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I. THOR
Thor stared at the doorknob, on the verge of reaching out to grasp it once again. Wondering if this, perhaps, would be the day it wouldn't burn him; if this would be the day that it would turn in his hand and open, letting him in.
He drew back, and made himself walk away. He would wait. As long as it took, he told himself, he would wait.
Patience had never come easily to him.
He ought to be glad - was glad, for the sole fact of Loki's presence. That he was here at all, that he was safe and alive when Thor had scarcely dared believe in the possibility of either of those things. That he had not flown, this time, but stayed, and Thor did not think it was a matter solely of self-preservation. Too often, in recent years, it seemed to Thor that Loki's pride had outweighed his survival instincts. Now, it seemed, there was a counterbalance.
Steve Rogers. Thor's friend.
Thor wondered if Steve knew the full significance of Loki's attachment to him. He had wondered for some time now, though keeping his thoughts carefully close to his heart. Not saying, though he thought it, Loki loves seldom but deeply, I used to know the shape of his affection and I think I can see it here.
Not saying, though he thought it, my friend, please do not break my brother's heart.
It was not, he knew, what his concern should have been - he was aware that Loki was dangerous, and could be more dangerous when he was hurting. (Had always been more dangerous when he was hurting.) He was aware that Loki could be using Steve, or manipulating him, or that he could simply turn on him in the blink of an eye (as he had on Thor). And yet some part of him could not but hope, thinking, perhaps, that if Steve could only draw him close, like a wolf coaxed near to the fire, then Thor would be able to touch him.
He should have known better.
But at least, Thor told himself, Loki was here. And alive, and not hurting anyone, and not hurting himself. That ought to be enough.
It wasn't. Not quite.
Thor and Loki had always been each others' first and best friends. Over the years, Thor had found others, where Loki had not. At least, not really - nothing that came close to the connection between the two of them. Loki had remained - in Loki's words - Thor's shadow. Thor had believed that he hadn’t noticed. He had believed that he'd been unaware the degree to which he had been Loki's center.
He had to face now the fact that he had known, at least on some level, because now he was feeling its loss. Because now there was someone else and some dim, deep, and ugly part of Thor whispered theft. Loki was his. Was his brother, and he was meant to be Loki's focus, and even hatred was better than this - silence, this shutting out, this refusal to so much as look at him.
Thor was - monstrously selfish! - jealous. There was an anger, carefully buried, that insisted that it wasn't fair, and Thor was furious with himself for feeling it.
Would you really rather your brother be alone, than allow someone else, someone other than you, to be the recipient of his affection?
That was the trouble. He wanted Loki to be happy. But he wanted Loki to be happy, at least in part, for his own sake.
Thor went looking for Steve, guilt tying knots in his stomach, longing making his heart ache.
"Thor," Steve said, visibly surprised. "What is it?"
"May I come in?" He asked. Steve stepped back and Thor entered. "How have...things been?" He asked, and grimaced inwardly at his own awkwardness.
"All right," Steve said. One corner of his mouth tugged and he said, "but I guess you mean mostly with Loki?" Thor didn't try to deny it, and Steve sighed. "It's hard to say sometimes," he said. "Talking to him can be a little like walking through a minefield."
Thor smiled ruefully. "You are not wrong." But is he happy? Does he speak of me?
"But I think...I think things are good," Steve said. "He's...restless. Wants more space. But it seems like he's settling in, more or less."
"That's good," Thor said, though the words sounded a little hollow. He wanted to ask for more: tell me what he says, what he sounds like, what he does, and felt pathetic for wanting it - a dog begging for scraps. There was anger at Loki (look what you've reduced me to) and at himself (you know what the cost might be of pressing too hard).
Steve's expression softened. "I'm sorry, Thor," he said quietly.
Thor made himself shake his head. "You needn't apologize."
"I should say something," Steve said. "Tell him...ask him to talk to you."
"Do not," Thor said wearily. "He won't do it. And will only resent you for asking."
"I'm sorry," Steve said again. "I know this can't...be easy for you."
Thor found a smile. It was Loki's words, suddenly, that came to mind: sometimes I am envious, but never doubt that I love you. "I am glad," he said, and he did mean it, "that he has you. That you have him. And that you are forging...something together." He didn't name it, but Steve's ears still turned a little pink, and Thor could not help but be amused, the melancholy and jealousy and guilt all slipping a little away.
