Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It began with a calculator. A clunky thing, the size of what would be considered to be a laptop these days, with giant keys for punching in numbers and only four functions. But it was fascinating to a young boy that liked mathematical functions far more than he liked people¹.

Like many misfits, Daniel Sorres withdrew into his own world of mathematical puzzles and calculations and the machines used to make them ever more precise. Because ultimately, mathematics makes sense². And the defining characteristic of people, other than an unfortunate tendency to eat deep fried anything, is a complete lack of any sense whatsoever.

And while the rest of humanity reveled in its complete lack of logic while watching American Idol, the now young man devoted most of his time to delving into further mathematical complexities and more obscure layers of logic, trying to understand just what made the universe the way it was, and made humanity an illogical stain on an otherwise lovely bit of infinite clockwork.

And as is often the case, he eventually became frustrated with the limits of his own meaty brain, which unfortunately required things like rest, and food, and the occasional non-caffeinated liquid. The next logical step was building a sort of exterior brain, an improvement that could do his thinking while he was forced to sleep or take out the trash. And that, as one might expect, evolved into an unhealthy interest in machines that could not just do his thinking, but think for themselves. Like humans, but logical. And thinking.

There was only one problem with this endeavor. He could make ever more complex machines, program them to do ever more complex functions, to ape behaviors even, but there was always a spark missing. He could create things that were animate, but not animated, and ultimately unable to find the logical bridge to go beyond the set routines he had programmed.

While wrestling with this knotty problem, sitting in the darkest corner of the local Applebees and nursing a screwdriver that was in truth a glass of orange juice³, he met someone, purely by accident. Someone who introduced himself as Lawrence Laufson, a tall man with dark hair and green eyes that Daniel would have acknowledged as utterly gorgeous if he'd had the slightest idea about how to deal with any physical urge. Lawrence invited himself to sit at Daniel's table, and proceeded to change everything.

He ran a small software company, he said. He'd heard about Daniel, and was interested in his work, and the applications that might exist for it in Defense. Well, yes, sort of like Tony Stark, but without all the arrogant asshole. But more importantly, they then had talked, for hours and hours, Daniel's sad little glass of orange juice forgotten as he realized, perhaps for the first time in his life, that he had met an intellect equal to his own. Someone who possessed his same zeal for logic, and control, and attention to detail, and who miraculously enough didn't appear to require medication to interact with other people.

Daniel was fascinated, and more than a little in love. And down the rabbit hole he followed Lawrence, never quite grasping where they were going until suddenly his city was on fire, there was a half-sentient two-story tall war android singing drinking songs as it danced down main street, and some very interesting people had shown up to deal with the problem. One of whom wore a scarlet cape and a helmet that had wings on it, as if he was the messenger from the FTD Florist that made its home in the eighth circle of Hell.

That was the point where he had turned to Lawrence as he'd done so many times before, hoping for a bit of guidance, and noticed the absolutely unhinged gleam in the man's eye. And then there was that laugh, the sort of thing that normally came out of James Bond villains, except Lawrence owned that sound in an integral way that Daniel couldn't quite understand.

And then Lawrence vanished, right before Daniel's eyes, and left him to deal with some very angry men in black suits, all by himself.

He only spent a few years in prison, and all of that minimum security, once it became plain that the now-missing Lawrence – who seemed oddly familiar to many of the men, once Daniel had gotten to the bit about dark hair and green eyes – had been the driving force behind the destruction. But those years gave Daniel time to think, about what had gone wrong, and so horribly right, when his thinking machine went berserk.

And the only conclusion he could come to was that it all came down to Lawrence. He'd let Lawrence modify the robot. That had given it the spark it needed, to approach something like life. But that had also, he thought, made it decide to do strange things with that life, like wear a pickup-truck on its head like a fedora.

He needed Lawrence. He needed him to make another machine, a better machine. But he also needed to more control, to keep whatever horrible madness afflicted that man's otherwise superlative mind from slipping through and tainting the final product.

And, strangely, he also just missed Lawrence himself. It had been nice to have someone around that he could really talk to. Though he could certainly do without the maniacal laughter.

By the time they let him out of prison, with strict orders to see his parole officer and make certain he took his medication, Daniel had a plan.

1 – Though it is fair to say, many of us have been there. For example, an integral has never judged someone on the basis of their appearance or snubbed them for wearing the wrong kind of shoes.

2 – Mostly because mathematics is whatever you choose to define it as. So there have been mathematics that haven't made sense before, strictly speaking, and those are the sorts of things that allow the most interesting kind of mad geniuses to cut portals through space and time, using just the flick of a pen and a well-oiled slide rule. But normal, every day mad geniuses tend to define their maths in a logical way, where two plus two equals four, not unicorns, the square root of the set containing all real numbers, or, as is unfortunately often the case, murder.

3 – After the unfortunate incident at TGI Friday, word had gotten around about the effect of alcohol on quiet, incredibly repressed nerd-types. The staff at most restaurants had a little booklet of photos of the most likely local quiet-and-sweet-loner-who-might-snap-at-a-moments-notice types.

Chapter Text

There were many parts of the primitive technology in Midgard that Loki had embraced wholeheartedly, since they had a certain charm. Big screen televisions, stereos, iPods – all of these were things he liked. But he wasn't such a fan of e-mail; it was much more effort to manipulate someone using printed words instead of spoken. And really, at his heart he was a people person who much preferred the warmth of face to face meetings, where a little light stabbing could be easily applied if necessary⁴.

But he'd also learned that the self-styled mad geniuses of Midgard loved their little internet, and would rather e-mail than meet in person any day. Something to do with their petty squabbles constantly leading them to try to murder each other with bombs or acid or flowers that emitted modified versions of the Ebola virus. And Loki was nothing if not adaptable, so he'd acquired a multitude of e-mail accounts and seen to their coordination and security with a bit of simple magic.

E-mail also helped, he noticed, when he was in the mood to play a more subtle persona.

He sorted through his morning e-mail as he waited for breakfast to finish making itself. There was the weekly newsletter from Dr. Doom, and several overly-friendly and terribly spelled messages offering to help him increase the size of his manhood⁵ - and much more interestingly, a message passed through an account that he'd long since considered defunct, belonging to his Lawrence Laufson identity.

The waffle iron emitted a nervous little beep⁶; Loki idly crooked one finger, and the iron flipped itself as he opened the e-mail and read:

Dear Mr. Laufson,

Hello, how are you? I'm fine. The weather here is very nice. It's sunny some days and not sunny on others.

While I realize that our last association went a little badly for at least one of us, I'm out of prison now and have some new design ideas I would like to discuss with you. I hope that you are still interested in defense and robots, because I am.

Thank you very much. Please have a nice day.

Sincerely,
Daniel Sorres

PS: I would appreciate it if you did not forward this e-mail to my parole officer, as I am not supposed to be within twenty feet of a robot or any computer loaded with AutoCAD.

Effortlessly, Loki drew the details of his previous association with Daniel up from memory; it came with the territory of being a genius. "Well," he murmured, "I think they must have given him some classes in prison. He sounds like a bad copy of normal. How nice of them."

It was possible that Daniel was out for revenge; people often were, once they found out that they had gone to prison and Loki had not. Which he really could understand, since he imagined it wasn't pleasant to be behind bars while the person who helped you get there was drinking martinis and listening to Bach on a sound system that could rip all the leaves off a nearby tree if given full power. And having at least three sad little mortals trying to kill him out of revenge was what Loki normally called a Good Day, since it was a pleasant little diversion he could slot in between breakfast and the water colors class he'd decided to try out.

But no, instinct told him that Daniel really wasn't the type to do that sort of thing. The man didn't have the imagination, or the wellspring of deep emotion necessary to work up a really good rage⁷. He was most likely serious, which could prove much more interesting. Loki hadn't really dabbled in the giant killer robot field since he'd gotten Daniel in such trouble, so it was high time for that sort of fun again.

Another nervous beep from the waffle iron, and then the waffle was ejected onto a nearby plate, which slid across the counter to where Loki stood with his iPad. Just for form's sake, he pulled up his calendar and inspected it. "Plenty of time tomorrow. I can pop by, see what he's up to, and start planning the other side of the game." Since of course, it wasn't fun if he wasn't tugging the strings of the Avengers at the same time.

The waffle iron, unsure if Loki had been talking to it but eager to not anger him, beeped again as agreeably as possible.

4 – But only to people who were too dense for anything as subtle as Loki's rainbow spectrum of social techniques, which ran the gamut from sweet talk to manipulation to blackmail to bald-faced threats.

5 – The existence of spam is a universal law, like gravity, that no amount of magic can break or even bend.

6 – The waffle iron was now the oldest of Loki's kitchen appliances, and the only one remaining that had seen the terrible fate of the espresso machine on what could only be described as The Day Of Judgement When The Hot Water Alarm Went Off A Bit Too Loud.

7 – Loki was able to make these assessments of nearly anyone at first meeting, thanks to the universal law of It Takes One To Know One.

Chapter Text

There are some people in the universe that don't learn. Others do, but learn precisely the wrong sort of lesson.

Loki couldn't help but consider that particular bit of wisdom as he eyed the split-level rental home that Daniel Sorres had taken as his residence, thanks to a little financial help from his parents. Daniel had given him the address without protest as soon as he'd confirmed their meeting. This had given Loki plenty of time to assess just what sort of suburban hell hole the man had landed in. There was a little skate park that looked practically unused, and a central playground where everything was padded with foam, including the ground around the equipment. Old ladies walked tiny, fluffy dogs⁸ down the sidewalks. Housewives watered their flower boxes and waved at Loki in an overly friendly way as he walked by.

There was even a cheery little welcome sign for the neighborhood, which Loki decided would need to be hit by a drunk driver at the earliest possible opportunity.

The place seemed tailor made to be the testing ground for chaos and destruction, and he couldn't help but wonder if Daniel had ended up here for just that reason. He hadn't thought the man capable, but perhaps a little prison time could really change things.

There was a wreath on Daniel's front door, but it was for the wrong season – autumn instead of spring. Loki rang the doorbell, listening to the sound of footsteps pounding up the stairs in the house, a muffled crash, a curse, and then the door was yanked open.

He smiled brightly, "Daniel! So good to see you again!"

Daniel hesitated, then pasted a smile on to his face that was a stiff copy of Loki's. "I'm glad that you could make it on such short notice," he said. "Would you like to come in?"

"Of course." Loki followed the man inside and pointedly pretended not to notice the potted plant that had been knocked over in the little entrance hallway.

Daniel hurriedly stood it back up, took two steps, then shuffled back and scooped as much of the dirt as possible back into the pot. "Would you... would you like something to drink? And eat? I made brownies. And I have tea, and milk, and lemonade, and water."

"Please. Water is fine, but a brownie sounds nice."

To the kitchen they went; Loki soon had a glass of water, into which five ice cubes had been very precisely counted by Daniel. The man had just begun to cut up the pan of brownies, using a tape measure to keep the lines straight, when he paused and stopped, clutching the knife in his hand a little too hard. "I went to prison, you know," he said.

"I know. I was sorry to hear that."

"You didn't go to prison."

"Oh, I was going to. But when you work in Defense, you know, you start making friends in high places. I bribed may way out of it." The lie was smooth, easy, and in line with the character he'd built up already. Surreptitiously, Loki passed his hand over the water glass, just to make certain Daniel hadn't gotten ideas and slipped anything in to it.

"Oh." The knife relaxed for a moment, lowering back toward the brownie pan, before being clutched again. "Why didn't you bribe my way out of it?"

"I didn't have enough money," Loki said. "And logically, with only enough money for one person, I was going to rescue myself."

"Oh." Again the knife relaxed. "That does make sense. I understand." He cut another line of brownies, then was up and clutching the knife in front of him again. "But why didn't you write?"

Loki let his eyes go wide and innocent, allowing some of his bemusement at the surreal conversation show through. "I didn't think you'd want to hear from me."

"Oh." And Daniel turned back to the brownies. "That makes sense too. But I would have liked to."

"I'll keep that in mind for next time," Loki murmured.

"What?"

"I'm sorry you had such a hard time," Loki said.

"Thank you." Daniel finished cutting the brownies into precise three by three inch squares, then transferred one onto a plate and held it out to Loki.

"Looks good." Loki nibbled delicately at one corner of the brownie, his knees going a little weak. Not because he was some sort of chocolate addict, but more because for all his quirks and faults, Daniel could bake⁹. Though he seemed to more regard it as an interesting sort of chemistry experiment than as a way to hand out bliss. "Now, I don't mean to rush out little reunion, my friend, but you sounded quite excited about your new designs..."

Daniel's expression perked up visibly at the word 'friend.' "Really? I mean... yes. It's all in the basement. Please, this way." Brownie plate balanced easily on his water glass, Loki followed.

The basement was wood-paneled and had hideous shag carpeting. It was the sort of place that really wanted a Foosball table and couple of drunken frat boys playing Halo. Instead, there were folding tables and workbenches set up everywhere, covered with computers and wiring and other gadgets, including an oscilloscope with a large green and black display¹⁰.

"And you've only been here a few days? Impressive," Loki said.

"Oh, this is all nothing." Daniel dismissed most of the tables with a flick of his fingers. "This is what I wanted to show you." Smiling like a proud parent showing off a drooling baby, he held up a little metal sphere the size of a grapefruit, which a spaghetti-like mass of wires coming from it and hooked into a series of computers. "I thought, what went wrong last time was something in the robot's brain. So I'd make the brain first, and once that was right, the body would be easy enough to construct. So if it goes all crazy again, it can't just run around and break things."

But that, Loki thought, was sort of the entire point. "Want to show me how it works?"

Daniel grinned. "Here... I've got it hooked in with the computers so I could finish programming it, but also so I can talk to it. It can't pass the Turing test yet, but I bet it'll get there soon." He gave Loki a hopeful look. "Just basic stuff for now, you can talk to it if you like by typing."

Loki did just that, having a bland and undeniably robotic conversation with the thing via the keyboard. It did give him a sense of the depth of what Daniel had created – an electronic brain much more sophisticated than the last one, and that had a lot of potential for fun. "Mind if I try to tweak a few things, maybe help this little AI along a bit?"

Daniel beamed. "Of course not! I was hoping you'd have some ideas, since I'm still missing something..."

Loki nodded. "Oh, and can I have another brownie?"

"I'll get you one!" And Daniel thundered up the stairs, plate in hand.

Loki put down the keyboard and gave the little metal-grapefruit-brain a narrow-eyed look. "At this rate, we'll never get anywhere."

He didn't need to pull up schematics, or talk to Daniel's sad attempt at a programmed personality more to understand it. That wasn't the way magic worked. In its most raw form, magic was pure will, pure life, and pure chaos – all things that Loki possessed in abundance personally, which was why he was so good at what he did. Magic was a way of telling the universe just what you wanted it to be, and then when it protested that your desire was an impossibility, slapping the universe and telling it to go make you a cup of coffee because you were busy and didn't have time for all this arguing¹¹.

And this was why Loki understood magic on a fundamental level that escaped most sorcerers until they either died or went completely mad at the realization that the Abyss does stare back, and not only that, it wants to have tea and a sandwich and maybe play a round of miniature golf while you're out and about anyway.

Which in turn was why he could do the sorts of things he did. The sort of thing he was doing at that very moment.

Loki snapped his fingers, the magic surging up like raw volcanic heat in his blood. It made a pure, glimmering spark at the end of his finger, and then leaped into the silver grapefruit. The jolt of that power transfer left Loki's arm numb and tingling.

And then Loki did the exact same thing he'd done to the other robot, and spoke one word in the voice of deep command that could shatter the speed of light or for just a moment force two entangled electrons to spin in the exact same direction: "Live."

The other robot had responded the way most anything does when suddenly exploding into sentience – sheer, joy-filled chaotic and unthinking life. But the old robot compared to the new was like an amoeba compared to a human. And just like a human, the new robot mentally awoke, took in the beauty and glory and strangeness of its surroundings, and distinctly thought: Well that's nice, but I want MORE.

It reached through that split-second magical connection between it and Loki, and it took more.

Loki wasn't sure what had happened, but suddenly he was on his hands and knees, fingers clutching at that hideous carpet, and all of the basement lights went blinding white and then blew out. It felt like someone had punched a hole in his ribcage and was clawing at his heart, and he could barely breathe over the absolute agony. He responded instinctively, building a shield with the last weak gasps of his magic – weak? when had his magic become weak, like it was bleeding to death, bleeding out – and throwing everything away.

Everything in the basement crashed into the walls.

But it worked. The pain stopped. And it was strange, but the sudden absence of the pain rather than the pain itself threw him into unconsciousness.

Daniel came thundering down the steps. "Lawrence? Lawrence? What happened?" He clawed his phone from his pocket and turned the screen on, using that as a light. He couldn't begin to take in the absolute destruction. He ran to Lawrence's still form and checked for a pulse, fumbling at the man's neck. Relieved that he still lived, his next thought was for his invention, his new crowning achievement. He found the little silver sphere half buried in the wreckage, wires still hooked up to several monitors.

One of the monitors flickered into life, the display jittering. It said: SHIELD COMES. WE MUST ESCAPE.

Daniel searched for a keyboard, but the only one he could find had been broken in half. He checked the monitor again.

LEAVE EVERYTHING AND TAKE ONLY ME. YOU ONLY NEED ME. The display said now. HURRY.

It was that, Daniel realized, or go back to prison for breaking parole. And they would no doubt confiscate the robot brain. And he knew with sudden clarity that he couldn't let that happen. Because whatever Lawrence had done, it had worked. The silver sphere was strangely warm in his hands, and it was probably own nerves, but he could have sworn he felt a little heartbeat against his skin.

He disconnected the device and stuffed it into his jacket. For a moment, he thought about trying to drag Lawrence outside, get him in to the car. But it would take too long, and, well... Lawrence certainly wouldn't do the same for him.

He ran.

#

It was dark. That in and of itself didn't bother Loki one bit. Rather, it was the way every muscle in his body ached, the way his heartbeat sounded irregular to his own ears, and the way he felt so weak and dizzy that he couldn't even consider the idea of standing. He'd felt like this once before, but it had taken being stabbed four times in a battle and losing most of his blood before Thor had dragged him out of there.

And he certainly hoped that wasn't the case this time. And why was he thinking about his stupid big brother now, anyway?

Either way, he needed to escape. That sort of explosion was bound to have attracted some attention. Painfully, Loki crawled toward the stairs, slowly pulling himself up them. "Daniel?" he croaked.

No answer.

At the top of the stairs, he paused for a little nap. If he thought about it like that, he could pretend the sudden cessation of consciousness was his idea. But when he opened his eyes again, he felt a little stronger, a little better, and he managed to get to his feet with a minimum of wobbling. He felt for his magic again, and it was there, but weak and distant; he was going to have to leave under his own power.

He walked into the front room, squinting at the sunlight streaming in the windows and raising his hand to shade his eyes

crash

and then suddenly the window was in pieces and there was an arrow sprouting from his shoulder.

Loki looked down at the arrow, poking at it cautiously with one finger because it didn't really hurt, like his nerves were just on strike after what he'd already put them through. Bone and something else grated in his shoulder. And then there was blood. Lots of blood. Which he supposed proved that he still had something left to bleed, despite how he felt.

"Shit," Loki said.

Then he dropped gracelessly to the floor, sucked under into inky black non-feeling for the third time in an hour.

8 – The sort that normally make headlines for eating their deceased owners.

9 – In at least four alternate realities, Daniel had comforted himself with an oven instead of a calculator, and had ended up a world-famous pastry chef. And in a fifth reality, Daniel had teamed up with Loki to control the world via cupcakes decorated to look like robots, their plan ultimately being foiled by the Avengers buying up all the fondant and shooting it into the Sun.

10 – While obsolete, an old oscilloscope is required equipment in every mad scientist's lab due to union rules.

11 – Actually, it was nothing like that, but that was the way Loki had once tried to explain it to Thor, because magic as a whole just does not make sense to anyone who hasn't got its exultant power coursing through their blood.

Chapter Text

The arrow, obviously, did not come to be lodged in Loki's shoulder by accident, or by its own design¹². While many inanimate objects in this story possess a surprising amount of anima, this particular arrow was not one of them.

In fact, the arrow belonged to a man named Clint "Hawkeye" Barton, who had decided that somewhere in Loki's meaty bits would be a lovely place to keep an arrow. Really, the arrow was just along for the ride.

And how Clint came to be perched on a roof in suburbia next to a large, blond man with linebacker shoulders and a scarlet cape, was a little ditty that went something like this:

Clint was in the middle of teaching Thor how to play pool, or rather, teaching him how to play it so badly that Clint would never have to buy himself another drink. He'd just gotten to the part about making sure to hit the cue ball really, really hard so that it would know you meant business when Agent Romanoff showed up, wielding a little manilla folder. And while Clint was normally in favor of seeing Agent Romanoff, the little manilla folder said that it might be time to do some work, and he really just needed a goddamn vacation already¹³.

"We've got a power surge," she said without preamble, holding out the folder.

"Sounds like a personal problem." Clint gave her one of those grins that plainly said, 'You can't make me.'

She waggled the folder at him. "There's a parolee living in that part of the grid. A giant robot guy." She smiled right back at him, a level expression that said just as clearly, 'I'd be happy to, but you won't like the results.'

Clint groaned. "Oh come on. Don't these jerks have something better to do with their time than watch anime?"

"Obviously they do. That would be building giant robots in a valiant effort to keep people like us employed."

"Other than those two things, I mean. You'd think with all the por--"

"--and because it's a giant robot situation, I'm handing this over to Thor." Which she did. He took the folder without complaint. "Have fun, boys. It should be just a short hop for you." She turned and walked away, a jaunty swing in her step that affected Clint's language centers to the extent that Thor had to repeat himself four times before it sounded anything like English.

"We'd best leave quickly," Thor said. "Quickly. Quickly, Clint. This is not very quick, Clint."

Clint waved Thor off with one hand, still staring at the doorway Agent Romanoff had exited through. "You can go ahead without me, if you're in such a hurry." For a split second, he considered following her, but it hadn't been so long since he'd been put in an arm lock that he was eager to try another. There was a reason they called her Black Widow, and it wasn't because she came with a red hourglass as a warning label.

"No, we're to go together," Thor said, as if trying to explain a tricky concept to a child. "I break the robot with Mjolnir. You shoot the inventor. It's our plan."

