Chapter Text
---
It was the morning after the Battle of New York, or as some civilians had already begun to refer to it colloquially: The Incident.
Steve Rogers was scowling across the conference table at Tony Stark. Stark has just told him that, much to everyone's frustration, all the security footage for the Tower had been lost. Someone had deleted it after the fact . Someone didn't want them to learn the identity of the Captain America impersonator who had stolen - and then most bizarrely, returned - Loki's Sceptre.
Steve had found it lying innocuously on the ground next to him, when he awoke from the intruder's attack. The STRIKE team had taken it off their hands later that day, after asking Steve if he was done with it. He was still a bit puzzled about that.
"So we have nothing?" he asked Stark, just for clarification.
"Nada," Stark said, with a vaguely irritable shrug.
A knock on the door interrupted Steve before he could respond, and both men turned to see a woman step in briskly. She closed the door behind her, scanned the room carefully to see they were alone, then approached the table.
She was not a familiar face. Average height and features, subtle makeup, black hair tied back in a high ponytail and the usual SHIELD name-tags on her black formal business suit . Unlike the women from Steve's time, she wore trousers instead of a skirt. Combined with her unusually pale skin, it gave her an almost monochrome look . The only splash of colour was the green and grey necktie she wore.
"Good morning, Mr Stark. Captain Rogers," she said politely. "I've been assigned to assist you with any follow-up to the Chitauri case."
"Is that a Slytherin tie?" Stark asked, sounding amused at this observation.
"Contrary to popular opinion, SHIELD agents are permitted a sense of humour," she pointed out bluntly. "It could have been worse; I could have worn glasses."
Stark chuckled. "You're already better than Daniel Radcliffe."
"Am I, now?" she asked, a faint smile appearing briefly on her face.
"Yeah, Gracie."
She frowned slightly at this non-sequitur, finally missing a step in what Steve could only assume was a chain of random modern cultural references, all of which had completely gone over his head.
Stark rolled his eyes dramatically. " Big Trouble in Little China ," he deigned to explain. "It's a classic."
Steve had figured out pretty quickly that these 'explanations' basically translated to 'go watch a movie', mostly because the first two times he had done this, those exact words had been included. He had known the man for three days, and already they had done this verbal dance six times.
"And you are?" Stark asked languidly, eyeing her up almost automatically, as he would with any new woman he met. It was a habit of his that reminded Steve rather sharply of Howard.
"You can call me Regina Snow," she said curtly, tapping her name-tag, which did indeed show that name, before turning her attention to Steve. "I'm to be your personal assistant, Captain. Though if Mr Stark is interested in a closer working relationship, there's a chance that I might possibly consider trusting him with the odd bit of valuable information."
"She sounds like Romanoff on a 'playful' day," Stark muttered under his breath, before saying more clearly, "No thanks, lady."
She smiled, perhaps too innocently for Steve’s comfort. There was something off about her, something he couldn’t quite pin down: she had the same sort of secretiveness that he'd seen from many SHIELD operatives, but it was more than that. "That wasn't flirting, Mr Stark."
"Oh really?" Stark retorted, apparently surprised.
"You'd not need to guess at hints and vagaries if I were," she said, with a faint smile.
Steve chuckled at Stark's slightly confused frown; the billionaire clearly wasn't used to being turned down. But then Regina turned her eyes on him once more. "We have a few important matters to discuss in private, if you have the time, Captain?"
"Sure," he said, far more wary than enthusiastic. He wasn’t feeling especially fond of SHIELD at the moment, with a few honourable exceptions. But if they had work for him, how could he refuse? They were paying his rent.
"Have fun, you two," Stark sniped.
"Oh, we won't," Regina retorted sharply, causing Steve to hesitate for a moment, glancing at Stark in confusion. Going by Stark’s expression, he might as well have looked in the mirror. Apparently he wasn't the only one baffled by Regina Snow's behaviour.
---
"You may want to look at this," Regina said, handing a tablet to Steve the moment they were alone, in one of Stark's 'private' (read: no cameras) office suites. Her choice of location felt quite deliberate.
He pressed the play button, and was shocked to see the recordings from Stark Tower yesterday. His doppelganger arrived just before Loki was defeated, and the split-screen, which showed both his doppelganger and Loki doing different things in different places at the same time, seemed to prove that whoever this really was, it most certainly wasn't Loki.