"He'll come around," Steve said quietly. Thor's smile slipped, and he focused on holding it.
You don't know my brother so well as I do, to think it is that easy, he thought, but just said, "I can only hope."
Loki had always been there. Always. For such a long time, Thor saw now, he had taken that for granted - that because Loki had always been there, he always would be.
He was still there. But Thor couldn't reach him. And he didn't know if he would ever be able to again.
II. SAM
"There's something I should tell you," Steve said, in the hospital, not looking at Sam. "About my - friend."
"Boyfriend," Sam said, half clarification and half reminder that Sam already knew that Steve was involved with another guy and wasn't fussed about it. He wondered if Steve just never talked about the guy, to be this awkward around it - or maybe he was just like that. "All right. Do I get to know his name now?"
Steve looked tense, and nervous, and Sam focused on looking neither. "Yeah," Steve said finally. "His name...his name's Loki."
Sam blinked, and then blinked again. He knew that name. Least, he was pretty sure, and it seemed unlikely that he had the wrong Loki, and that would sure as hell explain the anxious, unhappy look on Steve's face. "Uh," he said carefully. "Okay. That's...unexpected." To put it lightly. But Sam knew how to look like he wasn't reeling, even when he was.
"It's - I know it sounds strange. Crazy, even. But it's not - he's not - what you think. It's...complicated."
"That sounds like an understatement," Sam said. He was going back over what Steve had said to him about his 'friend', trying to pick out anything that might have indicated...something like this. Couldn't come up with anything, though. He'd made his boyfriend sound...well, not normal, but not abnormal, definitely not in the sense of "alien space god who attacked New York." "Should I ask how that happened?"
"It's kind of a long story," Steve said. "But I guess I owe you...an explanation."
"I'd definitely like one," Sam said. Steve sighed.
"All right," he said. "It...I guess I'll start with...I was in the tower - Stark Tower, in New York - on my own, when the alarm went off saying there'd been an intruder. This was...not that long after the attack.
"It was Loki. He was covered in blood and barely coherent, and a couple minutes later he passed out." Steve bit his lip and glanced at Sam, expression turning wry and rueful. "That's where it started."
Sam sat back. "Okay," he said. "I can already tell this is going to be interesting."
It was interesting. It was also, like Steve’d said, long.
At the end of it all Sam could think to say was, “so are you gonna introduce me to him?”
Steve looked like he’d been expecting Sam to ream him out, or maybe run screaming. And sure, there was a part of him that was tempted to do a little screaming, but he’d never been much of a runner. And he was pretty sure the only thing chewing Steve out would do would be losing him a new friend.
So he’d reserve judgment. Roll with it. Make his own call.
And hey, at the very least he was curious.
“I...sure,” Steve said finally. “I’d like to. Though…” he paused. “Let me talk to him first?”
“Sure thing,” Sam said. “I can wait.” It’d give him time to sort through his own thoughts anyway. Get a better idea of how to approach this new and different weirdness. He was getting a lot of practice with that lately.
So he went with Steve back to New York, met the Avengers - the Avengers, and that was its own kind of weird.
The first time he actually saw Loki, he had his fingers in Steve’s hair and was kissing him like it was the last time he was going to get the chance. He pulled back fast when Sam cleared his throat, though - or tried, except Steve didn’t let him.
Sam gave him a quick once over; there’d been some photos floating around after New York, but they’d all been blurry. Didn’t really convey the details, obviously: the fact that Loki was fucking tall, for one thing, or the wary, watchful look in his eyes like he was expecting Sam to pull out a gun and shoot him. When he talked, his voice was dry as bone, and when he walked over and held out a hand he moved like - well. Sam had seen guys who moved like that, and all of them were dangerous.
“Sam Wilson, yes?” He said, smooth and silky and polite. His grip was firm but not hard. Cold was an adjective that came to mind. Aloof. Closed off. And there was Steve, radiating nerves. There was, Sam thought, something going on here that he was missing, and when Steve said Loki was going to be joining them in hunting for Barnes - an idea which Sam still wasn’t completely sold on, but he was keeping that to himself - he thought that might have something to do with it.