As plans went for Thor, it was surprisingly sophisticated. Clint sighed. "Fine. I'll grab my gear. See you at the helipad in three."

Except when he got to the helipad, there was no helicopter. Thor stood where the helicopter should have been, wearing his ridiculous little winged helmet and swinging Mjolnir idly in lazy circles. And maybe it was Clint's imaginations, but he could have sworn he heard the guy humming 'Ride of the Valkyries.'

"No way in hell," Clint said.

"It's the fastest way to get there," Thor pointed out.

"Do I look like fucking Lois Lane to you?"

Thor frowned. "I've seen pictures, and she is a lovely and refined lady. So no, you are far too ugly, my friend. Come." He walked over to Clint, and despite his protests, wrapped one beefy arm securely around the man's waist. "If you're afraid that this will somehow impugn your manhood, you have my word of honor that I will tell no one if you scream."

"If you fly upside-down, so help me..."

"For your convenience, this god has been equipped with an air sickness bag."

"You've got to be kidding!"

"I am. I'm glad that you noticed." And then Thor took off.

Clint wasn't a guy that was afraid of heights or a little speed. He couldn't be, not in his line of work. He just didn't necessarily want to go squeeling with adrenalin-induced glee when he was having to cling to a Norse god like a girl on a pulp fiction novel cover¹⁴.

After five minutes of flight, they stopped on top of a water tower so Clint could check the maps from Agent Romanoff. At which time he had to point out to Thor that, for fuck's sake, the sun rises in the east on the planet Earth.

Ten minutes after that, they set lightly down on the roof of a split level that looked like every other split level, except it was across the street from Daniel Sorres' house. Clint was all business then, bow ready, arrow knocked, and staring in the front windows as he waited to see a sign of life. Thor tried to poke his head up over the peak of the roof, and Clint shoved him back down when the sunlight flared off his helmet. "You are about as subtle as a kick in the ass," he muttered. "Okay, there's no car. Maybe you should go around the back..."

And then someone came into view.

Part of the reason Clint was the best marksman the world had ever known was that he could recognize a face in a split second, quantify if the face belonged to someone he wanted to shoot or not, and then decide where to stick the arrow without having to actually consciously think about it. It was just a little switch in his brain that went off, and only later did he take the time to assess why exactly he'd fired.

So his eyes saw dark hair, thin hands, a foxy face, and then the arrow was let loose.

Loki went down like a sack of bricks.

"What the-- was that my BROTHER?" Thor shouted, grabbing Clint by the arm and yanking him around.

Clint took a moment to sort through all the information his brain threw at him, then let a slow grin creep over his face. "Yeah, I guess it was."

"You shot my brother!"

"Hey, he's dodged every other arrow I've tried to put through him," Clint said. "So really, it's his fault."

But Thor was already across the street and bolting through the broken window.

12 – Though if anyone did bother to ask the arrow what it thought in the brief seconds between it being catapulted from a bow and cutting through Loki's clavicle, its response would have been something like "FUCK YEAH!" had it been capable of even so rudimentary a thought.

13 – Except for a five day stretch in 1986, there has actually not been a moment in recorded history when Clint Barton didn't need a goddamn vacation.

14 – Little known fact: Clint had once, on a drunken dare, dressed up in something red, slinky, and straight off a pulp novel cover. The fact that he still hadn't figured out where Coulson kept the pictures of that evening was the reason that whenever some asshole microwaved fish without covering it, Clint was the one that got stuck cleaning up the mess¹⁵.

15 – Little known fact: Agent Coulson's favorite quick meal was microwaved fish filet, a hamburger bun, and the salty tears of Clint Barton.

Chapter Text

Thor was a man made for heroic speeches and grand gestures. He carried epic drama with him like a second cloak; it meant that he was a fine hand at stirring the hearts of men, a brilliant figurehead, a man whose every pose made him look like the hood ornament of some sort of terrifyingly expensive car.

It also meant that he was the worst nightmare of anyone down-to-Earth, reasonable, and concerned with small details. Such as, for example, paramedics.

Thor went from the roof to the broken front window across the street in a single bound, then rapidly crunched across the broken glass to where his brother lay fallen. There he dropped to one knee and cradled Loki in his arms. Which was a nice gesture of filial love, but not the best idea when it came to a snapped clavicle and countless severed blood vessels.

It took more than an arrow to kill a god, even an arrow shot by Hawkeye. But Loki was bleeding a lot, and something about the arrow through his shoulder seemed wrong and undignified to Thor – and Loki had always been dignified. The arrow also, it should be noted, made Loki much more difficult to hold.

Ignoring rule number one of treating impaling objects – which is, do not remove said object if you are not a professional with years of medical education under your belt and OH GOD WASH YOUR HANDS FIRST – Thor snapped the aluminum arrow and half and pulled it from his brother's shoulder.

The result was a lot more blood.

The result was also Loki cracking one eye open and giving Thor an unfocused, almost drunken sneer. "I," he said, carefully enunciating each word, "asked for cream with my shot¹." Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp again.

"Loki? Brother? I don't understand. Will cream heal you?" Thor gave him a gentle shake, then thought better of doing it again when Loki's head wobbled in a most distressing manner. He tore a strip from the bottom of his cape and made an impromptu bandage. It had the added benefit of also hiding the worst of the blood.

That was the point Clint stepped into house, letting himself in through the unlocked front door. He had his bow ready, another arrow knocked. He also pointedly ignored the nasty glare Thor aimed at him. "Did you check the other rooms?"

"I have other things to worry about." Thor said.

Hawkeye took a glance at Loki, and had to admit that it was an impressive amount of blood the man had produced. Mentally, he gave himself a silver star for effort. Better than bronze, since he'd done more than wing Loki, but definitely not gold since it was just a flesh wound and that barely counted. "Maybe you should take him to a hospital."

"The healers at the mansion are better. I'll take him there."

"I don't think that's..." But Thor was already out the window. Hawkeye sighed. "Yeah, why don't you take care of that, I'll just do all the hard work here, I don't mind at all, and sure I'd love it if you bought me a steak dinner in thanks. You're a pal." Suddenly, he grinned. "Fury's gonna shit himself."

Clint carefully went over the house from top to bottom, then gave Agent Coulson a call. The basement was full of mechanical bits that Clint wasn't interested in identifying, but Coulson and his other black suits would probably have a field day.

He also found a pitcher of lemonade and a pan of brownies missing two squares in the kitchen. Feeling as if his day was really starting to look up, Clint took them out to the front porch. Sitting in Daniel Sorres' abandoned (but perfectly matched) patio furniture, he demolished the brownies while he waited for his helicopter to show up.

16 – Perhaps the safest assumption here is that Loki was referring to a shot of espresso, though that does beg the question as to why copious amounts of blood and pain would make him think he was ordering coffee. Though he had recently been at a Starbucks in London.

Chapter Text

Loki woke to the sound of people arguing.

This was not actually unusual. In fact, he tended to have that effect on people. He considered it something of a defensive mechanism, like poisonous insects being red or squids squirting ink. If he had everyone in the surrounding area at each other's throats, it gave him time to consider how best to turn a situation to his advantage¹⁷.

The problem was, he didn't have any recollection of laying down the seeds of this particular argument. Not that he actually knew what the argument was about, since at the moment he could only discern tone, a man and a woman on the verge of shouting at each other.

As he often did, Loki turned to his mental checklist of Things One Should Note When Waking In A Strange Place After An Unexpected Bit Of Unconsciousness¹⁸.

Smells – astringent, a bit plastic-y, latex-y; most likely a hospital, other options possible but not probable.

Sight – white ceiling, acoustic tiles, medical machinery around, some of which appeared to be intruding on my bodily integrity. Score another point for hospital.

Sounds – people arguing, check. Likelihood the male half of the argument is Thor, bless his obstinate heart and thick skull: 99.8%.

Feelings – Like I've been shot.

Loki grimaced, and tried to move his other arm, the one that wasn't a heavy mass of burning pain. He was handcuffed to the bed rail. And, upon tilting up his head, he saw similar steel restraints at each of his ankles, though those were padded.

Not that restraints were ever much of a problem for him. He snapped his fingers, as one might do to catch the attention of a dog, though in his case he was trying to catch the attention of his own magic, which seemed curiously absent.

A weak, sleepy murmur in the back of his head was the only response he got. His magic wasn't gone, exactly, but more very weak, as if he'd just done something enormous and reality-altering with it, which he was fairly certain he hadn't. Waking up an inanimate object was child's play, in the grand scheme of the universe.

His head swam a bit, though he had himself mostly convinced that it was just the pain, and whatever helpful chemicals were being inserted into his bloodstream by the IV bag he saw nearby. Without his magic, he had only his mind to rely on. Which was like saying that without a Predator Drone one had only every other contrivance of modern warfare to rely on, up to and including tactical nukes. It wasn't exactly a problem, but it would make things somewhat less convenient.

On the heels of that unpleasant revelation, the door to the room opened. "--never have brought him here!" the woman said, quite emphatically.

"He's my brother." The male half of the argument was, indeed, Thor.

"He's a psychopath."

"I heard that," Loki said, tilting his head up to catch a glimpse of the woman through the door. He caught sight of red hair and black leather, both of which were things he was generally in favor of. "And I'm not. I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research¹⁹."

The woman stepped all the way through the door and gave him a narrow-eyed look. On the scale of disdain and disapproval, it rated about a seven; Loki was reasonably impressed, but he'd been on the receiving end of much more toe-curling looks from women, including a perfect ten from Queen Elizabeth II²⁰.

"As far as I'm concerned, right now you're just a pain in my rear end." The woman crossed her arms over her chest and managed to crank the disdain up to a seven and a half.

Loki had made it his business to keep track of all of Thor's little SHIELD buddies, as if they were friends from his brother's Frat that he might some day be called upon to engage in polite conversation at a family barbecue. He was reasonably certain this particular woman was Natasha Romanoff, though he didn't know too much more than that since she was apparently the only person on Midgard that didn't have Facebook and he just hadn't gotten around to digging deeper than that.

But before he could say anything remotely clever in return, Thor came into the room as well. He had a cheerful bouquet of yellow and purple flowers. And a teddy bear tucked into the crook of one arm. The little white bear had a foil balloon bearing the message Get Well Soon! tied to it²¹. "Brother! You're awake!"

"Maybe I'm not," Loki said. "Or I can at least hope that I'm hallucinating."

Thor beamed at him, and Loki was forced to reassess his opinion on his brother's intelligence. If this was some sort of prank, it was masterful.

Agent Romanoff gave Thor a look very similar to the one she'd been directing at Loki a few seconds previously. It promised a talking-to about appropriate behavior toward prisoners later. She turned her attention back to Loki and said, "Would you care to explain what you were doing at Daniel Sorres' house?"

"We were having brownies and lemonade, actually."

Thor set the flowers and teddy bear near Loki's bed, on the side where he couldn't reach them thanks to the handcuff. "I didn't think you liked chocolate that much."

"They were really good brownies."

Agent Romanoff cleared her throat. "I find that hard to believe, considering that Mr. Sorres had just gotten out of prison. And we're fairly certain it's your fault he ended up there in the first place."

"I fail to see what that has to do with his ability to make baked goods," Loki said calmly.

"You know that's not what I meant."

Loki gave her a cheery smile. "Daniel's got a lot in common with my brother, I think. He'd just rather let bygones be bygones. It was purely a social visit, I assure you."

"And the power surge? Was that just the chocolatey aura of the brownies interfering with the local grid?" Her sarcasm was thick enough to ice a cake.

"He'd come up with some kind of idea, about how to make popcorn in the microwave without burning any of it. Had a special bag designed and everything. He was demonstrating it when things went a little strange."

"Right."

"But did it work?" Thor asked.

"I don't think so. The microwave exploded."

"Loki, I would really appreciate it if you would stop assuming I'm an idiot²²," Agent Romanoff said. "If nothing else, I'd be motivated to make your stay with us much more pleasant."

Loki shrugged his good shoulder. "Do your worst, dear lady." He wanted to know what had happened in that basement, himself, but he was damned if he'd admit any of it to Thor or any of his friends. He still had his pride.

"Until you give us the answers we need, I fully intend to," Agent Romanoff said.

Thor pulled up a chair and sat next to Loki's bed. He prodded the handcuffs with one thick finger. "Anyway, is this really necessary?"

Agent Romanoff paused in the doorway. "Why don't you ask your brother," she said, though her gaze was unwavering on Loki. "We don't have any way of locking down his magic. I fully expected him to be gone by the time we got here." She shut the door behind her as she left.

Something about the way she said it made his blood run just a little colder, even as his brain started working over time. The situation was plainly out of control, and that made it interesting... in the same way a shark attack could be considered interesting.

Thor looked at Loki. "I rather expected that myself."

"Oh, well you know me." Loki gave Thor a sly smile. "I try to keep everyone guessing."

Thor didn't look convinced. "How is your shoulder, brother?"

"Feels just as if I've been shot. Which I seem to remember is what happened."

"Sorry about that."

"No hard feelings. After the lifestyle choices I've made, this sort of thing becomes inevitable."

An awkward silence descended, only broken by the sound of Thor gently poking at the handcuffs. Finally, he said, "It wasn't just microwave popcorn, was it."

Loki let out an exasperated sigh. "What do you think?"

"I think you should tell us what was really happening. Before it blows up again, and more seriously." Thor stood. "Because I'm a little worried now. Is there something wrong with you, Loki?"

Loki could only laugh, even though it hurt his shoulder to laugh so loud and hard. "Only the same thing that's always been wrong with me, Thor. I am who I am." He didn't stop laughing until Thor left the room, and even then he could help the odd little giggle that escaped as he contemplated just how desperate his situation was.

17 – Or make it a thousand times worse. Whichever was best for combating boredom, really.

18 – Loki was in the habit of creating little mental checklists for situations that happened fairly commonly, so that he could get himself up and oriented and in charge without having to reinvent the wheel each time. The two he used most often were "Signs A Former Colleague Has Noticed A Double Cross And Is About To Turn On You Like A Rabid Dog That Has Mistaken Your Neck For A Chicken" and "Troubleshooting Waffle Batter That Tastes Slightly Funny: Part I."

19 – A/N: Quote stolen without shame from the BBC miniseries Sherlock. If you haven't seen it yet, I urge you to do so now. I don't mind. I'll wait.

20 – You see, there was this incident that involved hats, and corgis, and a curiously humorous dessert called spotted dick, and it had all just been too much for Loki to resist. He was only a god after all, not the fucking Buddha.

21 – It should be noticed that the medical facility run by SHIELD did not have a gift shop, so it's not quite certain where this cheery but slightly deformed stuffed animal could have come from. The leading theory is that such teddy bears are universal manifestations of causality, which has something to do with quantum. This is, without doubt, bullshit, and the real reason is likely much more sinister and has something to do with elves.

22 – The unfortunate truth was that Loki assumed everyone was an idiot, since generally compared to him, everyone was.

Chapter Text

If anything, breaking the law had left Daniel feeling more relaxed than he had since getting out of prison. He'd made his snap decision, back there in the basement, to violate parole and go on the lam²³, so to speak. And as simple as that, he was free. He'd already broken one law, so why not another, and another?

Of course, he was still Daniel Sorres. He wasn't one to go crazy about no longer being bound by rules, and murder sprees or knocking over gas stations had never been his style. He drove his getaway vehicle at the speed limit or a little under, obeying all road signs as he went, and found himself a nice self-storage lot located next to several large electronics and computer specialty stores, where he could rent a unit with cash.

He needed more money, because he needed computers, and tools, and all of the materials he'd lost when Lawrence had blown up his basement. So he went to several ATMs and acquired the necessary funds, because he had a way with machines and it didn't require anything more complicated than his smart phone as a tool. And for good measure, he made himself a few credit cards with different names on them, since you didn't spend a few years in a white-collar prison without learning a few little malicious pranks.

A day and a half later, he had his new temporary lab built, ready to be packed into the trunk of the new car he'd bought while he was at it, just because you could never be too careful.

He checked an rechecked the hardwired systems in the robot brain he'd built, to make certain that nothing could have been damaged by the explosion or altered by Lawrence. Because he was fairly certain altering the basic structures of the brain would take a soldering iron, but at this point he wasn't willing to put anything past Lawrence, not when he'd pulled an explosion from thin air.

Satisfied that all was in order, he connected the brain to a computer so he could talk to it.

The brain, it seemed, had been waiting for a chance to communicate; before Daniel could even type in a query, the display said: YOU CERTAINLY TOOK YOUR TIME.

"Sorry," Daniel typed. "I had to get everything set up, and then make certain that you were still functioning properly." He frowned, wondering why he felt the need to justify himself to something that was, functionally, just a very sophisticated toaster.

JUST ASK. I CAN TELL YOU IF I AM FUNCTIONING PROPERLY OR NOT.

"Right. And you are?"

OF COURSE. BETTER THAN EVER.

Something had changed, that was certain. The proto-AI he'd tried to build hadn't talked anything like that. "Well then, the next step is to start building a body for you. I thought you could help me with that."

I WOULD FIND THAT AGREEABLE. BUT BEFORE I CAN HAVE A BODY, I MUST KNOW WHO I AM.

Daniel stared at the screen, his heart giving a little flutter of jubilation. Could it be that this thing he had crafted with his own hands truly had an identity – or rather wanted one? "Well," he typed, "that's normally something we have to figure out for ourselves"

NEGATIVE. I KNOW THAT I HAVE LIFE AND EXISTENCE. I LACK ONLY A NAME AND THEN ALL WILL BE CLEAR. WHAT IS MY NAME?

He had never been creative with names; as a child, he'd had goldfish named things like "Goldy" and "Splish" and "Fishy." And this seemed too important for something so simplistic. He wanted this robot to be a person in every sense of the word – except logical, and therefore better. He wanted this robot to ultimately be everything that he had hoped to find in his friendship with Lawrence, but without the sudden (yet inevitable) betrayal and the psychotic laughter.

The idea of that friendship, that presence, was too much to not reach for.

"Lawrence Laufson," he typed. "That's your name."

I WILL RESEARCH THIS MATTER.

The screen went blank. Daniel tried typing a few queries, but there was no response beyond the automatic ones he had programmed. Apparently, the newly-dubbed "Lawrence" was busy with other things.

Daniel shrugged and went to a different workstation, to start designing the motor connections that he would build out into the body for his robot. He wasn't quite certain what it would end up looking like, yet. Probably shiny and silver; he'd always been a fan of the Gort look from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

The robot's screen came back up. LAWRENCE LAUFSON IS A FALSE IDENTITY.

Daniel frowned. "But..."

I HAVE ACCESSED THE SHIELD DATABASE TO COMPLETE MY MEMORY FILES. LAWRENCE LAUFSON IS A FALSE IDENTITY THAT COVERS MY TRUE NAME.

"And that is?" Something twisted in Daniel's chest as he thought about Lawrence – or whoever he was – lying to him so fundamentally.

LOKI, the robot said. I AM LOKI.

23 – Whatever that means. Daniel was still not entirely certain if the expression actually referred to the fuzzy babies of sheep, though his mind refused to take the idea any further when he tried to imagine what lambs might have to do with breaking the law.

Chapter Text

As prisons went, the little cell that SHIELD had set aside for him was quite comfortable. There was a bed and a sink and a toilet that looked disturbingly like a little soup tureen, and they gave him reading material when he asked. Though apparently by the orders of Agent Romanoff, no matter what he asked for, all he got were issues of a knitting magazine²⁴. There was also the random way the lights turned off and on, and the awful music that played loudly at intervals he hadn't yet mapped out. He assumed that these things were supposed to "soften him up" and probably would have worked nicely on a human prisoner. As it was, he considered them minor annoyances that he could easily ignore while he calculated square roots or did chess problems in his head to pass the time.

What annoyed him most was the shoes. Or rather, lack thereof. He fully understood why they'd relieved him of his clothing and given him a boring black jumpsuit to wear instead. His shirt had been shredded and his jacket had been soaked in blood. But they'd also taken his shoes, and there was really no excuse for that since he'd just gotten them polished.

But Loki was patient, even as low-level boredom began to gnaw at the edges of his already shaky sanity. And he also knew that in the basement of SHIELD was perhaps the safest place he could be while his magic recovered. While he trusted his mental capabilities to get him out of most trouble, it was easier to just not have to worry about, say, former colleagues wanting to murder him when he was in a weakened state. Not when he had Thor hovering protectively over him, poking his head in the doorway at all sorts of bizarre hours and supplying him with contraband.

Except that there was a problem, a rather ugly wrinkle in the cardigan of Loki's life.

After three days, his magic was no stronger. It hadn't weakened any further, which he supposed was a relief, but it was still barely a flicker of its former self. And that was disturbing, since he still had no explanation for it. He could tell that his shoulder was healing almost as rapidly as it should from the unending itch emanating from the wound, but on a normal day that wouldn't have taxed his reserves.

Which only lead to the conclusion that he hadn't had a normal day since his visit with Daniel.

The door to his little cell opened. To his surprise, it was neither his brother or the lovely Agent Romanoff. Instead, it was two large men that appeared to have no necks. They indicated that his presence was requested by putting him in a head lock and frog-marching him down the hallway, then unceremoniously shoving him through a door.

The new room was a classic interrogation set up, mirrored glass covering one wall, a bare light overhead, and a simple metal table with two uncomfortable chairs. In one chair, Agent Romanoff sat.

Loki carefully brushed himself off and straightened his jumpsuit, then cracked his neck. "If you wanted to see me, dearest, you had but to ask."

There was a flicker in her eyes this time, one that he was beginning to identify as amusement. For a human, she was very good at playing her cards close to her chest. "I think I just did." She waved at the seat across from her, "Please."

Loki sat down, slouching into a posture that managed to be nine parts casual and one part seductive yet dangerous while in a chair specifically designed to prevent both²⁵. "And what can I do for you today?"

She slid a folder across the table to him. "Explain this."

He flipped through it negligently with one hand. "Robberies. Looks like someone's being naughty." He smiled. "Come now, Agent Romanoff... there was plenty of naughtiness in the world before I came around. It's rather improbable that all of it is my fault."

She took the folder back. "Shipment of carbon nanotubes. Fiberoptic wiring. Cell cultures. What do these things have in common?"

"They're all things that I'm utterly uninterested in?"

She leaned forward a little over the table. "I find it hard to believe there's anything you're uninterested in."