Steve watched in amazement as the doppelganger briskly ascended the stairs, and then waited, before pressing the elevator button at just the right time to join the STRIKE team in their descent, with the Sceptre in their custody. There, he spoke to the team, saying that the Secretary wanted him to take over on the Sceptre. Initially, they refused.
Contrary to the beliefs of many, Steve was neither naive nor stupid. He could read the room in that elevator, and what he saw made his blood run cold. Everyone within, except his doppelganger, was reaching for their weapons, as if ready to attack what, to all outward appearances, seemed to be him. But instead the impostor defused the situation by leaning over and whispering two words in the agent’s ear.
Two words, just two, but they were more than enough to turn his world upside down.
Steve sat down heavily on the nearest flat surface - which was thankfully a nearby office chair and not a desk or the floor - numb with shock.
Hail HYDRA.
His double had said "Hail HYDRA" to the STRIKE team, and they had taken that as a good thing.
He looked up at Regina, to see that she was simply watching his reaction, completely impassive. There was perhaps a hint of amusement in the corner of her eye, but nothing more sinister than that.
That, in itself, stirred an irrational flare of anger in Steve, in a way that some sign of malice wouldn't. Malice would indicate at least awareness of the significance of this. But this apparent apathy... didn't she understand what these two words signified, to him in particular? What they proved? Or did she know, and just didn’t care?
Then he looked back to the screen again. It was still split between Loki - now in the lobby with Stark, Thor, and a team of SHIELD agents gathered around - and the intruder, showing him confronting Steve. He remembered this fight. The intruder had sworn upon seeing him, but then tried to talk him down from a fight, before defending himself.
He watched the fight play out, wincing at the memory of the recent injuries from it. As he did, he also noticed the way the intruder had fought, in a way that he hadn’t at the time. Namely, it wasn’t like Loki at all, even taking into account the change in style to accommodate the shield. In fact, it was disturbingly familiar, as if the intruder was copying more than just his appearance. That said, he thought, if the intruder had tried to copy his fighting style, he’d done a poor job of it. While some parts were hauntingly familiar, others, bizarrely, were more like Natasha than him.
And for the second time, confirming that he hadn’t imagined it, he heard the second set of words to leave him in numb shock: "Bucky is alive."
He didn’t have time to dwell on it, however, and winced as he watched the replay of the distraction working, and his double using the Sceptre to stun him.
There was a brief pause as the double collected himself and the Sceptre, which was rather shockingly broken by the unexpected remark - was it a compliment? "That is America's Ass."
To Steve’s astonished embarrassment, he realised that his double was admiring his backside!
The recording tracked him leaving the building, almost five whole minutes after Loki had escaped with the Tesseract. But then it snapped back to show where Steve had been lying unconscious.
The double appeared out of thin air next to him, set down the staff on the floor beside him, and disappeared again.
The recording ended there, and Steve slowly looked up at Regina. Once more, she was resolutely poker-faced. Taking a few moments to compose himself, he asked his next question in a carefully level voice. "Why did you erase this from the mainframe?"
"Didn't want the wrong people to see it," she said, shrugging almost nonchalantly, taking the tablet back from his unresisting hand.
"And why did you show me?"
"Well, you are America's hero. Thwarter of evil schemes, historically from without... perhaps it's time to start looking within."
Steve shook his head. "HYDRA," he said softly to himself, not wanting to believe it.
"Well, cut off one head..." she said, trailing off expectantly.
"Two more take its place," he replied sullenly.
"So, why not tell the wrong people that we started with two in the forties?" she asked him, a sly smile on her lips.
Steve paused, following the trail of given evidence to its logical endpoint. "You weren't hiding this from SHIELD," he said slowly, turning to face her. "You were hiding it from HYDRA?"
"What better way than to use their own tactics against them? They implant themselves as moles within SHIELD. We should do the same to them."
Steve slowly shook his head. "Whoever that man was, I'm not him. I can't lie like that."
A smile spread across Regina’s face; sly, dangerous, and deeply amused, as if she was in on a joke that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. It was unnerving, even before he got to the profoundly strange sense that it was somehow familiar. "Oh, but you can,” she said. “And I'm going to help you."
He was still reeling from the whole thing, but suddenly, he began to realise that he had no idea who this woman was. Furthermore, if she was capable of the kind of duplicity required to triple-cross SHIELD in order to root out HYDRA, how did he know she was being honest now?