He and Steve left Loki to get ready to go. Sam could feel Steve hovering, and while they were waiting for the elevator said, “are you waiting for me to give you my seal of approval, or something?”
Steve grimaced. “That’s not - no. I guess I just…” Steve sighed. “You’re the first person I’ve introduced him to who didn’t already...hadn’t already met him.”
“Uh huh.” Sam considered, and then shrugged. “You want to know what I noticed? It’s kind of hard to say. I get the feeling that he doesn’t show what he’s thinking much, and definitely not to strangers like me.”
Steve’s lips twisted a little. “You’ve got that right.” He sounded rueful. After a moment Sam nudged him with his elbow.
“If what I saw when I walked in was any indication,” he said, “he’s definitely into you.” Steve’s ears turned pink.
“I don’t have any doubts about that,” he said, with a solid imitation of not being embarrassed. What do you have doubts about? Sam wondered, but he wasn’t about to ask.
So he’d met Loki, now. And he was still one big question mark. Sam had a feeling that wasn’t necessarily going to change anytime soon.
“Thanks,” Steve said abruptly. Sam glanced at him, raising his eyebrows.
“For what?”
“For being...good about this. About him.” Steve shifted his weight. “I know it’s...it probably seems weird. But I appreciate you being willing to...withhold judgment.”
“I try to keep an open mind,” Sam said. “You’re right. It is weird. But I get the feeling that’s a lot of life around you and your friends, yeah?”
“I guess so,” Steve said, with a faint and rueful smile.
Sam couldn’t say that he wasn’t going to be watching Loki damn closely. But he was also pretty sure that he was as skeptical as Sam about the wisdom of tracking down Bucky Barnes - and that meant that at least in one respect they were on the same side: the one about keeping Steve from getting himself killed. So that was some common ground, anyway.
From there...he’d just have to see how things played out.
III. NATASHA
Generally, Natasha was pretty good at figuring people out. Which was why Loki was a bit of a problem for her. In some ways, he was both predictable and straightforward in ways she'd pegged pretty early on: insecure, vengeful, tendency to overcompensate, mentally unstable, obsessed with power and control. She'd added a few things to that assessment with further observation: desperate for approval, paranoid, smart but prone to overthinking.
She hadn't been wrong about any of that. It just hadn't been the whole story - and so she'd ended up having to adjust, and adjust, and adjust. It was, on a professional level, frustrating. Natasha was aware - intimately aware - that people were complicated. Still, she didn't like being - if not wrong, not right either.
She'd been watching Loki carefully since the moment he'd walked into that meeting with Sif, metaphorical knives drawn. She was quite sure he'd predicted, if not everything she'd said, then at least most of it. And she thought, now, that before Sif had said a word, he'd already decided what to do.
And he'd still caught her by surprise. She'd thought it was a toss up between (roughly) three options: Loki went with Sif, Loki enlisted Thor and Steve to hold Asgard off, or Loki bolted, and she'd been leaning toward the third. Instead he'd - not just surrendered, but effectively walled off escape, which meant that Thor and Steve couldn't do anything to stop him. And that, she thought, told her why he'd made that call.
So Loki was going to Asgard. Which meant, almost certainly, that Loki was going to be executed.
And that was a problem.
"What are we going to do?" Clint asked. His eyes on her were sharp, and she tapped her foot restlessly on the floor.
"About what," she said. Clint gave her an annoyed stare, and she shook her head. "I'm not trying to be obtuse. There's a lot happening at once, here."
"Fine," Clint said. "Start with the basics, then. Are we going to try to keep Asgard from taking Loki?"
That was at least easy. "We can't," she said. "Loki himself saw to that. Even if we were going to interfere, that's not an option - not without knowing how this binding whatever works, and I'm betting that the only person who could really explain that--"
"Is Loki. Yeah." Clint's fingers drummed against his thigh, the only betrayal of the tension he was otherwise containing well. "So that's a no. What are we going to do? Because I'm assuming the answer isn't 'nothing.'"
"No," Natasha said. "Unfortunately, that isn't really an option. For one thing, I doubt that Steve is going to be willing to sit back on his heels and let Loki take the fall. For another..." She paused. "How much of the politics in there did you follow?"
