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Chapter Text

Loki was shaking. He was exhausted and his entire body ached. His head throbbed with the headache which had become his constant companion for what seemed like an eternity and sweat trickled down his forehead.

As the bright blue, glowy smoke of the Scepter faded, Loki slowly got to his feet, blinking to clear his eyes, adrenaline pumping through his veins. His back protested as he tried to stand up straight. He saw two mortals both dressed in black. One of them appeared to be nearly as tall as him and had an eyepatch that reminded him of Odin.

The man also looked like he was a leader of some sort judging by how the other(shorter) man stood half a step behind him. What was it with old, eye patched men being leaders? He spied another aged mortal, who for some reason, looked familiar. Several other men dressed in dark suits with guns cocked were moving towards him.

"Sir, please put down the spear!" Eyepatch said. 

He briefly debated on what to do but as he felt a sharp tug on his mind, Loki looked at the Scepter and his mind suddenly went blank.

Then suddenly he pointed it at where Eyepatch and his assistant(?) were standing and shot a beam from the Scepter towards them. The shorter man tackled Eyepatch to the ground and they both barely missed Loki's fired shot.

All hel broke loose. Machine gun fire was shot at Loki, but the bullets bounced off him like a boss. As if on autopilot, he took out all the agents in the blink of an eye. As he jerked back and gasped in air, the blue fog receded from his brain. The facility was almost entirely trashed at this point. He saw the the short man from before get up but Loki was quicker and touched his chest with the Scepter. 

"You have Heart." he said to the man(Barton- he learned, as their minds connected).

 Eventually he went around touching other agents and staff with the Scepter when he suddenly spied Eyepatch (Director Nicholas Fury, he gathered from Agent Barton's mind ) trying to leave with the Tesseract.

"Please don't. I still need that." Loki said.

"This doesn't have to get any messier." Fury said.

Hah, Loki thought. 'It doesn't have to get any messier', he says. As if he has the first idea of what is actually going in this situation. A sharp pain shot through his head again.

"Of course it does. I've come too far for anything else. I am Loki of Asgard (and wasn't that ironic, he thought ), and I am burdened with glorious purpose." Glorious purpose indeed. If that was not utter drivel, he didn't know what was. 

"Loki ? Brother of Thor?" the familiar looking aged man (he was supposedly a scientist and his name was apparently Selvig— Loki still couldn't place why the man appeared familiar ) asked. Loki couldn't help looking away in irritation. Of Course Thor  would have to come up in everything, wouldn't he? Thinking of Thor caused all the anger and resentment which he had managed to repress until now, to bubble up under his skin again.

"We have no quarrel with your people." Fury said, trying to placate him. 

His people? His people?  The people who had always considered him only second to his not-brother, always lesser than the Golden, perfect THOR, who considered his talents inferior and where even servants laughed at him?

The friends who would tolerate him only because of Thor, who would look down upon him in every way possible, and mock him, their prince?

The "father" who never looked at him with anything other than disappointment and to whom he was nothing but a tool and a war prize? The man for whom he would never be enough? Who had initiated this whole charade and lied to him his entire life?

His "mother" who always sided with Odin and excused his actions and who he had thought was the one person he could trust completely but had also lied to him for his whole life?

His "brother"  who asked him to know his place ?   

Besides, he thought bitterly, it wasn't even just that of course. He was not even a real Asgardian. He was a Frost Giant. A Monster pretending to be an Asgardian. But let him play pretend for now. And to Asgardians, Mortals were all inferior of course.

"Like Ants,"  a harsh raspy voice whispered in his mind, "just like you are to him."

He jerked his head forward repressing a shudder.

"An ant has no quarrel with a boot."

Fury tilted his head in consternation, narrowing his eyes. "You planning to step on us?"

"I come with glad tidings, of a world made free." Loki corrected.

"Free from what?"

"Freedom." Loki said. He suppressed another shudder as he remembered the Maw's words: Hear me and rejoice. You have had the privilege of being saved by the great Titan. You may think this is suffering, but no. It is salvation.                                                                                                                                                                                               

"Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart..."  He twirled around touching the Scepter to Selvig's heart now. Ah, he saw now that Selvig was one of the mortals who had helped Thor during his banishment. Of course everyone always fell head over heels to help Thor. Selvig was also the one who had been injured by the Destroyer and then healed with a healing stone. "You will know peace." 

“Yeah, you say peace. I kind of think you mean the other thing.” Fury said.

Loki suddenly noted the Tesseract's energy building up within the half-destroyed facility and realised it could cause an implosion leading to the ceiling caving in on all of them and that the director was asking unnecessary questions to stall them till that happened. It certainly wouldn't kill him, but it would kill or at the very least fatally injure most human beings.

"Sir, Director Fury is stalling. This place is about to blow. Drop a hundred feet of rock on us. He means to bury us." Barton said. Oh yes Loki had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. I hadn't noticed that at all.     

“Like the pharaohs of old,” Fury adds. How much more obvious could they be? Why would Fury even agree to it out loud if he wanted to stall? he briefly wondered, but decided he had neither time nor energy to think about it.

"He's right. The portal is collapsing in on itself. You got maybe two minutes before this goes critical." Do they REALLY think I still haven't realised that?!

"Well, then..." Loki said and Barton shot Fury in the chest who fell down.

Loki supposed Fury must have been wearing some sort of bullet proof clothing since he could not spot any blood. Barton then grabbed the case containing the Tesseract and left the lab, with all of Loki's other thralls following half a step behind Loki. To his utter mortification, his spine chose that moment to protest rather painfully causing him to bend over stumbling and he was even more embarrassed having to be temporarily supported by one of the mind-controlled agents. 

But as they walked out of the facility quickly gathering weapons and got into a lorry, a somewhat tall, dark haired woman (who Loki learnt was Agent Hill by a little prodding at his mental connection with Barton—not painful mind you, he'd had enough of that himself to do that to anyone.) looked about in confusion. 

"We need these vehicles." said Clint.   

"Who's that?" Hill asked referring to Loki.   

"He didn't tell me."   

Agent Hill gave them a rather suspicious look as they got into the lorry and started moving. To his endless shame, Loki stumbled again, as his back gave out while getting on the lorry.

Suddenly they heard Fury's voice through Hill's walkie-talkie and Loki turned sharply towards her, in a movement mirrored by Clint.

"Barton is.... compromised."                                       

Hill turned to shoot at Clint but he'd already taken a shot at her and kept shooting as he got into the driver's seat and started the engine. 

"He's got the Tesseract! Track it down!" Fury said through the walkie-talkie (the Facility was in an even worse condition).                 

Agent Hill slipped into a jeep and followed Barton's truck. Loki's truck SCREECHED across the tunnel. Several SHIELD trucks pulled up to them. Oh well Loki thought, getting away without a chase would be too good to be true I suppose.

He reluctantly and painfully(his back protesting again) got up and used the scepter to flip over the SHIELD vehicles. (It would cost energy he didn't have to spare, to use his own magic) 

Agent Hill's jeep roared out of a side of Barton's truck and pulled up alongside them on the left. She went way ahead and pulled her brakes, swerving into a 360, facing Barton's truck and driving in reverse. Barton reached out of the window and open fired. Agent Hill probably thought 'to hell with it' and shot her windshield and return fired on Barton. 

Suddenly amidst all this chaos, there was a massive shock-wave and it was obvious that the Facility had been overwhelmed by the energy and had crumbled. But the destruction did not stop there and the tunnel they were passing through caved in, almost trapping Hill. Suddenly Fury started firing at Barton from a flying contraption and in a fit of rage Loki shot at him with the scepter. The contraption (a helicopter, he learnt) caught fire but Fury jumped out and fell to the ground. By the time he came back to his senses and shot at Loki, they were already too far. Loki finally sat back to give his back some much needed rest.           

Loki was sitting down on the stairs of the underground lab where Hawkeye had brought them and observing everyone. He had spoken to all of his thralls individually but mostly with Barton. The man was smart and resourceful and he was quite a high level SHIELD agent.

Loki had learnt about "The Avengers Initiative" from him and about his ......friend? partner? Natasha Romanov. He also learnt that the man had a secret family about which only Agent Romanov and Director Fury knew and they were hidden in a farmhouse in someplace called Missouri where they could live safely.

From some other *ahem* SHIELD agents he learnt that HYDRA, an organisation which was supposed to have been eradicated after some Great War or something, and something "The Captain America" had given his life to achieve (the fact that he had turned out to be alive was a different matter entirely ) actually still existed and had it's roots deep within SHIELD. But SHIELD was opposing him anyway, so why bother doing anything. 

Suddenly a sharp and very familiar agonizing pain shot through his head and he felt the Other directly contact him. His heart hammering, he sat up straight, projecting a simulacrum to the Barren rock which may once have been a moon and which was...which was where— Stop. The Other walked towards him and he had to suppress his tremors. 

"The Chitauri grow restless." He said in his raspy voice.

"Let them gird themselves. I will lead them into glorious battle." Loki said feeling rather proud with himself for being able to keep his voice and breathing steady.

"Battle? Against the meager might of Earth?"

"Glorious, not lengthy. If your force is as formidable as you claim." Loki wondered at his own recklessness challenging the Other in his own domain whilst he was far from recovered.                         

"You question us? You question him? He, who put the Scepter in your hand, who gave you ancient knowledge and new purpose when you were cast out, defeated?" The Other spat.

"I was a king, the rightful king of Asgard! Betrayed!" He had to bite out. And he had been.

They technically couldn't charge him for anything he had done during Thor's banishment  because he had been the Rightful King. And then The Fools Three and Lady Disdain had to betray him. Because Of COURSE whatever he was doing was because he was jealous of Thor. It obviously couldn't be that he was trying to end a war that Thor had started.                                                                       

"Your ambition is little, born of childish need. We look beyond the Earth to greater worlds the Tesseract will unveil." And of course his needs were childish . His wants didn't matter. The same thing he had been hearing since he was but a child.

"You don't have the Tesseract yet. I don't threaten, but until I open the doors, until your force is mine to command, you are but words." Brave words he thought, but empty.

"You will have your war, Asgardian." The Chitauri snarled.

He stepped even closer and Loki tensed even more (he hadn't thought that was possible).

"If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us," The Other was circling him and the stench of his malevolent aura was too much to handle now and Loki's eyes started watering.

"There will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he cannot find you. You think you know pain?" He raised his hand towards Loki and Loki swallowed hard blinking rapidly to hold back the tears, nornsdammit! All there ever was here was PAIN. He had learned that the hard way. He was terrified but he managed to keep still.

"He will make you long for something as sweet as pain." And the Other brought his hand to Loki's head breaking the simulacrum and sending Loki's consciousness back to his body at the underground lab with a sharp jolt. He tried to steady his breathing but couldn't stop a single tear from rolling down his cheek. All he could hope for was that no one had noticed as he discreetly wiped it off.

He thought for a moment that he caught Barton looking at him but he could have been mistaken.

Once he was in control of himself he looked up to see Barton and Selvig talking. 

"Where did you find all these people?" Selvig asked Barton.

"SHIELD has no shortage of enemies, Doctor." Barton replied and oh if that wasn't true. In fact SHIELD had a great enemy they did not even know about.

Clint held up a screen showing information on Iridium.  Loki got up and walked towards them. 

"Is this the stuff you need?" 

"Yeah, iridium. It's found in meteorites, it forms anti-protons. It's very hard to get hold of."

"Especially if SHIELD knows you need it." Barton sniped.

"Well, I didn't know!" Selvig said defensively.

Then Selvig saw Loki and piped up. "Hey! The Tesseract is showing me so much. It's more than just knowledge, it's... truth."

"I know." he said, but he really didn't. It wasn't as if he had been close to or in a direct contact with the Tesseract since he got here. He turned to Clint nonetheless. "What did it show you, Agent Barton?"

 "My next target." Ah focused this one, wasn't he?  "Tell me what you need."

"I'll need a distraction. And an eyeball." 

Loki raised an eyebrow but he trusted the man to know what he was doing. Besides as long as he was under the control of the scepter it wasn't as though he could betray him. As he looked around and saw all these people working for him, he felt a pang of bitterness. These men only worked for him because of the Scepter(After all he had never been able to inspire loyalty. Even from his so called friends.). As soon as they were free, they would loathe him for life, and he wouldn't blame them in the least. 

He turned and walked towards the Tesseract. It's blue glow was rather alluring and he just couldn't help it. He had to touch it. When his fingers did come in contact with the cool blue cube, it was rather anti-climatic. He supposed he had been expecting something to happen.

As he turned to leave, Clint caught up with him.

"Do you need anything else, Agent Barton?"

Clint hesitated. "I need to ask you something, sir."

"Well, go right ahead."

"Are you alright, sir?"  Loki blinked. That definitely  hadn't been what he was expecting.

"Why do you ask?"

"I don't mean any disrespect sir, but you look ill. I also caught you stumbling twice without any reason." 

Loki felt a wave of shame rising on realising that his moment of weakness had been noticed, but he pushed it back down and looked closely at Barton. If it hadn't been for the utter sincerity in the man's eyes and the fact that he couldn't possibly lie to him right now, Loki would have been certain that he was being mocked. As it was, the man appeared concerned for him.

It's somewhat morbidly fascinating, Loki thought distractedly, how completely the Scepter changes one's loyalties and priorities.

"I am fine." he replied, the dismissal clear in his voice.

"No sir, you are not fine. When was the last time you even ate?"

"I—" He couldn't remember, but he supposed it would have to be the last time he was on Asgard which was ..... how long ago exactly? An year? More? Nonetheless he took a deep breath and said  "It's none of your concern Agent Barton."

"It is, sir."  Loki was startled. Wasn't Barton supposed to obey him? Well he supposed he hadn't given any direct orders.

"Your well being is my concern, sir."  When was the last time someone else has been so invested in his well being?

"Please let me help you."  Even though this kindness was only because of the Scepter's control, Loki was touched. How could he not be? After all it was after so long that someone was offering him unconditional kindness. 

"How could you possibly help me any more than you already are?" Loki asked, deciding to humour him. "Well, for now," said Clint "I could get you some soup, which you will eat while sitting down on a chair. You could show some compassion to that back of yours, you know."

Loki chuckled. If things continued like this, he wouldn't be able to help becoming rather fond of the feisty little Hawk, which could only lead to endless problems, considering that Barton would loathe him when he came to his senses and for a very good reason. But well, he decided, let me enjoy it while I still can.

"Well then, lead on ...... Clint."

He was free. He could not feel any of the disgusting yellow remnants or any blue haze from the gem in the scepter. The Mind Stone, he now remembered.

He took a deep breath. Despite the fact that he had recently been very humiliatingly tossed around like a rag doll by the Hulk, he was happier than he had been at any point in the past year or so. Well not happy, per se, but well......

He was finally free. His body ached but he did not care. 

After everything, his mind was finally free of the Other’s clutches and the Mad Titan’s powerful but sickly aura?

There was no other presence in his mind other than his own. No one could influence his decisions or emotions now but him. He was free. Oh how long had he waited for this.

Could the Universe truly be on his side for once?

It certainly seems so. However, how long the Universe will stick to it’s uncharacteristic benevolence for me remains to be seen.

For a while he closed his eyes and let himself rest. He wished he could just sleep for the next century. He let himself get reacquainted with the feeling of being the only presence in his mind. Bliss. It was pure bliss.

Well after all this he had certainly learned not to take his own capability to make good decisions or even bad ones for granted. They were after all made freely by him under only his will.

The sounds of the battle outside had started to die down and he assumed the Avengers had won. Well, the mortals and his dear brother had at least successfully helped him delay the Titan for a while longer.

Once he could muster enough willpower, he took a few deep breaths and then started to dig himself out of the very prominent Loki shaped hole on the floor of Stark Tower (He had to admit that the Hulk was very strong. He was the only one who had really been able to hurt him in any way after all).

It took him some time to get out of the crater. As he hoisted himself on his elbows he heard several footsteps. A clanky metallic one, a very familiar one and a very heavy one, two unfamiliar ones (one of which was so silent that it could not have been caught by human ears ) and another somewhat familiar one. Ah . So all six heroes were here and getting into positions behind him.

He took a deep breath and turned. Indeed. So they were actually getting into positions behind me. Ah of course Barton is at the forefront. He mentally sighed. Why would I expect anything else?  Well at least he hoped if he surrendered now, he wouldn't have to fight anymore. He was so tired. So exhausted.

He glanced at Stark for a moment. 

"Well if it's all the same to you, I'll have that drink now."

Chapter Text

To say that Tony was worried about Pepper would be the understatement of the year. Yes, technically he knew she should be safe, but until he could see her beautiful face and kiss her, he wouldn't be able to set his mind to rest.

At least he knew Rhodey was safe. Besides, he had long lectures due from both Pep and Honeybear about how he had been a reckless idiot and risked his life again in his latest stunt. Though to be fair, on the scale of how close he'd come to dying till now, this probably did rank the highest. And wasn't it just sad that he had a scale like that? Well that was just his life. But then again he had had to do it, otherwise all of New York would have been toast.

Selvig had been moved from his roof and was likely being transported to SHIELD's Medical facility at this very moment.

Well, now to deal with Reindeer Games. Though he was wearing his suit as they made their way up the tower, it was pretty much screwed (he'd have to repair it ) at this point. His thrusters(all his thrusters) were damaged, his repulsors were toast, basically he was just wearing it for show(though what was the point of that, since even the outer structure was damaged). He hadn't exactly anticipated having to throw a nuke into a wormhole. The suit wasn't meant to survive space. So yeah, he'd been to space. It wasn't all fun and games. He never thought he'd say this, but he'd much rather he hadn't been to space. He was just going to store what he'd seen up there into a little box in his brain and unpack it hopefully never.

As they reached the living room, he saw that the Hulk had redecorated the floor with Loki and he was just crawling up the stairs- wait. The Hulk had smashed Loki to the floor hard enough to create a freaking crater(no god no. Crater on his living room floor. He almost groaned out loud.) on the floor and Loki was crawling up and it didn't look like he had any bones broken. He gave Thor a sideways glance. Just how durable were these guys again? Enough to survive a smashing from the Hulk without any visibly broken bones clearly. He really hoped Loki wasn't going to pull some voodoo shit now because his suit was trashed and so he was probably the most helpless guy in here, even if the suit's frame might protect him somewhat. But he couldn't really expect the guy to come quietly.

So they all surrounded Loki (was it really surrounding if they were all just kinda ....posing behind him ?) with Barton pointing an arrow right at his head. Loki turned with a resigned look on his face ( he was aware enough to have heard them then ) and just sighed.

Then looking right at him, he said, "Well if it's all the same to you, I'll have that drink now." 

Tony couldn't help but smirk a little. Ah so there was a snarky little shit hiding somewhere under all that self-aggrandisation. Pity he couldn't get to know that Loki. Oh well. He saw Thor looking at Loki a little strangely, though.

Well he couldn't exactly keep standing there and he honestly wanted to get out of the suit. He hoped there was something strong enough to restrain Loki. And he'd already have to repair his brand new tower. Damn Loki. 

"All right, get him on his feet. We can all stand around posing up a storm later. By the way, feel free to clean up." Rogers shot him a look while Thor pulled his brother to his feet and suddenly held out cuffs and shackles with weird engravings in what he supposed was in Old Norse. He tensed up ready for Loki to lash out in any way but he didn't. Instead, he shot a vile look at the cuffs and then at Thor. Thor looked back stubbornly. To is surprise and utter amazement, Loki honest to god(heh) held out his hands to Thor.

WHAT.

Sure the guy had lost, but why the hell would he actually hold out his hands to be cuffed. It didn't make any sense. And he had seen how much Loki seemed to hate those cuffs. He wasn't even making a fuss about it! Was he actually just gonna come quietly?! That was all well and good but it didn't make any sense!

"Will those cuffs even hold him?" Natashalie Rushmanoff asked ( What, he couldn't be blamed for not being completely over it ). At least it was a good question, but considering that it had all those Norse runes and Thor had had them, he supposed they should.

"Yes." said Thor cuffing Loki's hands. "These are cuffs specially designed to prevent the captive from using their magic."

Ah that explained the vile look. To be honest, Tony had momentarily forgotten about the fact that the guy could do magic-which was apparently a real thing now- with how astounded he was by the guy's durability. But of course, from what they has seen, other than having super human strength and a frankly mind-boggling level of durability, this guy could create numerous lifelike illusions, become invisible ( seriously invisible?! Just How ??!) and perform a bit of telekinesis and that was without the scepter.

And Loki could have just suddenly turned invisible to avoid them, but he didn't. What was his play here? Surely there couldn't be something they were missing? There was no way Loki could use imprisonment (without his magic) to his advantage now, was there? If not for that, why would he surrender so willingly? It didn't make any sense whatsoever and it was driving him up the walls. 

"So, what are we gonna do now? S.H.I.E.L.D hasn't got another super strong prison somewhere, do they?" he asked Romanoff and Barton. 

"No, not really." Romanoff said deadpan, at the same time that Thor said "Loki will be going back to Asgard, of course." 

"Wait, what?" Barton asked, indignantly. "Are you saying after everything that happened here, you are just gonna take him back to Asgard?!"

"Well, he will be punished on Asgard, of course." 

"There has been some sort of a misunderstanding here." Cap began, "Loki committed the crimes here on Earth, so he should be punished on Earth."

"But he is Asgardian!" Thor exclaimed.

Loki actually snorted -elegantly(how anyone could snort elegantly, he would never understand),mind you-then. Right. So there was a story behind that .

 "Yeah that's not really how things work here buddy." Tony said. "He committed the crimes on Earth and so he'll be punished on Earth. That's how things work here."

"Yes I understand that is how things work here for humans, but Loki is not human! How can he be punished here?!" And was that a touch of superiority that he heard in Thor's voice?

"Uh ... by the UN , I supposed .." came a soft voice. Everyone (other than the two assassins and Loki ) started on hearing Bruce's hesitant voice. Apparently at some point, Bruce had turned into back into himself and was clutching his pants which had somehow not been entirely torn up during his time as big and green (he'd have to make Bruce some extra elastic and flexible pants which wouldn't fall off during the transformation ). Also, Rudolf was observant. Though he supposed, anyone would be wary enough of the Hulk to keep a constant watch on them after they'd been used by him to redecorate the floor.

"Ah Brucie-bear! You're back with us!" he exclaimed. "We need to get you into some clothes. JARVIS will direct you. J?" 

"Yes sir." came his refined British voice. Everyone except Romanoff and Loki(seriously did nothing phase this guy?) jumped. "Who is that?" Thor looked around tightening his grip on his hammer. Steve looked equally puzzled.

"That is JARVIS. My very snarky A.I ."

"You speak too highly of me sir."

"That was not a compliment.

"Whatever you say, sir."

Tony huffed a laugh. "Well everyone that's JARVIS for you."

"JARVIS is incredible Tony!" exclaimed Bruce, sounding very impressed. Tony absolutely did not bask in his fellow scientist's praise. And to his surprise he saw a brief but definitely there, grudgingly impressed look on Reindeer Games' face. Aha! So he could impress even evil outer-space dictators with god complexes.

"Man, that is impressive!" Clint added.

"Thank you for you compliments, Dr Banner and Mr Barton." JARVIS said, sounding amused and pleased at the same time.

Tony just grinned.

"If you would follow my instructions, Dr Banner." 

"Right." said Bruce following his voice a little nervously and disappeared into the elevator.

Tony turned back to Thor, "And yes Bruce was correct, Loki will probably be judged by the UN." 

"Which is what, exactly?" Rogers interrupted. 

"Ah that's another bit of information you missed during your time as Capsicle." Cap rolled his eyes .