Slowly, he stood up, folding his arms and levelling a hard stare at her. "And who, exactly, are you?"
"The enemy of your enemy," she said, and this time she sounded unexpectedly serious. Perhaps honest, too, though if she really was that good, then there was a strong chance that he couldn't tell, even with the clear eye-contact they had now.
"Not an answer," he said firmly.
"You wouldn't believe the truth," she said, with a shrug that showed that the nonchalance of before, affected or otherwise, was back.
"Let me guess, though. Your real name's not ‘Regina Snow’?"
"Not really, no," she said, apparently unfazed by being confronted with her deception. "I blame television and popular culture, personally. Snow suited me for Game of Thrones . Regina came from... something else."
Steve raised an eyebrow. "My first thought was Hans Christian Andersen."
She smiled slightly. It was only on one side of her mouth, but unlike the rest of her smiles, it did reach both her eyes. " The Snow Queen . Yes, that's another way to look at it."
"Why lie about your name?" he asked, frowning.
She snorted, apparently amused at his naivety. "Captain, do you really think that I’m the only person you’ve met in the last couple of days who’s using a name they weren’t born with?" she asked. "Mr Stark could tell you that when he first met the woman who calls herself Natasha Romanoff, she was pretending to be someone else entirely. Name and all." She shrugged. "Besides, what’s in a name? In this business, the name we choose is no more significant than the clothes - in some cases, a good deal less." He noticed, as she said that, her hand moved idly to the tie she wore, and he recalled the remark Stark had made. He didn't get the reference, but it couldn't be that hard to figure out, surely.
Steve’s eyes narrowed. It was this kind of reasoning that had made him increasingly less fond of SHIELD. He wasn’t naive: he was familiar with aliases, from his time dealing with the French Resistance, and he understood their occasional necessity. But that didn’t mean that he liked them. "If we're going to work together, I need to trust you," he said.
She shook her head. "If you knew my name... you wouldn't trust me."
Steve frowned at that enigmatic response. To say that it didn’t help was putting it mildly. "We're going to talk to Stark about this."
She regarded him for a long moment, before smiling that dangerous, unnervingly familiar smile. "As you wish."
---
They had been gone less than half an hour - and in that time Tony had only managed to drive five SHIELD bureaucrats into whimpering submission over the phone, while trying to figure out who did what to his servers to lose that important surveillance footage - when Rogers and Snow returned.
"Hold on one moment," he said, putting the minion he'd been talking to on hold.
Long ago, he had chosen the most frustrating piece of classical music he could think of for his hold music. Being classical, nobody could justifiably complain, but at the same time, anyone who chose to try to stay on hold would be forced to listen to In the Hall of the Mountain King: a piece chosen specifically for its ability to turn the brain of the listener to melted string-cheese with prolonged exposure, on a constant loop for as long as either they could tolerate it, or Tony decided to leave them hanging.
He smiled slightly at the small but satisfying act of petty sadism, before turning his full attention to the matter at hand.
"Back already, are we?" he asked, as Rogers sat across the table from him.
Rogers, expression sombre even by his standards, gestured to Ms. Snow and said flatly, "Show him."
She held out a tablet to Tony, and he stared at it pointedly. It only took her a second - far better than average for a SHIELD agent; they usually had to be told at least twice - to realise he didn't like being handed things.
He had never been overly fond of strangers handing him paperwork - it could always be a court summons for a paternity suit - but since his time in Afghanistan, he had refused to take anything from the hands of anyone other than Pepper, Rhodey, or one of his bots. Before then, he had signed whatever any Stark Industries employee put in front of him... and it had been a horrifying awakening to realise that his signature had been all over the approval documents for a lot of Obie's evil schemes, because of his own lack of attention.
It often kept him awake at night, wondering how many lives he could have saved, just by bothering to read the paperwork. Well, now he always read every last line of the fine print.
Or had Pepper do it for him. She was the only one he would trust with that, these days.
He knew the 'don't hand me stuff' rule was irrational: how the paperwork got into his hands didn't change what was in it, and whether or not he signed anything was entirely his own responsibility... but it still gave him the illusion of control over it all the same.
It was also possible that this was another extension of his general aversion to people, since Afghanistan. Torture will do that, or so he'd read. Once again, it was only Pepper, Rhodey, and his bots that he didn't feel uncomfortable within a five foot radius of, these days. He could put up a good front, but it was exhausting.