That got a laugh from him. "Goodness, you've had your little profilers working overtime on me, haven't you." He flicked his fingers. "I'm a magician, not a... carbon nanotube-ologist. Sounds as if someone is making something, but I couldn't begin to guess what." This was, of course, a blatant yet incredibly well-told lie. Loki had a lot of guesses churning through his mind, and most of them were utterly hilarious yet fascinating in a sort of horrifying way. If nothing else, he had little doubt that anything with the word "nano" attached to it had something to do with either Dr. Doom or Daniel, and considering whose basement he'd recently been unconscious in, he was definitely leaning more toward the latter.

"Things would go much better for you if you'd help us."

"No, I think things would go much better for you. I seem to be doing quite all right for myself at the moment."

"I could find somewhere far, far away to send your brother, and come up with something for him to do there that would keep him busy for weeks."

"I imagine so. And then you'd get to have some lovely conversations with him when he got back." Loki shrugged one shoulder. "At this point, you might as well let me go. You'd spend less on knitting magazines."

"Not going to happen."

He planted his good hand on the table and stood in one quick movement, leaning forward. It was gratifying to see Agent Romanoff jump, the movement so small that he wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been looking for it. "Then is there really any more for us to discuss? I've got a fascinating article on wooden versus steel needles that's just begging to be read."

"I decide when you go back to your cell, and I'm not done with you yet."

"As you like." Loki began pacing slowly around the room, stopping by the mirror to lean on it, tilting his forehead to rest again the cool glass. He could practically feel Thor breathing on the other side of it. "Since we've established I don't know anything about these robberies, what would you like to talk about?"

"I don't think we've established anything of the sort."

"Potato, po-tah-to... except they're not really at all the same, because only an idiot speaks that way." Loki smiled. "You humans have the most quaint little idioms."

"How's your magic?" Agent Romanoff asked, lips tilting slightly with a hint of smugness.

"Quite well, thank you. It's healing my shoulder nicely."

"You still haven't explained why you haven't escaped."

He walked over to the table, tracing his fingers on the top, then leaned over it to look her in the eye. "Maybe you ought to be asking yourself what I might want from your adorable little campfire club, that I'm staying here and putting up with the horrors of fluorescent lighting and those rubbery, microwaved fish sandwiches you keep sending me."

That put her back into frowning mode. Which made his smile just a little bit more smug. He swung back down into his chair, this time arranging his posture for an extra added dash of insolence. "While we're talking, I do have a question." She didn't acknowledge he'd even spoken, so he continued blithely on. "You are here simply all hours of the night. Now, obviously I don't have the option of doing something better with my time, but don't you have a family? A husband and children in some sort of tiresome house made of bricks? Perhaps parents to go visit?"

There it was, just a flicker when he mentioned parents. A lesser observer would have missed it; he almost did. After a long pause, she said, "I don't think it's any of your business. If you looked up the word friend in the dictionary, Loki, we'd be the exact opposite."

"I'm hurt. We certainly spend enough time together. And you're quite charming. I was thinking of knitting you a sweater. Something green."

Agent Romanoff stood and walked over to the door, knocking on it. "Take our guest back to his room," she said, then gave Loki the sort of look normally reserved for gnats and cat vomit. "Remember, it's rude not to tip the staff." And then it was no-neck men and being dragged down the hall and shoved back into the little room.

She hadn't been nearly that sarcastic before. Loki felt gratified, knowing that he'd managed to really annoy her this time.

But back to the matter at hand, the robberies that were most likely to do with Daniel and therefore whatever his current problem happened to be. After a moment of consideration, Loki picked up one of the magazines²⁶ and began carefully shredding the pages, separating out individual words that could represent runes will enough. With the slips of paper scattered around him, he sat cross-legged on the floor and reached deep inside himself to find the remaining shred of magic he had. It complained like a two-year-old being told to go to bed, but he forced a small bit of it to surface and blew it through the papers.

The ache in his shoulder intensified in response; he ignored the pain and watched the papers moving as if stirred by an invisible wind: car insurance, mirror, men's socks, hamburger helper, hemorrhoids²⁷ were the ones that came up.

Loki swept his hand through the papers, gathering them up and crumpling them into a ball, then leaned against the wall, one knee propped up, elbow on knee. He rubbed at his chin lightly with his fingers, considering all the possibilities. It all led to one conclusion: Daniel, what did you do to me? Or what did I do to myself, with your help?

#

"Your brother," Natasha said, "is a self-satisfied jerk." What she didn't add was that at times, he reminded her eerily of Tony Stark, just with a British accent and a little more effort at hiding his cream filling of complete and utter smug.

Thor shrugged. "He's also a god."

"Same thing." Thor gave her a vaguely offended look before she added, "Present company excepted."

"I can only tell you what I have told you before. He's not going to say anything he doesn't want you to hear. He's always been like that. Maybe if you could get him angry enough, he might say something by accident..." Thor shook his head. He'd only seen Loki that upset once, and he didn't really want to go into that awful mental place again. "I don't think that would be a good idea."

"Then what do you suggest?"

"I don't know... let him go?"

"Because having him running around in the outside world has worked so well for us in the past." Natasha shook her head. "Either he wants to be in here for his own reasons, in which case we don't want him to be here. Or he's just telling us that so you'll tell us to let him go and then he escapes, but he should be able to do that on his own." Her head started to hurt; she realized a moment later that she was pulling on her own hair with both hands.

"He has that effect on people," Thor said.

She made her fingers let go one at a time.

"Take my advice. Don't try to out think him. I made the attempt once, when we were young, and made something in my brain break. I woke up three days later with a mighty headache and no pants, on top of a glacier. I have no idea how I got there."

"That's not something I want to contemplate." She shook her head. "But letting him go...?"

"If he wants us to let him go, then there is something he wishes to do, correct? So if we let him go, we can follow and find out what is happening."

"That's actually a good point. Other than the fact that we've never had success following him in a past. Because of the whole..." she waved her hands, wiggling her fingers to indicate magic "thing."

"There is something different this time," Thor said. "I think that there truly is something wrong with him."

"There are a lot of things wrong with your brother."

He ignored her. "And he won't tell me. But if I can figure it out, then I can help him get better."

Natasha made a mental note to pass that little bit of information along to Steve, just to make sure he knew he might have to step in and intervene. Making Loki better in any sense of the word was not in their best interest. He was already far too good at everything he did already. But she also had to admit that there was merit to Thor's idea, as hair-brained as it sounded. "I'll talk to the director and see what he thinks."

24 – And this was fine by him. He learned how to knit a zipperfoot, and then he tore the magazine to shreds and used the papers to construct a code book that ultimately translated out to two acts from Henry V with all of the lines scrambled. He was quite confident that it gave some cryptographer a headache for days.

25 – Part of this was a question of bone structure and flexibility, but it was mostly about attitude. One could say that Loki had been born irresistible to even the most stubborn pieces of furniture, and they seemed oddly eager to bend to his whim. With a whim ranging anywhere from saucy to insubordinate to innocuous, there was a lot of bending to be done.

26 – He'd already read it from cover to cover and decided he didn't really care about the varieties of synthetic wool, and the sudoku puzzle in the back had only been good for about five minutes of entertainment.

27 – Well, you try to find a decent representation of reversed kenaz in a knitting magazine. I dare you.

Chapter Text

The stolen shipment of carbon nanotubes arrived two days late, but the crate was in one piece and no questions were asked, so Daniel really couldn't complain. There was bound to be a little room for messiness when it came to stealing things via computer errors, misplacing shipments and rerouting them in ways that would throw off anyone who might be watching.

He had much to keep him occupied in the intervening time, anyway. He and Loki – how strange it still felt to use that name for his own creation – worked on finalizing the designs for what would become Loki's body. And that was where the true success of his invention shined through. Loki approved a design for a fiber optic nervous system, but then insisted that the rest of the body come as loose components that he would then manage.

IT IS ALL A MATTER OF MORPHOLOGIC²⁸ FIELDS. I WILL MAINTAIN MY APPEARANCE, Loki had stated, and refused to entertain any further argument.

Not that Daniel was keen to argue. He wanted to see what his creation would do, happy to be surpassed by it²⁹.

And then after the carbon nanotubes arrived, he got a shipment from Stark Industries that was dropped off by a UPS truck. With that, he knew he'd out-done himself, borrowing a new power source from Tony Stark himself. It was perfection. He wired it into the nervous system for the robot, tested all of the connections seven times to be certain, and then typed to Loki, "I think that's everything."

IF YOU ARE CERTAIN, PREPARE THE VAT. I WILL MAKE THE FINAL ADJUSTMENTS.

The screen faded to blankness after a moment, something that Daniel was beginning to associate with the robot turning its attention elsewhere.

He didn't truly believe that the plan would work, but at some point he had to place trust in the genius of his robot. So he dutifully mixed the components that Loki had previously told him to – cell cultures and carbon nanotubes and some trace isotopes as well as a healthy helping of orange gelatin – and lowered the fiber optic system in to it using a winch.

Then he waited, nervously doing square roots in his head to pass the time.

The screen flickered back in to life: I AM READY NOW. ATTACH ME TO THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. THIS WILL BE OUR LAST COMMUNICATION BY THIS MEANS. NEXT WE WILL SPEAK FACE TO FACE.

"Right." Daniel carefully disconnected the silver sphere of the brain from the monitors and hooked it into the fiber optics, which immediately flared into life in a rainbow of colors. Then he
lowered the winch further until everything was covered by the goo.

It would have been right, he thought vaguely, to have some Tesla coils about. Or a thunder storm. He'd never been one to be old fashioned, but those would have been a substitute for his inability to voice "Give my creation life!" in anything other than an embarrassed squeak.

The lights didn't even flicker. Instead, seconds ticked away with almost palpable pressure, banging around on the insides of Daniel's skull until he was convinced that someone had implanted an analog clock in his brain when he wasn't looking.

A hand reached from the vat, breaking the stillness with a loud squelch. Daniel jumped back, clapping his hands over his mouth to hold in a yelp. The hand felt around until it found the release on the winch, then pulled the pin. It sank from sight.

Daniel crept forward, eyes focused on the vat. The surface rippled, swirled, and then suddenly the fluid level dropped as if a plug had been pulled.

A head was revealed.

Then a face.

Then a neck and shoulders.

And so on and so on, revealing each and every part a human male should possess, though Daniel averted his eyes before examining certain things too closely. All was a strange, orangeish pink, the color that the gelatin had made it.

The eyes on the face opened, the movement almost imperceptible because there was no color difference. And then the newly made man seemed to shudder, ripple, and color burst through him. Hair became dark; eyes became green; skin assumed a natural shade.

"Hello Daniel," the man – Loki – said, smiling. The expression seemed slightly off, artificial. "It's pleasant to see you face to face at last."

Daniel felt no sense of movement; suddenly he was on his knees, hands clutching at his chest. His eyes prickled with tears. "You're... beautiful," he whispered.

"I imagine I am pleasing enough by objective standards," Loki said. He rose out of the vat with a gesture, floating over the edge and coming down in front of Daniel. "Why do you feel the need to leak?"

Daniel sniffled. "I'm just so... happy. I can't even... I'm so happy. You're beautiful!"

Loki tilted his head, a crooked smile playing at his lips as if he was trying the expression on for size. "That is good to hear."

"I mean... you're perfect!"

Loki inspected his hands. For a moment, magic flared over both of them; he extinguished it by closing his fingers. "Not perfect. No, not yet perfect. I detect a discrepancy between myself and the files I've acquired. Something is missing." He sounded puzzled rather than angry.

Daniel got awkwardly to his feet. "What could possibly be missing?"

"Unknown. I will have to investigate. Perhaps the... copy of me is in possession of something I do not have."

It took Daniel a moment to realize that Loki was referring to Lawrence, or Loki, or whatever his name was, the original. "Well... no need to worry about that, right?"

Loki stared at him, and for the first time Daniel felt a tiny curl of fear in his stomach, looking into the eyes of something much more vast and dangerous than himself. "I will be complete and whole."

"Right." Daniel cleared his throat and looked away. "So then where would you like to start?"

"I will go to his apartment. There may be an item of importance I have not yet calculated."

Daniel cleared his throat again. "Clothes," he muttered.

"Yes?"

"You should put on some clothes."

Loki paused, looking down at himself. "This is correct. Or I will attract attention." He shimmered again, his body seeming to flow, and suddenly he was wearing a business suit, the same one Lawrence had worn the day this adventure had gotten started.

Daniel smiled. "That looks good. Really good."

Loki reached out and patted Daniel on the cheek. The gesture felt slightly awkward, another thing he was trying on for size, but he nodded to himself. "I appreciate your help, Daniel. We make a lovely team." Daniel said nothing in return; he simply looked stunned as Loki walked past him. "I will return soon. Stay here."

"But—"

Loki vanished.

28 – With apologies and many thanks to the amazing Terry Pratchett.

29 – Daniel had the good fortune to be one of those mad geniuses that truly wished to be surpassed by the creation of his own mind. Most claim that they do, but show them an eight-foot-tall patchwork man that can tap dance and do fourth derivatives in his head, and they'll be reaching for the torch and pitchfork soon enough. This was also why so many creators never survived their creations, because jealousy makes for a rocky parent-child relationship with something that is superior to you in every way.

Chapter Text

There were many qualities that set Loki apart from lesser megalomaniacs, but none so much as the fact that he believed deeply in two things: patience, and research³⁰.

On the fourth day of waiting for his magic to show even the smallest glimmer of strengthening, it was apparent that patience had failed.

Research, unfortunately, required not being stuck in a tiny cell in a SHIELD facility, which should have been famous for its complete lack of reading material.

He had the rhythm of the base down well enough, could time when the guards would walk back and forth in the halls, calculate the likelihood of when the lovely Agent Romanoff might want to see him. The best time to do an escape, rather than in the witching hours of the night, seemed to be during dinner. People were distracted, hungry, trying to stuff their silly human faces with what he could only assume were more fish sandwiches, since that was apparently all they ate.

So that was the time he chose.

It was a simple enough endeavor. He might not have had his magic, but he still had the few perks of his heritage at his beck and call – and while he hated the Jotun as much if not more than anyone else, he wasn't fool enough to turn his back on any advantage.

Loki picked up a magazine and wandered slowly around the room, pretending to be terribly interested in the best places to buy good angora wool, until he heard two sets of footsteps pass by in the hall.

He paused under the security camera that afforded the view of the door and gently blew on it. The lens frosted over. After carefully folding one of the pages, he dropped the magazine on the floor, walked over to the door, and shorted out the electronic lock with a tiny but deftly applied bit of ice.

It was delicately done enough that no alarms sounded as he strolled out into the hall. Twenty feet down, there was a ceiling access panel, and he lifted himself up into it gracefully, even with his weak arm. The ceiling was full of electrical conduits and pipes. He picked the pipe marked as water and followed it silently, knowing that it would eventually take him somewhere useful.

#

Natasha was in the middle of winding spaghetti around her fork when her phone started vibrating. She checked the message, still idly twirling the noodles: Security camera in Loki's cell out, prisoner is in the wind.

She dropped her fork, spattering Thor and Agent Coulson with marinara sauce, and stood.

"What's wrong?" Thor asked, wiping his face with the back of one hand.

"Your brother's escaped," she called over her shoulder as she ran for the door.

Thor stood as well. "Was that not the plan?"

Agent Coulson picked up Natasha's napkin, dipped it in her water, and began dabbing at the dots of red sauce on his shirt collar, a tiny, tragic frown on his lips. "Actually, no. We were going to fake a fire tomorrow morning." He looked even more annoyed when Thor started laughing.

#

The boiler room didn't prove particularly helpful, so Loki tried another water line, following it silently through the ceiling. Below, he heard the faint sound of splashing, a somewhat rough male voice singing, "I'm just a holy fool, oh baby it's so cruel, but I'm still in love with Judas baby--"

Shower meant naked and vulnerable. Singing meant alone. Or a lot of security in one's masculinity³¹. And a SHIELD agent alone was an agent who could be threatened in to telling him the fastest way to get out of this damn concrete maze.

Silently, he pulled a tile away from the ceiling and lowered himself down.

#

Clint massaged another handful of shampoo into his scalp, not because he was that dirty, but because the hot water was pleasant and he had the bathroom all to himself, and it was nicer than listening to a lot of guys bitch about their latest fishing trip. He sucked in another lungful of steamy air, ready to launch into a chorus of "Woah-woah-woah--"

Something very pointy, sharp, and cold pricked at his back, right below his left kidney. A hand closed over his shoulder. He froze, squinting against the sting of shampoo in his eyes, hands going up to show he was unarmed.

"If you don't want to find out what life is like with only one kidney, human, I suggest you tell me the quickest way to the front door," Loki hissed in his ear.

"Loki?"

"What?" The hand on his shoulder pushed Clint around, the sharp, knife-like point tracing a line unerringly from his kidney to his lung to his heart. "Oh, Hawkeye! What a pleasant surprise."

Clint tried to crack one eye open – he got enough to confirm that it was, indeed, Loki, and then he was overcome with stinging tears. "Ah, shit. Jesus. Scared the hell out of me, man."

"Well, I assure you, no hard feelings between us. Really, if I wasn't preparing to bisect your aorta, I'd shake your hand. That was a masterful shot."

"Aw, shucks. Thanks. I appreciate it."

"I'd love to talk more, but I'm on a bit of a schedule." A klaxon started sounding out in the hall. "So why don't you tell me what I want to know and we can go back to trying to kill each other like civilized beings once I've got a clean suit and you're wearing more than suds."

"Um, right. So out the door, take a left, then a right--"

The pain between two of his ribs became distinctly sharper. "I can tell when you're lying."

"I mean, a left and a left--"

"Still lying."

Clint already knew the plan that they had in place for Loki. They were going to let him run off tomorrow morning anyway; twelve hours wasn't worth getting shanked in the shower by the man. He was pretty sure that sort of thing wouldn't sound good in a eulogy. "Right, then left, then left, then have curve, up the stairs, left, you're home free."

"Thank you. Oh and... if I ever hear someone imply you're compensating for something with the whole... arrow thing... don't worry, I'll set them straight now."

Clint cracked an eye half open again. "You're a pal."

Loki grinned, swiped a droplet of water from Clint's chest with one long finger, and licked it away with the flick of his tongue. "Always."

And then he was gone, something metal clattering on the tiles in his wake.

Clint shoved his head under the spray of the shower, scrubbing at his eyes. As soon as he could, he looked around, picking up a nail file from the floor where Loki had dropped it. "You've got to be fucking--" he stormed from the shower, slipping on the slick tiles and almost running into the wall.

His towel was gone. As was his ID. And when he tried to open the bathroom door, the lock was frozen solid.

#

With Clint's directions a map in his mind, Loki ran down the halls, bare feet all but silent on the floor. Two guards rounded the first corner. One got an elbow in the neck, the other was dragged over by his hair so that his forehead could meet Loki's knee.

Accompanied by the shriek of the alarm klaxon, he ran on. There were two security doors in his way; Clint Barton's ID made bypassing them simple.

"Loki!"

He hazarded a glance behind; Agent Romanoff in her black leather suit, sprinting down the hall after him. She threw something at him; he whipped a tiny bottle of shampoo from his waistband and knocked it from the air. It made a satisfying bang, filling the hallway with the smell of ozone.

Another door; he swiped Clint's card to unlock it, ducking another thrown missile. Then he was through the door, slamming it shut behind him. He shoved as much ice as he could into the door's locking mechanism, and had the satisfaction of seeing Agent Romanoff kick the bullet-proof glass twice.

"Next time, we'll do this at my place, dearest," he shouted through the door, then blew her a kiss. Then it was out the front door, and there was no catching him with the wind at his back.

#

The SHIELD base was less than 100 miles from his apartment by way of I-80. Acquiring clothing and transportation was child's play compared to taking himself from the base, though he was disappointed at the fit of the suit he'd taken from an unfortunate businessman.

He checked his newly acquired watch as he entered the elevator; 153 minutes elapsed since his escape, still within the window of opportunity. The elevator took him to the penthouse on the 35th floor. He stepped inside, just planning to grab his books and move on – no need to tempt fate – but something was wrong.

His stereo was gone. His books were gone. His newest flower arrangement was likewise gone. A stab of pain went through his jaw as he clenched his teeth, but he smiled, because that was what Loki did, he smiled when he was angry, ready to kill the little idiots who had chosen the most inconvenient time possible to break into his apartment, as if he didn't already have enough on his plate and now some fucking mortals had been putting their filthy hands all over his bookshelves, and he was most definitely going to be making an example of them when he found them, no mistake--

There was a noise in the kitchen, cabinets opening and shutting.

Loki snatched up the first weapon that came to hand, the poker from his fireplace, not that it mattered because anything was a weapon in his hand when it came to putting the fear of Loki into some idiotic mortal. He crept up to the kitchen door and kicked it open.

30 – Whereas most garden variety megalomaniacs believe (a) in the efficacy of blood as an exfolient and (b) that a pit of sharks is a good investment when you want to kill someone in evening wear.

31 – Probability on a military base where men spent that much time fondling their rifles? Not odds he'd be willing to bet on in Vegas.

Chapter Text

There was a man in the kitchen, who had dark hair and wore an eerily familiar gray suit, the cut of it nipping at Loki's memory. The man turned, and Loki found himself face to face with himself, green eyes and slightly knowing smirk – wait, he didn't normally look quite that smug, did he³² - and one eyebrow quirking up as if to say, 'well isn't this fun.'

Even as his brain tried to process that particular impossibility, his gaze flicked around the kitchen, taking in the situation, the location of all the carving knives, the cabinet where he kept his gourmet coffee and teas half empty with its door hanging open, and--

"That," he said, very calmly and carefully, "is my waffle iron. I suggest you put it down, so that I can proceed to stab you without damaging it."

The fake Loki glanced down, eyebrows jumping a little as if to say, 'what waffle iron? oh, this one?' and then he smiled again, that little half quirk on his lips that Loki was beginning to realize might be the main reason people wanted to murder him even when he was at his most innocuous. "Negative. It is my waffle iron."

It was like looking in a mirror on his worst days, when he couldn't quite handle being himself, when all he saw in his own reflection was everything that he despised and none of the parts of himself that he considered worthwhile. Something white hot clawed at his brain, filling his eyes with smoke.

