"Can you burn it, Loki?"

"We have the chest cannon for fire power," Loki said, not focussing too closely on Tony's words.

"No, I mean, when you killed the first one, the very first one, before we picked you up to make you a Jaeger pilot, you killed one by yourself by burning its brain. You said you couldn't do that again by yourself, but if I'm sharing the neural load, could you the brain out of one in a Jaeger?"

Loki hadn't thought about that first Kaiju in a long time, not since he'd taken over the Jaeger suit style of fighting, but now it flashed through his mind, that initial attempt to control a Kaiju with his mind, and the absolutely failure that left his own brain damaged and the months of recovery afterwards. The memories escaped from his mental guards faster than he could stop or distort the facts.

"You fucking bastard!" Tony suddenly shouted, the anger flashing through the link to make Loki gasp. They came to a halt, thigh deep in the ocean.

"You thought you were going to make a pet of that fucker?"

"No, no!" Loki panicked, realising that something he'd been trying to hide was now bleeding through at the worst possible moment. "Not a pet, I am not that foolish-"

"You thought you could control a Kaiju, and what? Use it to destroy us? Use it to destroy Asgard?"

Loki didn't answer, because yes. He was going to use it for his own ends. With a Kaiju under his control, he would be invincible. He could use it to… he couldn't even finish the thought.

Tony was glaring at him from the other harness, and then looked down. "You thought you could use a Kaiju to stop other Kaiju," he murmured. "You wanted to stop them yourself and be the fucking hero of the story."

Loki didn't answer that, either. No one ever realised when his evil plots were not usually truly really evil, and had usually just been horrible mistakes instead, and he'd never bothered to explain himself, because he'd rather been seen as evil and be hated, than be seen as a fool or a failure.

"That's really stupid, Loki. Even if you had the power to control one, how would you maintain it? You could use it maybe once, then what? In the time between attacks by Kaiju, how would you hold on to it? You'd have had to have found a way to kill the first one, then keep retaking new ones, and how would that work unless only two Kaiju came through a breach at any time? Did you even bother to think your way through that?"

That was a surprise, and Loki didn't answer straight away, but forced the Jaeger to start walking again. "No, I didn't think it through that far. I thought if I took control of one, I could maintain control for long enough to use it to attack another when it came through."

"You dumb bastard."

"No, it could have worked," Loki answered. "I didn't know that they had two brains. The first brain was powerful, but I had it. I could have held the Kaiju for days, until the next one came through and set them on each other. If I had been successful, how would your world have reacted?"

"You wanted to be hero worshipped? What is it with you and being worshipped?"

"It's a god thing," Loki said dismissively. "You get used to being worshipped. It feels good. And I wanted to control that power. I was able to hold it, it was mine. But then the second brain rebooted the main brain, and the entire thing started what you would call a 'feedback loop'. I couldn't break away from it without it turning on me, and it couldn't completely shake my control. We were in a poisonous drift, and it killed the Kaiju, and nearly killed me. If I had known more about their physiology, it would have been successful. I could have destroyed the second brain and controlled the creature. And yes, you would have worshipped me for it!"

"You dumb bastard," Tony said again, but there was no heat in his voice, just a tinge of disappointment.

"Once upon a time I could have used it to destroy you," Loki said, no guilt in his voice. “You would all have cowered in terror before me.”

"Yeah, I know. For a smart guy, you sure can be stupid."

"I believe you humans have a phrase for this situation: takes one to know one."

Tony laughed, an abrupt bark of a laugh, "Maybe. Hell, sure, yeah, I've done some amazingly stupid things. But I've never tried a Vulcan mind meld with a Kaiju! That's a special kind of stupid all your own."

"If it had worked, I would have proven myself a god again!"

"No, you would have proven yourself a giant douche again. This is what is going to work! Working with me and the rest of the team. It takes a village to kill a Kaiju, haven't you heard that saying?"

Loki didn't answer, because he hadn't, and he was already ashamed of his failure to control the Kaiju. Or he was ashamed of his motives, but he didn't want to share that any more than he already had to, although he knew that Tony had to be picking up the emotional leakage.

They heard the call sign of Raptor Assassin behind them, splashing into the waves, walking to catch up.

"Where are Skua Anetia and Kerberos Panzer?" Toni asked over the comm.

"Five minutes, guys," Fitz said. "They are suited up; we are attaching them to the copters. Just give them five more minutes."

"Great," they heard Barton mutter. "That means fifteen. And we've got two waves of Kaiju to fight."

"I see them," Romanova said.

"Where?"

"On the scanner. Twelve o’clock, three miles. Two over the water, one under."