He wondered if that was why Ms Snow here was showing him the courtesy of setting the tablet down on the table, now... he hoped he wasn't that transparent, but he could see something in her eyes as she did it, and he was sure it wasn't just mocking his eccentricities.
As soon as she stepped back behind Rogers, again, Tony snatched up the tablet and pressed play. He watched the footage there with a mixture of incredulity and mounting fury.
"You deleted this from my servers?" he asked coldly, once it had finished playing.
"Would you have preferred SHIELD see it?" Snow asked idly.
Tony glared at her, which seemed to have about as much effect as glaring at a wall, then frowned at Rogers. "And we're sure that's not Loki?"
"I'm pretty sure he can't project illusions at that distance," Rogers answered bluntly. "And he hasn't shown a sign of being able to project solid ones, at any distance."
"Definitely solid?" Tony asked, more for form than anything else. The evidence was pretty compelling, but it paid to check.
Rogers grimaced. "Definitely," he said. "Guy packed a wallop."
"Well, we'll need to be sure of that. Check with Point-Break when we see him." Tony waved dismissively. "So, pretty little liar here wants us to know your double was HYDRA, why?"
"I wanted you both to know that the STRIKE team are HYDRA, actually," Snow retorted.
"Not denying it, then?" Tony asked her.
She smiled coldly. "I never said I was with SHIELD."
Tony raised an eyebrow, then mentally re-ran their previous conversation. "Uh-huh," he conceded. "Oh, and Snow? Seriously?"
"I'm a bastard," she replied matter-of-factly. "Figuratively speaking and, from a certain point of view, literally as well."
Tony didn't miss the look Rogers gave at Snow's language, but since he didn't comment, neither would Tony. He would, however, save the memory of Rogers’ expression for when he next wanted to needle the man about being old-fashioned. "You know, knowing your father isn't always all it's cracked up to be," he said glibly.
"Now who's lying?" she asked him, smiling coldly.
That remark cut deeper than Tony wanted to admit, so he changed the subject. "So, why exactly are we supposed to trust you? We’ve got teleporting doubles-"
"Note the plural." Tony barely heard her mutter under her breath.
That only added to the headache he was beginning to develop, but he continued regardless. "-of our beloved Capsicle stealing dangerous alien technology, then for some bizarre reason, putting it back again moments later, and a serious infiltration of SHIELD by HYDRA, which surprises me less than it probably should. I don’t know about Rogers here, but I’m not exactly overflowing with trust at the moment. Especially not for someone who’s just popped up out of nowhere, admits to hacking my servers to delete vitally important surveillance footage, admits that she’s using a false name, and won’t say who she is, who she’s working for, or even what she’s really up to."
Snow merely shrugged idly. "When you work for spies, trust is tricky. Give me a week, if I've not won you over by then, I'll leave of my own accord."
"To where?" Tony fired back.
"Somewhere far away, where the fallout of your distrust won't get me killed."
"You're expecting to get killed?" Rogers asked her, concerned. Tony barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes at the unthinking chivalry on display. Rogers of all people should know that this woman, whoever she was, was both deceptive and dangerous.
She looked to Rogers for a moment, before fixing her gaze on Tony in a very unsettling way. "I'm expecting very bad things to happen unless I interfere,” she said with a sort of calm that looked to him like a very good lie, in and of itself. "So if you don't let me help, then I'll do my best to get out of the bad things' way, as well as yours."
Tony hesitated for a moment, the memory of the vision he'd seen through the portal flashing across his mind. She couldn't possibly know about those bad things - or at least, he sure as hell hoped not - but HYDRA definitely qualified as bad things, even if you didn’t take into account their apparent infiltration of SHIELD. That, he reckoned, was enough to be getting on with for the time being. At the very least, HYDRA needed to be dealt with. And, he reasoned, if you're going to spy on the spies who spy on spies, why not use someone who was at least entirely upfront about being untrustworthy? Hell, she even wore a Slytherin tie, like she wanted to advertise her untrustworthiness.
"Fine," he said, his voice slightly weak from the memory of his vision. "One week."
---
Thor had been hunting for his brother for four days, when Heimdall sent him a message informing him of Loki's location. The location itself was unexpected, to say the least: a small apartment in New York City, on Midgard. He debated bursting in unannounced, but he rather doubted the rightful owners would appreciate their home becoming part of the collateral damage in the war that his brother had brought down upon their city and their world.