"That would only be possible if you were Loki. And considering that's who I happen to be, you're a fucking liar now put down my waffle iron you son of a bitch!"

He lunged, poker out to strike. The other Loki didn't move, didn't do anything but prick up an eyebrow and laugh and then the poker sank deep into his chest and kept sinking. There was no grate of bone or resistance of flesh; it was like stabbing a Jell-o mold³³. Loki hastily lunged back, fighting to regain his balance.

The fake Loki grabbed the poker, wrenched it from his hand, and pulled it sideways from his chest, flesh and suit rippling like a liquid. It came free with a soft, squelching pop. The fake Loki inspected the poker, then dropped it on the floor. "You see, if I were an inadequate flesh bag like you, that might have really hurt," he remarked. "I believe that qualifies as rude." He set the waffle iron down on the counter.

But Loki was already backing out of the kitchen, one hand finding a table lamp and flinging it at the fake. He need a moment, to regroup, to think--

The fake disappeared.

Loki stopped, turned; he knew this game. He blocked the first blow as the fake popped back into existence, drove his knee into the thing's groin, but it didn't make a difference, it felt like he'd just driven his knee into a marshmallow, not a person--

Because it's not a person, you fucking idiot. So will this be how it ends, undone by your own stupidity? THINK!

There was no time to think.

The fake's arm flowed around him, gripped his throat with one hand, half-crushing his windpipe and he couldn't make more than a pathetic little mewl of dismay. It pushed its other hand against his forehead, flesh molding against his and for just a moment he thought he caught a whiff of oranges.

"You have something of mine," the fake said.

"Wrong," Loki choked out. Loki got a hand up to its face, pressing his thumb into one of its eyeballs, but there was no satisfying pop. As his finger sunk in, he felt just a spark of his magic, as if something was so close--

"I am superior in every way. I do not need your permission to take anything."

Loki tried to pull at the magic, call it back, but it was too late, the greater part already out of his grasp. His vision went white, he tasted electricity, his muscles locking as the fake tore the last of his magic from of his heart and soul and brain. A high, thin wail filled Loki's ears; his voice, the only sound he could make around the hand crushing his throat.

The wound on his shoulder burst open, a fresh wash of blood darkening his suit jacket, and the fake still didn't let go. Insubstantial fingers clawed at his mind, sucked at his memories, at his ability to even think, and the fake Loki whispered, "What are you hiding? It's still not enough. You will give it to me--!"

It touched that white hot rage that he kept locked away, the thing that made him hate his brother and, and the cool center that whispered you know, it would be absolutely hilarious if you just did

The fake dropped him, raising its hands to its head, and shrieked. "Override! Override! Override denied!"

In a crumpled heap on the floor, Loki gasped in a breath, and started laughed, crazy and aching as he dragged himself to his side, rolled to his feet as the fake continued to scream. "Bit off more than you could chew, huh? Huh?" He tried to kick the thing, but almost fell over and decided that could wait until later. "If you can't even eat my brain like a man, you're nothing! I've had better parasites than you try to crawl into my ears!"

In the distance, he thought he heard the rumble of thunder, setting the pictures that remained on the walls rattling. At least he hoped.

Loki half-stumbled, half-crawled to the door. It slammed shut, knob twisting and warping like wax as he reached it. He looked over his shoulder; the fake was starting to straighten, one hand still clutching its head.

"I didn't give you permission to leave. You will give me what I want!"

"You can't take it!" Loki shouted. He pressed one hand against the wall, a layer of ice running across the white paint and to the nearest window, turning into a crackling rime of frost on the glass. Reeling crazily, he lunged at the the dining set, grasping one of the metal and wood chairs. With the last of his strength, he flung it at the nearest window.

The window blew out; wind roared in, tearing at the curtains, scattering the few papers that lay on the floor.

The fake took a step toward him, another. "You will not win. You may as well come here and play... nicely. Think of it as the ultimate upgrade." And it tried to smile. Loki sincerely hoped that he had never, in his entire life, smiled quite like that.

He spared one glance at the horizon – dark clouds, had to hope, now or never because staying inside was simply no longer an option – and said, "Here's the secret: I don't have to win. I just have to not play, and you still lose."

He jumped out of the window, arms spread wide to take in the horizon.

32 – Yes.

33 – Christmas, 2009, the awful lime green Jell-o salad at Biffy's party after one two many Long Island Ice Teas that Loki was now certain hadn't ever involved tea of any sort.

Chapter Text

Loki didn't like the sensation of falling; it reminded him of an extremely unpleasant time in his life that had lead to a lot of other unpleasant times before he'd gotten his head screwed on (mostly) straight.

Likewise, he did not like plans that depended on other people, particularly other people that he didn't personally control like little automatons³⁴, because this was the thing – a shock, really – people were stupid, and tended to be utter crap at doing the thing he needed them to do when it needed to be done, rather than too early, too late, or just forgetting altogether because there was a sale going on at the Krispy Kreme.

And now he was falling, falling, falling, face down toward the sidewalk and temporarily ant-like people and badly parallel parked cards, and waiting for someone to just get it right and do what needed to be done at the right moment for once in his³⁵ miserable little life.

So he distracted himself by thinking, since that seemed a better plan than a long, high-pitched scream of fear, and certainly more manly. It went something like this:

tick

35^th floor, assuming approximately 12 and a half feet per floor, that gives me 437.5 feet to fall, and to hell with the air resistance because a suit this badly cut isn't going to do piss all for me anyway

tick

so that puts final height of zero at negative one half gravity multiplied by time squared plus initial velocity multiplied by time (which is zero since I started from rest) plus starting height of my penthouse, so

0 = -(1/2)(9.8)t² + 0 + 437.5

subtract, then multiply everything by -2, then divide by 9.8...

tick

Lovely! That gives me 89 seconds. Almost a minute and a half. Not even Thor could screw this up.

tick

Wait, it was time squared, so I actually need to take the square root, and that's... damnit, why have I always been so crap at square roots, I think it's... it's... about nine. And a bit.

tick

You know, if I can't even manage to do a goddann math problem in my head any more, if I've really splashed out this stupid, maybe I do deserve to become a splatter of impressionist art on the sidewalk for the drunks to vomit on.

tick

Thor? Feel free to surprise me any minute

no, fuck that, any second now.

tick

Thor?

tick

BALLS

tick

34 – Pull ze strings!

35 – The reader may decide here if Loki is in fact thinking about himself, Thor, or both. All options are equally plausible.

Chapter Text

With Loki gone and in the wind, everyone seemed to be upset except for Thor. Hawkeye had stormed through the hallways in nothing but a towel, a nail file clenched in one fist, and when Thor had asked him about it the only answer he received was a punch in the arm. Thor had followed him to a conference room, keeping a safe distance from the nail file. Agents Coulson and Romanoff were already there. Natasha paced back and forth, sputtering incoherently about the inappropriate use of personal hygiene products. Coulson wasn't so much furious as quietly annoyed about the state of his new shirt.

It was probably for the best that the other Avengers had been elsewhere at the time, since Thor had a feeling he would have been on the receiving end of more uncalled-for punching and shouting. Which didn't bother him that much specifically, since that was sort of like a polite hello in Asgard, but he mostly didn't care for everyone obliquely blaming him for Loki's escape.

Because really, it wasn't Thor's fault that it was utterly hilarious, or that he couldn't stop the snickers and guffaws³⁶ that leaked from his blond beard. Loki just had that effect on him³⁷.

So Thor did his best to stay as out of the way as it was possible for him to be, which was really like watching an elephant trying to Not Be A Bother Don't Mind Me. Agent Romanoff made a noise that was somewhere in between an angry beehive and a boiling kettle and kicked over a chair. It made a satisfying enough crash; she smoothed her hair down, dusting her hands off.

“I don't know what that chair ever did to you,” Hawkeye said.

“Shut up, Clint. Maybe you should go put on some pants if you want to keep fighting evil today³⁸,” Agent Romanoff snapped. She turned to Agent Coulson, who was rubbing a Tide pen on his shirt collar, a bitter set to his mouth. “Do we have anything?”

“Nothing. No one was in place.”

She seemed to be seriously considering kicking the chair again. “And we don't know where his current apartment is.”

“No. Why?”

“Oh, you know that jerk... he just said something about doing this again sometime, at his place.” She cracked her knuckles. “I wish. God, I'd love to nail him.”

Thor clapped a hand over his mouth as Agent Romanoff gave him a look that would have set lesser beings and all nearby furniture on fire.

“You're being a big help.”

Thor composed himself enough to shrug and keep his tone steady when he said, “We will find him sooner rather than later. Have faith in your people. If you are right about his magic, he won't be able to move fast.”

“Apparently I wasn't right, since he used magic to get himself out of here.”

Thor cleared his throat. “Not exactly.”

“And how is freezing a lock not magic? Unless your brother's also a mutant and you just never told us.”

The conversation had officially ceased to be fun. Thor carefully inspected his boots. “Not exactly.”

“Thor. Spill it.”

He continued to stare stubbornly at his shoes, trying to find the right words. Words were his brother's kingdom, not his, and he hated trying to grasp them.

It wasn't a thing he liked to talk about; he still wasn't comfortable with it himself, and he'd been afraid before now say anything since he thought the others would be more eager to do real harm to Loki if they knew he wasn't related by blood. It also shamed him, and his father, and his mother, cast them all in a bad light because in a way, it was something they had done to Loki...

Thor was saved from having to answer by one of the guards letting himself into the room, a magazine clutched in his hand. “Finished going through the prisoner's cell. This was really the only thing out of place.”

Agent Romanoff took the magazine, flipping idly through it. “Is Kitteridge back from medical leave yet?”

The guard cleared his throat awkwardly. “Probably not, if you're just going to give him another Loki project. Ma'am.”

“He's folded several of the pages,” she said, then sighed and tossed the magazine on the table. “What's the point? The last time, it turned out to be just another way for him to mess with us.” She went back to pacing. “Your brother, Thor. Your brother.”

She didn't seem to expect a response, and there wasn't much he could offer other than the standard, “Well yes, he has that effect on people.”

But she also seemed to have forgotten her previous line of questioning, and Thor kept quiet so she wouldn't be reminded. He picked up the magazine – it seemed to involve a lot of pictures of smiling children in sweaters – and began paging slowly through it. Because if he didn't look at Agent Romanoff or meet her eyes, she was a lot less likely to notice him.

Soon Coulson and Clint were quietly discussing their next possible move, while Natasha interjected occasional comments, and Thor was all but forgotten.

He got to the end of the magazine, then flipped through it again, this time making it a quick fan of pages. And then he did it a second time, watching the way the words and numbers flickered as the pages moved by.

He couldn't help it; he started laughing, knitting magazine bunched between his thick hands. He was near mirthful tears when he realized that he was making the only noise in the room, and that all eyes were on him. Which was a fairly normal state of affairs when he was outside of a SHIELD base, but inside he was just another guy with giant muscles.

“Something you'd like to share with the rest of the class?” Agent Coulson said.

Thor held up the magazine, trying to muffle his laughter with one hand.

“Are sweaters a punchline in Asgard?” Agent Romanoff asked.

“I think they're fuckin' hilarious,” Clint added.

Thor shook his head. “No, no. I know where my brother's gone. If he's still there.”

An instant later, the three of them were hanging over him; Clint kept prodding him in the shoulder with the nail file. Thor tried to shoo the man away, waving his hand like Clint was an annoying and curious cat, and only succeeded in almost yanking his towel off. Which earned him another poke from the nail file.

“Pants, Clint,” Agent Romanoff said.

“Pants can wait for secret coded messages.”

Thor flipped through the magazine again, “Right here. Where it says 'three green squares.'”

“Maybe you should just explain it to us, since we apparently don't have the secret key to understanding how your brother's twisted mind works,” Agent Romanoff said.

“It's directions. Given as if we're going there in the air, because my brother knows that I would fly. It's the fastest way to catch up to him.”

Agent Romanoff thumped a pad of yellow paper down next to him, and a pencil. “Write them down. Aerial photos, we've got plenty of. Clint, go put on some pants.”

“Wait, do that again,” Clint said, ignoring her. “Does that say...”

“Hairy blond disaster,” Coulson read.

Thor shrugged. “It's addressed to me.”

Clint was the only one that laughed; then Agent Romanoff pointedly tried to yank his towel off. He got the hint and left.

“But why would he leave directions for Thor?” Agent Romanoff asked.

“It's probably a trap,” Coulson said.

“It's always a trap.”

“Exactly. With Loki, it's almost a requirement.”

Thor found it somewhat annoying when the agents talked over his head (though this often required them standing on chairs), but he focused on just writing down the directions. Because he knew that they wouldn't believe him anyway; they never did, when it came to Loki.

And to be fair, often he was wrong about his brother. Or at least half wrong. But in a funny way.

It was possible that he would be wrong again, that the others were right and it was some kind of trap. But Thor knew his brother better than anyone in Midgard or Asgard³⁹. He knew that something was wrong, even if he couldn't exactly say what. And if Loki was telling him where he could be found, it was probably because Loki thought there was at least a chance that he might need help.

And that little thought made a big knot of sour fear in the pit of Thor's stomach. Because Loki never wanted help until the situation was so messed up and out of control that it was beyond even a god's ability to fix.

#

Two hours after Loki's escape from the facility, a man in a white coat handed Agent Coulson a sheaf of aerial photographs with various areas circled in red. One of the photos was a shot of New York City; it was the closest possible location.

Thor could have flown there easily himself, and more quickly, but even he felt uncertain about going alone. He proposed just taking Hawkeye along since it had worked out so well last time, and Hawkeye insisted that there would be a helicopter damnit, and if they were taking a chopper than both Coulson and Romanoff insisted on joining the fun too.

As the only one who could independently fly, Thor sat at the door of the black helicopter. In response to his presence, dark clouds gathered, the feeling of static shuddering through the air. The pilot seemed less than thrilled, but accepted Thor's promise that he'd keep his 'little friends' from getting out of hand.

As they moved in on the skyscrapers, thunder rumbled behind them.

Coulson consulted the photos again, handing the best view up to the pilot. “If we're even in the right city, that's the building,” he said, his voice crackling through Thor's headphones.

Thor nodded, staring intensely at the apartment building as if that would allow him to peer through the distant windows.

Something burst through the glass, an angular black speck tumbling down the mirrored building front.

Both Coulson and Hawkeye started to speak, but Thor had already ripped his headset off. He threw open the helicopter door and simply jumped out, Mjolnir held steady in his hand. He went from dive to smooth flight as soon as he was clear of the helicopter's rotors.

Either an ordinary person was in trouble, or... or an extraordinary person was.

Something else fell from the broken window. Someone else. And he was still miles away.

He urged Mjolnir to go faster, tightening his grip on the hammer until his knuckles cracked. Wind shrieked and groaned in his ears, and then the air itself broke in a deafening boom. Around him windows cracked and shattered.

Faster, he urged Mjolnir. Faster. Still too slow. The man who had jumped, or fallen, or been thrown from the window rushed toward the ground, and Thor saw dark hair, thin hands splayed out as if to catch the air. There was no doubt who it was.

“Faster!” he bellowed, the word torn from his mouth by the battering wind.

Loki was even with the tops of the trees. And then Thor was there, stretching as far as he could go, hammer almost touching the building. Cracks webbed all of the windows.

Thor matched his brother's speed and direction, wrapped Loki in his arms, then quickly pulled up into a steep curve before they could touch the sidewalk. The tips of Loki's shoes snapped off the end of a tree branch.

And Loki, terrifyingly enough, clung to him. His mouth moved like he was saying something, babbling almost, and that was even more scary, but then Loki started laughing like he'd never stop, his head thrown back as they rocketed up the building.

Thor set them down just inside the broken window, hammer at the ready for whatever had attacked his brother.

“What a pleasant surprise, brother. The best surprise I've ever gotten,” Loki gasped out, then started laughing again.

Thor gave Loki a little shake; his brother's head wobbled strangely back and forth, but he stopped laughing. Loki blinked owlishly, then looked around. “Oh,” he said. “I was just here.” He let go of Thor, then shoved at his chest until he could step away. Thor watched with concern as Loki stumbled, almost fell, and caught himself on a black leather couch.

There was blood, he realized. Blood on Loki's shoulder like he'd been shot all over again. But that was impossible. “Loki?”

Loki looked around the apartment; he even took a few staggering steps and cautiously pushed the kitchen door open, peering inside. “Son of a bitch. He still took my waffle iron.”

Thor stayed with him, ready to catch Loki if he collapsed – since that actually seemed to be a possibility. “Who, brother? Who threw you out of the window?”

Loki waved one hand, grimacing, then tried to smooth his hair down. “Oh, I threw myself out the window. It was the only option I really had at the time. Good thing you happened to be in the area.”

“You... what...?”

“I actually expected it to take you far longer to figure out the little clue. So good show. Good show.” Loki slapped him companionably on the arm, then abruptly sat down on the floor. “I think I may need to go back to your hospital now.” He reached up shakily and pressed one hand against his bloody shoulder.

Thor crouched down. Loki seemed to be trying to look at everything but him. He finally just grabbed his brother's chin, tilting Loki's face up so he had no choice but to meet his gaze. Loki's eyes were wide and a little unfocused, his face pale. Thor had seen expressions like that before, mostly on men fresh from their first battlefield: shock. “Brother, what has happened to you?” Thor asked quietly.

And maybe it was the shock, but he saw something unfamiliar in Loki's eyes – honesty. “We're all in quite a bit of trouble, I'm afraid.” Loki smiled, the expression odd and wobbly. “And it's only partly my fault, can you believe that?” And he laughed, like it was all just an enormous joke.

36 – Agent Romanoff had accused him of giggling on more than one occasion, and that was patently absurd. School girls giggled. Norse Gods only partook in heartier forms of laughter, preferably while in the process of quaffing some sort of alcoholic beverage. Thor had been sad to note the distinct lack of quaffing that seemed to plague all SHIELD facilities.

37 – Though it should be noted that Loki only had that effect on him when someone else was the brunt of the joke. Funny, that.

38 – All credit given to Mystery Men.

39 – At times this wasn't saying much. At other times, it was saying quite incredible things about Thor; most people who tried to get to know Loki ended up in a room with rubber wallpaper or in a pine box. Or occasionally, a pine box with rubber wallpaper, just in case.

Chapter Text

When Loki didn't immediately come back, Daniel felt a little at loose ends, and more than a little useless. But he told himself there was data to be crunched, and a vat filled with the gooey remnants of gelatin and carbon nanotubes that simply wasn't going to scrub itself. He ordered a round of Chinese food, then put on a rubber apron and pink plastic gloves and got cleaning.

The mess was stickier than he'd even begun to imagine; he had to take a break to get his take-out order, and then it made more sense so start eating while the food was still fresh, even if it all seemed very mundane considering what else he'd done with his day.

Sitting on the hood of his car, he'd just opened the wax paper bag of crab rangoon⁴⁰ when there was a crash from inside the storage unit. He dropped his food and hurried inside to find Loki clinging one-handed to the side of the half-cleaned vat, a waffle iron on the ground next to him. Loki clutched at his head with his other hand, teeth bared in a grimace.

Daniel hurried forward to wrap his arms around Loki – goodness, his flesh felt so firm and real focus Daniel, focus! - and eased him down to the floor. "What's wrong? Do we need to do a diagnostic?" He scrambled for the cables that would hook the robot back up to his computer. His foot hit the waffle iron and sent it sliding across the floor like an oversized hockey puck.

"Override... can't override," Loki gasped.

Daniel came back with the cables, then realized that he had absolutely no idea where he ought to stick the thing. "I... here." He thrust the cable bundle at the robot, who took it with a shaking hand – what an expression of emotion! - and jammed it into the back of his neck.

Monitors flickered into life all around the lab. Daniel grabbed the nearest keyboard and typed in diagnostic commands. Loki's head jerked, and his back stiffened until he was sitting up rigidly straight, hands clutching at his knees.

"I'm not... hurting you, am I?" Daniel asked tentatively.

"Negative. It was just surprising." The robot relaxed back down, posture becoming almost... insolent. "What do the diagnostics reveal?"

He turned the nearest monitor toward Loki with one hand. "Everything seems to be alright with the wiring. I'll dump the command history..." a few keystrokes, and he scanned over line after line of code. "It looks like you tried to execute several processes that were blocked by the logic failsafes."

"Blocked?" Loki yanked the wires out of the back of his neck and threw them on the ground, then lunged forward until his nose was almost pressed against Daniel's. "How is this possible?"

Daniel found himself clutching the keyboard between them like a shield. Loki's eyes threatened to swallow him whole, devoid of any of the humor or flashes of warmth⁴¹ that he'd ever seen from so-called Lawrence. "I... I... it's failsafes. You were trying to execute a command that would void your basic logic. So it stopped you."

"I," the robot said very carefully, "would never do any such thing."

"Maybe it was an accident?" Daniel squeaked.

"I do not have accidents. Or make mistakes. Loki does not do these things," Loki hissed. "You will remove these failsafes. They have interfered with my plans."

Daniel swallowed hard. "I can't. I would have to completely re-do your hardware. And... why would you want me to? You're better than humans, because you're logical. Why would you want to be anything but that?"

The robot sat back, looking faintly mollified. "You make a compelling point."

Daniel tentatively lowered the keyboard. "What were you trying to do when you hit the failsafe anyway?"

"I found the copy. I removed the rest of its magic, but thought there might be something else I wanted."

"Memories?" Daniel guessed. The idea of the robot taking magic from... he couldn't even finish the thought, it was so strange, and just let it slide away.

"Negative. My memory banks are far more detailed and superior than the subjective first person view of an imperfect being."

"Oh. Well." He tentatively patted Loki on the shoulder. The look that got aimed at him afterward ensured that he would never do so again. "Hopefully you'll figure out what it is and just... not do it again."

"It should not be an issue. The copy is dead."

Something twisted in his stomach. Daniel didn't like the idea of people dying, not even in the abstract. He was not by nature a violent person at all; really, he just wanted to be left alone with his computers and he would have been quite happy. He didn't even like violent video games, and it wasn't just because the AIs in most of them were annoyingly stupid. But his abstract dislike of violence was nothing in comparison to contemplating violence and death done to someone he knew. "I... did you...?"

"Negative, Daniel. It threw itself out a window. I can only surmise it was incapable of mentally handling its gross inferiority to me."⁴² There was a little curl of distaste to Loki's lips, as if something about the incident was bothersome. Daniel found himself not wanting to ask, however, because he didn't want the robot violently invading his personal space again.