J.A.R.V.I.S.’s displays showed the enormous bodies barrelling towards their position, all of them massive, each of them big enough to destroy cities.

Suddenly Loki felt a tremble of fear; cold panic like ice water sloshed down his spine, sweat in his armpits, and his breath was trapped. He could feel his lungs constrict, his ribs suddenly too tight to allow him to breathe.

"Not now," he heard Tony whisper, gasping as if unable to draw breath.

"Tony?" he asked, "What's happening?"

"I'm having a fucking panic attack," Tony said. "Not now…"

Loki asked "Are you chasing the rabbit?", confused by what he was experiencing, which seemed to have no relation to what was currently happening, and yet neither of them were getting sucked into old memories. But he could feel fear leaking through the drift and he could feel it trigging his own nightmares of falling and the void.

"No, I'm fine, I can fight, it's just…"

Loki reached into the drift and saw the endless emptiness of space, falling, dying, watching a Chitauri mothership explode and feeling his systems shut down, feeling the oxygen run out and the suit start to lose pressure in the vacuum. He felt the darkness closing in, felt the air escaping, and knew that he was going to die here, in the vast emptiness… falling… falling from the Bifrost… falling and turning to face the vortex and the nothingness and the cold empty darkness of dying and dying forever while falling through the endless…

"Tony," Loki said, feeling his own mind start to chase Tony's into death and darkness and panic. "Don't go there, we're not there. We're not there now. Listen to me. That’s in the past. It won’t happen again, it’s not happening here. The sky above us is Earth’s – those stars are yours."

"I can't fail again," Tony whispered.

"Again? I thought you were unbeatable!" Loki said, trying to jolly Tony along. "Remember? As a team we are invincible!"

"I failed her. I've lost everything," Tony said again, voice rising in pitch. "Every time I think I'm winning, I've made things worse. I been responsible for the destruction of towns and when I've tried to make amends I've destroyed entire cities. I lost Pepper. I lost Happy. I think I'm about to lose my entire world."

"Tony, focus!" but Loki could feel the end of the world, the way his chest dropped and the overwhelmingly sour poison of grief. Pepper had died. She'd died. He'd failed and she'd died. She'd died on an island when she should have been happy. She should have been safe and he wasn't there and she died. She was crushed or she was consumed by the Kaiju or she died as the island was wiped from the map by a monster too big to fight and she'd been so strong and so bright and Happy would have tried to save her he would have been brave and thrown himself in front of her which was stupid in front of a Kaiju and she would have been brave and she would have been wearing insanely high heels and no one could run in heels like that except Pepper because she was amazing and brilliant and brave and the smartest person he knew a real genius not like Tony but practically brilliant and shining like a light…

Loki nearly broke the drift, reacting to the pure agony that suffused every cell in his body. He fought it and tried to hold on to Tony.

"This is what you were trying to show me?" he asked through gritted teeth. "I knew it was something like this, I can't stand it, Tony… I can't take your loss as well as my own…"

Tony whispered, "I'm sorry, it’s just... I'm so sorry," as he dragged Loki along, watching the light go out, the hope left the world and what was there left to fight for? Why keep on living when there was nothing left worth living for? But she wouldn’t have wanted that, she would have demanded Tony keep going because she was good like that and she would have nagged at Tony to do the right thing, and stood by him when he didn’t, and even when she didn’t love him like that anymore, she was still the only one who truly had ever loved him and now she was dead because of Tony’s failure, because Tony had failed, again, and created more monsters...

They staggered, and the drift was stretched as Loki tried to escape from Tony's torment.

"I'm sorry, I know you have lost so much, Loki, but it's always there, and I can't believe she's gone. I don't even know what I'm fighting for now that she's gone."

Loki wanted to say that Tony had so much to fight for, his world, his friends, but that felt so empty when Loki had heard so much bullshit like that himself over the years. Loss is loss and grief cannot be salved with pretty words, and grief was an agony that always remained. Time heals all wounds, but it leaves ugly scars that tear the flesh and the soul, great keloid twisting scars that shrink and force a body into a perverted shape, and covers the eyes with a film of misery so you can never see the world as it was ever again.

Loki sobbed, feeling the panic and the fear and the grief bubbling up from Tony's memories, and couldn't stop his own from joining them.

His sons, torn apart because of his mistakes, tied with their guts to a rock. Fenrir trapped somewhere, chained and in pain forever, until the end of the gods, Jormungandr cast into the oceans, his daughter twisted and damaged, suffering in a realm Loki could never reach. Every memory tinged with the blackness of this night, every one of his children sinking into these alien oceans.