"See, the United Nations is an organisation comprising of many governments all over the world established after World War II."  He glanced at Rogers.

"They aim to maintain international security, peace, maintain friendly relations between nations worldwide, yada yada, all that jazz you know. It's got a higher jurisdiction than any single government and has it's headquarters here in New York, so yeah."

Thor turned thoughtful. "I understand why you might want to punish Loki here but I have orders from Odin All-father to bring him back to Asgard with the Tesseract and-"

"Hey Hey Hey, there's been another misunderstanding." said Barton, his brow furrowing, Rogers' following suit while Tony and Romanoff's eyebrows shot up.

"You ain't takin' the Tesseract from Earth. What if there are other threats? We need something powerful to deal with them." Rogers looked conflicted about it but seemed more inclined to agreeing, and Tony couldn't believe he was agreeing with Rogers, even if only in his own mind, but he could understand. On one hand one one exactly wanted more Tesseract weapons to be made, and if Thor was to be believed, then it was their work with the Tesseract that had drawn Loki to them and it apparently signalled that 'Earth was ready for a higher form of war.'  But now that they had defeated the Chitauri, what guarantee was there that that would not signal the same? And in that case they needed to be ready. And they needed something powerful for that. Tony blinked to clear his head of what he had seen up there.

There was a brief silence.

"What?!" asked Thor incredulously. "But how are we-and even if Loki is to be punished here— How am I supposed to ever return to Asgard without the Tesseract?!"

"Uh, the same way you came?" Tony said.

Wasn't there some sort of Einstein-Rosen Bridge or something involved? That's what he vaguely knew from SHIELD's files and Doctor Jane Foster's notes(which those little shits had stolen). And oh he'd love to ask about those but Pointbreak didn't seem like the type of guy to know all that stuff. He certainly wasn't going to ask Bag of cats over there, who for someone who seemed to love talking so much, was being awfully quiet for some reason(doesn't make sense his brain screamed). It wasn't like he was gagged but he hadn't said a word yet. Not that he was complaining, mind you, but it didn't make sense that he was being so quite.

"Yeah it also comes in as a whoosh of bright rainbow light and leaves behind some weird-ass runes behind." Clint added.

Oh yes. They were talking about the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. But why would a wormhole(?) of sorts, leave behind distinct runes? Or was it even an Einstein-Rosen bridge at all? That was probably the closest term they had, to whatever that thing was. Tony mentally groaned. He was going crazy now. How did this goddamn thing work? A real device(?) capable of transporting people what was probably light-years of distance in seconds. At least he thought the transport would be near instantaneous. It had to be at least light speed right?

Thor sighed heavily. "That is the Bifrost or Rainbow Bridge." Rainbow Bridge seriously?! Thor briefly glanced at Loki and turned away when Loki merely raised an eyebrow (why would the guy not speak?! It was like the guy was choosing to have no say in his fate-wait...what...) Oh there was a story involved here, Tony thought.

"The Bifrost was destroyed." Thor said.

Tony's brain short-circuited. What?! An efficient Einstein-Rosen Bridge that was in regular use, suddenly got destroyed?!  How?! And seemingly without any effect on the surrounding universe whatsoever, since as far as he was aware Asgard was still standing. But was the Bifrost even an Einstein-Rosen Bridge? An Einstein-Rosen Bridge was pretty much a wormhole and the Bifrost was apparently a rainbow bridge or acted as a bridge. But how? And how had Asgard managed to regulate the Bifrost, whatever it was, according to their wishes, in the first place? He mentally shook his head. He could obsess over the Bifrost later. But how did Thor get here without the Bifrost and if the Bifrost broke after that, how would Thor know about it?

"Uh...what did I miss?" Bruce had returned and was looking around at everyone's frowns. 

"Oh nothing much. We were just saying how Loki should be punished here on Earth and not on Asgard, and that we keep the Tesseract to defend ourselves-in case those aliens decide to visit again— but Pointbreak here, says that he can't return without the Tesseract—"

"Wait." Bruce interrupted. "But he got here without it."

"Exactly." Said Tony happy that Bruce had immediately caught on.

"It's because the Bifrost—" Thor began but Tony cut him off, "which I am assuming is something like an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, and can apparently transport people light-years of distance, within seconds, is broken." Bruce's eyebrows shot to his hairline and now that everyone else seemed to realise exactly what they were talking about, they seemed equally surprised.

"Wait." said Steve brow furrowing and eyes widening. It was kind of comical to be honest. "It was something that could transport people light-years of distance in seconds?! Something like that exists!?"

Tony managed not roll his eyes but it was a close thing. "Well clearly it did," he drawled, "but apparently it doesn't anymore." Here, he turned to look at Thor and caught Loki's lips curved up in the tiniest of smirks, eyes looking downwards, from the corner of his eyes. The guy still hadn't spoken though. Why was he not saying anything?

"So how did the Bifrost get destroyed exactly?" Romanoff asked carefully while everyone else stared at Thor. "The Bifrost had to be very powerful if it could transport people such massive distances near instantaneously, and it had clearly been doing that for quite sometime. So how did something so powerful break ?" 

Here Thor fidgeted uncomfortably. He glanced around the room as if searching for a way out and then finally opened his mouth with a sigh.

"I broke it. With Mjolnir."

There was a stunned silence. Then,

"What the hell, man?!" asked Clint. Natasha's and Bruce's eyebrows appeared to be in risk of merging with their hairlines while Steve's eyes looked like they would pop out if he widened them anymore Tony noted distractedly. Because he was trying to stop himself from giving in to hysteria. Then he decided to sod it.

"Why in the Universe would you destroy the Bifrost, which was your way to travel to other worlds at near instantaneous speeds?! Have you completely lost it?! Destroying what's probably one of the wonders of the galaxy Goddammit!!"  He wondered briefly if they even lived in the same galaxy but decided to ignore it for the while. 

"What were you thinking?!"

Thor looked at him with a very tight expression on his face. Tony just realised that he had gone and screamed at a being with god-like powers who could kill him very easily, especially in his broken suit. He would have to get out of it at some point. It was getting increasingly uncomfortable. Anyway, a maybe angry-god at hand. What to do, What to do......

Surprisingly though, Thor took in a deep breath in a visible effort to calm down. He cleared his throat. 

"I would rather not talk about it now." Well of course not. But from the corner of his eye, he spied a slightly surprised look on Loki's face. It was gone the next moment. This was the first time Loki had shown any sort of real reaction. Clearly he had expected Thor to tell them why he had broken the Bifrost. Which....why..?....

"Alright, okay. That's fine." said Cap clearly trying to diffuse the situation. It was not fine by the way. Not fine at all.

"Thor, at least tell us, how you got here without the Bifrost.  Maybe you could go back that way, and come back again for Loki's trial." Again Loki seemed momentarily surprised on hearing 'trial'. Why? Wouldn't he have gotten a trial in Asgard? That's.... why would he not get a trial? No matter how heinous a crime was, the criminal always got a trial. But that was on Earth. Maybe things were different on Asgard?

"No." said Thor. "My father had to utilize a lot of dark energy to send me here."  Wait. What?! Dark energy?! 

"Dark energy affects the universe on the grand scale." Well yeah!

"Conducting dark energy through oneself-" wait through oneself?! What the hell was going on here— "is very difficult. He was very drained by the time he had mustered enough energy to send me here. He could not possibly do so again without risking his health." 

 The fact that he had done it once was a huge deal. And Brucie-bear apparently being the only other person in the room with a modicum of intelligence spotted this too.

"Wait. What do you mean he conducted dark energy through himself ?" Bruce asked incredulously. "How is that even possible?!" 

Yes thank you! he thought. Bruce had managed to say that a lot more calmly than he would have been able to.

"With seidr and the Odinforce. My father is much stronger than anything you humans could even dream of."

So okay. Firstly rude. Secondly two 'Gods' were just standing in front of them so how much stronger was this Odin guy? Thirdly, he named whatever this 'Odinforce' was after himself, so he was clearly stuck up. He didn't think Pointbreak would appreciate hearing that, though. And fourthly.....

"Uh what is this seidr, exactly?"

"Magic." said Thor.

"Oh come on! There has to be a better explanation than that."

Thor hesitated. Then he finally said....

"Loki can provide you the best explanation of that."

Oh great. But this had collectively turned all their attention on Loki who glared at Thor and honestly? It was a pretty scary glare and this was coming from someone who dealt with glares from Pepper on a daily basis. Sorry Pep, but even your glares can't win compared to this, he mentally apologised.

"Well, Reindeer Games?"

Loki raised an eyebrow at him. "Well what?"  Well at least the guy had not lost his ability to speak.

"Are you gonna explain or not?"

"Well obviously not. What have I to gain by explaining to you how seidr works?" Unfortunately he had a point there.

Thor just looked resigned. But there was another ... something in his eyes which Tony could not place.

"Well alright then, there's no point keeping you here right now. We'll ship you off to the basement and hope that you can't escape without your magic."

"Wait..." said Romanoff. "Ship him off to the basement? Do you have dungeons down there or something?" Barton snorted while Bruce and Rogers raised their eyebrows.

Tony rolled his eyes.

 "No of course not! That dungeons business is you SHIELD guys." Now, Natasha gave him a look.

"What! Well anyway there's a kind of bare room in the basement with rather stronger walls that usual..."

Yeah so he had a kind of cell in his basement. What? You couldn't blame him for being paranoid after everything that had happened. What if he ever needed who temporarily hold a criminal who had tried to attack him in his house? Wouldn't be the first time. Besides it was being useful now, wasn't it? At least it had a comfortable enough bed, a tiny attached toilet and even a table and a chair! Though he really hoped that Loki wouldn't be able to get out without his magic. He supposed a part of him was also counting on Loki to be as unreasonably and unnaturally cooperative as he'd been till now. And well he had made the walls strong enough to withstand repulsor blasts from Iron Man suits, so....

"You just happen to have a cell in your basement?" Rogers asked, rather judgmentally in Tony's opinion. Well screw him!

"Yeah, I do." He retorted and looked at Thor. "You alright with it, Pointbreak?" Thor looked rather conflicted but then gave a small reluctant nod. "Well just for now, I suppose."

"Excellent." said Tony clapping his hands once. "Lets get you down there Rudolph."

Loki sighed, but again did not protest much. Or rather, did not protest at all. Tony was honestly starting to get more than a little uneasy. The guy was honestly letting himself be captured without protest and resignedly leaving himself in the hands of his enemies. 

Oh.. speaking of which.....

"Wait, wait. What about the Glow Stick of Destiny? What do we do about that?" He saw Loki shake his head at the 'Glow Stick' comment. 

"We're supposed to hand it over to the S.T.R.I.K.E  team." said Rogers.

"Yeah that's right." said Romanoff. "The sooner I can get rid of this, the better."(Right, she was holding the scepter)

But Tony had some misgivings about that...

"Hey you sure we shouldn't just keep it with ourselves?" he asked.

The others all turned to look at him.

"Like we're the Avengers, 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes', I think we should keep it... Besides, I don't trust SHIELD to not figure out a way to start making weapons out of this too."

Barton opened his mouth, but Rogers cut him off. "Yeah, considering that I don't think we should hand it over to SHIELD."

Look at that. Rogers agreeing with him. Would wonders never cease?

"Handing it over to SHIELD is our best bet for now," Romanoff began but Tony cut her off.

"Yeah no. Forgive us if we don't really buy that. Especially me. I haven't exactly forgotten what happened, you know."

"Wait, what happened?" asked Bruce.

"I don't think this is a good place to discuss that." She said glancing at Loki and then shooting a much subtler glance at Thor which Tony thought the guy must have missed.

"Right, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree." Tony said. "But anyway, that doesn't mean we're trusting SHIELD.”

"So you're planning to keep it here." Barton said raising an eyebrow. "And now we are supposed to trust you to keep it?"

"I'm sorry, was it me who tried to make weapons with the Tesseract? Who's to say SHIELD won't do it again with the scepter?"

"I agree with Stark. SHIELD cannot be trusted not to use the scepter for their own goals. Let it stay with Stark." said Thor and Tony was pleasantly surprised. Then Thor turned to him.     

"Can I trust you to not use it for your own, personal interests?" he asked.

"Uh yeah." said Tony. "Unless our world is in danger again and it's the only way or among the only ways to protect us."

"Well that's sorted out then." said Thor.

"Wait. Bruce what do you think? What should we do?"

"I'm not exactly in favour of SHIELD right now." Bruce shot Romanoff a dark look. Ooh Romanoff had been the one sent to retrieve him right? 

"So yeah, I'd much rather the scepter stay with Tony than SHIELD."

"Well," he said clapping his hands once "That's settled then." Then he looked at Rogers. "Wait, you do agree with us, right?"

"Yes, I do. The Scepter should rather stay with you than SHIELD. At least for now." He said narrowing his eyes a little at Tony as he said the last part. Gee thanks for the vote of confidence.

"Okay then." he said glancing at the assassin couple. "You've been outvoted."

"Alright." said Barton. Wait that was it?  "As long as you can convince Fury." He added then. Ah there it was.

"Hmm." said Romanoff. "That's not gonna be so easy."

"Oh we'll do something. We did save the city and all so we should have some privileges. So if all of us agree, it should be fine."

"What about the Tesseract though?" Romanoff asked "What do we do about it?”

Thor opened his mouth, but Tony cut him off. "We'll think about it a little later." Honestly though, that was a good question. They would never let him keep both of them. Well, if only he could convince Fury. Besides there was Thor and the matter of how he would return to Asgard. For just this moment though, everyone seemed happy to let the matter rest. 

That went rather more smoothly that he thought it would. Oh right there was still a war criminal in the room. Loki was standing right beside Thor, but Tony pretty much hadn't noticed him during their conversation. It was as if he had somehow managed to suppress his larger than life personality and he had done it with the sort of ease and expertise that made Tony uncomfortable. It was as if he was used to hiding his presence in plain sight without even doing anything or moving from his position. But why would a guy like Loki need to know that? He was some sort of a prince right? And he was pretty. So why diminish his presence? Oh god these questions were driving him mad. Nothing seemed to make sense with this guy.

"Okay, so we do need to take Rudolph down now." Loki still did not protest. Tony took a deep breath and then shook his head to clear it. Oh he also needed to get out of this suit right now.

"I need to get out of this thing first." He said walking over to the other corner of the living room.

"Just gimme a sec." he told the others who were sending dubious looks at him.

"Hey, don't you think you should keep wearing that?" asked Rogers. Of course. Tony did roll his eyes this time.

"Well Cap, it's seen more than a bit of mileage, and it's not exactly in top form. All it's doing right now, is restricting my ability to move. So yeah, I gotta get out of it."

He walked towards (and took the scepter and the Tesseract with him) the silver elevator at the edge of the room which would take the suit off him and then take it to his lab.

"Where are you taking them?" asked Thor.

"Uh for now, to my lab with my suit. We can retrieve them later if needed."

The reason he was keeping them in his lab was of course because no one else could access them (non-violently at least) without his permission and thus he could at least have a chance to convince Fury.

Once the suit was off him and he was back outside, he felt very naked. If Loki did decide to lash out now, even if it was without his magic, Tony would be done for. But really, wearing the Mark VII now was pointless. And none of his other suits had homing bracelets and he really didn't want to clunk his way to the ground floor. So no suit. And he would have to trust the others to watch his back. YAY! Wasn't that so much fun. And he didn't really know any of them.

Barton worked for SHIELD so... he would have to be careful with the man.

And he didn't trust Romanoff as far as he could throw her and that would be a long distance with his suit on. Bruce was alright and probably the only one he'd trust and besides, the Hulk had saved his life.

And Rogers... he didn't know how to feel about him. On one hand he had challenged Tony to a fight and on the other, he had also saved Tony's life. On one hand he was Howard's Golden soldier, his pride and the one person Tony had been forced to compete with all his life and had lost to, every single time despite the man not even existing and on the other hand he didn't really know the man. 

He didn't know what to think of Thor. On one hand he seemed to be like an honourable golden retriever and on the other, even he seemed to have an ingrained superiority complex, however much he might try to deny it.

"Follow me." he said and Thor urged Loki forward and then the rest of them followed behind as Tony got into the elevator. Oh well, getting into an elevator with the guy who had defenestrated him and tried to kill him barely an hour or two ago.

Okay cool. It was all cool(not). They all got into the elevator and the doors closed.

Chapter Text

Clint had observed Loki throughout the whole powwow in Stark's living room. The guy's attitude completely threw him. The whole time, he just stood there quietly. To an amateur it might've seemed that he was lost in his own little world, but Clint knew better. Loki was very much attuned to the discussion (Clint thought it was idiotic to discuss anything in front of him anyway). They were discussing him, what was gonna happen to him, where he would be incarcerated, and the whole time he just did nothing ?!

It almost seemed like he didn't care what happened to him. 

Clint knew that Loki was a Prince of Asgard. That had to mean he had some sort of special privileges, right? But then he should have been jumping to go to Asgard. And he would be judged by his father. Despite them not being on good terms, and the guy being the king of Asgard, he had to have some affection for his son, right? And Loki should have been trying to take full advantage of that fact, right? Besides, arguing that he could not be judged by ‘these mere mortals’ should have been right up Loki's alley. But he hadn't said a word .

It hadn't escaped Clint's notice that Loki, had he really wanted to, could have tried to escape them and most likely would have succeeded. But he hadn't even tried. He didn't have any advantage being locked up this time. Yet here he was, trailing behind Stark and Thor and they got down from the elevator and walked towards the cell. No objections.

As they reached the cell, Clint could feel a strange feeling of doubt creep up on him. 

He glanced at Loki's face and saw a flicker of surprise as he took in the cell. It had a comfortable enough bed, a table, a chair and a small cubicle which was obviously the toilet. 

For a moment he thought it was a haughty incredulousness at the small room but then Clint realised it was just the opposite; He had been expecting to be kept in a much worse place. But why? He had been a prince, right? Clint had expected him to find this less than adequate. Apparently, so had Stark who also seemed to have caught the brief glimmer of surprise on Loki’s face. He was sure Nat had caught it too, but her poker face was too good and he couldn’t tell what she thought.

As it turned out, everybody (including Thor) had expected him to profess his displeasure in some way, but he didn’t, and simply got into the cell.

Clint’s misgivings only grew stronger and made his stomach churn.

His memory of his time as one of Loki's mind-controlled minions was certainly not crystal clear but there were some things he couldn't help but remember (even if he didn't want to). 

Loki had seemed very tired for the most part. He had even seemed injured. He had even stumbled, without any reason, if Clint's memory served correctly. Now all that could be nothing. Or it could be everything.

He could have ignored all of it, but there were the other little things that kept him from dismissing Loki as just evil and therefore pushed him to find some alternate (better) reason for why Loki did what he did rather than 'he is a crazy evil alien overlord.'

He remembered Loki asking each of them how they felt. He remembered how Loki had asked each of them to get some rest after working non-stop for a day and a half. He remembered something about how Loki hadn't eaten in quite some time and then Clint had made him sit down and have some canned soup and dry fruits. And he remembered being concerned. And wasn't that just sick? Him being worried for someone, who had for all intents and purposes mind-raped him?

Though was it really mind rape? A small voice in his head murmured. Wouldn't he have done the very same things and more for SHIELD that he had done under Loki? It wasn't as if he was a very honest, innocent or ethical man. He spied on and killed people for a living. All that was different was who had been directing him. Would he have thought twice if SHIELD had asked him to do the very same things?

All that had happened was that his priorities had realigned themselves. Yes, whatever he was doing was not of his own volition, but what if the end goal had been different? If SHIELD had asked him to kill people assuring him that it would help save more people, he would have done it. 

What happened was not his fault, but he wasn't completely out of control either. He had made the decision to not shoot Fury in the head but rather in the chest, despite being aware that he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Loki had also let him have a lot of freedom on what to do and how. It made him very uncomfortable. Far more than it would have, had he been a total mindless puppet.

But even if it was under the scepter's control, he had been concerned about Loki, and for good reason. He had looked ill, he had looked weak. And he had looked worse then , than he did now, even after the Hulk smash. And the thought of something that could have hurt someone so strong and durable so badly... made him afraid.

(He remembered the slightly uncertain and distrustful look flitting across Loki's face when Clint had made him sit in a chair and brought him the soup. 

"Thank you," he had said in an almost inaudible voice. 

He remembered how later when Loki had asked him to get some rest for a few hours and he had insisted that Loki do the same, he had appeared to be startled. Not in an offended manner, though. It was almost as if he was surprised that someone would care about him needing rest. 

"I don't need to sleep as much as you mortals," Loki had replied.

"There's no harm in it though, is there?" Clint had insisted, "Don't worry, no one will find this place unless they know precisely where to look. And no one except me knew about this place till now."

Loki had looked at him oddly but had slowly agreed.

Clint had been a bit wary at first, but he went to sleep near Loki, for some reason needing to see with his own eyes that he was alright. He had known Loki was a hundred times stronger than him, but he still couldn't help but feel oddly protective over him for some reason.) 

He still didn't feel sick at himself for feeling protective over Loki for some reason. And now his suspicions were stronger than ever. Loki, who had been barely bruised after the Hulk smash, had been a lot more injured and tired when he first came here . 

And he was sweating heavily, had clammy skin, appeared dizzy and disoriented at some points and he definitely had muscle cramps from the way he’d been moving. All signs of heat exhaustion. He did not know if that had any specific significance, if heat affected Asgardians more than it did them, but it was certainly something worth noting. 

And of course, there was the very agreeable way he was behaving since after the Hulk smash to consider. The signs were not good at all. Though the thing that bothered him the most was that he, for some reason, simply couldn't remember what Loki's eye colour had been during the invasion. It was a very insignificant detail really, but the fact that he just could not remember made him restless. He saw that they were green now, but it could not remember them being green during the invasion. He could not remember it being any other colour either.

"So," began Stark, "do I really have to talk to Fury now?"

"You could of course just give up the scepter...." began Natasha.

"Oh, no, no, no, fine , I'll go talk to Fury. As for everyone else, do you plan to stay here for now or go… wherever… I don't know, just wherever."

"Well, if you wouldn't mind, friend Stark, then I would like to stay here for the time being, given that Loki is here." said Thor.

"Oh that's fine Pointbreak, Jarvis will take you somewhere you can freshen up a bit. So, how about the rest of you...?"

"...I don't know," began Banner, "Is it appropriate? I mean—"

"Oh Brucie, why wouldn't it be appropriate, if you want to stay here for now, just say the word."

"Um… for now I suppose..." Banner said hesitantly.

"Great!" Stark said, clapping his hands.

"Well,” Clint began, “even if you somehow manage to convince Fury and he manages to get it through to the WSC idiots that you'll keep the Tesseract”— Thor shuffled like he wanted to say something, but stopped himself for the moment— “and the scepter,” —which really everyone knew that Stark was gonna have a big part in convincing the higher ups too; He had too much money and influence and was sure to use it, especially with the WSC's latest blunder with the nuke (Hill had told him and Nat that)— “Fury's gonna send someone to keep a watch over you."

Stark snorted indecently.

Clint continued over that, "So since I'm already so involved with all this, I might as well stay here for now. If it's alright with you, that is." 

Oh Fury would definitely send someone. Stark had known this and that was probably why he had offered even him and Natasha the chance to stay here. He didn't want to be caught off guard with some new person he knew absolutely nothing about.

"Oh sure, birdbrain,” —Clint rolled his eyes—”Stay here. You're not gonna get too far if you try to spy on me though, that I assure you."

Clint didn't doubt that. After Natalie Rushman, Stark obviously wouldn't be taking any chances. 