Collateral damage. How he disliked those two words, and would be grateful never to hear them again in his hopefully still very long life. For reasons he could not for the life of him understand, Midgard was obsessed with the monetary number of it. On another world, when Asgard assisted in the defeat of an invader, they would pledge to rebuild what had been destroyed - or assist at the least - and wealth was never really thought of by either group. The arrangement was always intended to favour the world being rebuilt, but in an honourable way that didn't bring the pettiness of finances into the matter. Furthermore, many worlds appreciated the presence of Asgardians during the rebuilding period - as it acted as a deterrent to any other would-be invaders - enough that they would often reward the builders with feasts and wine.
Midgard - or its governments, at least - seemed as if it just wanted to know the number, and had outright refused offers of aid that did not come in the form of currency. It was unsettling.
So, instead of breaking the door down, he rang the bell. As he did, he kept an eye on the potential escape routes, in case his approach drove his brother to flee.
But it did not. Instead, a buzzer sounded, and the door creaked open, allowing him access to the stairwell.
Heimdall had given him the apartment number, and Thor wandered up the five flights of stairs to the right door, and knocked lightly.
The door opened.
He took in the room cautiously, and found it to be quite ordinary for Midgard: a small sitting room, with a large window providing a good view of the battered but unbowed Stark Tower, across six blocks of trade buildings. A couple of doors, presumably leading to a bedroom and bathroom, if this was an average apartment - or at least, what he had come to understand was an average apartment. He had to confess, his knowledge of modern Midgardian dwellings was a work in progress.
The oddest thing about it was that it didn't have one of the televisions that were apparently ubiquitous on this world. It had bookshelves instead.
"Please, brother, let's not fight. I'd hate to lose the deposit on this place."
Thor whirled, hammer raised, to see Loki calmly closing the door behind him.
"What are you doing here, brother?" Thor demanded, taking in Loki's appearance. His clothing almost resembled Midgardian style now, with pressed trousers, and a button-down shirt in deep green silk. No shoes, just bare feet. That was slightly odd, and Thor took it as a sign of Loki being comfortable enough in this situation not to feel the need to run any time soon, which was both a relief and a worry. A relief because it meant that Thor probably wouldn’t have to chase him, and a worry because, with Loki’s less than stable state of mind and proclivity for the unexpected, it could mean that a very unpleasant surprise awaited him.
"Well, I live here now," Loki said casually. "If it's any consolation, I don't have the Tesseract anymore."
"I am aware," Thor said, frowning at that fact. The Tesseract had appeared in Asgard's treasure vault at some point during the night after the Battle of New York. Not even Heimdall had been able to discern how it got there. No one had been seen entering or leaving either Asgard or the vault in that time, nor could the Tesseract's own energy have been used to do so, as that would have left a trace they could have tracked. They had also gone to great lengths, over the last few days, to confirm that it was indeed the Tesseract and not some sort of fake. "But if anything, that gives me even less reason to trust you now."
"How about you trust it from Heimdall? I'm not using any concealment spells at the moment."
Thor hesitated. While he got the feeling that his brother was telling the truth, unlikely though it was, it was still Loki. There was more to this, there had to be. For starters, why was he suddenly so relaxed, so apparently content to disguise himself as an ordinary resident in the city that he had laid waste to only days before, as a prelude to trying to conquer the world?
There was something else that concerned Thor, also. From the moment Thor found him on Midgard, before and then during the attempted invasion, Loki had seemed quite sickly. He still appeared thinner even than was normal for him, but now his skin was no longer pallid, simply pale. There were no longer the same deep lines under his eyes. Loki appeared healthier , now, in spite of it having only been four days. It was deeply saddening to Thor that such concern had to be set aside to deal with the greater threat Loki posed.
"You still need to answer for your crimes, Loki," he said.
Loki rolled his eyes. "Does Mr Barton expect incarceration? What about Doctor Selvig?" Thor was taken aback by this argument, while also ruthlessly crushing the flare of hope at the insinuation that Loki may not have been responsible for the atrocities that he had committed over the last few days; that some other was behind all this. "Besides," Loki continued. "If you really want to keep an eye on my activities here on Earth, you may do so. I won't hide anything. Let Heimdall watch, I'm not shy." There was an odd smile there as he said that, which instantly raised Thor's suspicions - mainly, as to what there may be to be shy about - but then Loki raised a hand in a gesture that simply asked Thor not to interrupt. "I assure you, my intentions are - well I can't say harmless, some people will be harmed - but they are at least benevolent. Even by your standards, brother."