His pain was old, so old, but it was always there, the loss of his children, of his wife, his family and he had forgiven Odin, back then. He had forgiven Odin for what Odin had said he had had to do. What was necessary.

The rage was sudden and all consuming. "I FORGAVE HIM!" he roared, and that was pure, unfathomable rage. That was hatred and anger that came from the very depths of his bowels, so hot it burned his face, his skin boiling with the fury of… of forgiving the man that murdered his babies. "I forgave him because he said it had to be. I forgave him because Frigga said that Odin had a reason for everything he did. But he murdered and tortured my children to cover the fact I am Jotun. He leaves them imprisoned because they give away the true colour of my skin. He cast them out because they would reveal his lies."

The anger burned, the blood hot in his fingertips where he felt the edges of the weapons he carried.

And Tony was suddenly still and calm beside him.

They panted for a moment, and there was nothing but anger. The anger cooled, but it cooled like a sword being quenched in salt water to cool the fires of the swordsmith that made it, becoming sharper, harder, and more lethal.

Loki listened to Tony breathing, and he didn't even need to talk to him to know Tony's thoughts. Tony was taking all the fear and the loss and the grief and turning into a cold, murderous rage. Forging his anger as he forged his machines.

"The Kaiju did this," Tony said in Loki's mind. "They took my Pepper from me. And Happy. I won't fear them. I will just kill them."

"The death of the Kaiju will be my redemption," Loki responded. "In their death I will have my vengeance, my peace, and your people will worship me."

That started a cold laugh from Tony. "You're right. The more we kill, the more the people will love us. You won't get vengeance for your babies, but by god you can have blood here today. Fury promised you that, didn’t he. You’ll get your parade – we’ll see to that."

They had no more secrets. Loki saw Tony's fear, and Tony took Loki's shame. Tony turned Loki's shame into vengeance, and Loki took Tony's fear and turned it to rage. They were a powerful, burning blade of hate.

"I can see the Kaiju on the display – heat signals. They are here now!" Romanova's voice cut over their moment, waking them from their thoughts.

Fitz's voice cut in. "Guys, don’t forget there are two more behind the three you can see. Skua and Kerberos are behind you. They will be with you in a couple of minutes! Try not to engage just yet!"

"Come on, Jake, it's Adventure Time!" Tony said, and he and Loki put their heads down and charged into the fight, ignoring the suggestion to hold back.

The Kaiju were coming towards them in a flying V formation. Loki could feel the blood lust rise. He'd never been able to sustain a berserker rage like Thor, but that didn't mean he couldn't love the thought of bathing in the blood of his enemies. The glorious, blue, guilt free blood. He hadn't felt such a desire to kill since he'd been young, back when Thor had told him that battle was glorious and their quests were true, back before Loki had seen things in shades of grey. There were no shades of grey how. Just the black water, and the blue blood they would spill.

"It will be glorious!" They were both too full of rage and hate to listen to caution or sense. There was only the war.

Tony and Loki hit the first one head on, slamming down with a solid punch that pushed the Kaiju under the water before they’d even got a good look at it. Raptor Assassin took the one to their right. They didn't bother to focus on the Raptor, having full confidence in that team to take their Kaiju. The third Kaiju shot by them towards the land, but they ignored it, hoping the other teams would catch it before it could damage civilian populations.

The Kaiju that World Alliance tackled came up, roaring, and Loki could feel the power of the Jaeger and how easily it moved with their desires. There was no headache, no sluggishness, no neural damage, and he and Tony were working together like one being. There was only the Kaiju in front of them, roaring and surging towards them, six arms, four topped with sword-like appendages, spines, a tail like a mace, built to create death, and it was beautiful.

The smaller knives that Tony had built for Loki came to his hand, and he sent them, one, two, three, directly into the trifold mouth of the Kaiju, slicing away its tongue, one burrowing deep into the back of its pallet. The Kaiju screamed and shook its head, trying to dislodge them, clawing at its mouth, before rearing back.

"It's going to spray acid!" Tony yelled, and went to take a step back, but Loki's old fighting instincts took over, and he left an image of himself, his Jaeger, in place, and they reappeared behind the Kaiju. As the Kaiju attacked at the doppelganger, Loki triggered the chest cannon, blasting the Kaiju with enough explosives to take off one of its six arms at the shoulder.

"What?!" Tony yelped. "What the hell just happened? Did we dematerialise and materialise again?"

"Yes, I… I can do that," Loki said, realising that he now could. With Tony sharing the neural load, he could feel his magic coming with ease. No hangover burn from that first Kaiju attack. No lingering headaches from trying to pilot a Jaeger alone. "I have always been able to do that, but not while piloting the Jaeger," he grinned, fierce and wide. "But I can do that now, with you. You give me my power back!"