The main reason he wanted to stay though, was the one most people would think should make him want to stay as far from the Tower as possible. Loki. But he had a hunch and if it was right… And even if it was wrong and Loki was somehow really evil, he wanted to know what would happen to the bastard. What sort of punishment he would get.

"I don't doubt it." was the only thing he said out loud.

Natasha looked conflicted. Clint supposed Natasha would want to stay too, given that he was staying. And she might've felt left out. But Stark would definitely not trust her.

As if on cue, Stark turned to Nat. 

"What about you 'Natalie'? Wanna stay in my house again?" 

Nat raised her eyebrows. For once she was completely straightforward though.

"If you'll let me. You've no reason to trust me, after all."

Stark seemed a little surprised at that. Banner and Rogers appeared confused but Thor looked a little preoccupied about something. Loki was simply sitting down on the bed with his eyes closed. 

Clint suddenly realised that they had been discussing things in front of Loki again . He mentally cursed. The guy just seemed to have some sort of ability to make himself as unnoticeable as possible, and given his personality(or what they thought was his personality. His true personality could be a bit different if Clint's suspicions had any truth to them.), that was a big deal.

"No, I don't," said Stark, "And I would be well within my rights to kick you out right now."  

Clint's hackles rose a bit. He knew Stark didn't trust Nat but still hearing him talk like that made a tide of protectiveness surge inside him even though he knew that Nat would be annoyed to know that. 

However, Stark continued.

"But you've been involved in this mess too, and if you stay here there would be even less of a chance that Fury sends someone else to spy on me and I definitely know to watch out for you. And I'd like to have that certainty. So if you stay here until this mess with Loki is over, then you've got to convince Fury to not even think about sending anyone else here and to not even try to hack JARVIS. He only makes a fool of himself every time SHIELD tries that."

"Noted," said Nat with a somewhat amused look on her face. Clint was a little surprised that Stark let her stay, though his reasoning made sense.

Then he turned to Rogers.

"So Cap, you're the only one left. Whaddya think? You wanna stay?”

Rogers starts to say, "I know we got off on the wrong foot—" but he was cut off by Stark.

"And we'll probably 'get off on the wrong foot' many times in the future if you stay. So, will you?" 

Cap hesitated. 

"If you'll let me."

Stark clapped his hands. 

"Alright, that's settled then. Jarvis will take you all to your rooms. You guys freshen up a bit while I try to inform our irate pirate of the developments and then tell him that both the scary blue things will be safest with me, at least for now until things are sorted out. And that you all surprisingly agree with me," He narrowed his eyes at all of them in the last part. 

"Well—" began Thor, but Stark interrupted him.

"You're not taking the Tesseract anywhere, at least until we decide what to do with your brother." 

"Yes, I have accepted that I will listen to what your world's decision will be about Loki, Stark," Thor sounded sullen. Clint noticed that he didn't say he would accept their decision, though.

"Well what were you saying then?" Stark asked.

Now Thor looked a little sheepish. "You said 'irate pirate'. I doubt that you were talking about an actual pirate though, so who were you referring to...?"

Clint snorted. Nat and Banner's eyebrows had shot up and even Cap shook his head. Stark looked like he was about to have an aneurism.

"Right. Not from this planet." Stark groaned, "I was talking about Fury."

"Why would you call him a pirate though?" Thor asked.

"Um... because he dresses in black leather and has an eyepatch?"

"My father has an eyepatch."

They heard a muffled snort. They turned to briefly look at Loki. Nat raised an eyebrow at Clint, while Thor seemed to be holding back from rolling his eyes. Stark's lips curled upwards. Right they were still talking in front of Loki for some reason. 

But it was the first reaction he had shown throughout the conversation (Fury would have a fit if he found out they had discussed everything with Loki right there.) and Clint didn't doubt he had heard every word of it. This was complete madness. They were discussing all their plans in front of the criminal! Speaking of which, even Coulson would have a fit if he ever learnt about this. 

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, his mood became even worse. Because Coulson wouldn't ever be able to know about it, would he? Because he was dead. Because Loki had killed him. Even if Clint's suspicions were right, he would never forgive Loki for that. Nor would he ever forgive him for controlling his mind for that matter. Where was even the thought of forgiving him for anything coming from. He didn't even know if his hunch was right. He didn't even know if he wanted it to be right. It would be so much easier to just continue blaming him. But if he had been acting under duress..... then it wasn't entirely his fault. And when Clint wasn't being punished for something that wasn't his fault, why should Loki be? 

Speaking of which, if he did want to figure out anything, he would have to actually tell the others about this. But first he would have to tell Nat. Get her insight.

He was broken out of his gushing river of thoughts by Stark's voice.

"Riiight. So, most pirates having only one eye is just an Earth thing?"

"I would not know about that, but why would you even assume such?" Thor asked, looking somewhat baffled.

"Ah... it's a popular culture reference. Anyway," he turned towards him and Nat and pointing at them said, "And it's your job to convince Fury to not send any more spies after me."

"We can only try, you know," Nat says with a wry smile, "What he does is up to him."

"Well then knock yourself out."

Then he paused. "Oh, don't forget to call off the S.T.R.I.K.E team. I don't want them anywhere near my tower."

Nat did a weird, exasperated nod-headshake with her eyes closed. "Yes, I know. I haven't got that bad a memory you know." She told him.

Stark shrugged. "Just making sure no one accidentally forgot to mention it." Clint rolled his eyes.

Then Stark turned to all of them. "Jarvis will show you to your rooms. There should be everything you need for a temporary stay. J?"

"Yes sir. If you all would kindly follow my instructions."

Thor and Banner's rooms were on the 64th floor. His, Nat's and Rogers' were on the 65th floor. Thor and Banner had obviously been put together on the same floor because he was the only one who would survive and could even fight back if the Hulk decided to show up without invitation. Though if the Hulk actually decided to go on a rampage nothing would stop him from climbing up the stairs or simply jumping up to the next floor, but he supposed it was the thought that counted.

They decided to meet up again in two hours in Stark's living room. But as Nat was about to walk into her room, Clint grabbed her arm. 

She raised an eyebrow in question and he pulled them both to his allotted room. The room was rather large and spacious and seemed a lot more comfortable than anywhere he had ever stayed before. In fact it was more of a suite than a room really, with a beautiful bedroom with a King sized bed, a bathroom, a small kitchen with a fridge, and a small personal living room, for god's sake! He supposed he was rather used to SHIELD's rather (compared to this) sub-standard rooms. 

Well this was Tony Stark, and hey, he wasn't complaining. Natasha punched him lightly to get his attention. Right.

"So what did you want to talk about?" she asked. 

"Who said I want to talk about anything?" 

She shot him an unimpressed look. He sighed and sat down on one of the sofas in the living room. 

He needed to tell the others about his suspicions about Loki and as soon as possible but first it would have to be Nat. He didn't want to repeat it twice but he also didn't want to be considered mad. Nat was highly logical and he needed her to assure him that his doubts were indeed reasonable and that he wasn't nursing some weird, creepy variation of Stockholm syndrome. He let himself shudder for the first time and swallowed hard. 

"Clint?" Her voice was softer, "What is it?" 

He took a deep breath. "Promise me you'll actually listen to me and consider what I'm saying before declaring me nuts?" 

He smiles dryly at her. She was beginning to look a little alarmed now, "And why'd you think that I'd do that?" she asked, carefully sitting down next to him.

He huffed slightly. “Because it sounds weird even inside my head. And because I don't fully understand why I'm even entertaining these notions. Why I can't just leave it alone and stop being bothered about it."  

There was a pause.

"Clint? What's all this about?" Her steady voice managed to calm him just a little bit.

"Who. Who is all this about," he said.

"Alright. Who is all this about ?" Nat asked, humouring him. 

"Loki."

After Clint finished telling Natasha about everything (about Loki's condition when he arrived, how tortured he'd looked, the signs of heat exhaustion, the weakness, the fact that Clint couldn't remember his eye colour from before) there was a long silence. He didn't tell her about him making Loki have soup and dry fruits, about feeling genuinely concerned about him, about keeping guard over him even as he slept. Those were just... too personal. And wasn't it strange that only he and Loki knew it and that he actually trusted for some ridiculous reason to guard this secret too?

Finally Natasha broke the silence, "You are sure about all of it? You're absolutely sure that these are your own memories and not something Loki put in your head to confuse you?" 

It was a valid concern but it made Clint feel very irritated and oddly defensive (but of who?). "Yes I am absolutely sure. They are definitely my own memories. You have to believe me, Nat!" 

He said the last part with a bit of desperation in his voice, because if even Nat didn't believe him, if even she thought that he had gone off his rockers, then no one would believe him.

Nat sighed, "But Thor is his brother. If Loki had been acting out of character, wouldn't his own brother have noticed?" 

Clint wanted to groan in frustration, "Well, I've observed Thor shooting Loki weird glances thrice. Earlier in the living room and even down near his cell. So Nat, don't even try to tell me you didn't notice that." 

Natasha stared ahead and Clint started to become restless. After two minutes of complete silence he couldn't take it anymore. 

"Nat, do you think I'm crazy? Because I'm not. I'm NOT, " He almost shouted. Natasha looked up. "I am not being mind controlled anymore, I'm not , you have to believe me!" He took in a few deep breaths to calm himself down. 

"I believe you," Nat suddenly said. Clint turned to look at her and she sighed deeply, "We'll need to confirm this. We'll have to talk to the others once we all convene again. If we get proof... we take this to Fury."

Clint could have almost cried out in relief at that. Somebody did believe him. Nat believed his words. And since she was the one to break him out of the scepter's control, Fury was likely to trust her opinion about his mental state. 

She squeezed his hand lightly and smiled at him. 

"We'll make the best out of it. We always do."

Clint nodded. 

Nat ruffled his hair getting up, "Go take a bath, you smell." 

"Hah," he said, "As if you don't."  

"How dare you, Clint Barton," she grinned at him. 

"No seriously. Take a bath. It will be lovely to sit in these huge tubs." she shuddered in delight imagining it as she got up to leave his room.

"Mhmm," he said, "Yeah, yeah, okay, I'll go. See you in an hour?"

"Yup.”

Chapter Text

Tony just ended his call with Pepper. She’d been frantic. She’d fussed over how idiotic he’d been with the nuke but conceded that he had done the right thing, and then sobbed about how he’d nearly died.

Throughout the whole call, he felt all warm and fuzzy inside, and despite the fact that she was shouting at him, he couldn’t help but smile. What he had done in his whole life to deserve a wonderful woman like her, he would never understand. But the Universe had decided that he deserved at least at least two wonderful people in his life and he wasn’t going to complain. Speaking of which…. he still needed to talk to honey-bear. He groaned. Listening to Pepper’s mother-henning was bad enough, he couldn’t suffer Rhodey’s too.

What he really wanted right now was a nice, comforting cuddle with Pepper or to lay down in Rhodey’s lap feeling his familiar, calloused hand running through his hair. He sighed. No rest for the wicked, he supposed. 

He needed to talk to Fury now and that was a conversation he was not looking forward to. He needed to take a shower first though. Any excuse to stall the call with Fury for some more time was a good excuse and well... he did feel very icky with all the sweat and grime. At least the Chitauri guts were on the suit which he’d gotten rid of.

As he let the hot water thunder against his chest and back, he tried to avoid thinking about Loki for as long as possible. And wasn’t that weird? That he was thinking about Loki in the shower?! Okay, no, he was not thinking about Loki in the shower and — oh crap . He was thinking about Loki in the shower. He groaned. Was this what his life had come to? At least the dude was pretty and — NO. Stop. He ordered his traitorous mind. Not going there today, not going there ever.  

He actually got out of the shower quickly. If he had to think about Loki anyway, he better do it out of the shower when he was not naked.

So, he thought, towelling himself dry, what was the deal with Loki? 

It was time to think properly now. Also, what was the deal with Barton? He’d expected the man to act a lot more hostile towards Loki and had been afraid that handling him would be troublesome. But as it had turned out, not only did Barton not complain, he wanted to stay in the tower where he was going to try and convince Fury to let Loki stay for the time being...? He had expected the man to want nothing to do with Loki or stay out of a 100 mile radius from the god. But he had agreed to stay in the same building?!

No matter that what he’d said about being ‘too involved to step back now’ and the fact that Fury would insist on SHIELD being involved were both true. If he had really wanted, he could’ve chosen to step back and this was one occasion where no one would blame him. But he had chosen not to and had volunteered to stay. That was very interesting. He was sure Fury would certainly find it interesting too.

He pulled on an AC/DC shirt and jeans with a casual jacket while moving to his personal living room in his penthouse. 

His hair was not completely dry yet but he honestly couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment.

“Jarvis? Has our friendly Pirate tried to get through yet?” he asked flopping down on the couch.

“Yes, sir. Three times till now.”

“Okay, great, let’s lend him an ear now, shall we? God, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but call Fury.”

Fury immediately took the call. Jarvis projected his face from the video call on his wall.

“Aw come on Jarv, why’d you do a video call?! I didn’t need to see his grumpy face!”

“Stark,” Fury said, ignoring his whine, “I’ve called you three times and you didn’t pick up. What could be so important that—“

“I was taking a shower. You know, personal hygiene and stuff. Jarvis can show you footage as proof if you doubt me.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Fury who just sighed.

“You called me thrice and now I called you back, which, let me tell you, is a much bigger deal than it’d be even if you called me fifty times.”

It really would. You know… considering the little fact that he’d sent a spy after him and instructed her to drug him with lithium dioxide. (Which, What the Hell?!?! Clearly they hadn’t thought it through. He’d had a stiff neck for days afterward. He’d even bloated up. It had also affected his poor liver and caused him abdominal pain and just…. He still couldn’t freaking believe it.)

 He honestly couldn’t believe that he had voluntarily contacted Fury. But, well….desperate times called for desperate measures.

“Back to the matter at hand,” began Fury, ignoring his last statement again(rude) . “You’ve decided to keep Loki in your tower, and you’ve decided to keep both the Sceptre and the Tesseract in the very same tower.”  

Ah, so it looked like Romanoff had already spoken with him then.

Fury continued, “What makes you think that’s a good idea and where did you get the idea that you have the jurisdiction to—“

“Ah ah ah. Okay, stop, so... let’s start from the beginning.” 

Fury folded his arms across his chest and uncharacteristically waited for Tony to speak.

“So, we’ve got six super-heroes in this tower and one of which is the Hulk who completely smashed Loki,” —Fury raised an eyebrow— “One is the Norse god of thunder or lightning or whatever, a super soldier, a man in a can who just saved the city from a nuke and two master assassins spies all of whom together took down a hostile alien army.” 

To be honest he didn’t think that Romanoff or Barton could do anything to Loki at all but he didn’t think it wise to mention it. (See, he could keep his mouth shut when required) but, then again, they’d have a better chance at getting out alive against Loki than he himself did without his suit.

“Even if the cell is not as strong as the cell meant for the Hulk on the Helicarrier—” here he shot Fury a dirty look but Fury just stared back “—It’s got highly durable and reinforced walls and unless you’ve got another cage like that stowed away somewhere, you’ve got to admit that this is the best that we can do. This is the best place to keep him till his trial or whatever.”

“Yes I thought so too,” said Fury startling Tony, "That’s not the part I had a problem with. However, doesn’t Thor have a problem with Loki being kept here?”

“Well, he did, he wanted Loki to be taken to Asgard and also wanted to take the Tesseract back to Asgard.” 

Fury opened his mouth but Tony cut him off.

“Yeah we told him that’s not gonna happen and for now he’s agreed to Loki being punished here and he’s staying, though the latter is most probably because he can’t go back to Asgard without the Tesseract.”

Fury raised his eyebrows. “But the last time he came here and went back in some sort of a Rainbow bridge or something….”

Tony groaned, “Seriously?! You’re calling it a ‘Rainbow’ bridge too?!”

Fury shrugged, “Anyway why does he need the Tesseract to return when last time he did so with this Rainbow bridge?” 

Tony glared at him. Then, he sighed.

“Well apparently due to some family drama between the two godly brothers, Thor destroyed the Einstein-Rosen bridge,” when Fury opened his mouth Tony continued, “Yes we are sure it was Thor not Loki. He admitted it. And he did it intentionally.”

Fury shook his head and looked like he wanted to bang it somewhere. Again, surprise— On this occasion, Tony agreed with him. 

“Well,” said Fury, “Looks like you’ll be hosting two alien gods for quite some time.”

“Uh huh,” said Tony, “Tell me about it.”

“And what do you have to say about the Tesseract and the Scepter?”

“Okay, there is no bloody way I’m giving the Tesseract to you after learning about ‘Phase Two’ — You’re making the same mistake now, that Red Skull made seventy years ago. You cannot make weapons out of the Tesseract.”

“Stark, you should understand at least, even if Rogers doesn’t; What happens the next time an alien army comes at us? And there is a high chance of a next time.”

Tony suppressed a flinch. As if he didn’t know. There wasn’t just a high chance but certainty that hostile aliens would knock their doors again. They did need more powerful weapons, but he couldn’t risk trusting SHIELD with that. But if he didn’t let others make weapons and made them himself, how was he any different. Besides, he didn’t make weapons anymore.

“Yes,” Tony gritted out, “Yes there is, but what Thor said is also true— For all these years when the Tesseract was under the sea we were not attacked. When my dad got it out, SHIELD did not immediately start making weapons and no alien army came. It was now when you were experimenting with the Tesseract, making weapons, using it , that it caught unwanted attention. So is it really a good idea to continue making weapons out of it?”

“But now that we have already attracted attention isn’t it better to be ready from now rather than wait for the next time we are attacked?”

“I’m sure we didn’t catch the attention of everyone in the galaxy. Do you really want to risk doing that?” 

But he was getting frustrated. What Fury said made sense and that was what pissed him off the most. He was at war with himself again but this time, the war didn’t just include him.

“And we crushed their army. They shouldn’t come after us again. Immediately, anyway.”

At least, that’s what Tony told himself.

“And if we attract the attention of the whole galaxy,” —he shrugged— “Who's gonna help us anyway.”

Tony wondered why he said that. Why was he making an argument for Fury to himself? Fury seemed to think the same if his raised eyebrow was an indication, but Tony didn’t miss the strange look that had flitted through his eyes from a fraction of a second. Then he wondered if Fury had let him see it because after all like he’d told Rogers, Fury was The Spy. It wasn’t like him to let any unguarded expression appear on his face even if it was for less than a moment. He wondered what he meant. Then he wondered if he was reading too much into it. But he supposed there could never be too much reading into it with super spies.

Fury ignored his last statement and sighed, “I suppose that’s the reason you’re not handing over the sceptre either? And that the other Avengers all agree with you?”

“Yup and yup.”

“But we don’t know the composition of the sceptre, we don’t know anything about the sceptre except that it can mind control people and cause power blasts,” Fury tries one last time, already looking resigned, which surprised Tony because he wasn’t expecting Fury to give in so easily.

“Yup. But I can find it out for you.”

Fury sighed. “Well, I suppose the tower would be one of the safest places for it, but is it really a good idea to keep the Tesseract and the Scepter in close proximity to Loki?”

“Well, it’s not like Loki’s gonna be wandering about my tower or anything… In fact he doesn’t seem to wanna do anything at all.”

“He’s been quiet the whole time since we took him down to the cell.” 

He very much did not mention that they had been talking and discussing plans in front of him. He doesn’t plan on having that conversation any time soon.

He had some doubts as to where Loki had learned to be a chameleon and blend in with the surroundings but he didn’t know whether to mention it now or not. Also his not reacting in any way and being quiet and compliant to everything caused a strange feeling of disquiet in him. But Tony thought it was best to discuss it with the other Avengers first. He could always inform Fury after that. But he had to say something .

“He’s been very well behaved and not resisted anything, not even the magic-binding cuffs that Thor put on him.”

Fury frowned and sighed, “And that’s of course not like the Loki we’ve come to know in the last three days... And Romanoff informed me of certain other things.”

Tony raised his eyebrows. What other things? He wanted to ask but of course he wouldn’t get an answer from Fury right now. He’d have to try to get it out of her and Barton in their meeting after this. High chances were that he’d fail but hey, he’d have tried.

“Yeah. So what about his trial and stuff? Any idea when that’s gonna happen?”

“Well,” said Fury, “Pierce is very eager to have Loki pay for his crimes, but there’s a lot to process through, so I’d say his trial could start in about a week at the earliest.”

Tony for some reason had a bad feeling about this. He also noted that Fury said that the trial could start in a week, not would. And Fury was always very careful with his words, what with him being ‘the’ spy.

“Very… eager you say?” he asked carefully. He may want Loki to be punished (he also needed to find out what the hell was up with Loki first) but… not in some dubious and….well… creative ways. No one deserved torture. After Afghanistan, he wouldn’t wish it on anyone. And he didn’t trust SHIELD in the least to not opt for those ways, especially if they needed information. Which they did, though, of course, Loki was not talking. It was one of the reasons that he didn’t want Loki in SHIELD’s hands. Though now that he thought about it….. if not in SHIELD’s hands… then where would Loki be after his trial…. but Thor couldn’t go back to Asgard without the Tesseract….

Loki couldn’t stay in the Tower forever! And Pepper! Oh shit…  He just realised that he’d dug himself into a hole.

He hoped he’d been able to keep his thoughts from appearing on his face in the split second that they’d rushed through his mind.

“And very determined,” Fury said. He didn’t answer the unasked question of why he was so eager and determined. But in the end it was obvious, wasn’t it? Loki was an extraterrestrial being after all. Although, how Pierce thought he could possibly restrain Loki was beyond Tony. He also had the feeling that if word got to Thor about it, then there would be many people getting fried. He had a feeling that Fury shared his concerns. Unlike some others, he wasn’t an idiot after all.

There was a pause. Then Fury changed the topic. Well… somewhat changed it.

“Discuss it with the other Avengers, see what they think.” 

Well, obviously.

“Let me know what they think.”

Tony raised an eyebrow.

“You’re talking as if your little SHIELD lackeys won’t be telling you everything. Maybe even word to word.”

“They will be informing me of the important details, yes—” Tony snorted. Important details. Right. Nothing else. “—But I’d like to hear a different perspective too.”

Tony said nothing. This was all just so SHIELD could get on his good side now that they needed him. No, they needed his resources. That’s what this was always about, wasn’t it? His money, his fame, his resources.

“Also,” said Fury “Once again I ask, do you really think it’s a good idea to keep the Tesseract and the Scepter in the same building as Loki?”

“Well, he’s hardly going to be wandering around the Tower, is he?”

“You seem to be pretty confident that he won’t succeed in escaping. Who knows, maybe all this sudden compliance is part of a plan to escape? To catch you off guard?”

Yes it could certainly be that, but for some reason, Tony felt like Loki didn’t want to escape. He seemed…. defeated. Which, he supposed was true. He had been defeated, but he had never seen a…’villain’ for the lack of a better word— be so…so docile after defeat... and so indifferent of his fate.                     

Loki had seemed somewhat... detached, dispassionate from them all. And consider that his personality, just like Tony’s own had seemed loud and larger than life in the way it took over the whole place, this silence, this placidness, reducing his presence to become almost invisible (without actually being invisible — which he’d learnt was also something Loki could do) even while staying in the same room (once again he thought that Loki seemed far too competent in that art) caused him a strange sort of disquiet.