Thor was silent for a long moment. "I doubt it," he said in a low voice. "I wish I could believe you, brother, I really do. I wish I could believe your claim that you were merely another's puppet in this. But even if you truly were acting against your will, there are still other crimes for which you must answer, crimes that were performed long before you could make any claim of being controlled. The evidence is against you, brother. So I most certainly doubt you."
Loki nodded. "Of course you do," he said. "I'd hardly respect you if you didn't. But tell me, if you even suspected a greater threat that could end your life, mine, Asgard's, Earth's... and you did something you knew could help bring about that outcome, wouldn't you be at least a touch upset?"
Thor scowled at this. It was unlike any from Asgard to refer to Midgard as 'Earth', yet Loki had now done so twice. Perhaps it was part of the act of intending to live alongside the mortals, for whatever plan he had in mind, but it was an odd detail, in Thor's mind. Still, Loki was now attempting a common tactic of his; preemptive guilt about a mere possible scenario. Likely a lie as well, but both of them knew that, with the stakes so high as Loki now implied, Thor would never take the chance of ignoring such risk, lest it be true. "What are you saying, brother?"
Loki smirked, but this time, it was a thin mask for something more melancholy, more haunted. "I am saying that that outcome is on its way, and there are only half a dozen ways to avoid it, that I can see. I am sure you can see something changed in me, since the day I fell from the Bifrost: none who think clearly would choose such an ignoble death, yet I am now thinking quite clearly. The threat I foresee is very real, and I'm willing to work with you and your, ah, friends, to ensure my own survival. As I'm sure you like all those innocent beings out there continuing to exist, I hope that you won't interfere. I'll tell you what I can, but sometimes, there will be things that I cannot tell you, because sometimes knowing what course must be taken will make you unable to do so."
Thor rolled his eyes. "You're stalling," he said, hefting Mjolnir.
Loki narrowed his eyes, then bowed his head. "I suppose I am," he said. "In fact, I'm asking your permission to stall for, oh... about six years? And in that time, I swear that if I even lift a finger in a threatening manner, then you may incarcerate me back on Asgard without a trial, and I won’t even try to resist. But until I do, please, just let me be. And maybe don't tell your Avenger friends I'm here?"
"Why not?" Thor asked, frowning at that request.
"Because they are integral to the saving-the-universe plan that I've been drafted into."
Thor frowned at this, "Drafted? By whom?"
"Ah. Now, that is complicated-" Loki stopped, eyes darting quickly to the door.
Thor turned around a moment before the door opened, to reveal Captain America. His first thought was to wonder how in the Nine Realms Steve Rogers had known to come here, as he had only been informed of Loki's location, by Heimdall himself, less than an hour ago. Captain Rogers, remarkable soldier though he was, hardly had such resources. His second thought, hot on the heels of the first, was to whirl on Loki, to be ready to step in if Loki tried to either attack Rogers as a prelude to flight, or simply flee outright.
But when he turned his gaze back to Loki, he found not his brother, but a woman sitting where he had been but moments before.
It had been some time since Thor had seen Loki's female form. Almost six centuries, if he recalled correctly. He barely recognised her. She resembled her male form only slightly. In fact, she resembled Frigga somewhat more, albeit younger and with black hair. The attire was slightly altered to a feminine cut but otherwise remained the same. Except her nails - fingers and toes - were now painted dark green to match her shirt.
"Good morning, Captain," she said, standing and smiling slightly. "I've got those personnel files we discussed yesterday."
Steve nodded to Loki, clearly oblivious to her true identity. Or perhaps not - his attitude was polite, but wary, a not uncommon reaction to Loki by those who knew him or, at least, knew of him. "Morning, Gina. Please, call me Steve, everyone else does." He then turned to Thor. "I didn't know you two knew each other?" he asked amiably.
Well, there went all hopes that Steve might have been aware of Loki's identity here.
"Oh, I've been asked to work with all of the Avengers," Loki answered smoothly. "I'll be meeting with Clint and Natasha next week."