"Holy hell, that felt… weird. That felt amazing. We just broke the laws of physics."

The Kaiju came back around towards them, screaming its rage at the injuries it had suffered, and they took a step back, using the mortar in their hands to blast at its face, as it clawed at them, missing and being forced back.

"We broke the laws of physics, and you know what? I know how we did it! When you did that, I knew everything you know!"

"Isn't that how the drift works," Loki said, grinning but jumping back as Tony unleashed another round of mortar fire, taking the Kaiju in the neck and chest, chunks of flesh blasting out into the ocean.

"Yeah, but I know a thousand years of magic. Oh my god," Tony's voice was hyper-excited, his fear long gone. "Oh… Oh... I think I just came."

"Ah, but will you retain it?" Loki used the sword, slicing off another of the Kaiju's legs, middle left, leaving it with three on one side, including both back legs, and he felt his mouth fill with saliva at the delicious mutilation. He could feel Tony's satisfaction at the creature's suffering, and he knew Tony felt Loki's lack of remorse. Tony might once have felt bad about hurting it, despite the necessity, but Loki could easily wipe that away. Because Tony let him. Because Tony had always had an edge of cruelty, barely restrained and only recently acknowledged as a source of guilt, but Loki had always used his to his own full advantage.

"Oh, I'd better! We dematerialised, like something out of Star Trek. I could feel it! I could feel the illusion you left behind, a giant Jaeger phantom! I felt you recreating our reality in a new physical body!"

Loki did it again, letting the Kaiju attack the image of the World Alliance, letting it take the phantom World Alliance down into the water, and as it roared in what it thought was victory, they reappeared behind it, sword raised, and brought it down through the Kaiju's spine. It screamed and thrashed, paralysed in the water. It wouldn't last long now. They stood for a moment, and Loki enjoyed a moment of sadistic pleasure. But Tony pushed forward, raising the sword like he was swinging a golf club.

"For Pepper," he said, and swuing the sword down, taking the Kaiju's head clean off. It rolled into the water and away. The easiest win in the history of this war. Quick, clean, beautiful. Glorious.

They took no time for a victory celebration, although Loki could feel the raw satisfaction flowing from Tony.

"Raptor Assassin, need help?"

"No. Head off the two that are following behind!" Romanova ordered. The World Alliance could hear the other teams talking, their back and forth between each other and the Shatterdome, so they knew that the Raptor Assassin was fighting close range, distance weapons exhausted, but neither Tony nor Loki would dare question them, and they ran for the two late comers as ordered, with the other two Jaeger teams closing in fast.

The two late coming Kaiju were only a few minutes behind the first three, and Loki could listen in on Tony filing that information away. He was thinking about the time it took to travel through space, and what that meant for the breach, and travelling between worlds, and what information he could take back to Bruce for his virus bomb idea. Loki was only thinking of the battle and the weapons they had left.

The two Kaiju were travelling fast, but they were far apart. World Alliance stood in the water, and Loki threw the last of his small knives, as small as a commercial aircraft, at the furthest Kaiju, each knife striking hard along its back, severing muscles, breaking ribs, lodging deep into the creature's lungs. It staggered and screamed, but kept on moving towards land.

Over the comms they could hear that the two late Jaegers had taken on the first Kaiju that had broken past them, and were holding their own. Raptor Assassin was still struggling with theirs, but they knew it wouldn't take long.

The one they chose to face made as if to get around them, diving through the water at speeds faster than a Jaeger could follow.

"I made you a present, Loki," Tony said, as they charged towards their target. "Remember how you said you like fighting with a whip?"

"Yes?"

"Here," the schematics came up. "It was going to be a surprise during today's practice, so you could have time to learn how to work with it. So… surprise!"

Loki triggered the whip from the light display options, and it coiled down, long and segmented like a metal snake, a sharp shimmering point at the end, and he felt the handle as it settled into his giant metal hand. It felt good in his hand, and he gave it one long experimental snap, the crack echoing like a sonic boom across the water. He snapped it again, the length of it reaching out and wrapping around the neck of the Kaiju before it could get by. The whip tightened like a noose, and World Alliance braked in the water, both of them knowing just how to brace against the might force of the Kaiju as it came to the end of the line and snapped back, the power of it nearly enough to topple them, but they balanced together perfectly.

They released a little slack, then braced and yanked back, letting the Kaiju's own attempted escape momentum choke it and drawn it back.