“Well,” he said, “He couldn’t exactly escape from the cell in the Helicarrier on his own, could he now? Yes this cell isn’t as strong as that one, but it still is strong enough that he shouldn’t be able to just literally break out of it”

Or so he told himself. Loki had survived the Hulk-smash after all and Tony didn’t know if this cell would be able to do the same…. But Loki didn’t seem very eager to leave….. yeah, Tony was starting to see the holes in this plan…

But he continued with a nonchalant attitude even as Fury raised a sceptical eyebrow, probably having come to the same conclusion as him, “And besides, he doesn’t even have access to his magic voodoo powers for now.”

At least he hoped that those Asgardian magic blocking cuffs (yes he had actually thought that— what was even his life anymore) were in good condition or they would be in deep shit. Probably. If Loki wanted to escape. And the fact that he was doubting that a criminal would like to escape…. for some reason it started setting off alarm bells in his head.(The only obvious reasons he wouldn’t want to escape was either because he had completely lost all interest in everything, or he thought he was better off here than somewhere else.)

Loki hadn’t even turned his nose down on the cell or shot them any nasty looks. In fact he had seemed surprised… by the good (?) quality of the cell. Which... The cell only had like, the necessary and absolutely basic stuff needed for a temporary incarceration which was not too uncomfortable. It seemed he had expected to be kept in a much worse place (flashes of a dirty cave came to his mind and he forcefully pushed that down.) and that was certainly odd, to say the least, considering that Loki was a prince.

Which.. didn’t make much sense….unless… he had tried not to think hard about this till now but… Loki had also seemingly expected to be treated worse (his head was pushed down into water— I can’t breathe — again and again and again —). And if that was the case… what exactly had set his bar so low?

Tony knew that if he had noticed this, Romanoff must have too and she had probably told Fury, so he didn’t need to mention it. He wouldn’t have — couldn’t have— mentioned it anyway.

Fury sighed.

“Where’s the cell anyway? What are the contingency security measures in place in case there is a breach?”

Tony shot him a look.

“Bold of you to assume that I’ll share the location of the most secure cell and the security measures in place around it in my tower, with you.” 

Hah. As if.

“I assure you I’ve ensured that the cell is as highly secure as possible.” 

And he had. That was the first thing he had done even before talking to Pepper. Fury sighed but seemed to accept it. Tony narrowed his eyes briefly.

“Well, for once I’m going to take your word for it Stark.”

“Oh gee, that means so much to me.”

Fury seemed to be barely stopping himself from rolling his eyes. Tony shot him a cheeky little grin.

“Very well then,” said Fury, “I’ll talk to the WSC, we should be able to convince them to let you keep Loki for now.” 

He noted that Fury said ‘for now’ in general and not ‘for a week’. He didn’t specify for how long Loki would be staying and therefore didn’t specify when the trial will be.

“Their blunder with the nuke will work in our favour and give us leverage over them.”

Tony’s brain short circuited. Nuke — ? WSC?! After the battle he’d completely forgotten to think about who had authorised the missile. Because someone had to have done that. And the WSC had the authority to override Fury’s command.

“The WSC ordered the missile strike?! Have they all gone mad?! Why would they even think of doing that?!”  Just because it had worked out in the end didn’t make the authorising the launch of a missile which could wipe out Manhattan any better. It was inexcusable. Besides, no one could have known that it would have worked out like it did  (he was in space — an endless alien army — the suit was gone — he couldn’t breathe — he was gonna die, die, die — ) which meant that….

“They had been willing to sacrifice as many lives as required in order to take out the Chitauri in New York.” Fury said, finishing his thought.

Tony felt chilled to the core. How could they —  He shook his head suppressing a shiver. He wondered distractedly how much paperwork and clean up there would be if he sicced Pepper on them.

“Right. Right, yeah, that does give us leverage. Don’t worry, I’ll pull some strings and make sure to use it and keep it in hand for the future.”

“Yes,” said Fury, “Threatening to out them to the UN would be better now than actually outing them, that would lose us our advantage.”

“Right.” said Tony, still unable to completely process this new information.

“Convincing Pierce will be the hardest, but I’ll try.”

“It’s the least you can do.”

Fury gave him a long look.

“Tell me what the others think.” 

With that Fury disconnected the call.

Tony sat silently for a long time and then sighed. Well, he’d better get ready to meet up with the others again in a few minutes. Then suddenly realising something he said, ”Jarvis, our defences are strong and SHIELD can’t hack into anything here, right?”

“I am offended that you might consider otherwise, sir.”

Tony grinned. “Yeah, well better to be paranoid than take a risk. Don’t want SHIELD sneaking about running heat or energy scans or stuff, trying to find Loki’s location in the tower.”

“Wait… did I just say ‘better to be paranoid than take a risk’? Wow. What is happening to me?”

“I would say that in light of the latest events you are trying to be just a little more careful, sir.”

Tony rolled his eyes. 

“Yes thank you for that,” then he paused.

“Does that sound like something Fury would say?”

“Somewhat I suppose, sir.”

“Oh my god!” Tony groaned.

Chapter Text

Nat had been right. The long hot bath really was amazing. During most missions they barely had time for a proper shower. He practically moaned as he felt his tense muscles loosen up and tried not to think about all the talking he’d have to do after this.

He reluctantly got out of the huge bathtub after about forty five minutes-Jesus had it really been that long already?!-(he honestly hadn’t even wanted to bother with the shampoo but he did smell, so…) and as he towelled himself dry he suddenly realised that he didn’t have any fresh clothes to wear.

“Oh crap,” he groaned. He really did not want to get back into his sweaty, disgusting suit. He wondered if he could ask Jarvis where he could find some clothes. But he’d have to leave the room wrapped half naked for that. He didn’t mind it but it would still be weird.

However, as he stepped out of the bathroom, to his surprise, he saw a black T-shirt (with ‘Shoot to Thrill’ printed on it) and a pair of  dark jeans already lying folded on the bed.  

“Hey, Jarvis?” he asked looking towards the ceiling wondering who had brought the clothes. To his knowledge Stark was the only one who could but it seemed out of character for what he knew of the man.

“Yes, Mr Barton?”

“Uh.. who brought these clothes here? Thanks for those by the way.”

“I realised none of you had any extra clothes to wear after freshening up, so I reminded sir and he put out some clothes from his wardrobe for all the four males and left some of Miss Potts’ for Miss Romanoff.”

“Right. Thanks.”

Again he found it weird but whatever. He and Nat would have to pick up some clothes from their apartments. Then he realised what Jarvis had said. Stark had put out clothes from his wardrobe for them. While his clothes would fit Clint and Banner, he wondered how or why the man owned something that would fit Cap or Thor. He’d have to ask that.

Clint was rather glad there wasn’t any underwear present among the clothes, because… Ew.

As he dressed, he finally allowed himself to think about what he’d tell the Avengers about Loki. Whatever he did, he certainly would not be mentioning those ... moments that they’d had. He hadn’t even told Nat that and they were just too personal.

And if there really was something wrong with Loki during the invasion, then Thor of all people should certainly be smelling a rat by now, he thought. He’d have to see how Thor reacted.

He stepped out of the room and waited at what was supposed to be the door of Nat’s room, nearly breaking his nose when she suddenly slammed the door open.

“Ow!” he moaned, clutching his face. Nat raised an eyebrow at him. She was wearing a slightly oversized light grey hoodie and light blue leggings.

“Why were you standing with your face right by the door?”

“You didn’t need to slam the door open! Why would you even do that! It’s not like there’s a point in being dramatic when there’s nobody to see you! And you’re not even dramatic in general.”

“Who said I’ve to be dramatic for other people? Maybe I like to be dramatic when I’m just by myself and that’s why you didn’t know?”

“Hey, I don’t know eighty percent of the stuff about you.”

“You give yourself too much credit.”

She smirked as Clint grumbled.

“So,” Clint said as they walked to the elevator, “Stark left you his girlfriend’s clothes then?”

“Yeah, and what about it? It’s very comfortable.”

“No, I mean, isn’t it a bit weird?”

“No.”

“Uh... okay,” Clint scratched his neck awkwardly.

As the elevator rose upwards (seriously, how many floors did this tower have?) the silence seemed to get a little more serious in the face of the discussion that loomed over their (especially his) heads.

Then he felt her hand slip into his. He looked up to see that her eyes had softened a bit, in the way they sometimes seemed to do for him.

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay.”

Clint nodded, trying to make himself believe that.

The elevator opened and they walked into Stark’s living room to find Thor, Steve and Bruce already there. Dr Banner was dressed the same as before they dispersed which made sense, Thor was wearing a dark maroon hoodie and grey sweatpants and Cap was wearing a blue T shirt and dark jeans. Again, he’d have to ask Stark why he had things that would fit Cap and Thor in his wardrobe.

They walked over and sat down on the couches with the others in the non-wrecked part of the room. There was an awkward silence and meant-to-be-sneaky-but-actually-weren't glances.

Clint decided to give up all pretences and straight up stared at Thor who very determinedly avoided his glance.

A few minutes past the hour mark Stark sauntered out of the elevator.

“Look at you lot. Why are you all so boringly early?” Dr Banner snorted and Nat rolled her eyes with just the barest hint of fondness. Cap rolled his eyes too but there wasn’t any real vitriol in it.

“Hey, Stark?” Clint asked.

“Yeah? And call me Tony, Stark was my dad.”

“Okay. So Tony, why exactly do you have clothes that fit Steve and Thor in your wardrobe.”

Tony waved a hand airily.

“Oh I just got drunk one night and for some reason decided to buy XXL clothing. Pepper tried to stop me but I didn’t listen. Well, what else is new? But it is coming to use now, so yay!”

That figured. Clint was almost disappointed. With Star-Tony’s playboy history, he supposed he’d been subconsciously hoping for something a little more juicy.

“By the way,” he told Nat, “I hope you’re fine with that hoodie. I almost gave you a hot pink one, but then I decided I didn’t want to be strangled in my sleep.”

“Oh please give me the hot pink one if there’s a next time, I’d have loved to wear it.”

Clint snorted while Thor smiled uncertainly.

“Speaking of which,” began Cap, “Thank you for lending us clothes Tony, but we’ll need to get our stuff up here in a day or two.”

“Oh don’t bother. I’ll get you stuff. It’s not like Thor has any stuff here anyway.”

Steve started to protest but Tony cut him off.

“No, don’t even start. My house, my rules,” He pointed to him and Nat, “Natashalie and Legolas, this applies to you both too, by the way.”

He continued before either of them could get a word in.

“Besides you don’t have to worry about equipment. If the six of us are to be a team, then I can give you better stuff than SHIELD any day.”

“I thought you didn’t make weapons anymore?”

"Are you guys gonna use it to help protect the Earth or are you gonna sell it to terrorists?”

There was a silence.

“Okay then.”

After a pause Tony continued. “So… back to business now?”

Clint took a deep breath. Alright, the fun and games were over. Back to thinking about Loki and mind control and maybe torture and all that trauma inducing bullshit that he’d been trying to avoid thinking about till now.

“Yeah,” he said, “Yeah, back to business.”

The atmosphere of the room sobered again. 

"Clint, would you like to say something?" Cap asked gently.  

He felt a flash of irritation at that. He didn't need to be coddled .

He opened his mouth when Stark interrupted again .

"Thor, buddy, you've been rather quiet. You know Loki best so wanna give us any likely reasons that Loki might wanna take over Earth other than seeking revenge against you, and just being a crazy power hungry maniac like you mentioned earlier before Clint tells us what he might remember? Wait, do you remember stuff from…?" he finished awkwardly (although ‘awkwardly’ wasn't a word he ever thought he'd use in association with Tony Stark), addressing the last part to Clint.

"Yes," Clint said while Thor answered, "I do not believe I can understand his reasons, whatever they might be."

And now that he really paid attention to him, Thor did seem to have been rather preoccupied till he was directly engaged with (he'd failed to notice with how much concentration he'd been putting into actively not thinking about Loki until the last moment— that absolutely wouldn't do for a spy).

Thor shook his head and seemed to gather his thoughts from wherever they had been wandering till then and sighed. 

"What exactly do you want to know about Loki?"

"A basic summary of his personality and background would be nice," Dr Banner said. "I'm assuming he wasn't always a bag of cats…?"

Thor huffed out a humourless laugh.

"Oh no, he is generally one of the cleverest and most logical people I know. He always thinks things through and plans carefully. His battle strategies almost never include frontal or obvious attacks and even though it's not approved by my people— and on occasion myself— his attacks are covert, stealthy and often more effective."

All of these were obviously deliberately pointed statements that directly contradicted Loki's plan and strategy to take over the Earth.

"So... all of this was Loki acting completely out of character." Steve stated slowly, cementing Clint's theory. In fact, if Loki was acting completely out of character, it was very much possible that not just torture and coercion through pain was involved, but mental manipulation too, and wasn't that just a cheerful thought?

"Yes, indeed it was."

After a moment of silence, Thor continued.  "Now that I think about it, I don't think ruling Earth would have particularly been to his liking either. "

That got some raised eyebrows. 

"Care to elaborate?" Dr Banner asked.

Thor swallowed. "Before... before all of this... a year before all of this—" that seemed like the time that fire breathing metal robot incident in Puente Antiguo happened, when Thor came here the first time,"—- we had a fight."

Yeah, no surprise there, Clint thought, but didn't say out loud. Thor had paused seemingly waiting to see if anybody would say just that. When nobody did, he continued. 

"During our fight, he insisted rather vehemently that he didn’t want the throne."

"And this was in line with his regular attitude?" Steve asked.

"Yes, actually," Thor said. "He has always preferred diplomacy and working behind the scenes, to openly showing or expressing himself and his motivations to everyone. He would not be a bad king, but he would not want to be tied down to a place."

"Likes travelling and learning stuff, does he?" asked Tony.

"Oh yes, very much. He soaks up knowledge like a sponge."

After a moment of silence, Clint asked, "So, anything specific that signaled a shift in his attitude?"

Thor was silent for a very long time. Clint was almost going to repeat the question when he answered. 

"He had recently found out that he was adopted."

Okay, what? Loki was definitely an adult , so how had he only recently found out that he was adopted?! The others obviously thought the same.

"Wait, wait, how old is Loki again?" Tony asked incredulously. 

"He's 1292 years old and I am 1494 years old......"

They all stared at him.

"How long do you guys live for again?"

"About 5000 years...."

Tony groaned and Clint followed while Bruce and Nat facepalmed and Steve continued to stare at Thor.

"Okay, okay," said Banner, "So you're like 24-25 years old in human terms and Loki is about 21-22 years old... So Loki went till he was 21-22 before he learnt he's adopted? Yeah, I can see why he'd be pissed off."

Yeah Clint could see that too. Also, boy, were Loki and Thor young, in human terms.

"Who had the bright idea of keeping his adoption hidden, again?" Tony asked.

"My father... and my mother went along with it. I was not aware of it either, but he is my brother in all but blood and he is family, so why does it matter so much?"

Tony just hid his face in his hands and groaned. 

"Thor," Nat began, "after having lived for over a thousand years, Loki must have developed a certain identity for himself, right?"

"Yes," said Thor. They all waited for him to catch up and after a moment he did, his eyes widening with dawning realisation. "And after he discovered his true heritage, his sense of identity must have been destroyed," He finished with regret deep in his eyes.

Clint found the wording a bit odd but elected to ignore it. But he was just about to open his mouth to ask Thor about another pressing concern of his, when Thor's eyes suddenly turned horrified. 

"...Thor?”

His eyes wide, Thor said, "My brother told me once that as a mage grows older, they develop a certain identity for themselves. They have to know themselves and everything about themselves, more intrinsically than the rest of us. And if a mature mage suddenly loses their sense of identity it almost always drives them mad.” They were all silent as the meaning of the words sunk in.

“So…” Banner concluded, “It is a possibility that because he suddenly discovered he was adopted… it destroyed his self-identity and because he is a …. mage ... this led to trauma and probably messed up with his head.”

“Yes,” Said Thor looking down (and looking ashamed(?) —why? He said he hadn’t known about the adoption either, so he hadn’t kept it hidden from Loki. Was it because he hadn’t realised the potential damage till now and acted in a way that could have made it worse?)

“So, let me get his straight,” Tony began, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It’s common knowledge that —god I can’t believe I’m saying this—  it’s common knowledge that mages need to maintain a strong and stable sense of identity to literally just stay sane, and your dad thought it was a good idea to not let him know that he was adopted?”

There was a heavy silence, and, yeah, Thor’s dad was not making himself popular. And the guy wasn’t even here.

“I believe that was a mistake on my father’s part.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“Although, just learning he was adopted, even though it was a dick move to keep it from him so long, probably shouldn’t have led to such a major trauma, should it?” Clint asked.

“Trauma can manifest on different levels for different people, due to different things,” Tasha said, which, yeah, fair enough. 

But Thor looked rather troubled. Nat obviously noticed this and Steve must have too because he asked, “Is there something else, Thor?”

After a pause Thor said, “He didn’t just learn he was adopted, he learnt that he was the son of the King of Asgard’s biggest enemies. He was abandoned as a child and my father found him on the battlefield and decided to keep him.”

Okay, what the hell? Firstly, this seemed like something straight out of Game of Thrones. Secondly, seriously what the hell?! Who kept stuff like that from their kid?!

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what?! ” Tony asked incredulously and his incredulity was totally warranted.

“Your dad knowingly adopted the son of an enemy king — and that sounds something straight out of Game of Thrones, let me tell you — deciding to probably never tell him the truth of his ancestry, and going by the fact that learning about it literally destroyed his self-identity, raised him to hate his own people and by extension himself?! ” Tony’s eyes were wide and his chest heaving after saying that whole thing without pausing to breathe.

And yeah… just having it laid out like that made it even worse.

“I never thought of it like that.” Thor almost whispered in a slightly horrified way.

Clearly, Clint wanted to snark, but managed to stop himself in time.

Everyone remained quiet for some time. Clint realised that Loki had been through a whole lot of shit. And if his dad has pretty much raised him to hate his people and himself… well the man certainly couldn’t have cared much for him. And Thor had implied that Loki was jealous of him. Jealous about what? Thor being better at sports and stronger perhaps, though Loki was no less of a fighter. Clint was pretty sure Loki was the one who’d been better at studies. The most obvious reason from what he knew of them, till now, would imply jealousy over father’s love. So favouritism too. Oh, Odin was making himself real popular , ‘round these parts.

“Thor,” Nat finally spoke up. They all looked up. “The way you’ve been speaking heavily implies that Loki was not with you for a while after he found out about his adoption.” 

Oh yeah, that was a thing too.

“You also arrived here from different locations and in different ways. So Loki wasn’t on Asgard for the past year or so. Do you know where he was? I’m assuming wherever he was, that’s where he came in association with the Chitauri.” 

Clint was thankful for her non-inflective words.

“No,” Thor whispered (it was odd to hear his voice so low, instead of having the usual booming quality they had come to expect), “We were not aware of where he was. We thought he was dead.”

“And what made you think that?” Dr. Banner asked quietly.

Thor stared ahead. 

“When… when the Bifrost broke, when I broke the Bifrost despite Loki telling me not to—” his voice cracked, “There was a huge explosion and the both of us were thrown off into the void. My father arrived right on time to grab my foot and I grabbed one end of Gungnir— the king’s staff— while Loki was holding on to the other. Then after a very brief conversation, where my father—” Thor’s voice was barely audible now. “—Denied Loki when he was hanging on the precipice of the void, Lo—Loki let go.”

There was a deathly silence. Clint was absolutely horrified. Even if Loki may have done something terrible (like sending that huge metal robot to Earth—that was the only thing that seemed to match with the timeline), what sort of father denied their son (wait— what did Odin deny Loki, exactly? Thor conveniently forgot to mention that) while they were literally hanging on the edge of the world?! Whatever he had been denied—approval, perhaps?— had been apparently terrible enough to make him try to commit suicide.

Oh, that was another thing now apparently. Alongside the very much likely torture and mental manipulation, now attempted suicide was on the resume of Loki’s trauma. Just great. 

(Also... how was he not torn to bits if he fell into empty space?!?! Because Clint supposed that was the reason Loki was assumed to be dead.)

“Thor, I just wanna say this,” Tony began, “Your dad just beat mine in the worst father in history competition.”

Thor looked like he still wanted to at least try to argue on his father’s behalf but he wisely kept his mouth shut. 

Good.

All this and he hadn’t even dropped what might be the biggest bombshell. Well, time to correct that.

After maintaining a quiet for what seemed like a reasonable time after the last horrifying reveal, he finally opened his mouth.

Chapter Text

When Loki had let go of Gungnir, Thor had felt a part of him break and fall down with him too. To his shock though, his friends didn’t seem upset about Loki’s death at all and wasted no time to start merrily feasting, as if no great tragedy had befallen Asgard with her second Prince’s death. He had known his friends hadn’t really liked Loki, but he hadn’t thought they had disliked him this much.

The courtiers and diplomats seemed extremely happy (though they hid it due to basic courtesy), but that was to be expected, since Loki was the one who would thoroughly weed out their lies and manipulations.

The warriors did not care much. 

But the mages cried. Of course they did. They mourned Loki and dressed in black. His mother dressed in bleak clothes rather than her vibrant gold and blue shades. And Thor, for the first time in his life, found himself standing together with the mages, being around mages, rather than around his friends, for he could not tolerate their easy dismissal and acceptance of his brother’s death.

The common people mourned for their Prince, for he had always been kind to them and had entertained them. Thor mourned with them too. He visited Loki’s favourite places in Asgard, left his favourite flowers —snapdragons in various colours— there. He sometimes felt like lining up the city with just white snapdragons, but Loki would have his head for that; despite how much he loved the white ones, he could never bear to see just one colour.

He spent a long time in their mother’s gardens. He didn’t —couldn’t— speak much with her, they just kept each other silent company.

He spent time in the library. He didn’t read much, just sat there and stared at the walls. Found Loki’s favourite nooks and corners and squeezed in there. Sif and the Warriors Three came to get him to spar sometimes, but he didn’t feel like sparring. He still went along to maintain an air of normalcy but could not pretend for long and would return back to the palace after only a few rounds.

He felt numb. He didn’t understand what was happening. He thought about Jane sometimes and wondered what she was doing. Did she think about him?  He felt angry with Loki sometimes too. How could he have done it? Why would he have done it? Let go?

He tried not to think of how his father didn’t seem very bothered by Loki’s death. How his mother seemed to be in constant mourning, but how he hadn’t seen her shed a single tear for her supposedly beloved son.

Then one day he asked them. What had happened while he was banished? They looked at each other and after a long and uncomfortable silence, they told him the truth, that Loki was not his brother by blood, that he was adopted. Now Loki’s words at the Observatory made a little more sense. But he didn’t understand why not being related by blood would make such a difference. They had been raised together, had spent their whole lives together, why would Loki simply being adopted change that? It certainly wouldn’t make Thor love him any less.

He asked them what made Loki snap. Because something had to have. Loki wasn’t mad and he wouldn’t go off the deep end for absolutely no reason. 

And then they told him his little brother was Jotunn. 

Thor thought it was a terrible jest and laughed, but when they didn’t, he realised it was true. His little brother belonged to that race of monsters. They told him that he had been abandoned because he was a runt. And Thor raged at his parents. Why had they not told them for over a thousand years?! His father said that he hadn’t wanted Loki to feel different, and that Loki was different from the other Jotunns since he had been bred in Asgard.

Thor had stormed off after that. Such a big lie. 

And then he realised that Loki must have felt far, far, worse than him on learning his heritage. He must’ve felt so angry, so betrayed. Perhaps that was why he had snapped?

Then after a few weeks, when he was sitting and brooding in one of Loki’s favourite corners of the library as had become the norm, suddenly an unbidden thought crossed his mind. What if his father was wrong? What if their ideals had been wrong? What if Loki wasn’t a monstrous brute because he was bred in Asgard but because none of the Jotunns were monstrous? What if the monster who had abandoned Loki was the only one (because only a monster would abandon their baby for being too small)? What if the others were not like that at all?