Thor blinked twice. Loki was clearly impersonating an agent of SHIELD for some reason. He scowled at her, now. Loki smirked.
"Sorry, Thor. I brought food, but if I'd known you'd been here I'd have brought more," Steve said sheepishly, holding up a box of pastries, before setting it on the nearby coffee table, and then looking to Loki to ask, "So have you told Thor about my double from last week?"
Loki hesitated for half a second, before replying smoothly, "Not yet. Actually, we'd barely got past 'hello'."
"What about the doppelganger, Steve?" Thor asked warily, eyeing Loki with confusion and suspicion.
"Well, we've concluded that it can't have been Loki, as he was in custody in the foyer at the same time." Steve hesitated. "I mean, unless he can project solid illusions that far away?"
"No." Thor frowned at Loki. "No, he cannot. And the restraints that were used would also have prevented him from casting any form of magic, save the basic level of shapeshifting you witnessed."
"The double's actions revealed to us that certain members of SHIELD are in fact HYDRA spies," Loki explained. She then glanced at Thor, and added, "That's bad."
"That's an understatement," Steve agreed, sounding quite upset about the subject. "HYDRA were responsible for a lot of terrible things, during the War."
Thor nodded slowly. He would accept this from Steve Rogers, even if he would not take Loki's word for it.
Loki picked up some folders from the table, and handed them to Steve. She then reached into the small cardboard box of pastries, and took one of those for herself. Thor spotted five more within the box, and Loki gestured for him to take one as well. He waved away the offer politely, as she continued to speak. Even though he had watched her actions closely, he would never underestimate Loki's poisoning skills. "Those are the details I was able to dig up on the agents in the elevator. I can do some personal recon as well, if you like. I'm very good at face-to-face information gathering." She smiled faintly, before adding, "Not quite on Natasha's level, but I'm up there."
Steve seemed to consider this for a moment, before shaking his head. "No. Don't endanger yourself until we’ve found out as much as we can through other means."
Loki shrugged. "I was actually thinking of walking up to them, and saying 'Hail HYDRA. Captain America, who you pack of total idiots seem to think is evil just like you, has assigned me as his personal liaison to your team'. What do you think?"
Thor spluttered in shock at the bluntness of the approach, as well as the obvious inaccuracies of the quote, which she clearly intended for humour. It wasn't Loki's style at all. Even though it was lying, it was far too straightforward. Then again, so was the way she was currently speaking with Steve.
He saw Loki's smirk flicker back into life at his reaction, before vanishing, but said nothing. She had asked him to keep his mouth shut, so for the time being, he would. He would interrogate her properly later, before seeking counsel in Asgard with his parents, and reveal the truth if and when it was proved a good idea to do so. After all, on the off-chance Loki was telling the truth for a change, it could be vital that he remain quiet for now.
Meanwhile, the expression on Steve's face seemed to war between recognising the humour for what it was, and indignant horror at the plan she appeared to have conjured.
"Well..." Steve said slowly, apparently unaware of the unspoken exchange between the other two people in the room. "I suppose that could work. Give it a day or two, at least, though. And if it does come to that, be careful, and keep me informed at all times."
"Oh, I will," Loki said with a smile. "I will also inform them that, as their superior by a significant number of decades, you have ordered me to keep you informed at all times."
Steve actually laughed, rueful and delighted at the same time. "Oh, that's terrible. Did you just compare me to Schmidt?"
"Why, yes I did," Loki said. "You are of an equivalent era, after all. And besides, an argument could easily be made to these infiltrators that you overthrew him because he betrayed a shared vision of HYDRA's future. Making you outrank even their current leaders."
Steve’s amusement slid off his face in an instant, and now, he stared at her in shock. Then, slowly, reluctantly, he nodded. "You're a monster," he muttered, in a tone that mixed revulsion and admiration.
Loki smiled. "Thank you."
---
The next morning, Loki found herself sitting in a conference room in Stark Tower, with the entire Avengers team.
The irony was amusing, the way they so easily accepted her as a woman, when little else had been altered about her appearance, not even favoured colours. This form wasn't one of Loki's illusions, it was full-blown shapeshifting, which meant once she had assumed the new form it would require active effort to change it again. It was both more comfortable and significantly easier to maintain than a long-term illusion. It was also a human form, so as to fool any scanners they may use to try to determine her identity - she was capable enough of shifting back quickly that she didn't fear being harmed while in this more vulnerable form, and the deception was vital to gain their trust.