"I stole this tech from Whiplash, but I added blades in the whip," Tony shouted over the noise of machines and waves and the screams of the enraged Kaiju. "And if there's no other chance, we can send our own power through it and burn the bastard, but that's a final option, only, or it will drain our power reserves."

"Power?" Loki laughed. "You want power?" And there was magic again. Magic like he'd never been able to drawn upon when piloting a Jaeger alone. Green fire and pure power, drawn from Loki's own soul, and he sent it down the line of the whip like poison, triggering the blades at the same time. It tore through the Kaiju's flesh as if there was no strength in the creature at all, as if it was as weak as a store-cooked chicken, bits of meat tearing away, wind pipe exposed, blood spraying across the water.

They strode closer, huge strides that ate up the land, and Tony was laughing, his voice as full of fierce insanity as Loki at his craziest. They reached the struggling monster, and Loki poured more of his acid green magic into the Kaiju, letting it burn nerves until the Kaiju knew nothing but pain.

"Loki… picture Odin's face on it… Odin who killed your children and made you apologise to him for having to do it…" Tony's voice was a dark hiss of malicious pleasure, and Loki felt nothing but hatred. Pure, unadulterated hatred for the one who had murdered his children, who had killed his Pepper and his Happy and his squirrels and tried to destroy his world. He left all of that hate pour out of him in a tidal wave of red and fire and green and magic and hate and hate and hate…

Until the Kaiju simply exploded.

Chunks of blue meat came down around them, splattering them, heavy thuds as muscle and bone and tissue crashed into the oceans all around them.

They stood for a moment, both of them just a little shocked, and stared down at the blue on the giant hands of their Jaeger.

"Well, I did say we should bath in the blood of our enemies," Tony said, voice a little bit wobbly, and like that the spell was broken.

They stood for a second, looking at the mess they had made of their enemy. Instead of being dragged down by the sheer size of the Jaeger, with Tony he had their combined strength, as well as the strength of the Jaeger to back up his attacks. Not merely doubled, but his magical power was now increased tenfold.

"We need to help the others, and there's at least one more that we merely stabbed," Loki said, and he felt Tony pull himself together and they started off.

"Guide us, J.A.R.V.I.S.," Tony said, and J.A.R.V.I.S. linked in with Fitz and they followed the screen to the one who carried Loki's blades still. They ran through the water, leaving a massive wake behind them, Tony's breathing was loud in Loki's ear.

"We are nearly out of concussive weapons, Lokes, we have the sword and the whip," Tony said. "Remind me next time to load us up with more concussive weapons before we try to do a practice run!"

"I see it," they ran, but the Kaiju was faster as it swam like a shark while they plunged thigh deep through the oceans.

"Will your blasters allow us to catch up?"

"They are only intended for short bursts. They don’t have the power for flight," Tony said, and Loki knew it because Tony was thinking it, and then Loki knew that he could power that, too, and Tony knew it and he triggered the blasters in the Jaegers giant boots and they were flying over the water, like Iron Man only a hundred thousand tons of Iron Man.

"Wooooooooooooooooooop!" yelled Tony in delight and joy as the massive metal fighting machine flew towards the enemy, a trail of green magic fire running behind them. "You are my own personal genie in a bottle!"

"Is that to be my next ridiculous nickname?"

"Maybe!" Tony snorted, "But I was also thinking of One Man Pen & Teller, or Chris Angel, or Loki Ono, or even Macbeth, have you read that? Macbeth, have you read that? Shakespeare, he killed the king, get it? Did you kill Odin? Oh, that's interesting, huh…"

"White tigers?" Loki asked at the image.

"Another magician thing, Siegfried and Roy, what with your magic. Your lovely, wonderful magic!" Tony laughed as they saw the Kaiju they were hunting. One knife still stuck out of its spines, although the others had fallen or been pulled out already."

They flew overhead, and landed way too hard in front of it, causing a huge wave to slosh over the Kaiju and they shook from the shock of the landing, taking a moment to find their footing on the sand again.

The Kaiju stopped and looked at them, roaring and showing its teeth. It reared up in the water, and its mouth opened and opened again, all the way down its chest, a huge gaping maw of teeth and a tongue that flailed with the spikes and threat of an iron mace.

"It's going to spit acid," Tony warned, "Do the doppelganger thing again!"

Loki did, but not just one. He reached down deep into the power he could find with Tony at his side, the ease of the Jaeger around him no more than a normal coat of armour. He could wear this suit the same as his fighting leathers, as long as he had Tony to share the burden. He took his image and spread it, and soon there were seven World Alliance Jaegers all surrounding the Kaiju, and it screamed and spun, reaching to tear through the enemy with its massive claws, but at each swipe there was nothing but a fading image, a giant Jaeger that laughed and taunted, and reappeared in another spot, constantly moving and changing, laughing and mocking it with delight.