"I gathered some asshole is trying to start a coup against Thor's dad," Clint said. "And he's using Loki - or, I guess, accusations that they went easy on punishing him - to do it. Cast doubt on Odin's impartiality, and Thor's fitness to follow him. Sounds like Thor being gone slumming it with mortals probably hasn't helped his case." He raised his eyebrows. "Did I miss anything?"
She gave him a wry smile. "I guess you were listening." She cracked her neck to the side. "On the one hand - there's part of me that thinks an Asgard in turmoil is a good thing. That it'll keep them from deciding that we're still their protectorate - which I'm given to understand is the general attitude, or has been historically. On the other...we currently have a direct line to Asgard's ruler. I don't love the idea of losing that.
But then - it seems to me like this ‘Njord’ was banking on Loki running, or Thor refusing to bring him back. Actually putting Loki on trial...I don't think that's good for his goals. Or at least not ideal."
"You think Loki knew that," Clint said, his voice studiously neutral.
"I do." Natasha paused. "I think he's smart. I think he saw everything I'm saying and recognized that he'd be putting Steve and Thor in harm's way if he tried to fight this. That the best way to keep them safe is going along with it."
She cocked her head at Clint. "What do you think?"
"Me?" He said, eyes widening a bit too much.
"Yes, you," she said. "You - and I'm sorry to say this - know him better than I do. Is that what's going on, or am I missing something?"
A muscle worked in Clint's jaw and he looked away from her. Natasha thought he might leave, but finally he just said, "yeah, he might do that. What you’re saying." He didn't expound, and Natasha wouldn't ask him to.
"So," Natasha said, "easiest thing to do would be to stand back. The biggest problem there would be keeping Steve from doing anything reckless - Thor would be out of our hands but if Odin's smart - and he has to be - he'll manage that problem. Loki dies, Njord loses his angle of attack. Asgard stabilizes, and Thor's no longer under threat."
Clint looked back at her. "Very pragmatic of you," he said. She shrugged, and Clint said, "all right, since you're playing hardass cop, I'll go: Asgard executes Loki. Steve's gutted. Thor loses his shit. Neither of them forgives any of us for staying out of it - or see it as an outright betrayal." He paused, and grimaced. "And they'd be right."
"Yes," Natasha said, and finally sat down. "I know."
They looked at each other in silence.
"So again," Clint said finally, "what are we going to do? You've already said: we can't keep Loki from going to Asgard. And I don't think we're equipped for a jail break - not to mention that would just land us back at square one again, with the bonus of being official enemies of the Asgardian state."
Natasha leaned her elbows on her knees. "There's going to be a trial, isn't there?" She said. "Presumably that means there need to be witnesses. A prosecutor. And a defense."
Clint sat back. "You're not serious. Not to state the obvious, Nat, but...you're not a lawyer."
"No," she said. "I'm not. None of us are. But it seems to me - letting Loki be executed without a fight isn't an option. Keeping him from trial is impossible. So what we need to do is figure out a way that the trial doesn't end in execution."
Clint stared at her. She braced herself, expecting him to argue. His fingers drummed on his leg some more. "You're going to need a damn good defense," he said finally, and Natasha felt herself relax. Then he looked down and added, quietly, "maybe I should go."
"No," Natasha said immediately.
"Why not?" Clint asked, his eyes hardening. "Like you said, I know him better than - most people. And I'd have more reason to be there, as - as a victim." He forced the word out like it tasted foul, which it probably did. "Given that, if people see me testifying on his behalf..."
"I can't ask you to do that to yourself," Natasha said. "It wouldn't be fair." She met his eyes. "And even if that weren't the case, Clint, even if this weren't personal for you - I'm the spy. Infiltration, manipulation - that's my game, not yours. When Thor, Sif, and Loki leave for Asgard - and I'm betting Steve will find a way to tag along, whatever we say - I'll be the one who goes."
Clint's jaw tightened and for a moment he just looked pissed, but the expression bled away into exhaustion. He knew she was right. On both counts, even if the latter was easier for him to swallow. "Fine," he said. "Fine. Yeah. But then..." He took a breath and let it out. "I guess there's some things I should probably tell you. About Loki, and the invasion."
“Yes,” Natasha said quietly. “I thought there might be.” God, she hated it being like this. Hated using her friend like this.