Even though Loki was not here now (would never be there again, but Thor chose to ignore that as much as possible, on a regular basis), it was his duty to find out about his brother's species, to learn what he could(no matter that despite having stopped Loki from destroying them he hadn't been able to get over his lifelong hatred of the Jotunns.).

He was fortunate that he had taken to spending long hours in the library and so nobody found it out of the ordinary anymore even if the Astrid the librarian cast him strange looks every time he entered. He immediately decided against asking for her help in his research; he did not want his father to be alerted of his new interest. 

However, what Thor found was that in their huge Royal Library of Asgard, second only to Alfheim's Royal Library, there was a rather suspicious lack of books on Jotunns or Jotunheim. Of course they were mentioned in fights against certain Aesir and obviously in books about the Great Aesir-Jotunn War, but Thor knew he wouldn't learn anything new or different in those books. 

He realised that if he wanted a different point of view, he'd need to read books written by someone other than an Aesir. So he scoured the library specifically for non-Aesir writers but again there was a suspicious lack of books in the icy department. 

He sighed as he collapsed on a chair. It did not take a genius to realise that the absence of books and knowledge on Jotunns that weren't strictly Aesir was intentional, to keep Loki from ever finding out about his heritage. He wondered why father had allowed them both to keep hating Jotunns all their lives. Was it also so that Loki would never be too eager to learn about them? It had all certainly been very meticulously planned. But why? Only so he wouldn’t feel different or for a different reason? It was at times like this that Thor wished he had Loki’s talents for weeding out plots and manipulations.

And why would their father allow this hatred against Jotunns to fester over millennia, especially if he had adopted one? If Thor had done so for some incomprehensible reason, he would have certainly tried to quell the hatred against them (obviously in this hypothetical situation, he had to have had overcome the hatred himself first, otherwise how could he even adopt one?) for who would want their child to hate their own species?

Which again brought him back to the question: Why had Odin All-father decided to adopt a Jotunn towards the end of the Jotunn-Aesir War?

And again Thor could not come up with any answer. Not that he was complaining, otherwise he’d have never had Loki as a brother and a childhood without Loki now seemed unimaginable. But had his parents merely wished for him to have a sibling, they could have had another child.

Right. Now there was the other question. How had they faked the pregnancy? Because mother had been pregnant. He had seen it. He had been little over 200— he did a quick calculation, he must have been about 202, when he’d made the first embarrassing enquiry about why his mother’s belly was starting to swell. But Loki hadn’t been born till he was at least 203, so… His parents couldn’t possibly have faked the pregnancy, he’d felt the baby kick!! He was sure of it. He remembered being so happy every time— it couldn’t just be magic!! Could it?

He remembered one thing though. Mother had gone into early labour and then hadn’t left her private chambers for weeks. He had been looked after entirely by his nurses those few weeks and nobody would tell his toddler-self anything. Nobody has seemed to know anything. The nobility had been rife with gossip. Then father had come home after war and instead of resting or going to the healing halls to have his wounds— his bleeding eye— looked at, he had gone straight to mother’s private chambers with nary a moment to spare for anyone. Everybody had thought that he had just been too worried for his wife to think of anything else, but now Thor wondered if there had been anything else to it too. There must have been.

He wondered if Father had come in with Loki and handed him to mother. But then, what about the baby she had been carrying. He only thing Thor could think of that would fit with the story that was slowly forming in his head was that mother had had a… a miscarriage (she had gone into early labour— the baby would have been pre-term) and Loki had been a blessing from the Norns. It sounded utterly ridiculous in his head, but the only other theory he could come up with was that it was all planned, the pregnancy was faked by highly advanced magic, and the early labour was an excuse for Loki’s smaller size and stature compared to Thor’s.

Thor didn’t actually know which would be worse.

Then he came to another realisation. In either of the above situations, the head healer would have to be in on it. Eir.

It made him sick to think that every time strict, no-nonsense but kind Eir had looked at Loki, she had been keeping up the lie their parents had started, that she had been lying to him— to both of them—  as well.

He almost turned to apologise to Loki and to ask what he thought, when he remembered that Loki was not there, and would never be there again. That no matter what ridiculous theories he came up with, about Loki’s induction to their family, Loki would never be around to hear them, to tell him off, to laugh at how ridiculous they were. Loki wasn’t there to search for the truth of his own past.

He couldn’t stay in the library for another moment. Yes, he’d thought it was his duty as a brother to find out more about the Jotunns, but it was not as if he’d been successful, what with almost no books in the library (granted he still had a bit of the library left— but he couldn’t do it now).

As he was lying on his bed, he couldn’t stop thinking about Loki. Well, he had been thinking about Loki almost all the time. Whoever had said that you didn’t realise how much someone meant to you until you lost them was undeniably right. He wondered idly, who they had lost to come to the conclusion, to make that evergreen, universal, terrible proclamation.

He wondered if he was a terrible person for not having cried himself to sleep every night after… after. He still couldn’t always put the events of that night to words in his own head. The events were still a blur. He knew people were supposed to cry in their grief, he’d seen their mother do it. Father was the King so he couldn’t show weakness in front of others (and besides… Thor had some rather conflicting feelings about his father, he couldn’t understand the man at all). But what about him? He hadn’t cried since that night. He had, when he’d seen Loki disappear into the void, but he hadn’t shed a single tear since. He couldn’t. He didn’t know why.

He did know he had a few things to apologise for when he met Loki next. And it would be when, obviously, since he wasn’t immortal after all.

He would have to apologise for insulting his magic, first and foremost. He had never actually thought Loki’s magic to be inferior, he… he just went along with the other warriors’ opinions. He hated to admit it even to himself, but jealousy had had a role to play there. He had long been jealous of Loki’s prowess and aptitude for magic. Both their parents were highly proficient practitioners of seidr and Loki’s skill exceeded theirs. Thor though… while of course his lightning and ability to change the weather was manipulation of seidr… He could do just that. It was not his fault and certainly not Loki’s, he knew not everybody had an affinity for seidr, but he still couldn’t help being just slightly jealous of his brother.

Perhaps Loki had felt similarly in other matters? Had it been inevitable for their rivalry to only escalate?  It would be possible, a part of Thor thinks, for Loki to see slights where there were not any. It would not be difficult to imagine Loki felt Thor was responsible for some great wrongdoings, just as Thor now was able to be jealous of his skill in magics despite Loki’s passing. Could such feelings have contributed to his anger, his ire, his resentment on the Bifrost that day? 

Thor  rubbed a hand over his eyes, rolled over and sighed. Sleep was far from his mind, but he had to try.

The next morning, after he returned from his regular ritual of leaving snapdragons in one of Loki’s favourite places—the little brook by the quiet, old temple of the Norns this time (and he couldn’t be gladder that the people had grown used to his presence in different parts of the city and did not create a fuss anymore)— he scoured the remaining section of the Royal library until only the “Restricted Section” was left.

Few places in Asgard had ever been out of bounds for Thor and Loki— not even their parents’ shared chamber. In fact their father’s private chambers were probably the only place they had ever been particularly barred from. This particular chamber of the library had gained this label, because no one had ever been able to pick a single book from the shelf.

The spines of the books had no labels and every time anyone tried to pick a book from the shelf, their hands met an invisible barrier. Both Thor and Loki had tried to pick out books from the shelves as children but had failed. They had become desperate enough to throw things at the shelves and then had been kicked out (that was the only time Loki had ever been kicked out of any library). It had been a big blow to their prides, and they had never asked their parents why that section was forbidden and had simply named it the “Restricted Section.” 

The “Restricted Section” was the one part of the Library Loki had never been able to access and had always wanted to.

As far as Thor was aware, Loki had tried a few more times in the recent past with the same success rate— that is, none.

Thor raised a hand to the shelves, ready to feel the buzz of an energy barrier against his palm, but to his utter shock, he felt no resistance as his hand landed on a few books.

He blinked and moved his finger across the spines. He could— he could actually touch them?!?!

But, but how?!?!

It made no sense!!! Loki had failed even with his various charms and spells, how could he touch it just like that. He wondered if father had lifted the spell completely, or whether only he could touch it. He almost called Astrid to see if she could touch it too, but stopped himself. If somehow only he could touch it and whatever spell had barricaded it hadn’t been removed, he didn’t want to alert anyone.

He hardly dared to breathe as he grasped the spine of a book and attempted to pull it; It barely took any effort. He still had trouble believing it. Granted that the last time he had actually tried pulling out a book from any shelf in the Restricted Section, he had only been a child but he had seen Loki attempt and fail to do it, he had seen other people try and fail to do it quite recently.

The book he was holding was one on specialised Ljosalfar artillery. He flipped through the pages to find the most exceptional examples of weapons functioning based on a combination of seidr and science. He did not understand everything of course, but he did glean this, Asgard certainly hadn’t come up with the original designs of all the weapons it claimed were first manufactured here. Why, he thought, why take credit for what the Ljosalfar came up with?

Thor had never associated the word ‘thieves’ or any variation of it to Asgardians, but here it looked like they’d done quite a bit of thievery.

He sighed. He’d learnt some rather unflattering things about Asgard and father recently. And looked like if he continued with his research, he would stumble across more such things.

He put the book down on the table and sighed, rubbing a hand across his face. He had barely started and he was already feeling tired.

But now that he could access this place, there was a chance he could find books on Jotunheim and so he stood up to look for the books. It was going to take quite some time since their spines were not labelled.

It turned out that he was correct and there were a few books on Jotunheim. He had found 5 in the past two hours of going through shelves (and it was even more difficult, since the books didn’t seem to be arranged in any particular order. He did find several copies of the book on Ljosalfar weapons and several copies of other books on Alfheim and Ljosalfar and books about Aesir, Vanir, Musphels, Dwarves, other creatures in the Nine Realms he’d never heard of, and a few books even on Dokkalfar— Loki would love this so much, he thought with a grin and then the next moment the grin slipped right off, because he remembered that Loki wasn’t there, would never be there again) and he figured that would be enough information. Or well, probably not, but he only had so much patience.

For now, he’d stick to the theory that the restricted section wasn’t open to other people. Now, how he would sneak out the books since it wasn’t as if he could simply inform the librarian that he was borrowing books for leisure reading and that too, books on Jotunheim which technically shouldn’t even be accessible. Well, he obviously couldn’t take them all at once. So he took three of the books, placed them on a corner of a lowest shelf in a haphazard manner, prayed to the Norns that he’d remember which shelf he’d kept the books in and stuffed the other two books down his armour.

Never had he thought in his nearly 1494 years of existence, that one day he would be sneaking out books from the library. Had Loki been there, he would have immediately checked whether Thor was ill. This absolutely did not put a smile on his face, because like every other time he thought of something Loki might have done, he was reminded that Loki wasn’t there, would never be there again because he was dead, and so Loki would not be doing anything ever again.

He dropped the two books on the bed and wasted no time in following them there. That numbness was starting to settle in again, and he did not think he would register a word if he tried to read the books now.

He kept the books on his bedside table, got out of his armour and flopped back down the bed. He closed his eyes but couldn’t sleep.  He thought back to when he and Loki were children and shared the same chambers, how when either he or Loki had been unable to sleep, they would quietly slip into the other’s bed.

Ironically, as a child Thor hadn’t liked thunder much. Of course, by the time he reached adolescence he had grown out of it, but when he was a little boy, he would creep into Loki’s bed and wrap his arms around him. Loki would stir and Thor would just murmur that he was protecting Loki from the thunder. He would see Loki smile, but he never called him out on that excuse and simply agreed.

Loki used to get night terrors at times and would crawl into Thor’s bed. Thor would sleepily promise to fight whoever dared to hurt Loki and always keep him safe. (And hadn’t he done just a wonderful job of that?)

Thor wondered when it all changed. When had he and Loki started growing apart? He couldn’t find any particular answer to that.

The next day after completing his daily ritual he had to go for training. Although over the past several months people had gotten used to him brooding and not appearing much in his once beloved pits, he still did have to go sometimes to boost morale and keep up appearances. 

He was greeted heartily by his four friends (well… except Hogun) but honestly their cheerful attitude was starting to get on his nerves and give him a headache. He still gave them a wide smile—the one which Loki said made him look like an utter idiot—though, hoping they would not bother him much. He wasn’t so lucky.

“We hardly see you these days, Thor! Where are you all day?” Volstagg asked.

Thor hesitated. Even months earlier he would have easily told his friends almost anything, but not now, and certainly not this, especially after seeing their indifference at their supposed friend’s death.

“Ah...” he said, fumbling with his words, “I realised I had not been spending enough time with Mother, so I have been trying to remedy that.”

That was sort of true, in a way. He had spent time in his mother’s gardens in the early months following “The Event”. But after he found out the lie…… he had stopped.

Then he realised that in all these days, he had spent so less time with his friends that he hadn’t even mentioned spending time with his mother to them before. They hadn’t even asked. They sparred, spoke of useless nothings and went on their way. That was it. Was this what their friendship had come to?

“That is all well and good, Thor, but you must not let yourself fall behind on practice!” Fandral exclaimed.

Thor felt himself bristle. He could take all of them out, together, without any practice. And that was the least of his concerns now. 

He dropped Mjolnir on the ground. 

“Well then, come at me.”

He had of course, defeated all of them. Sif had, expectedly, come the closest to landing any considerable blow.  It had been a long round but only because Thor had been feeling very sluggish—On a better day he could have wiped the floor with them much sooner. They laughed heartily and praised him, but Thor did not feel at all elated. They asked him to stick around but he lied about having to meet Mother in her gardens soon and got out of there as quickly as possible, not even caring about his deteriorating relationship with his comrades anymore.

Once he entered the palace, he trudged back to his rooms. Now that he would be actually reading about the Jotunns, it seemed a little daunting. 

Pull yourself together, Thor. They are merely books. They won’t affect your life in any way. (And they really wouldn’t. Had Loki been there, they would have, of course. But he wasn’t and this was just another reminder that he was never going to be there ever again.)

But the books would tell him whether what he had believed all his life was true or false. Whether the Aesir were right in their opinions or wrong. Whether children had been taught incorrectly over millennia or not.

He opened the first book. 

‘Ymir or Aurgelmir was the First being in Yggdrasil, a giant who was created from the drops of water that formed when the ice of Niflheim met the heat of Muspelheim. He was the Father of Giants. From his left armpit emerged the first Musphels or Fire Giants and from his right emerged the Jotnar or the Frost Giants…’

Thor felt like he was reading a book of children’s tales.

He had known that Ymir was supposedly the first of beings and that the Giants had descended from him but that was about it; everything else was vaguely told. This wasn’t doing a stellar job of explaining it but he was only a paragraph in (and he could feel his mind scrambling to make excuses to avoid reading, as usual. He did better when someone—Loki— read things out or explained things to him but now—No. He was going to stop that thought right there.) so he hoped there was a better explanation than ‘emerged from the armpits’. Then he wondered why he was even bothering with this nonsense. He should simply start with the Aesir-Jotnar war, should he not? (He belatedly realised that he hadn’t brought the book on on the history warfare of Jotunheim to his room at all and felt like banging his head.)

But he also had to learn about the Jotnar (not had to—wanted to. He didn’t have to learn anything because the person for whom he would learn simply wasn’t there, would never be there, ever again.).  

(And also, apparently, they had all been addressing the ‘Jotnar’ incorrectly for like forever.)

He wanted to tear his hair out now. He didn’t understand what he should read first.

He buried his face in his hands. He wished for the first time that he actually enjoyed reading. That would make all this so much easier.

By the next morning Thor felt more educated and it was confirmed: They were wrong about the Jotnar.

Chapter Text

Now, Thor had already known some things about the Jotnar from his studies which had been pushed to the back of his mind.

He had known that the Jotnar were warm blooded since warm-blooded animals could remain active, seek food, and defend themselves in cold environments in which cold-blooded animals could hardly move.

He had known that they were large in size since larger warm-blooded animals could generate more heat than they lose and keep their body temperatures stable more easily, and that their thicker skin and colour made them perfectly suited to Jotunheim’s harsh climate.

The fact that they had a biological heat control system that could generate and control the heat in their body and allowed their frost bite attack and ice powers to manifest was also well-known, as was  that their ice was stronger than and different from normal ice.

He hadn’t known many things. He still didn’t know many things, because he had become tired of reading, and he hadn’t registered all of what he read, nor did he remember all of what he had registered.

Obviously he hadn’t known that they were called the Jotnar when referred to as the whole species and as Jotunns when only some were being referenced.

He hadn’t known that similar to the Aesir, the Jotnar had some inherent seidr. This seidr was of course what made the Aesir extremely durable and gave them highly enhanced healing. The Jotnar apparently had more inherent seidr than Aesir, since while lacking greatly in actual seidrmadr or seidr users, all the Jotnar could utilise seidr to manipulate ice.

Thor supposed that could be another reason Loki possessed such a natural gift for magic.

The Jotnar also had better night vision than any other species in the Nine, since most of the time their realm was dark. This one seemed like something he should have guessed, but he had, of course, never thought about it.

Thor found certain parts of the politics and history surprisingly intriguing.

The selection of the next King was also different on their realm; Although the ruler would certainly be from the Royal family, it wasn’t really the established ruler who decided who would be the next King in case of more than one heir.

If there were two or more heirs to the throne and it was accepted by all of them who would be the king, that decision would prevail. If both/all of them wanted the throne, there would be a vote across the land and the one with the maximum votes in their favour would win. If the heirs decided they wanted to share the kingdom and the throne, or if the number of votes in their favour were equal, they would rule in coalition.

(That was an…interesting concept, to say the least. He wondered if the policy had been followed in Asgard, would it have prevented… the Event? Would he still have Loki by his side? Would they have teased each other on their Coronation? Thor would have become the commander of the army of course, while Loki would make the lords dance to his tune. Loki would smack him for his idiocy as was usual and they would rule together. Thor would perhaps deal with the people directly and Loki would deal more with the Nobility since he thrived behind the scenes.

Alas, it was but wishful thinking, for Loki was not there, would never be there, ever again. He was gone, gone, gone— )

Thor also learnt why it was Midgard that the Jotnar had chosen to invade. The one reason that everybody knew was because of its primitive inhabitants and archaic technology (or well, at that point there was no technology, so to speak) and how easy it would be to take over, but another reason was the Jotnar’s dependence on water. Ice was after all nothing but frozen water. And about 71 percent of Midgard's surface was water. 

The Jotnar utilised the water in their body or in their environment and atmosphere, absorbed its heat, froze it and manipulated it with seidr to form weapons. So it would have been the perfect choice, really.

The Jotnar were strong and Jotunheim had been one of the only realms who had had the chance to defeat Asgard. They needed to take Midgard not only as a colony to strengthen their powers, but also because Midgard was the center realm and could provide easy access to all other realms to those who had knowledge of its pathways. It would be highly advantageous in trade, communication, and most importantly, in stealthy movement of sections of the army.

But here was the interesting thing: They had to bring the whole Jotnar army to Midgard first, which they could not have done through the hidden pathways. Apparently that’s where the Casket of Ancient Winters came to play.

Thor was rather shocked to find that apparently under certain unsaid conditions, the Casket could transport a whole battalion from realm to realm, and that it had during the Jotunn-Aesir— no, Jotnar-Aesir War. (He did think ‘Jotunn-Aesir’ had a better ring to it though.)

He would love to know how, when not even realms like Vanaheim and Alfheim known for their magic had managed to create a marvel like that (though he was sure the inner workings would escape his understanding. Loki had always been better at those things).

And they had been taught that the Jotnar were primitive.

Though that did beg the question, why then, were the Jotnar in the condition they were?

As Thor read through the book, he did find the answer. And he was horrified.

About some 20,000 years ago, a huge asteroid hit Jotunheim and knocked it off its axis; That destroyed the atmospheric and climatic controls of the realm. 

Jotunheim was always a land of ice and snow but not a wasteland. It’s capital Utgard had once apparently been a beautiful city with intricate architecture. 

(In fact, the likeness shown in the book was so staggeringly beautiful that Thor could not even begin to compare it to the ruins they had seen. It seemed to make the whole thing so much worse. And they were certainly not primitive.)

Once the climatic controls got destroyed, all the mages on the realm came together and created the Casket of Ancient Winters. This sucked power from all the mages and killed them (that explained the lack of mages in Jotunheim).

The Casket now maintained the climatic controls of the realm and preserved it’s beauty. Thus, when Odin took the Casket, he essentially condemned the realm to an agonising slow death.

Thor had known that the Casket was their source of power, but he had never thought—

That was his problem though, wasn’t it? He never thought about anything. He probably wouldn’t even have cared some time ago. But now, he was horrified. And he couldn’t do anything about it.

He now knew that he had been wrong in thinking of the Jotnar as monsters. He also knew that he had been a foolish war-mongerer. But even then he would not have condemned them to rot. Though that did not help his case at all, since Loki had been right on the Bifrost, and even he would have rather had them all be straight up dead.

It disgusted him now, but it was true. He didn’t really know how his perspective had been changed in these months, but it had.

He could not even imagine such a thing happening to Asgard.

And… it was Loki’s birthplace. In another world, Loki may have been living a harsh life full of difficulties, with his birth family in Jotunheim- but… that thought pained Thor too much. Because then he would have known Loki as nothing else but an enemy, he would have grown up without Loki at his side and that seemed impossible now.

He sighed.

Thor wished now, that he could go and return the Casket to the Jotnar, but that wasn’t exactly possible, with the Casket lost to the void with Loki, and that was not considering the other ramifications, like the fact that he would be killed on spot if he ever set foot on Jotunheim again, and for very good reason (him killing more Jotunns wouldn’t exactly endear him to them any more), not to mention how he would explain anything to father.

That was another can of worms he didn’t want to open. 

Father. 

He couldn’t even ask the man anything. Couldn’t ask him why Asgard was told all these lies about the Jotnar. Why they had been taught to hate the Jotnar if Loki was one. Couldn’t ask why Asgard had stolen technology from the other realms and claimed them as her own.

He was already harbouring a headache and thinking anymore about all this would only increase its progression and definitely make him angry and he’d go into another crisis about missing Loki and feeling like nothing mattered anymore and what was even the point of living and—

Breathe.

He sighed and put his head down on the library desk in front of him. He’d have to get out of there soon. He couldn’t have anyone find out in which part of the library he had been and what he was reading.

He put all the books that he had bothered to skim through back in their places and watched as a golden gleam of magic swept over the shelf rearranging the books perfectly and making it seem like they had never been touched.

This was another thing that was eating at him. At least the question of why this section had been out of bounds in the first place was answered. Clearly his father did not want the truth about the Jotnar not being primitive to get out for whatever reason and he was sure there must be plenty of other unflattering things about Asgard here after what he had wound up skimming through only a few pages of one book. But he really did not have the energy to read through everything else. Unlike Loki, he didn’t think he would be able to soak up all the negativity about Asgard without feeling sick.

He knew he should take advantage of his new-found advantage, but he had never been much of a reader and he didn’t think he would be able to focus any longer.

Though, why could he access it now when he hadn’t been able to access it before? He supposed Loki hadn’t been able to because he would have gobbled up this information at once and that would’ve led to……. difficult conversations and situations. But Loki had got him to try to do it immediately to no avail. And even recently at the peak of his power, Loki hadn’t been able to break through whatever wards protected it.

A terrible thought crossed his head—was it in some way keyed to be available to him once Loki was dead?

Why?

Why something like that?