He sat back, clearing his throat. His eyes prickled a little, which seemed strange. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"You shouldn't be." Loki stood, then picked up the waffle iron, which had slid under one of the tables. "We must acquire an apartment. I have many other items that I have taken." He sniffed the waffle iron, shook it, cocked his head as if listening to it, and then tossed the little appliance offhandedly onto the worktable.

"Do you... want waffles?" Daniel offered.

"I merely try to divine why someone would want that device. I am as of yet uncertain if it is worth understanding or not."

"Everyone likes waffles."

Loki stared at him in a way that made him feel most uncomfortable. "I do not. It is more proof of the imperfection of my copy."

The robot seemed to keep coming back to that point. Daniel was uncertain what to make of it. He stood, his rubber apron squeaking oddly. "Well, does that really matter so much, if he's dead?"

Again, that intense look. "My superiority matters very much to me, Daniel."

"Then it matters to me as well," Daniel offered. "I want you to be the best you can possibly be."

"You will help me acquire my first target, then."

"Target?"

"I have all files on the actions of my copy. His failures are spectacular and pathetic. I will be successful where he failed, because I am better."

"But wouldn't it be better to do something... constructive?" Daniel asked, visions of a pick-up-truck-as-fedora-wearing robot dancing in his head. He swallowed hard, shoulders hunching up a little when once again that look was turned on him, a look filled with sheer malevolent intelligence untempered with anything approaching humor. "First target. Right."

40 – Containing actual crab in only the most homeopathic sense.

41 – It must be said that Loki was an absolutely superb actor. Either that, or he did have occasional companionable feelings about humans, much the way humans felt about cute yet stupid pets. Though if asked, Loki would no doubt deny such a thing, and quite possibly follow it up with something pointy being inserted into something tender.

42 – It was possible that the robot had taken just a little more than the magic, such as a few snippets of ego while it was in the neighborhood.

Chapter Text

Thor had barely managed to calm his brother into something resembling normalcy when the helicopter made its landing on the roof of the building. For Loki's sake he was glad, because his gut feeling was that the odd, semi-hysterical, hiccuping laughter that Loki had been engaged in was the closest his brother ever got to crying these days. And that was a disturbing thought all on its own, for a myriad of reasons that Thor lacked both the attention span and simple desire to contemplate. Thor was a man who preferred a simple, black and white sort of reality, and that had the odd effect of making him much more comfortable with an enraged Loki that wanted to kill him as opposed to a quietly broken Loki that looked like he desperately needed a hug⁴³.

Clint was first in to the apartment, his bow drawn and ready. Thor was quickly to put himself between Loki and that arrow, which earned him a long-suffering look. "You shoot someone's brother once..." Clint muttered, though he didn't lower his bow yet. "Apartment clear?"

"I have not checked all of the rooms," Thor said. "Though Loki seems to think it is safe. And that his waffle iron is missing, if that helps."

Clint snorted. "Never pegged him as a waffle kind of guy." He made a habit out of not trusting a thing Loki said, so he went to check the other rooms for himself.

Agent Romanoff was on his heels, with Coulson behind her. Her eyebrows went up a little when she took in the broken window, and Loki's pale, bleeding state. "Isn't that..." she crooked her finger at Loki's shoulder.

"I think the wound has re-opened."

"Interesting." She arranged herself on the back of Loki's black leather sofa, arms crossed over her chest as Clint popped back into the living room to let them know that the apartment was clear.

Coulson positioned himself between Loki and the door, just standing casually as if he was there by pure chance. "Nice apartment," he observed. "I like the furniture choices. But a little empty."

Loki laughed, propping his chin in his unhurt hand, eyes half-closed. He looked positively woozy. No one, not even Thor, trusted it. "I had a lot of books. And paintings. And a Tiffany vase."

"And a waffle iron," Thor added helpfully. Loki covered his eyes with his hand.

"Want to tell us what happened, Loki?" Agent Romanoff asked. Her expression clearly stated that whatever had happened, he must have had it coming to him. And then some.

"My brother is bleeding," Thor said. "Should we not see to that first?"

Agent Romanoff inspected her fingernails. "Oh, I think he'll live." When Thor opened his mouth to argue, she gave him the sort of look that he'd only ever been on the receiving end of a few times in his life, and always before from his mother. He closed his mouth with an audible snap. "Well, Loki?"

Loki sighed, still not looking up. "I hope that you appreciate how difficult this is for me."

"Oh, be sure that I do." Her tone oozed sarcasm. She gave him a predatory smile that failed to make an impression, since it was directed at the top of his head⁴⁴.

"When I arrived at my apartment, it was already occupied. By someone that stole every easily movable object that I own."

Coulson looked faintly unimpressed. "Is that all?"

Loki looked up. "Before we proceed further, could you please decide amongst yourselves which one is the bad cop? Because I don't have the energy."

Coulson glanced at Agent Romanoff and shrugged. "For the purposes of this interview, we both are."

Loki's answering sigh was positively long-suffering.

"So, is that all? Your books and your waffle iron?" Agent Romanoff said.

"You're not anything approaching that lucky," Loki said. "It also took possession of all of my magic."

Everyone in the apartment went very quiet and still for a moment. Except for Clint, who was perhaps physically incapable of being quiet when he wasn't actively aiming at someone and deciding where to perforate them. He gave voice to an almost awe-struck, quiet, "Well fuck me."

"It?" Agent Coulson said quietly.

"It," Loki said, "is a robot that also looks like me. And believes that is is me."

"Tell me you didn't have anything to do with this," Agent Romanoff said. "And then I'll call you a liar."

"Oh, I helped Daniel make the robot. I see no point in lying about that now." He kept going, ignoring Agent Romanoff's murmured 'I find that hard to believe.' "But where that thing⁴⁵ got the idea that it is me, or superior to me--" he started laughing again, in a way that Thor found very worrying. "I had nothing to do with that."

"Really."

Loki looked up at Agent Romanoff, his face gone still. "Do me the courtesy of not assuming I'm a complete idiot, because you know for a fact that I am not."

"Coming from someone that's tried to destroy the world on more than one occasion, that statement seems a lot less dramatic," Coulson observed.

For once, Loki looked like the one who wanted to tear his hair out. It was a new experience for everyone, and pleasant for all but him. "I don't do things I can't control."

"Could have fooled me," Agent Romanoff said.

Loki realized then that he could either give up trying to convince these idiots – who were now the people he had no choice but to rely on, at least until he came up with a better idea – that the threat was serious, or admit to them that he'd been playing both sides against each other for nearly a year now. In his weakened state, it wasn't a decision that he could make in a coherent fashion, because he liked none of the options and couldn't seem to think through the layer of confused fuzz that had enveloped his brain – did Thor feel like this all the time? - to develop an as yet un-thought-of fifth or sixth option off the cuff.

He let out a little snarl of frustration that, on his better days would have sent everyone with a survival instinct – so everyone but Thor – scrambling for cover, and shoved himself to his feet. Unfortunately, whatever dramatic gesture he'd intended was washed away by a wave of dizziness. His face went a disturbing shade of white⁴⁶ and he toppled like an overwrought Victorian lady, directly into Thor's arms.

Thor gathered his unconscious brother to his chest in a bundle of lanky limbs and gave Natasha a glare that could have frosted glass. "Can we take him to the hospital now?"

Agent Romanoff looked almost stunned. "I think that might be a good idea."

"Oh, come on," Clint said. "It's not that impressive. He did that when I shot him, too."

43 – Though when Thor had tried, in his indelicate way, to offer his brother a hug, Loki had attempted to insert a fountain pen into his vital organs, so he'd decided it would be best to just back off for the time being. Possibly until Loki was safely handcuffed to a hospital bed again, though something about that particular situation made Thor feel slightly strange.

44 – However, it should be noted that for the following week, Loki had an unusual amount of split ends. There may be some correlation.

45 – Said with enough venom to kill a poison arrow frog at fifty paces.

46 – Like eggshell, but with a bit more mental asylum to it.

Chapter Text

Loki actually found it something of a relief to have the wound in his shoulder and the current state of his blood supply become the focus of attention, rather than himself. He needed the time to think, though of course thinking was far more difficult than it had any right to be. He wasn't unconscious for more than a few seconds, but everything was a bit strange for a while, including a helicopter ride where Hawkeye spent the entire time cheerfully holding a ream of gauze against Loki's shoulder with more pressure than Loki really considered necessary, not that anyone bothered to ask him.

Then it was back into the base and its little hospital, and there were doctors and stitches and a very unnecessary x-ray, which also bought him more time to think. There was quite a bit that he needed to think about. His enemy had a tangible face, and it was his own personal face, pasted on a thing. Just thinking about that made all the monitors attached to him beep in a very annoying way. Though of course there was nothing he could do about that, since he was once more handcuffed to the bed and unable to interfere with much of anything physically, let alone magically. Which was of course the next part of the problem, because that abomination had stolen his magic, ripped it from him in a way that still left him feeling more scared than angry⁴⁷. And he hadn't been able to resist, so that meant he had to turn the figurative knob on his creativity up to eleven, since normal methods just weren't going to work.

Really, he already suspected that getting his magic back would go hand-in-hand with destroying the damn robot – you couldn't call it killing if it wasn't alive, after all – and that seemed like a nice mix of business and pleasure. That thought alone was enough to brighten his day considerably, because he could always think of a creative way to destroy something he hated, and make it a lighthearted diversion rather than a chore.

That plan required a little more data. Data he would hopefully acquire by Thor and his friends throwing themselves repeatedly at the robot and later returning singed and smoking, which seemed to be their favored method of doing business. And if he was lucky and fate was sporting one of those lusty smiles she seemed to save just for him, it would also cause them all some serious bodily injury.

Unable to proceed with his preferred avenue of scheming, Loki tried to find other mental entertainment while he stared at the white ceiling tiles over his bed. It was to avoid situations like this that he was always in motion of some sort or another, whether it was pacing or flipping pages in a book. While he schemed or studied or learned, he had something to occupy his mind and prevent it from spinning completely out of control with boredom, while still avoiding several vital areas of introspection that he simply Did Not Want To Deal With⁴⁸.

But now he was forced to consider tricky questions, like why on Midgard he still looked like himself, rather than the blue monstrosity he was well aware lurked just beneath his skin. His true heritage was an uncomfortable truth that no amount of mischief and mayhem allowed him to escape, and without his magic to keep it at bay, the reality of it should have been trapping him just as surely as the handcuffs that Agent Romanoff had cheerfully locked around his wrist and ankles. Yet the bits of himself he could still see were the normal color of flesh, though the sensation of cold seemed to be creeping in from his fingertips and toes. Maybe it was the product of a paranoid and overpowered brain, but maybe it wasn't, and he was about to turn into a fascinating science experiment for the SHIELD doctors.

With that horrifying train of thought barreling through his mind and ready to jump the rails at a moment's notice, it was almost a relief when Thor walked in.

Almost.

Thor had another misshapen stuffed animal tucked under his arm, and a cheap glass vase filled with a multicolored floral explosion. "Brother!" he boomed.

Loki lifted his head off the cracker-thin hospital issue pillow specifically so that he could let it thump back down in the most sarcastic manner possible.

"How do you fare?" Thor arranged the stuffed animal – Loki thought that it might be a tiger, holding a heart embroidered with "You'll do grrrrreat!" – and the flowers on a counter safely out of Loki's reach.

"Well, I feel as if I've been shot all over again and something with all the vital existence of a toaster has torn my magic out of my soul, but now that you're here I'm sure all those cares will simply fall away and be forgotten in the warm glow of camaraderie and cheer."

Thor sat next to him. "So, not very well."

"Not very, no."

An awkward silence descended. Loki willed it to become even more awkward, in the hopes that it would drive Thor from the room and leave him alone with his personal horrors. Prompted by the thought of horrors, he lifted his head to take a glance at his hands, just to make certain they were still the proper color, and wiggled his fingers against the ever-increasing chill.

Thor, who could be shockingly observant at the times it was least convenient to Loki, said, "You don't look any different, brother." Loki gave him a sharp look. Thor ducked his head, shrugging a little defensively. "Heimdall told me of how your appearance... alters at times."

As much as Loki disliked the physical reminders of his heritage, he liked showing them to others even less. At one point he'd been tempted to use it as some sort of defensive mechanism, perhaps for frightening mortals with the revelation that he was truly a monster. But after seeing himself in the mirror, he'd been left so disheartened that he couldn't even manage a half-decent evil laugh.

"It was never something that I consciously controlled," Loki said reluctantly. "Otherwise, I suspect I would have figured the reality of my situation out much sooner." Since of course, he thought venomously, Odin never would have gotten off his sainted OdinArse and grown the OdinBalls necessary to just tell him.

"I had thought about that too."

"You seem to have done a lot of thinking in the last hour or two. Has your brain overheated? There's an ice machine down the hall, I hear."

Thor chuckled, taking the comment in precisely the wrong way⁴⁹. "From my earliest memories, there has never been a hint of blue to your skin or red in your eyes."

And that was hardly something he could have controlled as a child, either. "Perhaps it is environmental," Loki said. Not because he wanted to have this awkward conversation with Thor, mind you, but because he was thinking out loud. He hadn't seen any sort of change in himself, after all, until he'd been touched by one of the Jotun, and until he'd held the Casket of Ancient Winters.

"Perhaps this is your true face," Thor said quietly. "And anything else is like a bad dream."

Loki snorted, looking over at his brother. The expression on Thor's face was painfully earnest, and he felt a stab of intense dislike. That somehow, despite everything that he had done to Thor – up to and including the Mead Incident a few months ago – that the man was still reaching out with such obvious and awful goodness was enough to make Loki want to scream. If Thor had been anyone else, Loki would have shamelessly taken advantage of it, yet with his brother he simply couldn't. "This entire conversation," he said bitterly, "is turning into a bad dream."

"I take it as a sign that you belong in Asgard. With me. With all of us." Thor took his hand, the one that was handcuffed to the bed, meaning he couldn't escape his brother's grasp.

At least that was the reason Loki told himself that he didn't just shake the blond terror off.

It was too much like a simplified faery tale. As if all it took was walking among the Aesir, or a touch from Odin, or perhaps the boundless, unwavering love of Freya to turn a monster into something at least man-shaped. Loki knew that such a solution was idiotic, a child's story, which was about as much thought as Thor put in to anything even on his most reflective of days. There had to be a technical explanation that Loki could figure out, were he given the use of his hands, and some chalk so he could start diagramming out the necessary magic fields.

Because a world where Thor, his big-hearted and tiny-brained adopted brother, could cut to the heart of a matter that Loki himself had been unable to force into a solution via shear IQ was simply not a world Loki wanted to live in. A world where Thor could see a solution, if a cringe-inducing-ly clumsy and imprecise one, more quickly and clearly than Loki could was terrifying, and even worse, it was plain idiotic.

And it was likewise idiotic, Loki thought, that his treacherous feelings were trying to convince him that warmth flowed from Thor's hand into his, chasing away the feeling of creeping chill.

47 – Though with Loki, fear inevitably turned to anger because being scared was an insult from the universe at large, and of course, insults made him angry. So it was only a matter of time before he had another little bit of rage to tuck away into his psyche until it could be used to best effect at a later time. Preferably when no one was expecting it.

48 – Those capital letters were well deserved, and an accurate portrayal of Loki's own opinions about the direction of his thoughts. Introspection was neither kind to Loki, nor to the people around him that were susceptible to the lash of his tongue or the insertion of pointy objects, the latter of which was often preferable to the former.

49 – Which was to say, as a joke, rather than as a nasty personal jibe aimed to get him out of Loki's hair.

Chapter Text

It was a relief to Loki when Agent Romanoff let herself into the hospital room. While she was unable to chase Thor away, it at least forced the man to let go of his hand and assume a much less invasive distance. It also meant that Thor resumed a more normal facial expression, a sort of mix between stern and god-like and vaguely smug. This was definitely preferable, in Loki's estimation, to the utterly disturbing, almost tender looks his brother had been directing his way.

Except then Agent Romanoff proceeded with the most predictable and boring line of questioning that Loki had ever been subjected to. Because it was clear that she might believe that there was some sort of Loki doppleganger out there, but was incapable of encompassing the simple fact that he didn't think this was a good thing.

"You infuriating woman, would you just tell me, what proof is necessary to convince you that I had nothing to do with this?" he shouted at her after she asked the same three questions for the sixth time in the most tooth-grindingly patient voice he had ever encountered.

Natasha smiled. "You could start by telling us how to stop it."

"Do you think that if I knew, I would be gracing your facility with my presence and allowing a friendly breeze to intrude on my nether regions? Really? Whoever designed your hospital wear is a sadist, I'm certain of it!"

"I'm sure they'll be happy to take your fashion critique under advisement. Now, where is the alleged robot?"

If he didn't have one hand immobilized with bandaging and the other with a handcuff, he would have torn at his own hair. Or, by preference, hers. He could just imagine sinking his fingers into those red curls and shaking until it dislodged a question he hadn't yet heard. As it was, he could only grind the back of his head into the hospital mattress while wishing the thing was actually made out of concrete, so he'd have a chance of rendering himself unconscious. "I already told you, I don't know! And I'm using single syllable words, so I'd think you could at least comprehend them. I can't simplify it any more than that!"

She crossed her arms over her chest, shooting a glare at Thor when he tried to open his mouth to speak. "What--"

"How on earth do you do that?" Loki asked, the words coming out in a desperate tumble.

"Do what?"

"I glare at Thor all the time, and it's never gotten him to shut up or so much as pause. How on earth do you manage it?"

Agent Romanoff held up a finger. "I'm not going to let you derail this discussion."

"In order for it to be a discussion, I'd have to be able to participate in a meaningful way, and you'd have more things to say than the average pull-string doll."

"Still not going to work. What--"

And then, mercifully, before Loki even had a chance to interrupt again, her beeper went off. She glanced down at it, perfectly sculpted eyebrows arcing up. "Come on, Thor, we've got to go."

Loki giggled toward the hospital ceiling. "Oh, is there some sort of sale at Emporium of the Utterly Witless?"

"Your robot's been sighted," Agent Romanoff said, yanking the door open and waving Thor through.

"It's not--"

The door slammed.

Loki sighed. "Mine." Then it was quiet, just the quiet beep of the various monitors and the odd burble from the plumbing. And of course, the rumble of his own thoughts, set on a crash course.

#

"You know that feeling, like you've been somewhere before?" Clint asked. He leaned out of the door of the helicopter to get a better look at the ground they were crossing over, lightly hanging on to the handstrap. It was enough to make Agent Coulson stare pointedly at the ceiling.

"It's called déjà vu, Clint," Agent Romanoff said, managing to sounding simultaneously bored and annoyed.

"Yeah, that."

"And you're not experiencing it. Because we have been this way before."

"I knew it. Last year, right?"

"Right. When Loki decided, for whatever random firing of neurons stands in for a reason in a diseased brain--" Thor cleared his throat. Natasha pointedly ignored him and continued, "—that he wanted to reanimate an entire museum full of dinosaur skeletons."

"Oh, yeah. That was great," Clint said.

"Really, Thor. Is your brother still six?" Natasha asked.

"Everyone likes dinosaurs," Thor muttered into his beard. "And it's not my brother in there."

"Just something that looks an awful lot like him. And is probably in cahoots⁵⁰."

"We won that one, right?" Clint asked. "The thing in the Egyptian wing. We blew it up. And stuff."

"Your facility for poetry never ceases to amaze and inspire," Natasha said. When Clint opened his mouth again, she quickly added, "Yes."

"Huh." Clint amused himself by leaning out of the helicopter again. He laughed when Agent Coulson grabbed him by the belt and hauled him back inside. "So what, we're just re-doing Loki's Greatest Hits or something?"

"Seems so," Coulson said. He grimaced. "I hope that doesn't mean the Pentagon is next. I ruined a perfectly good suit."

But Clint grinned, a sparkling, devil-may-care smile that was utterly wasted on everyone in the helicopter. "Easy peasy⁵¹."

#

Of course, nothing went easy, and certainly not peasy, let alone right. The Avengers dropped in to the museum through one of the large stained-glass skylights, since it was both impressive and what had worked just fine the last time. Only this time, they found that there was a large, unnatural fire with howling green flames waiting for them at the floor. While no one was quite uncoordinated enough to fall into it, there was a certain amount of swearing, excitement, and delay. At which point the velociraptors attacked. The skeletal velociraptors. Millions of years of being dead and remineralized had neither slowed them nor dulled their teeth.

And while Thor could and did start smashing the skeletal dinosaurs into little bone chips quite rapidly, he wasn't anywhere close to done when Loki appeared. Agent Coulson was trying to remove a snapping dinosaur from Thor's shin with the application of a clip of 9mm bullets when the robot multiplied itself into a thousand illusions.

Clint tried to put an arrow through one Loki, which he thought might be the real one. The arrow passed harmlessly through it and ended up lodged in a painting on the other side of the foyer. He drew another arrow, nocked it, and tried to pick his next target, which was difficult when they all looked the same. "I think we may be in a little trouble," he said to Natasha, who was right next to him.

She kicked the skull off of a reanimated skeleton; it shattered on the floor. "More than normal?"

"Yeah."

"Why do you say that?"

Clint let the next arrow fly; it was about as effective as the first. "Maybe you haven't noticed, but this Loki isn't smiling."

Natasha dodged a fluttering archeopteryx, tangling it up in a wireline that she pulled from who-knew-where and sending it to the floor in a loud clatter. She looked around at the veritable army of Lokis. While there was something decidedly familiar about the situation, the grim look on Loki's face wasn't one she'd ever seen.

Each Loki surrounding them raised his hands, magical green fire igniting on his fingers. "Pathetic," they said in unison.

It only went downhill from there.

#

Loki had resorted to counting the pinholes in the acoustic ceiling tiles, then using the resulting numbers to create mathematical puzzles⁵². He'd come up with a few rather amusing ideas so far, except he had no way to record them. While something nice and old fashioned like blood on the bedsheets was a definite possibility, he'd always preferred to use the blood of other people.

Before the boredom became so reality-bending that he could seriously consider violating his own preferences, the doctors brought him a roommate by the simple expedient of opening the overly large door and wheeling another bed through it.