She wondered if Loki was expecting this. Banking on it - on some kind of defense. It would make sense - a way of saving himself that didn't put Steve and Thor in the crossfire. Except, of course, it still would, and she had a feeling that wasn't what Loki was thinking at all.
What would happen if she asked? Natasha wondered. What would he say?
What lie would he choose to tell?
She doubted it would be the truth. Doubted Loki would ever say I didn't want them to get hurt. I didn't want to risk their lives.
She'd known that Loki would kill for Steve. She hadn't known - until now - that he'd die for him.
IV. TONY
Natasha poked her head into the lab where Tony was staring at a set of screens that told him nothing other than the data equivalent of “fuck if we know.” He looked up at her, bleary-eyed.
“Good news?” He said, without optimism.
“We’ve got another one,” she said. “Romania.”
“Romania,” Tony echoed. “How do they keep finding these places? Don’t suppose they left a note this time - ‘off to Belgium in two days, see you there’--”
“No note,” Natasha said. “Just bodies.”
“Christ,” Tony said. He rubbed his eyes. “Well, the murder squad is efficient, I’ll say that much for them.”
“We’re leaving in ten,” Natasha said. “Be ready.”
Efficient was one word. Terrifying might be another one.
Going through a Hydra base where Loki and Barnes had paid a visit was a little like being on the ground after a natural disaster. Provoked some of the same ‘poor bastards never stood a chance’ sense of inevitability, because that was kind of how it seemed. Those two blew in like a hurricane, killed a whole bunch of crypto-Nazis, and vanished into the ether.
Not that Tony was anywhere in the vicinity of actually feeling sorry for these guys. Hell, no. If he'd even been tempted all it would take was thirty seconds to remember why this was happening in the first place. What had sent Loki and Barnes off the rails to begin with. Steve. Steve Rogers, survived on ice for seventy-odd years, taken down by seven bullets in his back.
Yeah, (not so) deep down he could sympathize with the whole 'murder spree' thing. Thor definitely did. Thor, as far as Tony could tell, was just pissed he hadn't been invited. Well, pissed and worried half out of his mind, because anyone with half an eye could see that this was going nowhere good.
Loki was a nuclear bomb on countdown. When he finished burning through Hydra...well hard to say what he'd do next.
Tony was man enough to own that the thought terrified him more than a little. Because if nothing else, this whole miserable episode had made it abundantly clear that Loki had power, serious power that they hadn't really seen before. If this was what it looked like when Loki let loose...
He looked down at something that had been a human body at some point, but didn't look much like one now, and focused on not throwing up in his armor. The question that occurred to him - the question that kept occurring to him, as the body count kept going up, was: how goddamn much had Loki been holding back during the invasion? And why?
"Nothing," Natasha said, returning from wherever she'd gone, Clint following after her. Neither of them seemed affected any more than Thor by their grim surroundings. Maybe they were just used to it. Or better at hiding their reactions. "Data's been wiped. Hard to say if they did it before the two of them got here or whether one of them did it."
"It hasn't been long," Thor said. Not that it mattered how long it had been. Loki and Barnes were ghosts. Wherever they went between massacres, it wasn't anywhere they could track. They weren't any closer than they'd been a week ago.
Tony rubbed his eyes. "If there's nothing we can learn, can we get out of here? Being around this many dead bodies isn't, weirdly enough, my idea of fun."
Natasha looked annoyed. Tony thought maybe she was taking it as a personal affront that she hadn't been able to track her quarry down. Thor had the same look of disappointment, worry, and anger that was nearly a permanent fixture these days.
Tony...he got it, he did. The revenge thing. He couldn't deny that there was a lot of him that thought they fucking deserve it. They killed Steve, Nazi bastards, they deserve what's coming to them.
But there was another part of him that kept thinking: there's two of them. Two people doing all this and, let's be real, one of them doing the lion's share. This is what happens when Loki lets loose and we can't stop him, we can't even catch him, and maybe at the end of this he just hits the self-destruct button but how much of the planet is he going to take with him?
And that? Yeah, that scared him.