Tony laughed and clapped his hands, and the Jaeger did to, a terrific smack of metal on metal, echoing amongst all the shadow Jaegers, and leaving the Kaiju in a rage of confusion as it lashed out with claws, teeth, tail to try to kill its enemy.

"You are my hero," Tony said, his voice hushed both in awe and excited by the pain they were causing.

"And you are, as you humans say, the wind beneath my wings," Loki said, and they both laughed together.

They raised the sword. Swords. Seven of them.

"For Pepper!"

"For squirrels!"

And brought them down upon the Kaiju in seven great slices, cleaving the creature into pieces, all of them sprayed with blood and gore, and then six of them fading away as the Kaiju lay defeated, just large chunks floating on the water, suddenly calm, the waves soothing into a slow undulation with the tide.

They stood for a second, then, "For squirrels?"

"I lied when I said I didn't care and that they were just ridiculous little rodents."

"I know."

"I loved Annabelle."

"I know."

They turned as one and charged through the waves to see if the others needed help, and knew that, finally, it would work. They would have the power to win. They would keep the enemy at bay until Bruce found a way to take the battle back to the enemy world. And they would save earth, and the humans, and the chocolate and the Coca Cola and the trashy novels and the fast cars and the booze and the team and everything else that was important, everything that was worth being loved and protected.

Especially the squirrels.

-oo0oo-

Chapter Text

Ratatoskr

Steve had recently discovered Neil Diamond. Tony wasn't sure if that was an improvement from his disco era. But Tony had danced to Sooliamon and when the volume was pushed up to 11 it really did feel almost like a song of worship, and they danced to America and all of Steve's choices because they were oldies but they were goodies. Like Steve. Like Tony if he would ever admit it. And certainly like Loki who was ten times their age and agreed with Steve that Neil Diamond was actually very good. Tony cursed both of them, but wiped the sweat from his eyes, danced his victory dance along with the rest of them, and swore he'd turn them to AC/DC one of these days.

They had celebrated their win, all teams making it back safely, and Loki finally unlocking all the power and potential that Fury had seen in him, with Tony's tech and Tony's support, and the trail of death they had left in their wake. They had partied with all the supplies they could spare, a hidden bottle of whisky that Fury had tucked away for a victory celebration, and there had been fresh fruit in the punch. No one knew where the pineapple had come from, but it was a symbol of hope to them now, and Tony had paraded around with the stump on his head as his crown as they'd celebrated their win.

Now they were crashed out in Loki's tiny room again, the dawn had broken some time ago, and they were avoiding the sun, but they were too wired from the fight and the victory party to fall asleep. They were laying side-by-side on the little bed, their arms on the outside hanging awkwardly because there wasn't quite enough room.

"You wanted to die," Loki said, his voice soft.

"Yeah. I was… I couldn't die until I'd had revenge for Pepper. Still haven't, really, not until those things are dead. All of them. And their world, too, if I can. Screw mercy."

Loki looked at Tony, but at this angle, his face was blurry. "You don't anymore."

Tony was quiet. "No. I probably didn't then, either. I didn't want to die; I just wanted to stop living. Different thing. I'm not suicidal, but there's a limit to how much pain any one person can handle. To be honest, I don't think I could have survived the kinds of losses you've survived."

"I survived because I believed Odin's lies, and I let those lies take away my vengeance. If I hadn't used the lies as an excuse, I would have killed all of the ones who took my children from me, and probably died in the attempt."

"You know what? I can never lie to you. Think about it. You're not the good of lies; at least you're not that good at lying. You're the god of having someone make a lie out of your life. And you have no idea when someone's lying to you."

Loki turned away to look back at the ceiling, the truth sour in his ears.

"But in the drift, I can never lie to you. We both have nothing but honesty. It's not that great, sometimes, but I think it'll be good for you."

Loki was silent and thought upon that concept for a long time, letting the comfort of it suffuse his bones. One person he could absolutely trust. He had often wondered if he could trust Thor, but although Thor would tell the truth most of the time, it would be Thor’s truth and that was stained down to the bone by Odin’s lies.

"You have always lived a very honest life."

"Yeah, publicity and paparazzi take away all pretence. But I think I let my life be a horror show a lot of the time just to prove to them that the loss of privacy didn't bother me."

"It did."

"Yeah, I guess. But whatever. We kind of have our own secret life in the drift. That's both poetic and intensely creepy when you think about it."