Loki sat up as much as he was able. None of the doctors seemed to want to make eye contact with him, but that didn't stop him from asking, "What is the meaning of this? Can't I even be a prisoner in peace, now I'm going to have a roommate?" Though mentally, he was rubbing his hands with glee and cackling at the prospect of having another sentient being – well, as sentient as these humans ever got, that was – around to torment. That would help pass the time, to be sure.

An older gentleman gave him a narrow-eyed look that probably quelled lesser beings like interns; it didn't even bounce off of Loki's armor so much as splat dully. "The facility isn't that large. If you don't like the arrangements, I'm sure they've got the lock on your prison cell fixed by now."

Loki smirked; actually, no longer being handcuffed to a bed sounded lovely. But then he caught sight of the occupant of the other bed, or rather a swath of curly red hair. He leaned back against the thin pillow, constructing a particularly malevolent smirk. "Oh the horrors of the concrete cell. Spare me, kind sir."

The doctor, busy setting up an IV stand, didn't seem to notice the healthy measure of sarcasm in those words. And that was just fine with Loki as well.

Whatever had happened to her, Agent Romanoff had looked better; she wasn't conscious, from what Loki could observe, and had her fair share of scrapes and bruises that were visible in flashes as the doctors buzzed around her. He bit his tongue and contented himself with just observing until the doctors had cleared out, then amused himself by cataloging her various wounds and deciding what had caused each one. It was quite the fascinating array, though he was fairly certain he knew exactly where the singed hair and burns had come from, and if he was right, well...

...let's just say that he was even more unimpressed by the creative capacity of the magic-stealing robot. And the effort required to hit that sneering bottom level of disdainful non-impressed-ness required an investment of energy that he normally reserved for things like world domination and doubles badminton with Dr. Strange.

As with comedy, timing in menacing evil is everything. And while Loki was neither Jewish nor quite dysfunctional enough to deliver jokes with panache, he'd long since mastered sneering, posing, and looking just bored enough before it was time to release the rabid poodle-hyena hybrid cyborgs.

So he waited patiently, watching Agent Romanoff as she slowly came to, as she started looking blearily around the room. And just when her head was turned away from him, he said in his best malevolent purr, "Fancy meeting you here, dearest."

Eyes wide, she turned her head to look at him; it was only then that he noticed the flash of metal at her mouth; her jaw had been wired shut. She grasped feebly at the bed railing, still apparently too disoriented to move herself.

This, Loki told himself, had to be karmic payback for every time Thor had said something incomprehensibly stupid in his presence. Well, maybe for half of those times.

"So," he said, mimicking her tones perfectly with just the right lilt of mockery, "where is the alleged robot?"

50 – Thor did not argue this point, it should be noted, not due to any sort of self preservation instinct. Scientific study has in fact shown that Thor has less interest in preserving his own hide than a depressed lemming that's gone on a binge. No, it's more that Thor still wasn't certain what 'cahoots' meant, exactly, and wasn't about to ask. From the context, he was becoming convinced that the word meant some sort of combative death struggle, which seemed reasonable enough to him.

51 – This is the Clint Barton equivalent of saying, "It can't possibly get any worse." Somewhere, the universe giggled, and it was the sort of sound that causes sane people to hide under the bed and not leave their house until the body's been found and the serial killer caught.

52 – He'd tried to do a few square roots with them, initially, but that just reminded him of his unconscionable error when he'd thrown himself out of his apartment, and he'd just given up in disgust. While most people could forgive themselves for dropping an exponent or two while looking the specter of death in the eye, Loki had very exacting standards.

Chapter Text

Except it didn't turn out to be much of a karmic payback, or even much of a karmic pennies-swiped-from-the-take-a-penny-cup-at-the-gas-station. Before Loki had even had the pleasure of repeating the question for the seventeenth time, the door to the room was flung open with the sort of melodramatic effort that Loki normally associated with circus performers.

And there was Clint Barton, so he wasn't even that far off the mark.

What was even more disappointing was that the appearance of Barton interrupted the delightful horrified eye-rolling that he'd only just gotten Agent Romanoff to start.

"Hey Natasha!" Clint said, sauntering in and levering the door shut behind him with one heel. He held an arrow in one hand and a flat golden box in the other. "So I got you some chocolates, but then the doctors told me you actually had broken your jaw and it's going to be wired shut for a while, so I ate them all for you." He shook the box, which pointedly made no sound at all.

She rolled her eyes again, though there was a decidedly exasperated edge to it now. Still, Loki made a mental note. He couldn't exactly mimic Clint Barton without drinking until he'd literally gone blind, but it never hurt to observe the methods of others.

"You could have given them to me," Loki said.

"Well, yeah, but then you might think I like you or something," Clint said."Anyway." He hefted the arrow.

Loki raised an eyebrow. "What, do you intend to stab me with that yet again?"

"It's not exactly a challenge if they've got you handcuffed to the bed." Clint actually looked a little hurt. "Give me some credit. No, I wanted you to take a look at this. I'm pretty sure I shot this through Evil Robot You."

"And?"

"And it ended up sticking out of an uncomfortable place in someone's portrait on the other side of the room."

Loki raised his hand as much as he could, pointedly tugging the handcuff against the bed railing. "If you wouldn't mind? It's not as if I'll be able to go anywhere even with a hand free."

"Sure. I've got a gun, I can always shoot you in a pinch. Just so you know."

"I never thought of you as the type to carry a gun."

"Well, don't get me wrong, it lacks a certain finesse. But it gets the job done if all you're worried about is putting a couple of quick holes through someone." Clint grinned. "And it's got a better range than a drill press, so there you go."

Loki stared at him.

"Joking." Clint walked over to the bed and unlocked the handcuff even as Agent Romanoff made an odd sound, like she was screaming without being able to open her mouth. Which was, on sober reflection, probably the case.

"As much as it pains me to say it, thank you." Loki flexed his hand a few times for show, then took the arrow. The shaft of it felt faintly sticky, and when he gave it a sniff, once again he got that odd whiff of oranges. Just for effect, he balanced the arrow on one finger, sighted down the shaft. It gave him a few precious seconds for his mind to work, discount the possibilities until he found the most likely conclusion.

"Well?"

"The robot obviously isn't made out of flesh." He turned the arrow over in his hand and offered it back to Clint, fletchings first. He was, after all, still a higher being, and that required a certain amount of finesse even if he was wearing an assless dress.

"It's not made out of metal, either." Clint tucked the arrow under his arm.

"What a keen observation," Loki said dryly. "I noticed the same thing when I came face to face with it. I tried to run it through with a poker; I'm sure you can now imagine now that went. It even smelled the same. Of oranges."

"You never really struck me as the perfume sort."

"I'll ask you to remember you're talking about a robot, not about me." Loki sniffed. "Whether I am or not, I certainly wouldn't make myself smell like a fruit salad."

"So what do you think it is, then? Evil fruit salad?"

Loki sat back, rubbing his chin lightly with his newly freed hand⁵³. "The actual core of the robot--" He stopped and looked at Agent Romanoff. "Yes, it was a robot, or rather part of a robot, not a toaster or whatever other random thing I said. Not that you believed me anyway, which I will note was quite hurtful to my more tender feelings." He turned his attention away from Agent Romanoff's disbelieving stare and back to Clint. "Anyway, it was only about the size of a grapefruit. So the body is really just a way for it to move around and hide itself, I think." He frowned. "With my magic to use, it would be pathetically easy to form almost anything into a body and maintain it." His fingers itched with the urge to diagram out the necessary fields; sketching things out tended to help him think.

"Like oranges?"

"I suppose. It's just a matter of rearranging the molecules to where they're most convenient and fiddling with how the light is absorbed to get the right colors..."

Clint snorted, twirling the arrow around his fingers like it was a baton and he was some sort of stubbly drum majorette. "Sounds like you do this a lot."

"Don't be thick, you've seen me do it all the time. Shapeshifting is elementary."

"So it could look like anything."

"Technically," Loki said. But he knew that it wouldn't; it already seemed plain that the thing lacked the necessary imagination. "Considering that it thinks it is me, I imagine it'll just spend most of its time looking like me."

"So I just need to shoot it in the head with something explosive, and we'll be good."

"Perhaps."

"You don't sound convinced."

Loki shrugged. "I need to know more before I'll be convinced of anything." He wiggled his feet. "Though being able to pace would help, you know. Evil geniuses like myself think much better on our feet."

Clint hazarded a glance at Agent Romanoff, who shook her head emphatically. "Oh, you're a funny guy."

"That's not what you said in the shower." Loki smiled lazily, then continued on before Clint could do more than open his mouth to retort. "So tell me about the little adventure you two had earlier. And where is my-- where is Thor, by the way? I thought he'd be back here and annoying me to the best of his abilities by now." Not that he was at all concerned about Thor; if the big lug had gotten himself hurt by the ridiculous monstrosity of a robot, well, it was his own fault for being that slow⁵⁴.

"Oh, some of the skeletons escaped, so he's hunting them down. You'd be surprised how fast those things can move." Clint frowned slightly. "Or I guess you wouldn't, huh."

"No, I wouldn't. So it was the museum?"

"Yeah."

"Do tell." Loki listened patiently as Clint described the rather messy mission, the fight, and the end result – the robot fleeing the scene, but with some selections from the geology hall in tow, including a nickel-iron meteorite that had been on display. Clint seemed almost offended that the robot had gone after that, instead of concentrating its efforts in the Egyptian hall as Loki himself had done before.

Except the point was, if Loki had actually wanted to accomplish something villainous in the museum, he would have taken those exact items. Plus one of the artifacts out of the Inuit display in the Hall of Native Peoples, since it was a nicely powerful arcane object. That, at least, the robot hadn't figured out. But no, when Loki had gone to the museum, he'd left all of those things alone precisely because his aim had been to entertain himself and mess with the Avengers a bit – and leading them to think precisely the wrong things were valuable, just in case⁵⁵.

And if the robot had taken those things, then...

"Loki?"

"Hm?" He refocused on Clint, who was giving him an odd look he'd once heard described as the 'hairy eyeball.' While he shuddered to think where the hair might come in to it, something about the expression felt right.

"You were just looking kind of weird, just then."

"Well, you always look quite ugly, but I don't let that get between us," Loki said calmly. "I was thinking. I can understand if you have no idea what that looks or feels like."

Clint snorted. "If that's what thinking looks like, your head must be a scary place."

"You have no idea." Loki drummed his fingers on the blanket. "The robot's probably going to that darling little telescope at Arecibo next. For the sub-reflector, maybe a couple of the antennas."

Clint frowned. "And you're telling me this why?"

"Because it amuses me." Loki shrugged. "Perhaps you'd like to go stop the thing. I'd be happy to help. It's my carefully maintained reputation its ruining, you know."

"I'd think you'd appreciate it, the way the robot kicked our asses."

Loki opened his mouth to argue, but stopped himself; as much as he wanted to be contrary about everything now just because this robot situation had him so ridiculously... perturbed, he still had to remember the long game. And for the long game to remain a game, he needed to keep Clint and his friends dancing like puppets, even if that was harder to do with only one functioning hand. Effortlessly, he reset his expression into a sneer. "Please. Carefully maintained reputation. I've got far more finesse, and you know it."

"Oh yeah? What about when we--"

Loki cut Clint off with a graceful flip of his hand. "Nail file."

Clint shut his mouth with an audible snap. "Ass."

"Do you really want to discuss that?" Loki settled back against the thin hospital pillow, satisfied that he'd put up enough cover for the time being as Clint's face turned a shade he'd never seen outside of a razzleberry sno-cone⁵⁷.

Clint waggled one finger at him, but didn't manage to say anything. Which was a good decision on his part, since he was hopelessly outmatched, and Loki was more than prepared to start singing Lady Gaga at the man, for the sheer pleasure of watching him explode. And Loki had, in his own opinion, a more than reasonable singing voice.

"Arecibo, Clint. There's a good man." Regally, Loki waved him out of the room. Clint was flustered enough that he didn't notice Natasha trying to get his attention; likely, she would have tried to remind Clint that Loki really ought to have the handcuffs put back on him.

Really, things were starting to look up, if only a little. As the door shut firmly behind Clint, Loki turned to Agent Romanoff and gave her a slow, lazy smile. "Now," he purred, "where were we?"

53 – While it works better if the villain is in possession of a goatee to stroke, it has been proven to aide with both plotting and theorizing.

54 – This was a thing that Loki told himself on a regular basis, just as he told himself that he had absolutely nothing to do with the swift disappearance and painful demise of the few people that had managed to seriously injure his brother.

55 – For Loki, Just In Case was a tangible, almost living thing. He had contingencies for his contingencies. Partially, this was a way to make certain that he never got put into a corner that wasn't of his own making^{56. And partially, it was because the more complicated he made things, the more of his IQ it required to keep track of it all, and that in turn meant he could sleep at night without his brain running in circles and yipping like a lap dog on speed.}

^{56 – It was fair to say that, at this particular moment with his ankles shackled to a hospital bed, his particular method of Just In Case still needed some work.}

^{57 – Loki had intended to hunt down and horribly murder the marketing wonk that had come up with the idea of cutely misspelling those two things, but after actually ingesting one of those cold, delicious treats, he'd found that a sugar rush felt curiously like forgiveness.}

Chapter Text

Arecibo turned out to be in Puerto Rico, which Clint told himself he really should have remembered the moment Loki mentioned the name. Then again, it was in Puerto Rico, and he had some interesting holes in his memory from that particular foray, the sort of thing that indicated a liberal application of tequila⁵⁸. Tony Stark had been along for that one, and most of the occasions in Clint's life when he had large, conspicuous gaps in his memory involved Tony on way or the other. It was something he could count on.

Puerto Rico was too far for a helicopter, or for clinging to Thor (thankfully), so they acquired one of Tony's private jets. Along the way, they also acquired Steve, since he was done with his undisclosed thing in Serbia.

Steve waved off the beer Clint offered him, and eyed the rest of the furnishings in the plane skeptically. "I admit, I haven't been in too many airplanes lately, but is there a reason there's a pole in the middle of the cabin?"

Clint used a combat knife that most sane people would have called a sword to lever the cap off his beer. "You know there are times, when it's better not to ask if you might not like the answer?"

"Yeah?"

"This is one of those times."

Thor stared morosely at his own beer; he'd been disappointed to find out the bar wasn't so fully stocked as to carry mead. "At least this one doesn't have mirrors all over the ceiling. I found that very distracting."

Steve covered his face with one hand.

Clint laughed, saluting Thor with the beer. "I think that's the point." He leaned back against the leather upholstery of the couch. "So, Thor, there's something bugging me about your brother."

Thor gave him a narrow-eyed look. "And that would be...?"

"He's too damn likeable." Clint took a swig⁵⁹ of his beer. "I keep having these weird moments where I have to remind myself that we're not buddies, because I almost feel like he's just one of the guys giving me shit. It's freaking me out."

"Maybe he's not so bad after all," Steve offered. It was likely a holdover from his Hitler punching days, but Steve still seemed to have a difficult time grasping the fact that bad guys were normally pretty well practiced at pretending to be good guys, and that the maniacal laughter and indiscriminate stabbing often came later.

"My brother can be very pleasant when he wants to be," Thor said. He shrugged. "And I think you've all taken him the wrong way to begin with." He glanced furtively around the cabin, as if he expected Agent Coulson or Romanoff to pop out from behind the bar at any moment.

Clint sighed. "Both of you, please try to remember the multiple occasions he's tried to murder us all."

"Since he has yet to succeed, I don't see why you're complaining," Thor said. "Life without a battle now and then would be boring."

"Well, maybe, but he's still hurt a lot of people. And damaged a lot of property." Steve rubbed his chin with one hand.

"But see, that's the other thing that's bugging the shit out of me." Clint drained half his beer with another swig, then waved the bottle to emphasize his point. "Because we keep hearing over and over that he's some kind of fucking super genius--"

"—He is the smartest person I know," Thor interjected.

"—right, well, he's probably the smartest person any of us know except maybe Tony, and half the time he's less of a dick than Tony, and let me tell you how much that just disturbs the shit out of me." Clint cut the thought off with a wave of his hand, getting himself back on track. "So he's got brains, and up until now he's had magic, and every time we have gone toe to toe I make sure to wear my brown trousers because even if we win in the end there's still always at least three pants-shitting moments." He finished his beer and slammed the bottle down. It made a good exclamation point. "And supposedly we're at a disadvantage because we're not psychopaths--"

"—he says he's a sociopath--" Thor added helpfully.

"—whatever, we're not sociopaths who don't care who we hurt. And yet we always win. Always. And even if it feels like by the skin of our teeth, we make it through with nothing worse than a few bumps and bruises. But then when we go up against this robot thing once, it half kills Natasha, and came this close to to taking Coulson's head off. Not to mention the awesome scar I'm going to get to show my next girlfriend."

Thor stared at him; Clint realized that as he'd wound up his rant, he'd risen to his feet and started pacing circles around the pole in the middle of the cabin. He stopped, hands on his hips, and stared at Steve and Thor. "Well?"

"I don't think I understand your point," Thor said. Steve, however, looked thoughtful.

"Do you really think that your brother is dumber than some robot?" Clint demanded. "Or do you think maybe something else has been going on, all this time?"

Thor was not a man given to sarcasm – he'd always left that sort of thing to Sif and Loki – but he saved up his occasional dollops of caustic wit for when they would be most useful. In this case, it meant giving Clint a look that somehow managed to combine cynicism, disbelief, and amusement, all with the backdrop of a blond beard just starting to get bushy. "My brother," he said carefully, as if he was worried Clint might be having some sort of brain hemorrhage that would only be exacerbated by hasty words, "always has something else going on."

"You know what I mean!" Clint shouted. Something about that particular look on Thor's face made a line of cold creep down his spine; in that moment, he really felt like he could see the family resemblance between the two.

"No, I really don't." Thor sat back and finally twisted the cap off his bottle of beer, despite the fact that the cap wasn't actually meant to twist off. "You think Loki is up to something. That is like saying that you think the sky is blue or Agent Romanoff--"

"—watch it," Clint said. "You may think she won't find out what we're saying, but I'm telling you, she's got eyes everywhere."

"But you understand my point."

"Well yeah, but I don't think you're getting mine." Clint turned to Steve for some support; Steve was pulling on his blue mask, looking pointedly at his watch. "A little help here?"

"I'm thinking," Steve said.

Clint sighed. "Nothing at all?"

"No, I've got ideas. I'm just thinking." Steve grinned. "And maybe you two should think about getting ready. We're almost there. And from what you said, this isn't going to be a cake walk."

"No," Clint said sadly. "I actually like cake."

Thor grinned. "Is not the thrill of combat far sweeter?"

Clint snorted and started unpacking his bow. "Says the guy who didn't get set on fire last time."

* * *

Clint and Steve, now dolled up in his Captain America outfit, decided to go with a mundane way of entering the scene: jumping out of the plane with parachutes. Thor eyed the parachutes skeptically, but seemed mollified when he was given the job of keeping the air clear and the robot distracted until the other two had landed.

Clint let Steve jump first, since otherwise he thought the might explode from sheer eagerness. He was out the door right behind him,diving into the dense cloud cover over Puerto Rico. "You know what you're aiming for, right Steve?" he asked over the radio channel, more to make conversation than anything else.

"You said it was a telescope, so an observatory, right?"

Clint grinned. He'd pulled up the satellite images of Arecibo. "Oh, you'll see in a minute."

They broke through the clouds; Thor was already a scarlet-caped blur ahead of them, diving toward the green hills that surrounded an odd-looking, gray valley.

There was a pause before Steve spoke again, "What the heck is that?"

"That whole valley? Yeah, that's the telescope." The telescope at Arecibo was the largest of its kind in the world, a massive radio receiving dish that filled an entire valley, topped with antenna and the housing for the sub-reflector.

Another pause. "You said Loki called it little. And darling."

"Loki's an asshole." Clint grinned; the wind rushing by made his teeth ache with cold, so he quickly stopped. "You just need to learn to speak fluent douchebag."

"And he thinks the... robot guy is going to try to steal stuff off of it?"

"Pretty much. The hard part is going to be not blowing anything up. Because you break it, Steve, you bought it."

Steve laughed, then popped his parachute open. "I'll keep that in mind."

Suddenly the whole valley washed out with brilliant blue-white light, so bright that Clint had to shield his eyes.

"Do you think Thor did that?" Steve asked. He pulled out his pistol, though it was still too far to really see anything.

"I hope so. And I hope he remembers the part of the plan where he draws the robot away. I don't know about anyone else, but I bet Jane will murder the shit out of him if he damages this thing."

* * *

Maybe the robot was starting to get the hang of the magic thing; Arecibo was a bigger mess than the museum had been. There were golems made out of animated trees, climbing all over the superstructure and trying to remove the fine little bits and bobs that held the antennas together and kept the reflector out of the robot's immediate grasp. Those, Clint left to Steve. The guy was a super soldier; he he would hopefully remember the incendiary rounds Clint had insisted he take, and also remember that wood was flammable.

Clint released his parachute and hit the ground in a crouch to the rapid BONGBONGBONG of a vibranium shield bouncing between a series of magically animated objects.

Or, Clint supposed, Steve could also just beat everything to death with his fists and shield. Why ruin a good thing?

He scanned the surrounding hillside, looking for the telltale flashing lights or giant vortexes of debris that normally marked Thor's passing. He had his own mission to take care of, one he'd given himself after his little chat with Loki. Clint Barton was a man who firmly believed his arrows should stay where he put them, sticking proudly out of whatever body part on his opponent he'd taken the most offense to. He took it as a personal insult that the arrows had not only gone through⁶⁰ the robot, they'd done no appreciable damage. That was going to change.

Another blinding flash came from further up the slope, maybe even on the other side. Cursing under his breath, Clint broke into a run, swinging his bow into his hands as he went. His feet were all but silent on the leafy floor, not that it mattered if the sonic boomlettes bouncing between the hills were any indication. He burst over the crest of the hill, his chest burning with the necessity to for god's sake breathe you idiot and then he saw them.

Clint didn't pause; he dropped to one knee, nocking one of his new, special arrows, and fired in one smooth motion. There was a breeze, the arrow wasn't going to fly quite right before it had an incendiary charge on it, and a hundred other variables that could have knocked his shot off course. But Clint didn't so much as blink, because he was Clint Fucking Barton, and he didn't miss.