They really should've had a contingency plan for this. Or, well, Tony had figured they did have a contingency plan, but it was abundantly clear now that "sic Team Avengers on him" wasn't good enough, even if they did still have Team Avengers, which - without Steve, it felt a little like the heart had been ripped out of that particular club. Definitely had ripped the heart out of Loki, and fuck if that hadn't been...
Steve's body lighting up from the inside, magic glowing through his skin. Tony shuddered a little even as his stomach twisted into knots. A good seventy percent of the time he and Steve hadn't seen eye to eye, but when it came down to it, it turned out that didn't matter.
Tony flew back to New York alone and arrived well ahead of the rest of the team, stepping out of his armor and retreating downstairs to look for a drink. He found Pepper and Jane Foster instead, talking in low voices. They both looked up at him when he came in.
"Nothing?" Jane said. He shook his head, and she looked down, nodded. Pepper stood up and came over to give him a hug.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"It's fine," Tony said, suddenly exhausted. "I didn't really expect anything else."
Back when this had started, it had all seemed a little like a joke. Loki's weird crush on Captain America. Maybe obsession, a little, and it'd just gotten weirder and weirder until eventually it'd seemed almost normal that Loki was living on the premises and then that they'd gotten an adorable little apartment together. Still a little weird, but what in their lives wasn't, and people changed.
Or maybe deep down they didn't. Or maybe Loki had started to, but with Steve gone all of that had unraveled fast and hard, the way they were all sort of unraveling.
Maybe they shouldn't expect to bring Loki back at all.
The second he thought it, it felt like a betrayal. Steve had loved Loki. Fucking adored him, head over heels. And Barnes was his lifelong best friend. For that, at least, Tony owed him at least trying to save them. Even if they had to knock them out, drag them back to the Tower and throw them in a couple Hulk-proof cells.
They'd just have to catch up before the bomb went off.
Somehow.
V. WANDA
"Stop," Loki snapped. "Stop - you're going about this all wrong."
Wanda clenched her fists so she didn't snap back so explain to me how to do it right instead of snapping at me, but she wasn't going to keep doing that much longer. He'd deserve it. "What am I doing wrong," she said flatly, and Loki flicked his fingers.
"Everything," he said. "I hardly know where to begin."
Wanda lifted her chin. "That sounds like an excuse to me."
"I beg your pardon?" Loki said, his eyes snapping to her and narrowing. She held her ground.
"If you don't want to explain it to me, just say so," she said. "But maybe you just can't and don't want to admit that you don't actually know what you're doing."
"I don't--" Loki almost gaped at her. He did look stunned, and Wanda looked stubbornly back at him, refusing to back down. She had the feeling if she didn't hold her ground now, early on, then she wouldn't get the chance again. Loki might not hate her - might not, she still wasn't sure that his teaching her wasn't just about testing her limits - but she was quite sure that he was willing to dismiss her in a heartbeat.
Wanda wasn't going to be dismissed.
A spark lit in Loki's eyes and for a moment Wanda thought she'd gone too far, that she was going to be answered with something worse than sharp words. She braced to defend herself, though her thoughts flashed to the methodical destruction she'd witnessed in the Hydra base she and Pietro had escaped and she wondered if, head on and without the element of surprise, she could really defend herself. And even if she could...what would she do after? Would Steve understand?
Her place here was still so fragile.
But the spark went out, and Loki huffed a laugh, one corner of his lips twisting upwards. "Well," he said, "I suppose you did warn me." He exhaled through his nose. "Try again. But this time more slowly, and keep your gestures - smaller. Your greatest weakness right now is efficiency - you're expending more strength than you need to, and exhausting yourself too quickly. Don't use a flood when a stream will do."
"Poetic," Wanda said, with a small smile.
"Magic is poetry," Loki said, the crooked smile fading. Wanda looked away. She didn't feel that. Magic - hers - was violence and pain and something that had been forced onto her by murderers. She wanted to learn how to use it, to control it, but it wasn't...beautiful.
"You don't think so," Loki said, his head cocking a fraction to the side.
"No," she said. "I don't. Maybe - maybe for you, but..."
"Is it because of how they were awakened? You give them too much power over you." Loki's gaze was sharp, and it pinned her. "Whatever they may have done, they do not own you now. For good or ill, you are your own." Wanda could hear something just under the surface of Loki's voice, something harsh and strangely urgent. She remembered what she'd glimpsed in Loki's mind, when she'd stumbled in too deep and found herself trapped briefly in his nightmares. She pressed her lips together.