"You like it, though," Loki said, feeling content with Tony's full acceptance. "When we fight, we are equal. You are not greater than me. I am not greater than you. We are truly equal in the Jaeger."

"Yeah, it's more cool than creepy."

Loki realised that Tony didn't get the import of Loki's words, but that was all right, because the next time they went into the drift he would. Tony would know the value Loki placed on their equality and he would approve. Or laugh, maybe. It didn't matter which, it was all fine.

"There is something else you should know now, before it blindsides us in a drift," Tony said, his voice serious.

"What is that?"

"I'm not just prone to panic attacks when faced with the concept of the void of space. I’m also afraid of cockroaches."

Loki laughed at the non-sequitur, as Tony had obviously intended. "Well, I am not. I shall dispose of any minor vermin that bother you with equanimity."

"And a shoe! Dispose of it with equanimity and a shoe!"

"Should I not come to care for all of earth's creatures? Perhaps I could make a pet of it!"

"Eeeuuu, no! No, awful things! If you cut their heads off they still keep running around!"

"You've done that?"

"No, I think I read it somewhere, I don't know. Maybe that’s chickens. And there's another thing."

"Are you afraid of chickens?"

"No, I was thinking about us. I know you're going to live for thousands of years after I die, but I want to be a part of your life for as long as it lasts. I want to be one of your good memories."

"Oh…" Loki was silent and turned to look at Tony again, but Tony was staring stubbornly at the ceiling.

"I want to… I don't want you to have death and loss as your strongest memories anymore. I want to remember Pepper alive and beautiful and smart, and I want to remember Happy as brave and loyal and loving. I want you to have that, too. I want to help you build good memories again. So, I was thinking, when this is all over and Bruce has his virus and I figure out a way to get back through the breach and we finally destroy the Kaiju, you should stay with me while we rebuild Earth. Will you stay with me?"

Loki took a moment to think, but there was really no question. Even if he had to go back to Asgard to help Thor and let him know he was pre-forgiven, he’d return here. "Yes. Yes, I will stay. After."

He reached down, his fingers brushing the back of Tony's hands, and then gently entwined their fingers. Tony gave his fingers a gentle squeeze in return, and they pushed their shoulders together a little more, feeling warmth between them. Tony turned to look at Loki, his eyes intense, and started to move forward, their lips almost brushing-

A knock on the door startled them both and they broke apart. Loki sat up, but Tony said, "Ignore it. Whoever it is will go away. They have to know we're exhausted."

The knocking came again. "Mr Stark? Mr Skywalker? It's Agent Coulson, I'd like to speak to you."

"Ignore him, seriously," Tony said, as Loki got off the bed.

"He'll just keep knocking, politely, until I let him in," Loki said, remembering what Phil had said to him at the beginning of this quest.

"All right, come in!" Tony said, as Loki pulled the door open. Tony got off the bed and gave Coulson a glare.

Phil Coulson pushed the door open, giving them his usual half-smile. He perpetually looked as if he was slightly amused by a day dream he was just vaguely recalling while they talked, but the semi-smile was a tiny bit more prominent this time.

"Gentlemen. Could I have a moment of your time?"

"Phil. What do you need invented today?"

"Actually, I need to talk to Loki."

Loki could see Tony turn sharply to look at Loki as if Loki was in trouble now, but Loki didn't react.

"What can I do for you today, Agent?" Loki said, instinctively prepared to defend himself, too used to accusations to do otherwise. A scattered thought wondering if he’d now been told his job was done and he could leave.

"I have something for you from Director Fury. He wants to know which you like best."

Loki took a small box from Coulson, and removed the lid. Inside were nestled two candy bars. 'Loki's nuts!' read the wrapper, and the other said 'Loki's fresh!' and pictured a weird cartoon image of Loki gleefully posing on the wrapper.

"The Director remembered his promise of having a chocolate bar named after you," Coulson explained. “The slogan’s will be changed, of course, these are just mock-ups for now.”

Loki dropped the box on the bed and unwrapped both bars, shoving them both in his mouth as the same time. The flavours clashed horribly, but he didn't mind.

"One is pistachio centred milk chocolate, the other is spearmint centred dark chocolate,” Coulson said, unperturbed by Loki’s actions “and they want to know which you favour."

"Nuts!" said Tony. "Obviously Loki's nuts. It’s totally accurate. I even know the tag line: Loki's nuts, put 'em in your mouth!"

"Well, I'll leave that particular task to you, Mr Stark," Coulson said, absolutely dead pan. "If you have no preference, Mr Skywalker, we can use the pistachio as suggested by Mr Stark?"

Loki nodded and chewed, indifferent. Chocolate was chocolate as far as he was concerned.