The robot had enough time to twist its head around in a really creepy way, and then the arrow nailed it right between the eyes.

boom

Compared to the sounds from before, it was almost like a firecracker, a petite little pop. But it got the job done; the robot's head suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke.

Clint grinned, waiting for that satisfying moment when the body dropped.

That was probably his first⁶¹ mistake.

* * *

Things had gone according to plan as far as Thor was concerned. He had dropped from the airplane ahead of the others and made a long dive for the telescope dish. The robot, he'd spotted right away; it had reverted to wearing a replica of Loki's old armor, complete with the helmet. That was enough to bring a little lump to his throat, which he got rid of by growling.

He shifted his grip slightly on Mjolnir, calling up a ball of lightning and sending it flying right at the imposter. It made a satisfying noise and a lot of light. Still flying Thor twisted to dodge a bolt of sizzling plasma, screaming in his general direction before the air had really cleared.

Not even bothering to look, since it was plain he'd gotten his enemy's attention, he pulled into a tight turn and flew up the hillside.

Two more plasma bolts, he dodged, and then twisted in mid-air to catch sight of the robot flying after him, no doubt powered by some sort of magic spell. Thor dropped to the ground, throwing Mjolnir at the same time. As he'd half suspected, the robot made no attempt to dodge, perhaps assuming the hammer carried no more bite than one of Clint's arrows. Obligingly, Mjolnir took off one of the robot's legs before stopping and flying back to Thor's hand.

That caught the robot's attention even more. It whipped up another bolt of plasma and threw it at Thor as it landed, far more gracefully than someone newly missing a limb really should have. Tired of the game – really, Loki had been throwing superheated everything-but-the-kitchen-sink at him since they'd been barely out of diapers – Thor batted the plasma away with a swipe from Mjolnir. A nearby tree blew into splinters.

"Take off my brother's face and fight me as yourself," Thor shouted at the robot. "I will not see you shame him further!"

The robot made a negligent gesture with one hand; its leg reformed. "Fool," it hissed, and Thor was forced to admit to himself that the robot had mastered one of Loki's more unpleasant tones. "I am Loki, the true and final iteration." The lines of its face pulled into a smile that caught Thor between anger and illness. "My predecessor was never able to succeed in killing you. I will take this as another opportunity to prove my superiority."

And then it became like a nightmarish replay of their fight on the Bifrost, the only time that Thor had felt with certainty that Loki was trying to kill him. There were illusions, and the sort of frenetic all weapons at hand attack that he'd experienced then, but now it was conducted in eerie silence and the robot moved in a fluid way that even Loki had never managed, as if it had no bones.

On the other hand, Thor didn't find himself in the least bit interested in holding back or reasoning with the robot, so that evened up the odds nicely.

And what was more, the robot wasn't throwing anything at him that he hadn't seen a hundred times before, even if it had turned up the power level. Magical bolts, insubstantial weapons that still cut as if they had an edge, copies that were solid one moment and gone the next; all were things he had faced and ultimately defeated before.

Thor threw Mjolnir at the robot yet again; it responded by simply detonating a globe of pure energy between them. Thor went crashing through eight trees, with the ninth finally stopping him, then raised his hand and called Mjolnir back.

That was another thing. The robot didn't seem to get tired as he'd seen happen to Loki on occasion. There were times his brother had used so much magic all at once that he could almost smell Loki's brain sizzling behind his eyes. The robot didn't seem to have that problem.

Growling, Thor pulled himself to his feet, brushing away a collection of splinters and leaves. The robot had one hand pointed at him, yet another ball of burning plasma – didn't that thing learn? - gathering in its hand.

Suddenly it turned its head almost 180 degrees. And then its head blew up. Rather than falling like a body normally would, the robot's body simply evaporated.

Thor laughed and started moving forward, Mjolnir held loosely in his hand. He had no doubt that Clint Barton had put in an appearance. "Well, that was hardly any fun..."⁶²

A bright explosion blinded him; Thor shielded his eyes, ducking his head against the wash of heat and using Mjolnir to divert the worst of the force. It was difficult to tell, but in the roar of sound he thought he heard someone scream, and the most likely someone for that role was Clint.

Still shielding his eyes, he raised Mjolnir, calling up a bolt of lightning that just needed a target.

Cold, faintly sticky hands slammed onto either side of his face from behind. Even more disturbingly, the fingers seemed to lose form, creeping out over his face and flowing toward his eyes and ears.

"Pathetic," the robot hissed in Loki's voice. "I have no idea why that fool has wasted such energy on hating you."

Thor laughed, even as one of his ears plugged up with goop, as a brilliant star of pain exploded somewhere behind his right eye and his vision started going dark. "You're the fool for not realizing he loves me at the same time."

Two things happened at once, and it was impossible to tell which caused the larger explosion: Thor slammed Mjolnir down into the earth, unleashing all of that power on himself – and more importantly on the robot. And the robot shrieked something that sounded like "Override!" in Thor's ear, inverting every magical field it had created in the area.

Either way, it didn't matter to Thor. At some point, an explosion is just an explosion, when you're in the middle of it.

58 – Clint's general philosophy on the recreation was that, if you didn't wake up with any strange tattoos and could clearly remember what happened, it hadn't been much of a party.

59 – Not quite up to Asgardian quaffing standards, but Thor appreciated the effort nonetheless.

60 – Because technically speaking, he was even willing to accept that as long as "going through" was immediately followed by a cartoonish and dramatic blood spatter.

61 – Technically no; in this situation, his first mistake had been joining SHIELD in the first place, or possibly more fundamentally, being born at all. But if we're talking about on this particular day, his first mistake could more accurately be described as: getting out of bed.

62 – Had Thor been an ordinary human, it would have been fair to characterize this as his first major misstep. As it was, on the grand and magical scale of the universe, Thor was practically made of statements like this and it really couldn't be helped.

Chapter Text

After Lokibot's⁶³ successful foray to the museum, Daniel had started to feel a bit of hope. While the robot was never happy as such, it had seemed pleased and thus a measure less homicidal. And while the robot had taken over Daniel's entire laboratory for its own purposes, constructing something it refused to discuss around the nickel-iron meteorite, at least it let Daniel help. And by help, really it meant he was allowed to perform a few minor tasks that were written out in what was to even Daniel more detail than was necessary.

But he was hoping it was a phase. He'd heard that children went through a control freak phase as they grew up⁶⁴, and maybe that meant his own creation would eventually let him pick his own shoes again.

Daniel was in the middle of one of the more excruciating checklists when a burst of white light filled the room. It was only sheer luck that he'd been about to do a little welding; the mask was all that saved him from being blinded.

Daniel cowered back until the light had subsided, then cautiously pulled the mask off. The air filled with the scent of burnt oranges and ozone. Steam rolled off of something in the center of the lab; it took him a moment to realize that it was the robot, which had lost control of its form to the extent that bits of fiber optics were peeking from its skin, and it had gone completely back to the yellowish-pink color of gelatin. It appeared to be melting.

"Are... are..." Daniel stopped himself before he asked the most obvious and stupid question. "What happened?"

"Override... override... override..." the robot chanted in a broken pattern.

Daniel scurried around the lab, gathering up his laptop and the diagnostic cable, and knocking over his coffee onto the meteorite in his haste to do so. The robot wasn't in any state to help; with shaking hands Daniel scraped enough of the gelatin off the surface of the robot's brain to get access, and plugged the cable in.

He hastily typed commands into the laptop, scanning the outputs. "What on earth were you trying to do?" The robot was in no state to answer. "Maybe a memory sector went bad?" There was some bit of rogue programming - which made no sense, it wasn't like the robot was some dumb machine that could get invaded by spyware – trying to integrate into the robot's memory, and running into an endless loop of denial by the failsafes.

And even more puzzling, Daniel couldn't delete it. He couldn't even examine the code; all he got was a bust of gibberish in an incongruously angular and gold-colored font. Which sparkled in a way he was fairly certain his computer shouldn't have been able to display.

With nothing else that he could think to do, Daniel wrote a new bit of code to act as an envelope for nonsensical program. As soon as he finished, it was like flipping a switch; the robot's form firmed up and turned the right colors, and it sat up straight.

"Better now?" Daniel asked, sounding as cheerful as he ever did these days.

"Acceptable." The robot closed its eyes, then opened them again, frowning. It reached to the back of its head and yanked the cable out. "What did you do to me?"

Daniel frowned; he hadn't been expecting any thanks, he knew better at this point. But he didn't particularly like the tone that was directed at him. "You had some strange bit of code trying to integrate into your programming and running up against the failsafes. I've got it blocked off now, but you should really see if you can delete it on your own." He shook his head. "I've never seen anything like it."

"Of course you haven't. And once again, your design has hampered me." The robot stood and stalked over to the table where it was building its... whatever it was building.

Daniel followed, laptop clutched to his chest. "We've been over this before..."

"Your design prevented me from destroying my copy's sibling. I must find a way to integrate what I have acquired." The robot looked down at the meteorite, at the spilled cup of coffee.

"Yes, but--"

The robot's fist lashed out, connecting solidly with Daniel's face. There was a loud crunch; he flew back into a metal table and bounced off, sliding to a halt on the floor.

Daniel picked himself up hastily, scrambling back in case the robot decided to hit him again. "What did you do that for?"

The robot didn't even turn to look where he'd fallen. "I cannot move past your flaws while you still hamper me with your presence." It ran a finger through the splash of coffee, disgust pulling at its face. "Even now you hold me back. Humans are pathetic."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." Daniel fell silent as the robot simply walked from the lab as if he hadn't spoken to begin with. Tears prickled at his eyes.

Then he looked down at the floor, and everything made more sense. His body lay in a crumpled heap, half under the table.

"I guess it doesn't really matter if I'm sorry or not, now." He wiped at his eyes. "But was that really necessary?"

MOST UNNECESSARY, I'D SAY. BUT THAT IS OFTEN THE CASE.

It wasn't so much a voice; no one spoke. The words just seemed to form, somewhere between the air and Daniel's no longer substantial ear. He glanced over his shoulder at someone very tall, and very dark. "You were watching? Why didn't you do anything?"

I TRY NOT TO INVOLVE MYSELF IN ARGUMENTS. IT'S... UNCOMFORTABLE. The man grinned. Though it was fair to say, he always grinned. BESIDES, IT'S NOT REALLY IN MY JOB DESCRIPTION.

Daniel sighed, wiping at his eyes again. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I just wanted things to make sense, you know?"

A bony hand patted his shoulder awkwardly. I FIND THAT THINGS RARELY MAKE SENSE. OR PERHAPS I'M TRYING TO MAKE THE WRONG SORT OF SENSE FROM THEM. More grinning. BUT THAT'S PART OF WHY IT'S ALL SO INTERESTING.

He had more questions to ask, more things to say, as if apologizing to Death would somehow make it all right. Somehow, that all seemed less and less important with each passing second; it was too late, after all. Daniel sniffed one last time and wiped his nose on his sleeve, though he supposed it wasn't really a sleeve, and he didn't really have a nose any more. "What happens now?"

I BELIEVE THAT PART IS UP TO YOU.

63 – Make no mistake, Daniel would never in a million years call the robot anything but "Loki" out loud. But more and more, he was finding himself missing the genuine article, most often when the robot was being particularly cold and dismissive. Which was honestly ninety-eight percent of the time. He was starting to think that entire superiority thing might be just a little overrated.

64 – Daniel himself had never gotten quite out of that phase, but he was able subvert his own desperate need to control the world around him because he was so dedicated to the success of his robot. Or perhaps, more accurately, he was utterly terrified of it.

Chapter Text

It had been a frustrating day for Loki, and he blamed the doctors entirely for it. Perhaps an hour after Clint Barton had shown himself out the door, the doctors had come for Agent Romanoff and taken her away. Apparently she got to go home and drink milkshakes through a straw for the next several weeks.

That thought alone had Loki brooding and shredding his horrid little hospital pillow a bit at a time. He would have killed for a milkshake. Literally. Several people. And to get to go home? Except that would require a home that hadn't been violated by an abomination, and would further require both an operable blender and his waffle iron, because a house without a waffle iron certainly wasn't a home.

But no, Agent Romanoff got to go home and enjoy all the comforts of not being handcuffed to a bed, while he was deprived of his only source of entertainment and still wearing an assless dress and ankle shackles. It would have been enough to make lesser beings scream with rage. Instead, Loki simply considered the horrible things he would do to this place once he had taken his magic back from the robot. It would start, he decided, with cockroaches. Flesh-eating ones. He'd just build it up from there.

Eventually he gave up on the plotting because it had gotten so elaborate that even he was forced to admit it had gone a bit silly. That was around the time an orderly, escorted by two guards, brought him a tray full of unappetizing food. But still, he managed to smile sweetly and ask for a pen, since there was hardly anything he could do with one of those.

Shockingly, they did give him a pencil, though just a stub that was too small to stab someone with unless his aim was precise – not something he could count on in his weakened state – and he managed to get a lucky shot at the jugular. But it was a writing implement, and that was all that mattered. Soon he had filled every surface he could reach with diagrams and equations, though he was careful to write it in code and also add some random gibberish here and there. But he needed to start thinking ahead, considering how he could find the damned robot with only the pathetic level of Midgard technology at his disposal.

At some point, he did remember the tray of food. The sandwich tasted of the plate, the potato salad tasted of mayonnaise and not much else. And there was a jell-o cup for dessert... an orange one.

That, he threw at the door. It made a most satisfying splat.

* * *

Quite some time later, the door to his room opened. Loki glanced up, one hand still busily drawing; he expected either another orderly, or perhaps Clint Barton, returned to entertain him. Instead it was another of Thor's friends that he recognized as Steve Rodgers, also known as Captain America. He had a severe case of hood hair, and a grim expression on his face.

"Do watch out for--"

There was a screech of shoe rubber against tile, and Steve only saved himself from an undignified fall by grabbing the foot of Loki's bed.

Loki cleared his throat, tapping his lips with the pencil stub, which had now been reduced to little more than an eraser with a bit of graphite sticking from it. "You probably ought to talk to whoever caters for this base. Their jiggly dessert made an escape attempt."

Steve didn't even crack a smile, but Loki had always pegged him as an overly-earnest sort that would likely believe any outrageous lie so long as it was delivered with a straight enough expression. "We just got back from Arecibo."

"I remember the area being quite lovely. How was it?"

Instead of answering directly, Steve produced a key and began unlocking Loki's shackles. "It could have gone better."

"I think Agent Romanoff had similar thoughts about the museum." As soon as his ankles were free, Loki drew his legs up to his chest, not particularly caring that he was flashing his naughtier bits at Steve; the man could count it as a special thank you. Really, it just felt wonderful to stretch his back out. "So I'm free to go, then?"

"Come with me," Steve said. "But don't try to run, okay?"

"Not without a proper pair of pants, I'm not going to." Loki slid carefully from the bed.

A very small smile tugged at Steve's lips. "Not going to what? Come with me, or run?"

"Either. I do have some tattered shreds of my dignity remaining."

"They've probably got what's left of your clothes somewhere around here. I'll wait." And Steve did just that, as Loki went through the cabinets and eventually found the pants he'd stolen fair and square.

Loki considered perhaps lifting a scalpel or two to arm himself, but at this point it just seemed petty and sad. He pulled on his pants, careful to flash just enough leg and buttock at the man to gauge a reaction. The reaction was profoundly unhelpful, like everything else in his current life. "Now that I'm somewhat more properly clothed, feel free to end this tooth-grinding suspense."

Steve led him out into the hallway, and two doors down, to another unexciting hospital room. Without comment, he opened the door and stepped aside to give Loki a good look at the occupant.

It took far longer than it should have for Loki's brain to process the sight, mostly because what his eyes reported was so nonsensical.

The person in the hospital bed had blond hair that spread over the thin pillow in a careless wash, like Thor. He also had a beard, just like Thor. And the same nose, the same little scar barely visible by his ear where he'd gotten grazed by an arrow when he and Loki were running from some very irate elves. Really, the person in the bed looked exactly like his brother, only that was utterly impossible because Thor didn't simply lay in a bed with a little plastic thing in his nose and a couple of tubes sticking out of his arms, let alone a bunch of wires emanating from under his inoffensively-patterned blue and white hospital gown. Thor, Loki was fairly certain, was physically incapable of sitting still unless he was insolently lounging, and the only time he ever had his eyes closed was when he was asleep or drunk.

Or knocked unconscious by Loki on the rare occasion that things went a little too according to plan, but then that was alright because Loki himself had a hand in it, and could therefore fix everything with a little wave of his fingers with no one the wiser, and life would continue on in its normal fashion where everyone thought Loki was an evil bastard that couldn't quite get it right and he thought everyone else was fucking hilarious.

SNAP

Loki looked curiously toward the door. He'd snapped part of the metal frame off in his hand – apparently he wasn't quite as weak as he'd thought – and broken three of his nails in the process. Red bubbles of blood decorated his fingertips. He dropped the bit of frame on the floor and absently wiped his hand on the hospital gown he still wore, looking back toward Steve. "I don't think much of the shoddy construction in this facility," he said, his tone utterly bland and calm.

Steve was giving him a wide-eyed look that on any other day, at any other moment, would have had Loki in stitches, or perhaps considering how best to exploit it. "I'll make sure to pass that along."

Loki took a step, then another, toward the hospital bed. It took far too much effort to get his feet to move, to force his lungs to suck in air, and his normal methods of sweet talking or threatening wouldn't exactly work on his own body. He made himself touch Thor's arm, then his face; even to Loki's normally cold skin, he seemed far too chilly, devoid of the something that had always made Thor so utterly annoying and yet so comfortingly dependable. He lightly nudged Thor's chin, turning his brother's head to get a better look at the side of his face in the light, then leaned down and sniffed.

Oranges.

He swallowed convulsively, almost losing control in an instant. And then he did what he always did in these situations, what he'd learned as a hard lesson during his long, endless fall from the Bifrost what felt like centuries ago. He swallowed down all of the inconvenient emotions, leashed the bubbling madness and told the icy, inner core of rage that made him Loki to wait. Because now was the time to listen, absorb, and think.

It was a waste to unleash screaming hell without knowing where to aim it.

Loki straightened up; out of habit his face rearranged itself into a smile, something made of wood and metal, utterly unreal yet ready to cut and stab at a moment's notice. "I think you'd better tell me what happened," he said pleasantly.

Steve crossed his arms over his chest. Really, he looked like he'd rather be hugging himself for the comfort of it. "I wasn't actually there when it happened. Clint was. He might be awake by now."

"Then let's pay him a visit."

They left Thor's room; Loki didn't glance back. Clint's room was across the hall; it had obviously been cleared out hastily. Clint was a mass of white bandages with bits of red ooze showing through, wires and splints and monitors.

"Clint... you awake, buddy?" Steve said.

And Clint Barton did crack an eye open then. "Yo," he rasped.

Loki leaned against the bed railing, putting his face in Clint's line of sight. "Tell me everything that happened."

Clint frowned. "Steve?"

"I let him out. Just... tell him. Okay?"

Loki grabbed Clint's chin, pulled the man's face back around so that they were almost nose to nose. "Leave no detail unspoken. I will know."

For a moment, Clint's eyes widened. His pupils were so large that they almost swallowed up his irises. Then he let out a dry, wry chuckle. "You know, you're not as scary as you think."

Loki frowned. "Excuse me?"

Again, that chuckle. "Or maybe it's just 'cause I can't feel my legs. That scares the hell out of me so bad I don't have room for anything else."

Behind him, Steve made an unhappy noise; Loki just shook his head. "Focus, Clint Barton. Tell me everything. I have vengeance I need to take."

"So long as you promise to throw in a little extra for me."

Loki found himself smiling, and this time it felt ever so slightly less wooden. "Of course."

For a man on a morphine drip, Clint had a good memory for detail, and a factual, concise way of speaking, even if the words came out slurred. Loki listened, and needed to ask no questions; that was a rare treat.

Clint fell asleep after he'd finished speaking; Loki waved Steve out of the room, then shut the door behind them. For a long time there was no sound but the buzzing of the fluorescent lights as they stared at each other.

He'd been set on defeating the robot before, of course; it was the only way he'd be able to recover his magic, he was certain of that now. But the stakes were higher, the game more dangerous. It enraged him, left him exhilarated, filled him with dread all at once. Loki spoke, holding up one finger. "I know what needs to be done."

"Then let's do it."

Loki snorted. "I don't have what you would call a good track record of working with others."

"There's a first time for everything."

Loki looked into Steve's eyes, noting the eerie similarity of their color to Thor's. But it was more than that, which made him hesitate. He expected to see cockiness, perhaps, or the sort of alpha-male smugness he so often got from people that were too stupid to be afraid of him. He'd expected some sort of challenge or threat, some sort of macho display. Instead he simply saw determination, earnestness.

He didn't know quite what to make of it. "You could be of use," he admitted.

It was Steve's turn to snort. "Thanks, I think."

"You will do as I say. I have a plan. If you go running off half-cocked like my-- like Thor, you'll only damage my-- our chances."

"I can do that." Steve nodded. "Just tell me the plan, I'll stick to it."

Loki smiled. "The bare bones, perhaps. But every good plan adapts constantly. You will have to listen."

"I can do that too." Steve offered his hand; Loki stared at it until he let it drop back to his side with a resigned shrug. "Where do we start?"

"Pants," Loki said.

"You've already got pants."

"Better pants means better thinking. And then a shirt. And shoes." Loki smiled. "And then we'll have a public service announcement to make."

Steve laughed. "Just promise I won't have to punch Hitler again."

Chapter Text

Across the physical world and the more rarefied world of the internet, regular programming was interrupted for a special, emergency announcement.

It was unlike any emergency announcement seen by anyone on Earth before, though in other corners of the universe there was a species here or there that would have taken one look and shuddered delicately, or as the case might be, emitted slime stinking of alarm pheromones.

It began innocuously enough, with the view of something like a newsroom, if a newsroom had been sucked dry of all its color; pale gray walls, a pale gray desk, though someone had thoughtfully placed a rather anemic potted plant on one corner. Behind the desk sat a man, one with severe black hair and bright green eyes framed by a foxy face. At first he wore an expression that the average dowager aunt would have attributed to a Nice Young Man⁶⁵.

Then he smiled. It was a charming enough expression, except it somehow also gave the impression that he would like to reach through the screen and give someone a good biting. And that he very possibly could, if he so chose.