"Do you really believe that?"
She heard Loki's hiss of an exhale. "Careful, witchling."
"I mean it," she said. "Do you?"
"Yes," Loki said flatly. "I do." He started toward the door. "That will be all for today."
"Wait," Wanda said, eyes widening, but he'd already swept through the door and disappeared.
She couldn’t talk to Pietro about Loki - all he would do would be to make disgusted noises and say something disparaging. She couldn’t speak to Clint, either - she didn’t know the full history between them, but she could gather enough to know that it was delicate, and painful.
Steve gave her her opening. “How are things going with Loki?” He asked, with a certain delicacy that suggested he knew the answer might be less than positive.
“Fairly well, actually,” she said. “For the most part. He isn’t always very nice, but I manage.”
Steve made a face. “If he’s giving you trouble - I can talk to him, if you need me to.”
“No,” Wanda said. “It’s fine. We’re just…” She considered. “I think he’s testing me, a little.”
Steve grimaced again. “He does that,” he said, with a mixture of rueful chagrin and frustration. Wanda felt a bit of an urge to laugh.
“I don’t mind,” she said. “He does push me, and I like the challenge. And I can push back, when I need to.”
“That’s good,” Steve said slowly. “But if you do need me to say something…”
“I’ll tell you.” Wanda gave him a small smile. “And thank you. I appreciate it.” She paused, considering how to approach what she really wanted to ask - and in truth, whether it was wise to. “Thanos,” she said. Steve’s expression immediately tightened.
“What about him?” He asked. Wanda looked down at her hands, twisting them in her lap.
“Him and Loki,” she said. “What…” She paused, considering her words carefully. After his fall from Asgard, Thanos found him. She did not know what fall from Asgard meant, but she knew Loki’s fear of Thanos, strong enough that it had bled into her even after she had escaped from the whirlpool of his nightmares. “He was...with him for a time?”
Steve looked like he was struggling to answer. “That isn’t…something I feel comfortable talking about for Loki,” he said finally.
“No,” Wanda said quickly. “I know he was–” Steve gave her a sharp sidelong look and Wanda winced a little. “I...saw.”
Steve opened his mouth and she could see that he wanted to ask, but he closed it again and she was relieved that she did not have to decide whether to tell him what she had witnessed, or not.
“I knew that he was...connected to him,” Wanda said, “and afraid of him. But did he…” She chewed her lip and then said, “Thor said that he wasn’t coerced into attacking Earth.”
“That’s what Loki says,” Steve said, sounding disgruntled. Wanda didn’t need to read minds to read that.
“You don’t believe him?”
Steve gave her a careful, assessing look. “These are all things you could ask Loki, aren’t they?”
Wanda gave him a sad smile. “I could, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. And I feel...behind. Like there are all of these things everyone else knows, that I don’t understand.”
At length, Steve sighed. “I think it’s complicated,” he said. “And I think Loki sometimes...wants to claim he’s worse than he is. And act like it, too.” He gave her a significant look, like he thought she might miss what he was saying.
“He doesn’t scare me,” she said firmly, which wasn’t entirely true but was true enough.
“I’m glad,” Steve said. “But he’s not the only one who takes more blame than he needs to.”
She looked down again. “I know what I’m responsible for.”
“Do you know what you’re not?”
For good or ill, you are your own. “Like you said,” she said finally, “I think it’s complicated.”
“Wanda,” Steve said. She looked up at him, meeting his eyes.
“Loki,” she said. “I think - the way he talks, I think he was controlled more than he wants to admit.”
“What makes you say that?” Steve asked slowly.
“Just something he said.” She stood up. “Thank you, Steve.”
“Anytime,” Steve said after a beat. “Though I’m not sure what I did.”
Wanda smiled at him, and slipped out. She retreated into her room and thought about ownership of herself, and responsibility, and how frightened she had been, how powerless. She thought about what she’d done to take back that power.
She thought about the pain she’d felt, the excruciating torture she’d felt secondhand in Loki’s mind, the searing fear and desperation.
We aren’t so different, are we, she thought sadly. But she didn’t think she would ever say it.
Still, it gave her at least a little understanding.