It was Steve Rogers who had insisted upon explaining the truth to them. "However mad it seems, it's better than lying to the people we trust."
Loki had met his eyes and asked simply, "Trust? And whom do you trust?"
He hadn't hesitated to reply, "My team."
Now, however, she found that she didn't really want to explain it. The lies she told so often made much more sense. As the Midgard saying went, truth was stranger than fiction, and trite as it was, it was true. Fiction, after all, was expected to make sense.
Thor was giving her the most vicious look possible. The only person in this room to know her true identity, but he had agreed to keep quiet in return for a lack of immediately recognisable evil schemes on Loki's part.
Of course, she mused, it was difficult to avoid schemes given certain circumstances... they just were't all that evil, for a change.
"Are we sure about this, Gina?" Steve Rogers asked.
Of the eight people that Loki had been told could be trusted with this secret, six were present. And no one else. Loki was a master of concealment and illusions, and she had thoroughly checked the room before hosting the meeting.
"Yes. Everyone in this room can be trusted with this information." She was being specific. This information, not necessarily other things.
Thor noticed the exact words, and his glower somehow managed to intensify.
Tony was also scowling, but his was more widely spread, taking in the entire room. "Even the spy kids over here?" he demanded, indicating Clint and Natasha.
"Who better to keep this kind of secret than those who tell more lies than truth?" Loki asked bluntly.
Natasha arched an eyebrow at her for that. Clearly she was suspicious as well.
"I'll start with the unbelievable truth, before we get into the provable facts," Loki said. "I have knowledge from the future. That knowledge comes from an informant who has shown me certain events that must come to pass to secure the survival of not only humanity, but the universe at large."
Thor spluttered, hostility vanishing into disbelief.
"You're right,” Natasha said, tone completely deadpan. “That is unbelievable."
"Definitely unlikely," Banner said, and as he spoke, Loki had to work to suppress a shudder. Most would find it hard to imagine that the small and unassuming man before her could become an enormously powerful rampaging beast in the merest blink of an eye. Loki, by contrast, having been handled like a child’s rattle by the beast in question, found it very hard to forget.
"Prove it," Tony challenged.
"Well that's the trouble: anything I could tell you as proof won't happen for a while yet," Loki bit back.
"Try me, bastard queen," Tony sniped.
Loki smiled viciously. "Jon Snow dies."
"That's in the books," Tony retorted.
"He comes back."
That surprised Tony, and he couldn't seem to stop himself from asking, "What? How? When?"
"Well, the novels never get finished, because of the apocalypse I'm trying to help you prevent... but twenty-sixteen, I think, on the TV show."
Clint slowly lowered his head to the table, and allowed it to connect with the solid wood loudly enough to draw everyone's attention, then just as slowly looked up at the rest of them. "We need to prevent this apocalypse, guys," he said. He may well have been perfectly serious, but he was also quite obviously mockingly insinuating the motive was to save one writer not the whole universe.
"I'm still not convinced," Tony persisted. "There's always another big threat, but what exactly are you suggesting?"
Loki leaned forward across the table, a dark smile on her lips. "You've seen it,” she said. “You're already thinking about it. 'A suit of armour around the world'."
Tony blinked, but credit to him, did nothing more than that. "Good guess. Better than most 'psychics'," he conceded.
"Yes, of course, it's a guess," she sniped sarcastically, before turning to Thor. "You know the convergence is coming in a year... there's still one Svartalfbatur hidden, waiting for it."
"That's not necessarily fortune telling," Thor retorted. "You could have learned that from the present."
Loki rolled her eyes, exasperated by his - admittedly understandable - scepticism. "Jane Foster will find the Aether."
Thor stared in shock.
"Do you think I could arrange for that to happen?" Loki sniped.
"No," he murmured softly, apparently stunned. "No, I do not."
"Good, there's your bit of fortune-telling, then," she muttered bitterly.
"Anything else?" Banner asked her. "I mean, anything more immediate?"
"Well we've got HYDRA intelligence - oxymoron that it is - to be getting on with," Loki observed. "By the time we're done with that, I'll be proved right about the Aether."
"And then will you tell us who your informant is?" Steve asked.
Loki smiled at him. "It's cute you're the one who keeps asking that."
---