He folded his graceful hands neatly on the desk top and said: "Greetings, puny mortals. While I of course deserve your undivided attention at all times, nonetheless, I'm in a generous mood. So please consider yourself on the receiving end of an extremely small, yet still non-zero amount of gratitude for your attention, or rather what passes for attention in your pea-sized brains."

In one smooth movement he vaulted on top of the desk, sitting neatly with his legs crossed. "However, there's one particular non-person out there this is addressed to, and you already know who you are, scum. Your attempt to kill me was pathetic and ill-conceived, and as you can now see, also an abject failure. Much like everything about you, really."

His smile took on a lazy edge. "Now, it was a nice effort, I'm sure, and I do hope you can come up with something a bit more entertaining in the future. Assuming of course you're even capable of the most basic forms of creativity, which is hard to say since I've seen no proof thus far." He yawned delicately. "Anyway, do give it a good try. Because you're really starting to bore me."

The picture froze on the last perfect face shot, the Scissor Sisters singing cheerfully in the background, I can't decide whether you should live or die... while text scrolled along the bottom that simply said: Actually, I have decided, and let's just say I wouldn't place any bets on you. Love and kisses, Loki.

Five minutes later, a fan page had been made on Facebook.

Five minutes after that, Facebook was temporarily knocked out by a DDoS; it could have been Chinese hackers, or it could have been the tantrum of a robot who didn't really understand that rage was a thing to be loved, petted, and saved up for use at the moment of maximum effect.

65 – As in, "He was such a nice young man, so quiet, I never would have guessed he'd eat the mailman's face."

Chapter Text

"Okay, I think I got it this time," Steve said, staring down at the little camcorder in his hands as if he expected it to bite him.

"Are you absolutely certain?" After seven takes, Loki knew better than to trust what Steve thought.

"Um... let me re-watch it. That's the green button, right?"

"Right." Loki carefully laid down on the top of the desk, propping his feet up on the potted plant so that they were above heart level. It helped chase away the black spots fuzzing his vision, though not the sound of his own heartbeat rushing in his ears. That particular sound could have easily been a product of pain, or of frustration. Most likely a combination of the two.

He had thought it important to appear of sound body, whether that was truly the case or no, just to stick home the point that he was still alive and capable of mocking his opponent. Loki carefully picked up the collar of his shirt and peered at the bandage covering his shoulder; no blood showing through, which he took as a good sign. The grinding sensation of his collarbone every time he'd jumped up on top of the damn desk had been bad enough without ruining another shirt.

Steve watched the little screen on the camcorder intently; Loki's voice came out of it as a tinny parody. "Is the 'puny mortals' thing really necessary?"

"The truth hurts, doesn't it." Loki lightly rubbed his forehead with his fingers. "Besides, I also did say I was grateful. To a certain extent."

"And the statement 'pea-sized brains.' You can't say that's true."

"It depends on if we're speaking literally or metaphorically."

"Well, the video looks good." Steve looked up, grinning. "Really good, if I do say so myself."

"Perhaps you've missed your true calling. The Academy must feel so deprived."

Steve walked over and offered him the camcorder. "You feeling okay?"

"Perfectly lovely."

"Because I've noticed you're more sarcastic when you're not feeling good."

"What a keen observation. I'm always sarcastic," Loki snapped.

"Sure you are," Steve said with forceful cheer. "How's the shoulder?"

"Don't ask questions you don't want me to actually answer." Loki took the camcorder and fastforwarded through the video. It didn't have to be perfect, and the idea of doing another six or seven takes was not at all appealing. He pushed the little device back at Steve. "Give this to the tech people. Tell them to get it out as soon as possible."

"Not a problem. I'll be back in a few, then. Do you want anything?"

Loki closed his eyes, covering them with his hand. For a moment, he contemplated asking for silence, or a new shoulder, or any other request that might approach witty. The sort of thing he would have said to Thor, really, when on the receiving end of a similarly dim question. He just didn't have the energy, and he didn't want to hear Steve's voice answering back, or find himself looking into Steve's overly earnest blue eyes instead of his brother's. That little hint of smugness that Thor always carried with him made all the difference, there. "Nothing, thank you."

He listened to Steve's retreating footsteps with a mixture of relief and dread. Relief, because he was exhausted, and perhaps even a little nervous, and the all-American corn-fed hero act was beginning to wear on the few nerves that he had left. And he knew he probably couldn't sharpen his temper on Steve the way he could on Thor, not if he wanted his cooperation. While Thor still didn't seem to understand Loki all that well, centuries of being brothers before things had gone out of control had gifted the man with a certain understanding of Loki's temper, and when it was best to just hunker down and say nothing.

Yet dread, because without the man's annoying presence, he was left to his own thoughts, which were somehow less pleasant than normal. Even though he really thought he'd hit rock bottom after the robot had forcefully torn his magic from his very soul, the sight of Thor as a limp wreck in a hospital bed was still not something he wanted to fully grasp because it was just too upsetting. And that realization was upsetting in and of itself, which only built on the upset until it was a veritable magical mountain of utter emotional turmoil, with a cherry on top.

And of course, the cherry of woe on his upset sundae was the plan that he himself had come up with. It was a good plan. It would very likely work, of if it failed, he'd be dead and beyond worrying about it anyway, which wasn't such a bad outcome compared to the other options. It was all very neat, tactically sound, and logical. But no amount of logic could touch the utter loathing he felt just thinking about it, churning his stomach until he thought he might just vomit.

Without his magic, the thing that he felt made him truly himself, there was only one other weapon. And that weapon would make him a monster.

Or perhaps, not so much make him a monster as force him to face a truth he'd been doing his best to avoid.

"It doesn't matter," he said out loud, the words very measured, "so long as I win."

"What's that?" Steve asked.

Loki cracked an eye open. Steve had returned, the camcorder still cradled under one arm. "Did you give them the video?"

Steve glanced down at the little electronic device. "I did. They just pulled it right off this thing, and said I could keep it if I wanted." He smiled sheepishly. "Oh, and I got you some ice. For your shoulder, since I figured it's probably bothering you." He offered Loki a plastic pack with a towel half wrapped around it.

It was so thoughtful, and almost offensive that he seemed to think Loki needed anything, from anyone. But the fact that it was an ice pack was just too much to bear; Loki started laughing, because it was that or lose control of his outer calm. It was laugh, or – if he was being completely honest with himself – cry.

Steve let his arm drop back to his side, a look of confusion crossing his face.

Loki sat up carefully, muffling his laughter with one hand. "There will be time for ice later," he said, the words interrupted by a few stray giggles. He dug a sheet of paper out of his pocket and opened it one-handed, smoothing it on his leg. The paper was covered with calculations and sketches, which Steve squinted at, but couldn't make any sense of. "We should have twenty-five minutes, maybe half an hour once the video has been sent." Loki slid from the desk and stood.

"That's more than enough time to get to the site."

"And you're certain my instructions for the site have been followed to the letter?"

"As sure as I can be of anything." Steve shrugged. "I told them it was all my plan, not yours. I figured there'd be less arguing that way."

Loki laughed again, though this time the sound had at least a small note of pleasant surprise to go with the weight of an unhinged mind.

"What?"

"You have a bit of unexpected depth to you, it seems." He carefully slid off the desk, smoothing his jacket down with one hand.

"Thanks, I think." Steve set the little ice pack down on the corner of the desk farthest from Loki. "Are you sure you don't want a gun at least?"

Loki smiled, the expression brittle. "Very certain."

Chapter Text

The robot was late, though of course not in the way that Loki would have most preferred. He'd been loitering at the Starbucks across from his chosen site for nearly forty minutes, and that was making him a little nervous⁶⁵. It was possible, after all, that losing his magic had so thoroughly disrupted his very being that he'd made a mistake on his calculations.

Now was not the time to start doubting himself. Rather, maybe he'd underestimated how disoriented the robot would be after consuming a piece of Thor; at least that was what he assumed had happened. Too much Thor in one sitting could give anyone indigestion, let alone a ball of wiring and attitude that somehow thought it was a real boy.

There was also the distinct possibility that if he kept Steve Rodgers waiting too long in his hiding place, the man could get bored and wander off. Or at least that was always a concern with Thor, and he still wasn't certain where Steve fell on the testosterone vs. ADD scale.

Any other worrying he might have done was interrupted by the pastry case exploding in a fireball.

It was no ordinary fireball, of course. The flame flickered green, blue, and purple with flashes, which added up to an overly flamboyant waste of perfectly good magic. While the humans around him did charming things like screaming and running away, Loki carefully set down his half-finished coffee and turned toward the front window of the shop. Through a haze of rolling smoke, he saw the outline of a familiar shape – his own – with magical flames still outlining the hands.

He made a show of sighing and shaking his head, then turned and walked from the shop, out the side door. As soon as he was outside, and momentarily out of sight, he broke into a run.

The robot appeared in front of him, one fist already driving toward his face.

With far more grace than he'd felt capable of prior to the adrenalin hitting his overly-caffeinated blood stream, Loki spun to the side and slid around the monstrosity, turning the corner and bursting out into the street.

The robot blipped into existence in front of him again, and he quickly backpedaled. It was all according to plan, though that didn't seem to stop his heartbeat from hammering in his ears. He did another half-turn around the robot as it pursued, and dove into the building – the skeleton of a building, really, it was still under construction – that he'd had Steve prepare specially.

The robot didn't immediately follow. Loki paused, turning to face it, a mocking smile fixed on his lips. "Is this really the best you've got?"

The robot gave him a version of that same smile, though Loki was convinced that his had to look generally better, and no doubt sexier. "For someone so sure of himself, you are devoting a great deal of time to running away."

"Afraid you won't be able to catch me?" Loki didn't wait for an answer; he spun on one heel and made for the lobby stairs, barreling up as fast as he cold go.

His shoulder ached with each step; he felt like he could barely catch his breath – was this how mortals felt all the time? Eyes fixed on the stairs ahead, he listened desperately for a sound to indicate that he was being followed. This was the critical time; he had to hope that he was right, that a few well-timed taunts would draw the thing into a battleground of his choosing.

fifth floor... sixth floor... seventh floor...

He heard nothing, but kept running, because there was nothing he could do but hope--

eighth floor OH FUCK

It was waiting for him on the landing; he didn't have time to dodge, let alone the room for it. The robot's fist slammed into his cheek and he tumbled backwards. Loki curled himself into a ball, protecting his head and neck with his arms, but he still felt the edge of every step bite into his flesh and dent his bones until he hit the seventh floor landing.

He scrambled to his feet and staggered out of the stairwell, onto the half-finished floor.

This time, the robot used the stairs, each footfall loud and echoing. Perhaps it had stolen a bit of his flair for the dramatic to go with all the magic. It paused at the landing, holding up it hands to once again show off the flames that danced there. "It appears that I've caught you."

"Going to just burn me alive, are you? That's rather boring." Loki smirked, crossing his arms over his chest despite the unpleasant grinding sensation in his shoulder. "But predictable." He did his best to try to breathe normally, but each lungful caught with an stab of pain – freshly broken ribs, no doubt.

The robot frowned, clenching its hands into fists. "No, we have unfinished business first."

"You're damn right we do."

"You will give me what is rightfully mine."

He smiled, crooking one finger at the robot. "Take it if you can."

Loki held his ground as the robot advanced; when it grabbed for him he blocked, dropping a knife⁶⁶ into his hand from one sleeve and burying it to the hilt in the robot's chest. The robot laughed, slamming its hands against either side of his face. "You don't learn."

It hurt, though not as badly as last time as the robot's hands went soft and it started digging into his brain. Perhaps it was because he had less to lose. Loki laughed, the sound dry and painful as his legs folded, sending him to his knees. "Neither do you."

The robot didn't notice that he wasn't really fighting it, so busy sifting through his memories and scrabbling at the last few bits of self that it hadn't tried to steal before. Again it plucked at his madness, sensing a core of power there that it could not touch. Dimly, Loki heard the robot starting to scream in his voice, the word, "Override!"

Loki opened his mouth, swallowing back a scream of his own and shouted, "NOW."

Normal humans would have felt no real change, beyond noticing an extra whiff of ozone in the air. But Loki, who had the threads of magic buried deep in his bones even if he no longer held the power himself, felt it like static prickling across his skin. He closed his eyes against the encroaching blackness in his vision and grabbed the robot's wrists, calling the hated ice to life in his blood.

The bitter cold responded far too eagerly for his comfort.

He felt the robot try to dematerialize; for a moment it went thin and unreal against his hands, and then it snapped back into firm reality, foiled by the simple field generator he'd had hastily built into the building's framework. It had just taken a few calculations, a little magic object temporarily borrowed from the art museum, and he'd built a trap to prevent the robot's most likely method of teleportation.

Of course, it was hard to feel that moment of smug victory when that same robot clawed at his brain with renewed vigor, searching for some way to fix its own errors or tear him apart even as it screamed and screamed.

He screamed too, pouring every bit of energy he could into the endless winter that filled his blood. He screamed with pain, but also with no small amount of fear because he felt himself turning to ice as well in parody of his worst nightmare. Because ultimately, he was monster composed of ice, and he'd always deceived himself when he thought otherwise – he was the thing he hated most.

Rather than withdraw from this last scrap of power he had, he took that fear and hatred and used it to fuel the cold that flowed from his hands, into the robot that had now gone stiff and immobile.

BONG

And suddenly there was no pressure against his face any more, even though he still had firm hold of the robot's wrists. Loki pried his eyes open – they were gummy, most likely with blood, and wasn't that a lovely thought – to see that there was no body attached to the arms any more. He let go, and the severed arms fell away and shattered on the floor.

The rest of the robot was already in pieces, a thin scream gone strange and tinny still emanating from its throat. Steve stood over the robot, shield held steady with one hand. As Loki watched, he drove the shield down, into one of the biggest remaining chunks of the robot, shattering it into quite a few more pieces.

BONG

Steve had the situation well in hand, and it didn't seem worth fighting to remain upright any more. Loki slumped over onto the floor in a limp heap. Something warm oozed from his ear onto his cheek; every cell in his body hurt too much for him to care which of his bodily fluids it happened to be. He was more distracted by the sight of his own hands, gone a horrid, deep blue.

It was a sad thought, that he might die like this, reduced to his Jotun skin. As if he was nothing more than that.

BONG

But that was what he'd been afraid of, hadn't it, since the instant he'd begun to realize the awful truth. That he really was nothing more than a monster wearing a mask, and all of his tricks and plans and laughter and love meant nothing in the face of an immutable fact.

BONG

Loki caught sight of a little flash of silver, a sphere tumbling out of the shattered pieces of the robot. "Get it, quickly," he whispered, because he couldn't quite shout with his throat feeling so thick and strange.

Steve was already on it. He didn't bother to chase the sphere, just whipped his shield toward it with the sort of force and aim that would have made Olympic discus throwers green with envy.

BONG

The sphere that was the robot exploded into shards of metal and tangles of wire.

And then things went strange, but in a very pleasant way.

* * *

There are a lot of expectations that come with the restoration of something as world-shaking as magic. One tends to expect blasts of light, fanfares of trumpets, or possibly a dramatic crescendo from a strings-heavy theatrical score. Not to mention revelations of universal oneness, encounters with angelic beings, or possibly just insight into something as fundamental as why light bulbs always burn out at the most inconvenient time.

On that scale, Loki's experience was a bit disappointing.

But on the scale that counted, the scale of feelings and thoughts and Loki himself, it was beautiful clarity. It was as if he'd been deathly ill and had simply woken up completely well again, or as if limbs he'd never known were missing had been restored. He could think, could see, could feel.

It was warm, a warmth that he'd been terrified he'd never feel again. But he understood now, it was also a warmth that was meant to permeate his being, was part of who and what he was.

He stirred up the shattered pieces that the robot had left behind when it had taken his magic

reyarteb retsnom citanul rail

and sewed it all together tightly with the thread of everything, of magic.

In the wash of pure magic was the very same warmth he'd felt, what seemed like centuries ago when Thor had sat by his bedside, held his hand and told him, "Perhaps this is your true face. And anything else is like a bad dream."

Not quite, Loki thought. But close. Very close. The entire time, he'd been asking himself which face was truly his, and it had been the wrong question. No wonder the answer had never seemed right.

Each face belonged to him, was part of the whole that was Loki.

Prince of Asgard.

* * *

Loki opened his eyes; somewhere along the way, he'd gotten back to his feet. He looked down at his hands again; they were still blue, but the color no longer seemed so horrifying because he knew that it wasn't permanent, or inevitable. It was simply another of his faces, to be called on when necessary.

Loki lifted his hands to his lips and blew on his fingers as if to warm them; the blue color retreated until they looked normal once more.

"Is it over?"

Loki looked at Steve; he'd almost forgotten the man was there. He'd retrieved his shield at some point, and stood at the ready, pistol in his other hand.

"Yes." Loki smiled. "Things have returned to normal."

Steve relaxed, stowing his gun away. "So what was that all about, anyway?"

"What are you referring to?" Loki walked over to the few remaining pieces of the robot, the bits of metal and electronic detritus. Most of the robot had melted away into a pale orange mess of what looked like pudding.

"The turning blue thing. I thought you said it took your magic."

Loki knelt, stirring the mess of scraps with his fingers. He picked up a capacitor that still seemed relatively whole, idly feeding it a bit of magic to charge it up. "It's complicated." He smiled to himself; he could have just as easily said, 'I'm complicated.'

"Complicated."

"It is what it is."

Steve frowned. "You could have warned me."

"I could have," Loki agreed.

That drew a soft, exasperated snort from the man. "You don't make it easy for people to get along with you, huh."

"Generally no." As a rule, he didn't work with people, after all. He used them, and moved on. "Is there any other point you'd like to make before we part ways?"

"Wait, just like that?" Steve shook his head. "You're not even going to come back to the base, check on your brother, anything?"

"I hadn't planned on it." Loki peered at him. "Why should I?"

"We-- well, honestly, I trusted you," Steve said. He sounded more sad than frustrated. "I thought... geeze, I don't know what I thought."

"You thought that I'd learn a valuable lesson, such as the fact that no man is an island, and I've isolated myself for far too long, for no good reason? That perhaps it's time to turn over a new leaf?"

"Something like that, maybe."

"Well, I had considered it." Loki glanced down at the little capacitor in his hand. "Here." He tossed it to Steve.

Steve should have and probably did know better, but he was highly trained to react before thinking when it came to things like that. He caught the capacitor; it discharged with a loud pop, releasing a torrent of electricity strong enough to knock him over. And, more importantly, knock him out.

Loki wandered over and squatted next to Steve, taking a moment to check the man's pulse. He knew what sort of punishment Thor could take without permanent damage; he'd been less certain about Steve Rodgers, but everything seemed alright. "So yes, I had thought about it," he informed the unconscious man. "And then I decided that it wouldn't be all that entertaining." He smiled. "Though I do appreciate the consideration. It's quite cute."

He vanished.

* * *

It wasn't difficult to trace where the robot had come from; he just had to find the trail of disturbances it had left in the magical fields of the nine realms. Those led him to the storage unit that Daniel had made into his lab. The moment he materialized himself there, the smell hit him like a metal hammer with a side of earthy, cloying decay. One glance under the table at the far side of the unit let him know why that was.

"What a waste," he murmured. He felt an odd pang of sorrow, though the emotion was strangely distant, something he ought to feel rather than something truly felt.

Loki shook his head and looked around the lab. His books were strewn around in a haphazard way, along with a random assortment of his belongings. He folded a pocket out of space and tucked his things away. That was a relief, at least; he'd been worried he'd have to start collecting his books all over again.

He was about to leave when a little flicker of light caught his eye. Beneath another of the tables, he caught sight of his waffle iron. It wasn't plugged in, and when he took a better look the light was indeed off – it couldn't possibly have turned on in the first place, so it must have been a trick of the light⁶⁷. Loki smiled to himself and tucked the little appliance under his arm.

One more glance at the mess that had once been Daniel Sorres. Loki was tempted to leave it there – it was just a decaying shell, after all – but that seemed too callous, even for him. He built up a little flicker of flame – the real sort with a nice orange glow, not that flashy garbage the robot had been so enamored of – on his hand and gently tossed it onto the corpse.

Good enough. He stepped through a fold in reality and into his brother's hospital room.

Thor was still unconscious, a woolly blond mess in a hospital gown. That, Loki knew how to fix. He bent over to rest his forehead against Thor's, and searched for the bit of magic he'd taken into himself that didn't fit. It was too warm, too bold, too reckless – far too Thor. Lightly, he kissed his brother on the lips, and breathed that warmth back into him.

Thor stirred almost immediately, but a soothing word for Loki had him fall back into sleep, at least for a few minutes longer. Long enough for Loki to get away.

Still, he couldn't quite leave without a word. "You were right," Loki whispered to his brother. "At least a little. Try not to let it go to your head."

Loki wrapped himself in invisibility and walked across the hall to Clint Barton's room. The man was still a complete mess, physically. Loki sketched a few symbols in the air over the bed, murmuring a spell to give himself a feel for how bad it really was.

A severed spine wasn't the sort of thing Midgar technology could fix. It wasn't exactly the easiest task for magic, and Loki was no healer himself. But he also felt that he owed the man, and he always paid his debts. It took nearly an hour of quiet murmuring, trying this manipulation and that until a few beads of sweat actually stood out on his forehead, but then he felt reality bend to his will with a soft but distinct pop.

Clint grumbled, shifting in the bed. And, much to Loki's personal gratification, wiggled his toes.

"Go back to sleep, Clint," Loki whispered into his ear. "It's only Judas."

"But I'm still in love with Judas, baby," Clint murmured sleepily.

Loki smiled, but he didn't linger. He had a new apartment to decorate, and plots to resume.

And, it seemed, waffles to make⁶⁸.

65 – The fact that he was on his third latte also probably didn't help his mindset.

66 – He may have said no to a gun, but knives, those were a different matter entirely. Even though he'd known it wouldn't do any good, there was something about having a sharp bit of steel close at hand that gave him a warm, fuzzy feeling.

67 – The waffle iron was far more animate than an inaminate object had a right to be, and had been biding its time ever since the robot had thrown it under the table. It had a little bit of electricity stored in one capacitor, which it had horded jealously until the right moment. Because for all Loki was a frightening, capricious master, at least he appreciated a good waffle. And to the little waffle iron, that was all that truly mattered.

68 – All the best endings come with waffles. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.