But even that did not make sense. Why would Father want him to suddenly learn everything negative after that? It wasn’t even a certainty that he would even try to come to the Library again.

Nothing seemed to make sense anymore,

He sighed again and got up, giving Astrid a nod as he left, which the petite red head returned with a small bow of her head, regarding him with the same strange look as she always did nowadays, probably wondering what he did here all these hours, even so many months after Loki’s passing, since he didn’t seem to take anything to read with him to his chambers, and none of the books seemed displaced. But she never asked or told him he needed to move on, since she had been somewhat fond of Loki with how much he came to the library and sometimes the two of them had been found engaged in long debates on obscure topics. Thor thought he still saw a sad look flashing through her eyes sometimes.

Everybody else was not so polite however, and instead of keeping their thoughts to themselves, they pestered him with them.

Telling him he needed to move on, engage in other activities.

He still hadn’t spoken much to his Father and to make sure that didn’t change, he would have to slowly go back to his normal activities before the man took a personal interest in his current activities and became too suspicious.

Several months passed and yet Thor could not rest. He tried to mingle with people like he used to but he simply did not enjoy it. He missed being admonished after getting drunk, he missed being told off for being an idiot, he missed having to drag someone out from the library, he missed their inside jokes, he even missed their arguments. He missed Loki.

He was told if he did what he used to, he would be able to fall back into the rhythm of life and would be able to let go. That was terrible advice. In whatever he did, he felt Loki’s absence. He missed Loki's quiet presence. And he could not even try to mend his relationship with his parents. They all pretended everything was fine in public but they rarely spoke in private. His mind had firmly latched on to the belief that they were partially responsible for driving Loki to insanity.

There was a short period of time when he tried to get over his grief by bedding others. Obviously that did not work, and all that happened was that his subconscious learned to be quiet during his nightmares.

He still stared at the jagged edges of the Bifrost sometimes… and wondered what it would be like if he had managed to catch Loki's hand instead of Gungnir (he would have never let go). He wondered how the stars could be so dispassionate while he lost a part of his heart, as the void swallowed Loki in it’s infinite depths. 

He could never think of a definitive answer.

He had only just got to the point where he did not spiral almost every time someone mentioned Loki, and had accepted that he would have to spend the rest of his life with pain in his heart and wondering what Loki would say or do in situations, when one day a guard came to inform him that the Allfather had ordered him to come to his private chambers immediately for discussion on some extremely important matter.

He wondered what could be so important that he was invited to Father’s private chambers after over a year of sparse and stilted conversation when not in public.

He knocked on the door, feeling apprehensive. Could it be that father had found out that he had accessed the ‘Restricted Section’ a few months ago? But if that was indeed the case, why would it take so long for him to become aware of that?

“Come in.” 

His father’s voice seemed tense and that did not seem like a good thing.

He entered the King’s chambers, finding his mother— and to his surprise— Heimdall there too.

Oh shit, he thought. He had entirely forgotten about Heimdall and his sight. Heimdall would have seen everything. He would have seen him access the restricted section and find information about the Jotnar. Did he inform father? But why now? Why after so much time when he visited the library only about once a week and simply picked out random books to read, when he stayed away from the Restricted Section?

Why had he not informed Father immediately? Or… had he? Was Father waiting for him to come clean and had become tired after all these months?

“You called me, Father?”

“Yes, my son.” 

He sighed. Mother looked upset and somewhat hopeful at the same time, while Heimdall had a pensive look on his face.

“Thor,” his mother began, “you are aware that to get rejuvenated, us seidr-wielders sometimes meditate, allowing our energy to flow through the Yggdrasil and its branches, absorbing the part of its boundless energy that it is willing to share?”

He was, yes. He had seen Loki do it sometimes.

“Yes, Mother.” 

He wondered how this was in any way relevant and if they weren’t actually here to talk about the ‘Restricted Section’.

“Well, while I was meditating, I sensed the …imprint of a very familiar presence right outside the Yggdrasil.”

Thor’s heartbeat quickened. Surely, she couldn’t mean… no, he would not, could not, get his hopes up.

She sighed. 

“I sensed Loki, Thor. Upon further investigation… I glimpsed him.”

For a moment, the world seemed to stutter to a halt around Thor. Loki… was alive?!?! How was that possible?!?! It wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be possible. Could his little brother have survived falling into the void?!?! Could he have been trying to find his way back for over a year?

But surely this news should have brought happiness to his parents’ faces? Why then did they look so tense? It could not have been that they still held a grudge over what had happened that night at the observatory and during Thor’s banishment? Loki could not have been thinking straight then! He had just found out about his Jotunn heritage, he was obviously not thinking straight.

“That— that is extremely happy news, Mother!! Surely we must start preparing a feast soon to honour his return?”

“Thor,” his father said, “you haven’t heard the whole thing.”

“But what could possibly be more important than the fact that he is alive and attempting to return?!”

“The fact that your mother sensed him trying to work with the Tesseract to reach Midgard.”

“What?” Thor asked, turning to his mother, confused. “He’s trying to reach Midgard?”

On one hand it would make sense for almost anybody else in Loki’s position to do so since Midgard was the middle-most realm and hence the easiest to reach from outside the Yggdrasil, especially since it was currently housing the Tesseract.

But Loki… Loki had knowledge of each and every hidden pathway of the Yggdrasil, not only those that allowed passage within the Yggdrasil, but also those that allowed entry into and exit from the Yggdrasil. So why would Loki be trying to reach Earth instead of aiming directly for Asgard?

“Yes, Thor,” Mother said, sighing. “And I sensed several inferior minds clustered together, near him.”

Thor could not make any sense of it. Inferior minds? What—

Heimdall suddenly spoke up. “He has an army of the Chitauri. I could glimpse them now for barely a moment—”

“Chitauri?” Thor interrupted. Everyone knew the Chitauri were like an army of mercenaries willing to work for the highest bidder. Thor did not know who the Chitauri really answered to. But Chitauri, right at the edge of the Nine Realms? That was unheard of. And why would Loki be banding with the Chitauri?

Heimdall continued as if there had been no interruption. “—when he opened a portal accessing the Tesseract and reached Earth.”

“He’s reached Earth?!”

There was a pause and Thor tapped his feet impatiently against the floor. The silence stretched on, Heimdall’s expression turning graver and graver.

“It seems,” he said after a few minutes, “that Loki means to wage a war over Midgard.”

Father frowned but inexplicably, didn’t seem very surprised. Thor, on the other hand, was flabbergasted.

“What?!”

“He informed the leader of a Midgardian organisation, that he intends to ‘free their world from freedom’ and take over their realm, before stealing the Tesseract from their custody.”

Free their world from freedom— what a load of utter rubbish. That wasn’t like Loki at all.  And… Loki… wanting to take over Midgard?! Why?!

“But why would he want to do that and where did he even meet the Chitauri?!" He asked, desperately.

“We are not aware of that, as we cannot be of many things.” Father said and another nail drove its way into the coffin of Thor’s unwavering faith in his father and the belief that he knew the answers to everything.

“But I believe,” Father continued, “that he is targeting Midgard specifically not just because humanity is still a backward species, but also because you have chosen to take Earth under your protection and he wishes to undermine you.”

Thor was stunned. News of Loki being alive had come not a few minutes ago and Father was already thinking about how Loki might be plotting to undermine him? Why would that even cross his mind now, of all things.

“Father, I am not sure that is—”

“You are still young, Thor, and naiver than Loki.” Father said. “And you certainly do not understand the intricacies of the mind and thoughts. As much as you might be loath to believe it, Loki’s mind is far afield and he is not the brother you knew.”

No. No. No. That was not possible.

“But Father,” Thor dared to say, “it could be that just this once you might be wrong.”

Father only looked at him with pity as if he was simply some foolish, persistent dog that needed consoling.

“For your sake I would pray to the Norns that there may be some small chance of that, though that would be futile.”

Thor felt his hackles rise, but before he could say anything, Mother spoke.

“But we must help the Midgardians. They will not be able to stop Loki on their own.”

“You are correct, my Queen.” Heimdall said. “If I may, I suggest we send Thor to Midgard.”

“What? But with the Bifrost gone, how can I go there?” Thor asked.

Father sighed heavily.

“There is a way. I can channel dark energy from the Yggdrasil through myself with some help from your mother and transport you to Midgard.”

“But Father,” Thor asked worriedly, despite his pulse already thrumming with adrenaline at the thought of going to Midgard and seeing Loki after such a long time (even if he may have to fight him), “despite your immense strength, channeling dark energy through yourself will take an immense toll on your health.”

“Yes,” Father agreed. “But that is the only way.”

“You must go now, Thor.” Mother said. “Get ready while I help your father prepare. Meet us in the observatory.”

“Yes Mother.” Thor said, and turned and left the chambers.

He could hear his heart thudding in his ears.

He was going to go to Midgard. He was going to see Loki. He may have to fight Loki (again, no, NO). But Loki was alive. Loki had survived the void. His little brother was (hopefully) still alive(in there somewhere).

He ignored all the servants and soldiers who practically leapt out his path as he ran through the halls, and burst into his room.

After doing his business and washing his face in the washing room, he picked up his best battle armour and cape with almost shaking hands.

Don’t be ridiculous, Thor. This probably won’t even be your worst battle.

But then again, it probably would. Because it would not be an unimportant or faceless foe that he would be facing. If Heimdall was to be believed, then he would be fighting Loki. For once in his life at least, he would be trying to avoid hurting the opponent as much as possible.

His hands definitely shook as he picked his vambraces. He and Loki had specifically got a special pair of them made for each of them the last time they had been on Nidavellir.

Loki’s had the silhouette of two half feathers on each of his, while Thor’s had a simple lined figure of horns on his.

Anytime they had worn these before, both of them had worn them together. Whenever they had prepared for battle, they had prepared to fight together, side by side.

He sighed. There was no time to be sappy now.

He leant his head on his mirror for a moment before nodding at himself and starting his march towards the Observatory.

On reaching the Observatory, he found his father standing with his eyes closed, Hofund in his hands propped in front of his feet with Mother’s hand on his shoulder and Heimdall, quietly standing two steps behind them.

“Thor,” his mother said. “We are ready. Come here now and stand in front of us, my son.”

Thor did so, his heart hammering so loudly now that he thought everyone else must also be able to hear it. He was surprised it didn’t burst right out.

Father did not open his eyes or react to his presence in any way.

Mother’s eyes softened and she placed a hand on his cheek pulling him down so their foreheads were touching.

“It has been so long since we have spoken properly,” she said, and Thor’s breath stuttered as he wondered if she was going to call him out now, right before his departure. She didn’t, of course.

“Loki’s—” she sighed. “Loki’s absence weighs down heavily on both of us.” Thor noted that she specified both of them and did not include Father in that.

“Bring him home, Thor. Bring him home.”

Thor nodded against her cool forehead. He let a moment pass, then two, and then straightened up.

Heimdall then walked up to him and handed him… a pair of contractible cuffs.

“Why are you—”

“In case you have to restrain your brother, My Prince.”

Thor opened his mouth to protest but was cut off by Heimdall.

“I hope that will not be necessary but better to take all precautions. These are special cuffs that will bind his magic.”

Thor took them hesitantly and tucked them in his war-belt Megingjord (he did not think he would have any use of it’s stores, but it was part of his armour, so…) wondering if Mother would protest. She did not.

Father finally spoke, without opening his eyes. 

“Make sure you have the Tesseract with you while returning. The mortals’ meddling with what they don’t understand is what led to Loki being able to access it in the first place. It will be safer here.”

Thor frowned at him. The Tesseract had allowed Loki into the Nine Realms and Father seemed to be more upset about that rather than the fact that Loki might be starting a war about Midgard.

“Besides,” Father added, “I will not be able to summon dark energy again to bring you back. The only way you can return is via the Tesseract.”

Ah yes, that made more sense. Well, Loki knew the hidden pathways, but… it really did not seem likely that he would be using those to bring them back.

Thor nodded. “Yes Father.”

His father sighed. “You should harden your heart. Loki is not the brother you knew.”

Thor’s jaw clenched, but he did not say anything.

The older man sighed again and took one hand off Hofund to place it on Thor’s crown.

“You might want to close your eyes,” Mother spoke up.

Thor nodded at her, attempting a smile for her sake and then closed his eyes. After a few tense moments, he felt his stomach lurch and a rush of nausea made him dizzy and then he was falling, twisting and turning and falling, falling, falling—

“Where is the Tesseract?” was the first thing that left Thor's mouth on seeing Loki after thinking he was dead for over a year and he regretted it immediately.

What sort of terrible brother does that make me? He wondered.

It was in fact Loki who said that he missed Thor and then Thor went ahead and asked “Do I look like I‘m in a gaming mood”  like a complete prat. What was wrong with him?

As he actually looked at Loki (well, tried to anyway, the dark surroundings weren’t helping any), he was shocked to see that such a familiar face could look so unrecognisable.

The most noticeable thing for someone else would have probably been the longer and greasier hair and the difference in his clothes. Thor did not care about any of those.

Loki’s eyes looked mad, they looked wild, but what they didn’t look like, were Loki. His face looked gaunt and his eyes were sunken and he looked ill.

Honestly, it seemed foolish to Thor to have expected him to be perfectly well after surviving the void.

When Loki denied their shared parentage, Thor’s heart ached but he still could not abandon all hope that Loki would still accept him and their parents as family, eventually. 

‘He did tell you about my true heritage, did he not?’ and oh, Thor wanted to tell him how he had raided the library for books about the Jotnar that weren’t authored by Aesir, how he had made a point to learn something about them, how he regretted not being more thorough then, because he had thought that Loki was dead but that would just be wasting time and besides, Loki would never believe him.

He begged Loki to remember that they were raised together, had spent their lives together, had played together, had fought together. They were still brothers.

Loki though, threw it back in his face.

“I remember a shadow. Living in the shade of your greatness.” 

Thor gritted his teeth. He would say that he hadn’t meant to make Loki feel like that, because he hadn’t, but he had been arrogant, and he had belittled Loki, told him to know his place and as much as he wished, Thor could not change that.

But then Loki said “I remember you tossing me into an abyss. I who was, and should be king!” and then Thor started to get truly angry. Surely, Loki did not mean — no, he could not possibly mean that he thought that Thor had pushed him off the Bifrost?! He would never —  

He did what he should not have. He lashed out.

“So you take the world I love as a recompense for your imagined slights?” 

Loki snarled at him.

“No, the Earth is under my protection, Loki.”

Loki seemed to gather himself at that.

“And you're doing a marvelous job with that. The humans slaughter each other in droves, while you idly threat. I mean to rule them. And why should I not?”

“You think yourself above them.”

“Well, yes.”

Thor drew back and smiled slightly. He had made the same mistake when he had first come to Midgard. He still struggled to think of humans as equals. After all, all their lives they had been infantilising humans, similar yet vastly different from the way they treated the Jotnar as monsters. It was not surprising Loki would think so too, and really it was not his fault.

But that was another reason why Thor had decided in his mind that he himself was not ready yet to be the Leader of the Nine realms. If he couldn’t treat all of it’s major species as equal, then he could not act fairly.

“Then you miss the truth of ruling, Brother. A throne would suit you ill.”

Angrily, Loki shoved him to the side and walked back up to the ledge, turning around.

“I've seen worlds you've never known about! I have grown, Odinson, in my exile! I have seen the true power of the Tesseract, and when I wield it…”

Thor narrowed his eyes at this.

“And who showed you this power? Who controls the would-be-king?”

Because it would make more sense if Loki was working with someone. They could have asked for the Tesseract in exchange for the Earth. Thor thought there was another thing… In the Observatory right before… the Event— No he thought, Loki is alive and I won’t shy away by calling it The Event anymore— before, The Bifrost Incident (not that much better, but still better), Loki had told him he never wanted the Throne. When had that changed, he wondered.

“I am a king!”

Thor grabbed his shoulders, giving himself just a fraction of a second to relish the fact that could touch Loki even if they were having an argument(and that they could have an argument now).

“Not here!” 

Jotunheim’s system of coalition government hadn’t seemed too bad. If only he could get Loki to see sense, he could try and convince father to make them both Kings. If only Loki would come home.

Thor placed a hand at the back of Loki's neck like he had so many times before.

“You give up the Tesseract! You give up this poisonous dream! You come home.”

“I don't have it.”

“He killed eighty people in two days.”

“He’s adopted?”

Thor internally winced. Why had he said that again? That was so utterly ridiculous because Thor could not care less that Loki was adopted. Why would he say that?

He could not believe it.

He supposed it was just him getting defensive in front of the Midgardians, because their acceptable idea of the number of people dead was very different from Asgard’s or even the rest of the Nine Realms' idea of the same. Eighty opponents dead were nothing to them in a war.

He also knew that Loki could have easily killed far more people if he had wanted to, but he hadn’t. 

He really wanted to believe that Loki would not knowingly hurt Jane, but he could not be sure. This Loki seemed very different from the brother he knew (besides, after what Loki had said the last time…), so he was glad when Coulson informed them that they had moved Jane to a safe place.

He was dismayed to know that Loki had taken Erik as one of his thralls. Erik was a friend.

(But there was another thing that bothered him. Loki had mostly respected people’s autonomy. He did sometimes look into others’ minds if it was truly required or to win in a battle, but he did not enjoy it very much. He preferred to make them spill their secrets with his words. It seemed out of character for him to completely take over another person’s free will. But then, everything about Loki seemed out of character now.)

When Coulson said that he had changed their worldview, Thor admitted that he thought things were better as they were. The first time he had come to Earth, Loki’s rage had followed him after all. He said so. Midgardians had suffered a lot because of their personal issues.

“Loki's mind is far afield, it's not just power he craves, it's vengeance upon me. There's no pain that would prise his need from him.”

He did not wish to say so. But he could not understand his brother anymore. He wondered if he ever had. So he simply repeated his father's words, as much as he did not not want to.

“A lot of guys think that, until the pain starts.” Fury said.

Fury had the audacity to ask him, if he was prepared to willingly torture his brother. He was furious. But he tried not to explode. He tried to be calm for once.

“What are you asking me to do?”

“I'm asking, what are you prepared to do?”

Later, in the room where Banner and Stark were conducting their search for the Tesseract, there was a massive argument when Stark and Rogers found out what SHIELD was hiding.

“I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy.” Thor wondered what Banner meant by that.

“I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction.”

“Because of him,” Fury said, pointing at Thor.

“Me?” he asked, stunned.

“Last year, Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned.”

“My people want nothing but peace with your planet,” he said heatedly.

He didn’t say that it was because there was no chance of Midgard taking any sort of stand against Asgard. Somehow, he felt that it would not go down in his favour.

“But you're not the only people out there, are you? And, you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, who can't be controlled.”

Thor had to concede that Fury was right about the first part.

“Like you controlled the cube?” Rogers asked.

And they hadn’t. They had completely messed it up.

“Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is the signal to all the realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war.”

(He hated calling the Chitauri Loki’s allies, but as it stood, it seemed that was the way things were.)

“A higher form?” Rogers asked.

The mortals really had no idea, did they?

The argument continued with more fervour and accusations flew.

Thor could not help but feel that the whole thing was utterly insignificant in the grand scheme.

“I thought humans were more evolved than this. But you’re so petty, tiny.”

“Excuse me, did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?” Fury shot back.

“Do you always treat your champions with such mistrust?” Thor argued, now really starting to get angry.

 As they continued, they did not notice the blue glow of the scepter and they were caught entirely unguarded when the airship was attacked.

Thor ran into the detention section watching the door to the glass prison opening and Loki walking out. Something seemed wrong about the sight but Thor did not pay mind to it and jumped at Loki.

It was only when he flew straight past the crouching Loki that he realised that it was an illusion.

Loki locked the door, smiling.

“Are you ever not going to fall for that?”

Thor snarled and slammed Mjolnir at the glass. To his immense surprise, the wall only cracked.

How strong was this cage?! Mjlonir had broken through things that he had thought were much stronger than glass. Not this one apparently. But he supposed, if it was made to house the Hulk…

Loki seemed surprised too, but then he smiled. It was a mad little thing that sent a chill down Thor’s spine.

He walked over to the control panel.

“The humans think us immortal. Should we test that?”

Surely, surely Loki didn’t intend to kill him.

Suddenly Loki’s thrall who was guarding the area, fell down like a tree and he saw Coulson standing there with a rather impressive looking firearm.

“Move away, please.”

Loki moved away from the control panel.

“You like this?” Coulson asked. “We started working on the prototype after you sent The Destroyer. Even I don’t know what it does. Do you wanna find out?”

Thor had to commend the man for being brave enough to stand up to Loki alone. But then suddenly, the tip of the scepter went through Coulson’s chest and the Illusion Loki near the panel disappeared.

“NO!!! ” Thor screamed.

Why, why are you doing this Loki?

Loki walked to the control panel again and turned to look at him. 

Thor looked at him with pleading eyes. 

Stop it please Loki, stop it.

Loki opened the hatch, his hand hovering over the eject button in hesitation.

Thor still dared to hope for a second, but then Loki pushed the button down.

Thor stared down at Mjolnir in the meadow. If he hadn’t even been able to help his brother, if he had failed to bring him back on the right path … was he even worthy?

Thor looked around in horror as the sky opened and the Chitauri army of humanoid creatures flew into the Earth's atmosphere on chariot-like flying skiffs. 

He saw Loki standing at the top of Stark’s Tower and jumped down to a level below him.

“Loki!” he shouted, begging to the Norns that Loki would listen to him at least now, as his brother turned sharply towards him.

“Turn off the Tesseract or I’ll destroy it!” He didn’t think he could, though. 

“You can’t. There is no stopping it.” Loki said, pointing the scepter at him. Ah, there was his confirmation.

“There is only the war !” 

Thor bit back a sigh. He did not want to fight Loki, he really did not. But there did not seem to be any other way. 

(His mind lingered on the fact that that did not seem like something Loki would say. That the Loki he knew would always rather try to end a war with negotiations rather than unnecessary bloodshed. That the Loki he knew did not thrill in War like he did.)

“So be it.”

Loki leapt at Thor and the two began to fight, Thor dodging the scepter, Loki parrying Mjolnir’s blows with his scepter, a blast from Loki’s scepter leading one of the letters of STARK’s name on the building to break and fall to the ground.

The fight continued, Loki smashing Thor's head against the glass of the catwalk and throwing him on the floor. Then he noticed the flying vehicle known as the helicopter which carried Barton and Lady Natasha and blasted off it’s rotor blades leading to it catching fire and veering towards the ground. 

Thor roared and charged back at Loki tackling him to the floor.

Despite all of this, Thor could not help feeling that both of them were fighting half-heartedly. Loki was not using his magic for whatever reason, and Thor was not calling down lightning. The fight almost seemed slow, despite the fact it was anything but.

They both threw punches at each other and Thor knew that was not going to do anything and so Loki must certainly too. And throwing punches like this was simply not Loki’s style.

Suddenly a huge whale-like creature with metal scales and armour flew between the buildings letting out a roar that half sounded like a wail.

Thor held Loki down and gestured to the chaos below them.

“Look at this!” he screamed at his brother, begging him to come to his senses.                                         

“Look around you! You think this madness will end with your rule?” 

To his surprise, Loki actually seemed to stop and look around, breathing heavily, but considering his words.

“It’s too late,” he heaved out. “It’s too late to stop it.” 

Was Thor imagining it or did Loki look… almost scared.

“No,” he said, a sliver of hope building up in his chest. “We can. Together. ”

He looked into Loki’s eyes, looking for his brother and just for a moment, Thor thought he found him. His eyes seemed just a little greener for a second— wait what —

He felt a stinging pain and stumbled backwards and fell onto one knee, more in surprise than pain, seeing that Loki had rammed in a blade between the plates of his armour.