"Well, that's one more step on the path to being worshipped again," Tony interjected. "Kaiju killer, and candy bar decoration. Next, we need to get to work on your action figure. Hey, how's that going, Agent?"

"Actually, we will be sending someone to take measurements soon, but first, I want to introduce you to someone. This is one of our Agents, although I don't think you've met?"

A youngish woman, much younger than Tony or Phil, poked her head around the door and then pushed past Phil to walk into the room. She had bushy, unruly hair, a homely face, large buck teeth, a smear around her eyes that could have been make up or an unfortunate birth mark, and a small carrier box in her hands.

"Loki? Hi! I'm Doreen Green," she said to Loki "I'm so thrilled to meet you! I've seen you on television and think you're great!"

"Hey!" Tony interrupted. "We both fight in that Jaeger, you know! If he's a hero, so am I! I'm great, too, you know!" Tony was joking, Loki knew Tony knew all about hero worship and how it worked and how it could be misdirected, but it was expected that he play the diva, so he did. For the lols.

But Doreen just looked confused for a brief second. "Oh, yes, the Jaeger! Yes, that's very good, you guys are great fighters! But that's not what I was talking about. I'm Squirrel Girl!" She said, as if that was something very important. "You know? The Unbeatrable Squirrel Girl?"

"Ah!" Tony stood up, and put on the charm. "No one wins a fight against Squirrel Girl!"

She laughed brightly. "Exactly!"

Even Loki had heard of her reputation. No one would fight her. No villain would take the chance. If you lost, you were the one who lost against Squirrel Girl, and she was all but unbeatable. And if you won, not that anyone ever did, you would be the one who beat up Squirrel Girl. And everyone, good or bad, would look at you with contempt. It was a no win situation and even Loki had not sought her out to take her on.

"What can we do for you today, Ms Green" Loki said, in his best Prince Charming of Asgard voice.

"Oh, it's what I can do for you." She pulled up a chair next to the bed and waited until Loki sat on the bed next to Tony before she opened the carrier very carefully. She pushed it towards Loki.

Loki looked into the box. Nestled inside, in a soft ruffle of white cloth, was a tiny baby squirrel, blinking itself awake.

"I heard on the reports about what happened. About the park being destroyed? There were news reports on your history and how you'd joined the fight and then a Kaiju killed your squirrels. So I went and investigated. I found this little one, just new born. I've looked after her for a while now and she's still very dependent, but I think you could take over now. If you want. I've been looking after her, but I have so many, and she's one of yours, I think. You called your squirrel Annabelle, didn't you? That's what Phil Coulson said, anyway. It’s part of SHIELD's file on you. Annabelle the squirrel. She didn't make it, but one of her babies did. So, um…" She trailed off as Loki remained silent, staring at the tiny little knot of golden fur in the box.

He'd lost his whole world. He'd lost his life. He'd lost his family and his reason for being. He'd lost Thor and the only one who'd loved him without lies. He'd lost his self. He'd lost his home and his new home and he'd lost everything. But not this little life. Not this one, tiny, little life.

It took a flash of pain and he could feel his face crumple, and tears started before he could even stop them. He tried to find the words to say this was just a stupid little mortal beast whose life was gone in the space of a heartbeat, whose existence meant nothing to a god, but when he tried he just gasped and nearly sobbed. He bit his tongue before the sob could escape.

Tony's hand was on his shoulder, warm and worried, but not judging. Tony knew. Tony knew he'd loved the stupid squirrels. No one said he was unmanly, or a poor warrior to worry about this little life. This one tiny life when so many thousands or millions died across the nine realms every day. Tony didn't mock or torment, but squeezed hard, and Loki thought for a moment there was a sadness, and a wisp of envy as this life came back to Loki when so many were gone.

Doreen, patted his hands, her brows drawn together, "I lost my best friend, Monkey Joe, a long time ago. I know how it hurts. I like squirrels."

Loki took the case with the tiny little ball of fluff, and listened to her as she instructed him in how to feed the baby with a miniature milk bottle, and how to keep it clean and deal with its waste, and how to use the heat lamp and how long they baby would sleep and how to make sure it only got small meals so it wouldn't choke or grow fat, and how to help it when it grew and wanted to hide its little acorns.

Tony listened patiently, not saying a word as they listened to the girl's spiel on the care and feeding of squirrels.

"I like squirrels, too" Loki said with a satisfied nod. He had come to appreciate all of the little lives. Brief, fleeting mortal lives. He liked them. All of them. And he'd die to protect them. All of them.

Or maybe he'd live with them instead. And make sure they lived, too.

-oo0oo-