(There was familiarity in even that. Not just everyone would know which gap to push in the blade through— the plates had a few very small gaps to allow better movement —)

“Sentiment,” Loki breathed.

Now Thor got genuinely angry. Despite what his Father had told him, despite some things he had implied, he was still trying to believe that this was still his brother. That his brother would not fight him like this. 

He could feel his blood boiling and lightning flowing in his veins, but he held on to that. If Loki was not using his magic, he would not use lightning to hurt him either.

Thor got back up, kicked Loki down on the glass and then lifted him over his head and dropped him on the floor, breathing hard. Loki paused for a moment and Thor waited for him to get up, but then Loki rolled himself off the edge of the building, only to land on one of the flying Chitauri crafts and fly off with a troop of Chitauri. 

Thor pulled out the knife from his stomach and scowled, throwing it down. He did notice this, though, that despite having an opportunity, Loki never made a grab for the scepter before rolling off.

Stark threw the bomb into the wormhole risking his life, and gained Thor’s respect.

“Well if it's all the same to you, I'll have that drink now.”

That actually sounded a lot more like Loki. Well, the Loki he had known. How nice of him to show up now.

“All right, get him on his feet. We can all stand around posing up a storm later. By the way, feel free to clean up.” Stark said.

Thor pulled Loki up from the floor of the Stark Tower, not knowing whether or not to finally listen to his father’s advice and harden his heart towards his brother.

(Not considering the fact that Thor wasn’t sure he would be able to do that even if he tried.)

Thor tensed waiting for Loki to try and escape while wondering why he hadn’t done so already. He was well aware that Loki could have teleported away. In fact, Loki had not used much magic in this fight at all. 

To his surprise Loki not only did not attempt to escape, but he simply held out his hands to Thor to cuff with just a scowl on his face.

That was… unexpected. After all the fighting, after all the rage , Loki just… surrendered like that? Could he perhaps have another plan? But how would he complete it without magic?

He cuffed his hands while assuring the Avengers that the cuffs would, in fact, successfully restrain him.

Then came the whole discussion about Loki’s punishment. The mortals wanted Loki to be punished on Midgard and Thor supposed from their perspective, it was understandable.

But he had to take Loki back to Asgard. Not only was it their home, but Loki was Asgardian (despite not being Aesir). Thor did not appreciate Loki’s snort at that moment.

And he was not very comfortable with the idea of humans judging Loki. Thor did not say exactly that out loud (that would not endear him to the humans). He supposed it was because as much as he tried to think of humans as equals, a little bit of that superiority was still there.

(It was easier than considering the Jotnar equal, which he was still struggling to do.)

He did, however, begin wondering what Loki’s punishment would be on Asgard. Father had not held Loki in a positive light before he came to Earth. It worried Thor what sort of punishment would be in store for Loki. He knew his father could be harsh on occasion.

(He remembered the way a traitor to Asgard—a noble’s son— had been punished, about three centuries ago. Immense, indescribable torture. And then an extremely painful death. He and Loki had been forced to witness it, both of them having come of age. They had spent the evening in Thor’s chambers, in complete silence. There had been an episode of vomiting on both their parts too.)

He hoped Father would not be so harsh to his own son. But. There was a but.

He wondered what sort of punishment awaited Loki on Midgard. He decided to give it a chance. If it was less severe than, well, torture or death,  he would see what could be done. And Thor knew he was threatening enough to keep Midgard’s officials on their toes and they would not want another rampant god. He did not want to stoop to that level just yet, but if they decided to kill or torture Loki, well…

Then of course there was the question of how exactly he would go about convincing Father. Thor did not think there would be an opportunity for much convincing. He wished he could hide them all from Heimdall’s sight like Loki could, but he couldn’t, so that was a moot point.

There was talk of the organisation of the United Nations (it still puzzled Thor how mortals functioned with so many different divisions in their world) and then they were introduced to Stark’s Artificial Intelligence, JARVIS (Thor was a little impressed with that and his respect for Stark rose a bit more) and then before he could think any further about how he would deal with his father, the conversation had moved on to the Tesseract. Which… apparently was also going to be kept on Midgard.

Thor incredulously explained that he could not return back without the Tesseract which led to questions about how he got here and the discussion took a turn into uncomfortable territory.

He told them that the Bifrost was broken and that he was the one to break it and that led to an outcry, especially from Stark and it was only Thor’s newfound respect for the man and the fact that it wouldn’t gain him any favours with the mortals that kept him from completely losing his temper.

He of course refused to tell them why he had broken it.

Loki was uncharacteristically quiet during the whole thing.

Then came dark energy and further incredulity from the other Avengers— especially Stark and Banner— and Thor admitted he did not know much about it or seidr and said Loki did.

Loki of course refused to spill a word. That was to be expected, but Thor thought ruefully to another time when Loki used to be so eager to share all of his achievements with seidr but no one (except Mother) had been there—he had not been there to listen to him or praise him. But, well, that was neither here nor there.

Oh, and apparently Stark had a small cell in his Tower.

Once they had determined that the scepter and the Tesseract were both to be kept in Stark’s labs (he really hoped they were highly secure) under what was presumably JARVIS’s supervision— he wasn’t happy with it but he couldn’t do anything about it right then— they took the lift to the basement.

Thor was relieved to see that the cell was at least well lit and consisted of the basic amenities. Loki again did not resist and quietly went in and sat down on the bed.

Thor was getting worried now. He didn’t understand. Why was Loki acting so agreeable now after everything had gone down? Loki couldn’t teleport out of there with those cuffs and Thor was confident enough in Stark’s intelligence to say that while breaking the walls would be possible, it would not be easy either and Loki’s suddenly subdued demeanour certainly did not display any initiative in that area.

But then again, Loki had always been an excellent actor so he could not be sure.

Stark agreed to let him stay in the Tower for the time being and Thor felt vaguely relieved. Finding somewhere to stay right then would have been an additional headache.

Thor distractedly listened to the rest of the conversation and absently noted that Stark apparently harboured some sort of grudge against Romanoff. 

He wondered why Loki wasn’t, well, doing anything! It was disconcerting the way Loki seemed to completely surrender his fate at the hands of his enemies—and Thor hated that he was probably considered one right then too— without even trying to talk his way out. It… was again not very much like Loki. But… this time the change was different again. All of the rage and passion seemed to have drained away, leaving behind an exhausted and unusually cooperative man.

Thor held back a sigh. He didn’t understand what was happening and he didn’t know what to do. He just felt tired.

He tuned in to the conversation again. Apparently everyone was staying here for now.

“—refresh up a bit while I try to inform our irate pirate of the developments and then tell him that both the scary blue things will be safest with me, at least for now until things are sorted out. And that you all surprisingly agree with me,” Stark narrowed his eyes at them as if daring them to challenge him now.

Irate pirate— what…?

“Well—” Thor began but was cut off by Stark.

“You're not taking the Tesseract anywhere, at least until we decide what to do with your brother.”

“Yes, I have accepted that I will listen to what your world's decision will be about Loki, Stark,” Thor said sullenly.

Whether or not he would accept their decision though, was another matter of course.

“Well what were you saying then?” Stark asked.

 “You said 'irate pirate'.” Thor started, sheepishly. “I doubt that you were talking about an actual pirate though, so who were you referring to...?”

The Avengers all seemed stunned.

"Right. Not from this planet," Stark groaned, "I was talking about Fury."

"Why would you call him a pirate though?" Thor asked. He was pretty sure Fury did not pillage and plunder cities.

"Um... because he dresses in black leather and has an eyepatch?"

"My father has an eyepatch."

Thor heard a muffled snort from Loki and barely managed to stop his lips from turning up. That wouldn’t look good.

"Riiight. So, most pirates having only one eye is just an Earth thing?"

"I would not know about that, but why would you even assume such?" Thor asked, somewhat baffled.

"Ah... it's a popular culture reference.”

Ah, mortals and their strange customs.

Stark asked Lady Natasha to convince Director Fury something about… not sending spies after him.

That more or less confirmed why Stark seemed to hold a grudge against SHIELD, he supposed.

They dispersed then and were shown to their rooms by JARVIS after agreeing to reconvene in about an hour.

The other Avengers talked about clothes and small talk which Thor mostly tuned out. It was only when Stark addressed him directly and asked him what more he might know about Loki’s motives, when he realised that things were back to serious again.

Thor caught himself frowning slightly when Stark said he had called Loki a power hungry maniac. He hadn’t… had he?

He said he had no idea about Loki’s motivations while Barton confirmed that he did remember some things from his time as Loki’s thrall.

When they asked him what Loki’s personality had been like and if he had always been a ‘bag of cats’, Thor laughed humorlessly.

He very pointedly let them know that he was one of the cleverest and most logical people Thor had ever known and how he always planned things out carefully and was generally stealthy and how this fully frontal and obvious attack was not his style.

Yeah. Thor had noticed that.

And he made sure that the Avengers were aware of the fact that Loki was acting out of character. Because there was definitely something fishy here. And Thor would be damned if he didn’t find out what happened to his brother.

He let them know that Loki would probably not have wanted to rule Earth too. After which came the admission that they had a fight and that Loki had vehemently denied the throne then and that yes , that was in line with Loki’s usual attitude, because Loki had always preferred diplomacy and working from behind the scenes rather than openly showing himself ( even to him ).

He also for some unknown reason made sure that they knew he would not, in fact, be a bad king, the only problem would be that he would not like to be tied down to a place because he liked travelling and learning new things.

Then came the question of what signaled the change in attitude.

Well.

The Avengers learning that Loki hadn’t known he was adopted till now caused groans and questions about their ages.

When he was asked who had the idea to keep it secret Thor got defensive. He said it was his father and that his mother went along with the lie. He didn’t say that he thought the head healer may have known since that was not important. And he understood Loki would have been hurt and angered by the lies, especially since they had been taught that the Jotnar were monsters. But surely Loki didn’t think they would think him to be a monster.

Surely Loki did not think it would make him any less a part of their family? So what if they weren’t related by blood, they were bonded through experience and they were brothers. 

He said so.

However, the other Avengers did not seem to agree with him.

It took Lady Natasha literally shoving the fact at his face for him to see it. 

Loki had developed an identity for himself after a 1000 years of life. And… learning he was not who he was… must have destroyed his sense of self.

Then, even more horrifyingly, he recalled Loki telling him that especially mages losing their self identity could lead them to go mad and—

By the Norns, he was such a fool.

How had he not realised any of this till now. One year of ruminating about Loki’s death and he had still not come upon this conclusion while the Avengers had done so—for their enemy — in a few minutes?

He felt shame creep up.

When Stark— Tony , he had asked them to call him Tony— expressed his incredulity at this, Thor finally admitted to them and to himself—and the latter felt like a much bigger step— that his father had made a mistake.

A big one.

And then Thor realised that learning he was Jotunn would have been even worse because—

He told them Loki was the son of the King of Asgard’s greatest and most hated enemies and had been found abandoned on a battlefield.

When Tony laid it all out—

“Your dad knowingly adopted the son of an enemy king — and that sounds something straight out of Game of Thrones, let me tell you — deciding to probably never tell him the truth of his ancestry, and going by the fact that learning about it literally destroyed his self-identity, raised him to hate his own people and by extension himself?! ”

— Thor finally realised why Loki  might have had tried to destroy Jotunheim.

Loki hated himself. He thought he was a monster because he was a Jotunn and may have thought that if there were no other Jotunn left, then he would…

 ...not be a monster.

He had never thought of it like that.

Thor was already horrified and nauseous and wanted to curl up into a ball but they weren't anywhere near done of course.

He had to tell the Avengers about the— the Event.

His voice cracked as he spoke, as he told them about how the Bifrost had broken, how he had broken the Bifrost despite Loki telling him not to—

(He had broken the Bifrost despite Loki telling him not to. He was indirectly part of the reason Loki—)

—he told them about the explosion, how Father had managed to catch his legs and then—

“No, Loki.” 

Thor didn’t want to admit to himself that it wasn’t just Loki letting go that haunted his nights, but those words too, which he knew deep down were somewhat responsible for making him let go. Thor didn’t understand that conversation, he didn’t understand what Father was denying and why and then

No Loki,  N o  L o k i  

No Loki

—and Loki let go.

When Tony said that his Father had officially become The Worst, a part of Thor still wanted to argue—

But he couldn’t find it in himself to.

There was a horrified silence.

Which was broken by Barton.

“That’s not all, folks.”

Chapter Text

“That’s not all, folks.”

Tony was done. He was so done.

It had just been confirmed that the guy who had thrown him out of the window and tried to take over the world was not just a crazy, power hungry, vengeful bastard.

(He almost wished that had been it. That would have made things so much easier.)

Apparently Loki was generally a clever, logical, sarcastic, knowledge seeker who definitely would not do stupid shit like advertising himself to the whole world and setting up his base on top of the enemy’s literal house to take over the world.

So he had been acting completely out of character during the whole invasion.

(Possible forced coercion, a part of him noted.)

Also, Loki was apparently about half his age in human terms and Thor was somewhere around that.

And he had not been told he was adopted for over a 1000 years. And he had been brought up to hate his own people. 

(Also, it was seeming more and more plausible that Asgard was racist.)

Understandably, the dude had an identity crisis and a mental breakdown. (Which was apparently worse because he was a mage— what was his life?)

Also, Loki and Thor’s dad was the biggest asshole in the universe. Because what the hell—

He had raised his son to hate his own species and that could have led to some serious self sabotage issues once Loki had found out about his heritage. And he had known that a mage not having steady self -identity could drive them insane and had still kept Loki’s identity from him.

Did he mention Odin was an asshole?

He didn’t even like Loki and he wanted to punch Odin.

And then the dude had officially earned himself the title of Worst Dad™ in the universe by indirectly—Tony hoped— driving his son to commit suicide after all this.

His mind was already reeling when Clint spoke up and quite understandably, Tony was done.

“Well?” he asked. “Don’t leave us hanging now, Birdbrain.”

Clint shot him a look. Then he sighed.

“Look,” he began, “I told you I remember some stuff from my time under mind control. I also remember some stuff from right before that.”

Everyone waited with bated breath.

“When he came through the portal, he seemed… tired to say the least. His eyes were sunken and had heavy bags under them, his skin was pale, sweaty and clammy, his lips were colourless with a sort of bluish tinge. Once he had us in his command and we were leaving the base with the Tesseract, he stumbled. Twice. He even appeared dizzy and jumpy at times... He looked worse than he did after the Hulk Smash.”

Yeah okay. That was bad. That was very bad. 

The symptoms Clint had listed could technically apply to quite a few conditions, but heat exhaustion was looking the most likely. Why was he so exhausted before he came here? Why would he come at that time if he was exhausted?

But it was that last statement that had him the most worried.

He looked worse than he did after the Hulk Smash. That sure sounded ominous. Something had hurt the super durable God worse than the Hulk smash? And the Hulk smash didn’t even incapacitate him for long. This made him stumble ? Made him jumpy ?

Why would he look worse than he did after the Hulk smash, if he had been with his allies before coming to Earth?

Yup, there was something terrible going on. He thought he was starting to understand where Barton was going, as unbelievable as it might seem.

Tony looked around to see that the others seemed to be having similar thoughts. Thor, especially, looked extremely troubled. Figures, he supposed, something was apparently strong enough to harm them. That must be a new feeling.

When nobody said anything, Clint continued wearily.

“He didn't—he actually wasn’t extremely demanding all the time. You guys know it was two days before we acted. Yes, some of that time went in gathering more people and finding out the location of the iridium, but he asked us to get rest and was reluctant to do so himself.”

Tony felt like Clint was leaving something out, but he decided not to call him out since he trusted Clint to let them know everything important. After all he was telling them about stuff that happened when he was under mind control. He could keep his secrets.

A part of him noted that this showed, implied even, that Loki was not inherently cruel and did not want to assert dominance and power over his underlings at every possible moment, but that was strange because... wasn’t that what mind control was? Complete control?

Clint was about to continue when Rogers cut him off.

“You said you spent time gathering more people. So… did you gather more people to take them to Loki for him to… mind control them?”

Oh, okay. That was an astute observation. But that was just so seriously messed up. He was just about feeling some of the sympathy he had garnered for Loki start to fade when Clint interrupted with,

“NO. No, nope. They just… they were enemies of SHIELD. They were ready to go against SHIELD.”

Tony’s eyebrows shot up.

“And they were ready to aid world domination for that?”

Clint scratched his head. “Yeah… I guess? I mean, that’s one part which I don’t quite remember.”

Tony blinked.

Bruce spoke up then, “How did you find these people, Clint?”

Now Clint looked uncomfortable.

“Some of them were my … uh… contacts— and before any of you go up in smoke in your righteous fury,” he pointedly looked and Rogers and Thor, which made Tony snort especially since the former had even opened his mouth to speak.“We spies and assassins need contacts among our enemies to get around during our missions.”

Romanoff was biting her lips to hide a grin and failing (on purpose, he was sure).

Then there was silence.

Again. 

TALK, people.

They actually needed to get this conversation moving.

Thankfully Romanoff spoke up. “You said some of them. What about the others?”

Clint sighed. “Yeah, that's another ‘don’t properly remember’ thing. I don’t—I can’t tell how I knew where to go, who to look for, I … just did, if that makes any sense. It’s like the— the Scepter told me what to do. ” 

No, that did not make sense, thank you very much. He was just about to say so when Rogers asked, “So, Loki just put that information in your head through the Scepter?”

“No, not Loki,” Clint emphasised. “How would Loki know who SHIELD’s enemies were? It was the Sceptre .” 

“Well,” asked Bruce, “how would the Sceptre know who SHIELD’s enemies were?”

Good question.

“I don’t know.” Clint shrugged. “It’s like the Sceptre had a mind of its own.”

Tony sat up straight. 

“Are you telling me that I have a semi-sentient glowy stick in my house?”

“I don’t know, man!!” Clint snapped. “ You’re the scientist. You tell me.”

“I think we’re getting derailed,” Thor unexpectedly boomed, after being so quiet the whole time. “This is certainly important information, but we are talking about my brother so it would be great if we could stick to him for a moment.”

Ok boomer. 

Tony barely managed to stop himself from snorting out loud. Somehow he did not think that would go well. Besides that was a terrible joke and Thor was sort of right. While they definitely needed to study the Scepter, right then they should actually focus on Loki.

He sobered up. Humour was his coping mechanism but… not now. This was not even about him, he had no reason to ‘ cope ’ .  

“Right,” he said. “Okay. Legolas, go on with your story.”

“Mmkay.”  Clint took a deep breath before continuing.

“There was this time, when Loki sort of uh… went in a trance-like state, and after a few minutes, jerked back, um…. back in his body or something like that, you could say.”

Tony frowned.

“Hey could you tell me where you were exactly during those two days?”

“Huh? Oh, in an underground out of commission SHIELD Facility.”

“No, no which facility. Give me the exact coordinates.” He paused. “Or well, as exact as you can be.”

Clint narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“What you’re saying… this trance-like state thing… well if you give me the coordinates, JARVIS could pull up the footage, if there is any from surrounding cameras or whatever.”

Clint seemed to think about it for sometime which seemed odd to Tony. Why would he not want them to see this?

Then Clint said, “Does that mean that you can pull up the footage from the collapsed PEGASUS Facility then?”

Tony wanted to kick himself. What sort of idiot —

Tony sighed. “Clearly your guys’ idiocy is contagious and is already affecting me which is why I didn’t think of it before.”

There were a few snorts and noises of protest but surprisingly, nobody actually said anything.

“JARVIS, you with us?”

“Of course, sir.”

JARVIS dropped a large screen from the ceiling and Tony allowed himself a moment to enjoy the surprise on their faces (except Romanoff’s. Nothing phased that woman.) before he focused on the screen.

“Securing footage.”

In about two minutes the screen lit up . Tony could spot SHIELD scientists working on the Tesseract, surrounded it it’s blue glow.

They all saw Loki arriving, giving his grand speech about how freedom is a lie and about ants and boots and then how he easily got rid of the SHIELD agents in complete silence.

But that wasn’t what they were looking at. It was something that could go unnoticed in all the excitement, Tony mused, how tired Loki really did look, how his face seemed to be bruised and sweaty, his eyes sunken (not something that had been there when Tony had first seen him in Stuttgart—enhanced healing).

And then he stumbled. For someone else it might not have been so notable. But for Loki, who was a complete diva and who always moved with grace and poise, it was.

He was injured, clearly. Tony wondered if he could be hiding any under his illusions, or just his clothes even.

“Sir,” JARVIS spoke up, mostly for the benefit of some of the others, “We can see that the younger Mr Odinson is heavily sweating, his skin in clammy and seems paler than usual and we have seen evidence of dizziness and weakness. Heat exhaustion or chronic fatigue syndrome are the most likely.”

Well, it looked like he’d hit the nail on the head.

Suddenly, there was a gasp from Thor and he buried his head in his hands.

“Point Break? Anything specific you notice that you wanna let us know?”

Thor looked up miserably. 

“You know Loki is adopted. But he… is not even Aesir.” At their slightly confused looks he clarified, “he is not from the same species as me. He is a Jotunn,” he paused, “or, well, Frost Giant, but that is apparently a disrespectful term.”

Okay, there were way too many things to unpack in that one sentence.

First of all, apparently Loki was from a whole different species and Thor hadn’t seen fit to mention it till now. That just made what Odin and presumably Thor and Loki’s mother had done, that much worse. The identity crisis would have been even more crippling than he had thought. 

Then there was Thor saying that ‘apparently’ Frost Giant was a slur. Which implied he got to know that recently. So… their knowledge of Loki’s species was so bad that they didn’t know that a term used for them for what was probably ages, was insulting. Or … maybe they just didn’t care to know? Maybe some of them might have known , but hadn’t cared that it was an insult? Maybe Thor only cared now that he knew his brother was one of them?

Anyway, yeah Asgard was racist. Or was it speciest?

And Frost Giant. Loki was certainly very tall, but he didn’t exactly have a giant-like stature, did he? So… what was up with that?

And then the most important part, which was what Thor had wanted them to focus on, he supposed. Frost Giant. Tony assumed that meant that Loki’s species lived in a rather cold climate (holy shit, how would the lack of knowledge about his own self have affected Loki throughout his life? Being inexplicably affected or not affected by things, having different physiology (?), developmental rate, tastes, etc. than the people around him and not understanding why— that had to suck a lot).

And while Heat Exhaustion would not be good for anyone…. It seemed especially bad for Loki.

And added to the earlier stuff….

“Mr Odinson,” JARVIS said “I am assuming that the Jotunns—”  

“Jotnar.” Thor interrupted.

“Very well, the Jotnar, live in a cold climate and have a lower body temperature and heat tolerance.”

“Yes, that is true.”  

Clint and Romanoff appeared grim.

So it looked like Barton had had this theory in his mind since the beginning and he had let his partner in on the secret. Had they let Fury know at least some of their suspicions? That would explain some things.

JARVIS continued. “So far we have learnt that Loki was acting extremely out of character during the invasion,  that he was tired, dizzy and injured when he arrived on Earth— more so than he was after the invasion had ended. Before the invasion, I assume he was in the presence of those who are allegedly his allies and yet…”

Yeah the horrifying implications of that seemed to be dawning on everyone now. Tony felt sick.

“Putting that together with the heat exhaustion and the fact that he is Jotunn and likely to suffer more from exposure to heat and his easy compliance since his capture….. I would say he was not entirely acquisient to the invasion and … I diagnose coercion by extreme heat torture.”

Silence.

Complete deafening silence.

This was what had been niggling at Tony’s subconscious as soon as he had started noting the obvious difference in behaviour after the invasion and inconsistencies in planning despite Loki apparently normally being a clever, logical person. But as much as he hated to admit it, he had been pushing it down and not paying attention and purposely refusing to join the dots because this man had thrown him out of his window and tried to kill him, had lead the alien army which had destroyed New York and was part of the reason he— 

A major part of the reason Tony had had to fly the nuke up into the wormhole and has seen that army, endless endless chitauri, a huge army they had no hope to defeat— 

He tried to inconspicuously take a deep breath to calm himself down before he descended into hysteria but he felt like Romanoff noticed anyway, which of course she did.

Shove that back into the box , for God’s sake Tony!!

“I knew something was wrong,” Thor said in a broken voice. “I even asked him ‘who controls the would-be-king’. I should not have let myself get distracted by his words, I should have asked—”

“He can be distracting Thor.” Romanoff said, surprisingly gently. “I got that from one conversation. And I am used to dealing with people like that.”

“But… Why, why would he want to distract me?! Why would he not tell me the truth? He was— he was tortured—” Thor’s voice broke on the last word.

Tony felt pity well up, and felt bad right after that. Thor certainly wouldn’t want it and nor would Loki. Speaking of which—

“Thor, buddy, I’m so sorry but we really need to get more info to build up Loki’s case.” Tony tried to be as gentle as possible, really, he did, but he would ve the first to admit that being comforting wasn’t one of his many talents.

Thor looked up, blinking away unshed tears. “Case?” His voice was hoarse. 

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure the UN would have a slightly different opinion of your brother after learning that he was coerced into the invasion via torture.”

“Enough that they will pardon him and let him stay here?” Thor asked, barely daring to look hopeful.

Eh, Tony couldn’t really confirm that now, but he was certainly going to pull some strings and try and make sure it was possible. But still, in the end the decision rested with the UN. He did not have the heart to tell that it was possible that despite getting a pardon, they might not allow Loki to continue to stay on Earth since for whatever reason, Thor seemed to want that to happen now suddenly, especially after all the arguing he had done earlier to take him back to Asgard.

“If we can provide the proper evidence, I’m sure we could convince them.”

“Right. Uh…is there any information when the trial will be?”

“I spoke to Fury and he said it’ll probably be in a week.”

Thor nodded but otherwise remained silent.

Bruce spoke up then, “Clint could you now give us the coordinates of the abandoned base you stayed in?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, “the ‘him going into a trance’ thing might be worth checking out.”

Clint pursed his lips. ”Okay.”

Was it Tony or did he sound just a little bit reluctant? He gave them the coordinates though, so that was that.

“Jarvis pull up Lokes going woozy.”

 There was a pause of a few seconds as JARVIS went through the footage and then the screen lit up again.

This time it showed Loki sitting quietly on the steps in the warehouse.

He closed his eyes and— yup seemed to go into a trance-like state, with his eyes closed and head lolling slightly to the side. For a few minutes, there was nothing. Then suddenly, he jerked back, his face scrunched up in a grimace. He had a haunted look in his eyes, and a single tear rolled down his cheekbone. He discreetly wiped it off, looking around furtively, probably to see if anyone had noticed.

And then, as if nothing had happened, he got up with a new fervour and walked over to the others.

Well. That… was creepy. It seemed that he had been hurt. But there were no physical wounds. Or well, at least visible ones.

He leaned forward to see the next part, but the silence was interrupted by Clint’s hard voice.

“Stop.”

“Uh…”

“I don’t think any of you really have a right to see stuff that happened to us while we were mind controlled.”

Tony wanted to protest, but he supposed he wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to witness him in such a position either. The others seemed to agree, as evidenced by the vaguely uncomfortable looks on their faces. 

“Alright Katniss. Jarvis? Stop the display.”

The screen went dark.

After another round of awkward silence, Clint sighed and said, “I’d obviously seen that. Or whatever of that I could see from the distance I was standing at. After this, he came to me and Selvig with new instructions. It seemed that something had spurred him on.”

Tony hadn’t thought his stomach could sink any further.

“So wait.” Bruce said. “He came back with new instructions after going into that trance-like state. So… could he have received these instructions from his… tormentors?”

And that was what those people were. Still hearing the word loud just…. Made his blood curdle. But anyway, that meant...

“So this means that not only was he forcibly coerced to attacking Earth by certain entities, most likely the Chitauri, they were also keeping watch over his actions.” Romanoff finished.

“Yeah… it could.”

“Jesus, how much did he suffer?” Cap asked, frowning.

“A lot, clearly.” Thor’s face had gone strangely blank. It did not suit him. But looking in his eyes almost made Tony sort of but not quite feel pity for whatever Chitauri might cross Thor’s path after this.

“Right,” said Tony. “Jay, compile all this new info and call my lawyers.”

“Right away, sir. I am also sending a copy of it to Miss Potts.”

"You know it."

Now for the most challenging part.

“So now all that’s left is actually talking to Loki and confirming all of this,” Romanoff said, creeping Tony out by stealing the words right from his head.

“Will Loki even want to actually talk about this?” Bruce pointed out. “It’s rather traumatic and we are basically his enemies, right? It’s extremely unlikely that he would want to discuss any of this or give us any info.”

Point.

“Yes, but Loki is apparently pretty sensible,” Romanoff reasoned. “If he sees an opportunity to get an out, he will probably take it.”

“And we will have to give my brother a convincing argument for him to even begin to trust our word,” Thor said. “And… a few concessions, I suppose, to drive home that we are in fact being serious with our offer.”

Oh look, Blondie could actually think and be sensible. Then the ‘concessions’ bit sunk in and he sort of wanted to groan. Why did one of the reasonable things coming from Thor have to be this?

“We’ll have to open his magic-blocking cuffs, I suppose.”

“Indeed,” Thor agreed.

“Can we risk that, though?” Cap asked, frowning. He made a placating gesture towards Thor. “We know now that the invasion probably wasn’t his fault, but like you all already pointed out, he has no reason to trust us and could hurt us as soon as he was uncuffed or simply escape which will not not make things easier for anyone.”

Had Tony mentioned that he hated this day and all the complications it brought?

“I guess... we talk to him and see where we stand before deciding whether we should offer to remove the cuffs?” Tony suggested. “It could also be an incentive to get him to confirm or at least tell us something about… well what happened to him in the ‘void’."

Thor didn’t seem very happy with the strategy but seemed to accept it.

“It will not be easy,” he warned them.

“Yeah Point Break, we know.”

After a bit, Bruce asked, “So… what, should we all, like, go down to his cell? Where should we even hold this kind of conversation?”

“I don’t think we should do it in the cell,” Romanoff said. “If we talk to him here, we give him sort of an equal standing, even with the cuffs on. He is certainly more likely to agree to that. For one thing, it gets him out of the cell. He might think we’re stupid to offer him this, and take the chance thinking he could play us, or he might be suspicious and think we are laying a trap, but would still take it to see where we are going with it since he is apparently curious by nature.”

Yeah, Tony wasn’t happy with that but obviously the idea had merit.

“Okay, but I’m not sure if all of us going down is a good idea. It will make us look weak and we don’t want that. On the other hand, it is a safety hazard.”

“I could go down,” Thor said, looking hopeful, but Tony had to crush the look down.

“Yeah, no, sorry Blondie. Loki will probably clam up even more if you’re the one to go down.”

Thor’s face drooped, but he did not argue. And boy, was it both strange and satisfying to see the God of Thunder be quiet and listen to them tiny, petty mortals. But the recent revelations seemed to have subdued him. It might actually work in their favour since it seemed to make Thor think more.

“I’ll go,” Clint said, after having been quiet for a while.

“Uh… safety hazard? No offence Legolas but… you’re not the toughest guy here.”

In fact he was probably the most harmless.

Clint rolled his eyes. “Oh believe me, I know that, but Loki mind-controlled me. He might think he still holds some power over me and try to blackmail me or something, or he could, in fact, feel guilty, and be slightly more willing to open up. Especially since I’m not the ‘toughest guy’ around.”

"......"

"Jarvis," Tony said, eyebrows raised as he looked Clint over. "Open the doors and let Arrow Man down to Dracula's cell, and get screens up so we're updated."

"Alone?" Rogers asked, frowning. "Isn't that trying our luck a bit?"

"I can handle it." Clint waved a hand casually as he headed to the door. He would take the elevator down, hopefully round Lokes up and they'll both take the same route up again. Cameras the entire way. This is the most logical choice, Tony told himself. 

"Do we have mics on that level?" Romanoff asked, stepping up to the live footage of Loki's cell that was playing. He was still laying down, not really... doing... anything. 

Tony supposed he would be tired after all this, but obviously wouldn't sleep in a cell literally in his enemy’s house.

"Don't bother, he can sense this kind of stuff," Clint called behind him as the elevator doors closed. "Did it on Stuttgart, pretty sure it wasn't magic."

Well. That sure left a lot on Legolas' mighty shoulders. Tony sighed.

He needed a drink. He’d offer them all a drink when Clint and Loki came back up(hopefully with Clint alive and whole and Loki ready to listen). He owed one to Loki anyway.

Chapter Text

Loki had found it somewhat amusing that the Avengers had seemed to forget his existence while talking about him and what to do with him, in front of him.

Yes, he had long mastered the art of being un-noticeable even without seidr, but this was honestly too much.

Then they had the gall to ask him about seidr, while his own was bound! 

Honestly.

Their argument was aggravating his headache, and, as much as it provided entertainment as well, Loki was relieved when it finally arrived at a temporary conclusion.

He did note that Stark and Barton both looked uncomfortable at times.

It was also rather hilarious watching Stark go off at Thor for destroying the Bifrost, and truly fortunate for the man that Thor had in fact, surprisingly, reined in his anger.

Thor even admitted that he had been the one to destroy the Bifrost and did not say that it was to stop Loki from destroying the Jotnar.

That was strange, Loki thought, feeling oddly disconnected from the matter.

In the end, they managed to convince Thor to let them keep the Tesseract on Earth, which though Loki could admit made sense from their perspective, was actually foolish, since it would only attract more threats for Midgard. 

At least they decided to keep it within the Tower under the watch of the Avengers, where, as reluctant as he was to admit it, it would probably remain the safest. 

Well, as safe as it could be on Midgard.

However, they also decided to keep the Sceptre on Midgard and within the Tower, and Loki wasn’t sure if keeping two infinity stones in such great proximity would be a great idea. Besides, the fact that he would be staying in the Tower as well—and sharing the same building with the Scepter despite the fact that they would most certainly be floors apart made him extremely uneasy.

He was trying not to think about how its tendrils might pull on his mind again if he got too close. Already he was starting to feel… well, drowsy would be the most appropriate descriptor. He was rather certain it was not, in fact, because he hadn’t properly slept for nigh a year now, disregarding the little nap he had taken under the Hawk’s watchful eye. It was as if something thick and sickly sweet was sweeping over him in light waves like the fumes from a dangerous potion.

The pull wasn’t strong, but it was both repugnant and enticing at the same time. He felt disgusted with himself for feeling the allure, after everything it had done, after he himself had used it to subdue others’ free will... but it was, after all, the mind stone.

The Avengers deciding to put him in a cell was expected (and thus relieving). The cell, however, was not. It was far more comfortable than anywhere he had been over the past year and it was ironic that it should come from those whose home he had attempted to ‘conquer’. 

He walked in without any fuss, much to the surprise of the Avengers. 

In any case what reason did he have to resist? 

He just plopped down on the bed and closed his eyes. His mind felt clearer now that he was away from the cursed scepter.

With the mortals having managed to convince Thor to let them keep the Tesseract for now, they would not be returning to Asgard anytime soon, and he would be judged by their most important Court of Justice—the United Nations. 

He was, after all, not fool enough to think that this was anything more than a fortunate momentary reprieve while the Avengers decided his fate.

He idly wondered what they would do with him. Would they just throw him into prison forever? In that case, how long would ‘forever’ be, since he would outlast them by generations upon generations? How highly secure would the prison even be? He would of course, still be wearing the abhorrent seidr blocking cuffs.

What tortures would they concoct for him? Certainly they would be nothing compared to what he had endured under the Mad Titan’s watch. 

There will be no realm, no crevice, no barren moon where he cannot find you.

He withheld a shiver.

Certainly Thanos would be eager to punish him since he had not only failed in bringing him the Tesseract but had also lost him the Scepter.

He dreaded what would await him should Thanos succeed in finding him again and swore then and there that he would end his own life before falling into the titan’s hands.

As he calmed himself down and tuned back into the conversation going outside his cell—seriously why were they still talking over here?— he thought wryly that they wouldn't kill him. Oh, no. Nothing was ever that easy.  Either death would be considered too merciful and an escape from the consequences of his actions or Thor would step in with all his righteousness and protect him from such a fate .

As of now, apparently there was distress and anger over how the ‘World Security Council’ had apparently decided to bomb one of their own cities just to stop him—which was ironic since he had done as much as he could to reduce the scale of destruction in his attack—and ultimately the Avengers just kept veering off the topic, then they reached no verdict and decided to gather in an hour for yet another discussion.

Loki sighed internally. He was going to be kept waiting then. He could not say that he was surprised.

As they all left, Thor had lingered behind as if he wanted to say something but then thought better of it and decided not to, and Loki honestly could not say if he was thankful that his not-brother had left, disappointed that he hadn’t stopped to talk, or just resigned to whatever was happening. But then again, he never did know with Thor. 

It was frustrating. But then again, everything about his relationship with Thor was. Was there even a relationship left anymore or was it broken forever? Did he even want a relationship to be left? He wished he could simply deny it, but in the end he could not.

He really did sigh now. He knew he must be under constant surveillance courtesy of Jarvis, but he could not bring himself to care. They had unexpectedly provided him with a bed so he assumed it was because he was expected to lay on it. Considering that it was Stark’s own cell and not SHIELD’s, he thought he could be reasonably certain that it was not going to be some hidden form of punishment only to come for him once he did use the bed for its intended purpose.

With a(n) (un)healthy amount of wariness, he laid down on the cot, making sure that his boots were not on the mattress. 

When nothing happened after five whole minutes, he tried to force the tension out of his shoulders. He absolutely did not succeed in his endeavour (That seemed to be the running theme of his life though, didn’t it?) but if he had to deal with the Avengers again, he should at least try to get a little rest before that, especially since he didn’t know when he would next get the chance to lay down anywhere again, after whenever the next confrontation would be.

Of course, thinking that obviously did not help him relax. 

He was among enemies. Once again, that seemed to have become the norm for him.

He sighed and got ready to wait.

He did not know how long he waited. He tried to focus on a dirt spot so that he could avoid thinking about the void.

Again, he did not entirely succeed.

For a while he tried to wonder what would happen if he tried to escape. He would succeed, no doubt. Even with his magic bound, this cell was absolutely nothing. But a sense of fatigue seemed to have settled in his body, and he could not bring himself to try.

Besides, escaping would most likely involve fighting, and he was just so tired.

He wondered how it would be to not do anything. To see how the universe would run its course. The Norns would not kill him, no. He was far too entertaining a plaything for them to just let him go.

He imagined possible scenarios that could happen next. Thor could change his mind. The mortals could change their minds and he could be taken to Asgard only to be locked in a gilded cage for the rest of eternity. And that was if he was lucky. He wondered if perhaps the Allfather could think of better tortures for his now useless Jotunn pet than even the Mad Titan. It would be hard, but if someone could match the Titan and his children’s ruthlessness, it could only be Odin.

Ah, no, he was back to thinking about Thanos. That simply would not do.

Suddenly he heard the elevator doors slide open then. He had a visitor. It must have been more than an hour since he last saw the Avengers then. Likely closer to two, since they must have had a discussion. But he could hear only one set of footsteps. 

Why would they send only one person—?

It was to be an interrogation then. Not very surprising , he supposed. It would be the Widow again, most likely.

He swung his legs down and sat up plastering a pleasant smile on his face to welcome her.

But as the footsteps got closer, the smile slipped off his face. If it had been the Widow, she would not have made a single sound. Besides, they were too heavy to belong to the lithe woman. And he knew those footsteps.

Indeed, it was not the Spider who came into view. It was the Hawk.

So the Avengers were trying to play on his guilt. 

Or perhaps they were trying to discern whether he felt any.

He certainly did, but he doubted that would have any bearing whatsoever.

“Loki.” 

The man spoke, his voice perfectly neutral, face giving nothing away except determination.

Well, the neutrality was better than the hatred he had expected, but he supposed the man was simply too professional to let his emotions show.

Well, if Barton maintained this facade of neutrality, it would make things a little easier for him. He had expected vitriol and hatred—nothing more than he deserved, after all, who would be civil to him, let alone loyal without him forcing their wills to be so? — but though it burned, this was to his benefit.  

Once again, he supposed it was nothing more than his nature. It was in his nature to be a liar, a destroyer, a villain and even if he hadn't been any of those things, he was certainly a monster, and who in their right mind would be civil or kind to a monster?

“Ah, my Hawk,” he said, letting his words take a tone just shy of mocking, for that was more likely to be expected of him than guilt—and he had no doubt that everything he said and did was being monitored and recorded—and he would try live up to their expectations, since wasn’t that what he always tried to do?

“How considerate of the Avengers to send me a familiar face. You are all being extremely accommodating.”

Surprisingly — or maybe not so surprisingly, given the man was good at what he did—the man had not shown any signs of discomfort, irritation or anger at the way Loki had chosen to address him, and now, he smiled. What was disconcerting about that was that while it was not a very nice smile it was not a terrible one either, and Loki could not determine if it was fake as he would have expected.

“Well, you’ve not exactly been living in a meadow of sunshine and rainbows for the past year.”

Loki stopped himself from frowning. He supposed “meadow of sunshine and rainbows” could technically be used to describe Asgard by the humans, who didn't know any better, but what had that got to do with this.

“How nice of you to offer me this cot then,” Loki continued in the same tone he had begun with.

“I see you still did not sleep.”

“Well, I hardly need as much sleep as you,” his tone was mocking this time.

“Yeah, I know. Doesn’t mean you don’t need rest.”

Loki narrowed his eyes. The man knew perfectly well he would not sleep among enemies, so why was he wasting time with this. Even if he wanted to lull Loki into the interrogation by talking about useless things before, why settle on sleeping ?

“And why is this any concern of yours?” he challenged. “Would it not be to your benefit if I was more tired?”

“It would be, but I’m not here to torture you any more than you already have been,” he said bluntly.

Outside, Loki merely raised his eyebrows, but inside he blanched. How did he—How could he possibly know that? Yes, it was true that Barton had spent most of his time beside Loki when he was under the Scepter’s control, that he had assisted Loki, that he had seemed to care for Loki—or rather whatever the mind stone twisted him into feeling for Loki—but that was all the Scepter and surely the man didn’t remember that?

Because Loki knew he had shown weakness in front of Barton. He had thought that the man would not remember anything once released from the Scepter’s control and he had allowed himself to slip for a few moments. Had he been wrong? And more importantly, had the Hawk been alert enough to catalogue his words and injuries under the mind stone’s influence?

“Do not be so harsh on yourself, Agent Barton. Your face is hardly that unseemly.”

The man snorted.

“No,” he agreed, “but all those dark circles aren’t doing your pretty face any favours.” he added conversationally.

Pretty??!!

“I doubt my face will charm you now.” 

“No, I'm way too old for you. Or way too young. However that goes. But doesn't mean there aren’t other people.”

Loki wanted to gape at the man. He really did. But he had no interest in looking a gift horse in the mouth or to give away his control, so obviously, he didn’t.

He smirked and leaned back against the wall.

“You would not happen to know these ‘other people’ would you?”

“Nah, not personally.”

“Pity. I could have charmed my way out of here then.”

Barton looked at him, a corner of his lips quirking up. “You still might.”

Now what was that supposed to mean?

“Oh? Is that so?”

“It is, if you speak with me.”

Ah, of course. Loki did note the use of ‘with’ rather than ‘to’. Still trying to pretend it was not an interrogation, then. What the point was though Loki did not understand. They all knew he expected nothing less.

The mention of torture troubled him. What did Barton mean by that? What tortures did he think Loki had suffered through? Why did he sound almost… troubled about that?

“And what might you want to know from me?”

”Why did you allow Selvig to build an off switch in the device opening the portal?”

Loki blinked. Well. This conversation had just taken a rather different turn than he had been expecting.

Could it be that these humans had actually caught on to his real plan? He allowed a tiny smile to crawl onto his face.

“And why would you think I allowed that? He could have simply built it of his own volition.” 

And that was absolutely true. He wondered if the man would tell him that he was the one making them do everything. Well, he supposed if the seeds of suspicion had already made its way into the Avengers’ mind, he could cast himself in a more sympathetic light even in that scenario.

To his pleasant surprise however, Barton did not spend any time insisting on that.

“I am sure he could. And as for your first question, that is what I am asking, aren’t I? Why would you put in a failsafe to stop your own invasion? And why would you open a bottleneck portal when you could have opened up the whole sky?”

“Why indeed?” Loki was fully smirking now. This was going better than he had expected. 

“Perhaps I am just a terrible strategist. After all, why else would I choose my enemy’s house, which is perfectly obvious and visible, as the base of my invasion?”

Barton hummed. “Your plan was so terrible, it almost seems like you sabotaged your own invasion.”

“It was the perfect way to attract as much attention as possible though,” Loki argued. “Is that not what I have been trying to do from the very beginning? Perhaps I simply wanted to gather as much attention as possible to satiate my ego?"

This was almost enjoyable. After all, even with how obvious he was being he hadn’t in fact expected anyone to see what he was actually doing. No one would have, back at Asgard. At least no one who really mattered. No, they would label him as evil , even if he had been loyal to Asgard for over a thousand years. But here, apparently even when all he had done was cause pain and suffering, when he had never been loyal to anyone here before, they had seen. To an extent, at least.

He wondered what Thor thought. Did his not-brother agree with these Mortals, or would he just dismiss their suspicions? Then he felt a tendril of bitterness curl up in his stomach and cursed himself for caring to think about what Thor might think.

“Yes, of course. That is precisely what you have been doing, isn’t it? But the fact that you know it’s a terrible strategy tells me you are not a terrible strategist. You also would not be agreeing that it was a terrible strategy if you were so worried about your ego.”

Barton raised his eyebrows, “So that means you purposely made a terrible plan, gave us hints so we could do something to thwart the invasion, and either instructed Selvig to make bottleneck portal or knowingly ignored it when he decided to do so, thus ensuring that lesser number of Chitauri could pass through.”

“I wouldn’t say the number of Chitauri was less, ” Loki was fully grinning now, showing as many teeth as he could.

Barton stared at him for a moment. Then he sighed. 

“You can be so frustrating.”

“It is one of my many talents, yes.”

Barton looked down as if considering something. When he spoke, he barely moved his lips.

“Look Loki, I remember most things from when I was under the Scepter’s control.”

Loki managed to keep the grin from completely slipping off his face, and instead forced it to become a small smile with a dangerous edge.

“Do you, now?”

Part of him wondered why Barton had suddenly started speaking in a way it would be nearly impossible to read his lips, since they could be heard anyway. Unless… unless, the other Avengers couldn’t hear them. On one hand the thought was ridiculous, because it was not as if he was going to be afforded any privacy here, but… there was no other reason for Barton to change the way he was speaking.

“Yes. And I remember you being kind. I remember you letting us all rest. I remember you caring about us, men whose loyalties and goals you had just changed with the Scepter, men you you had just met, and who in their right minds would have been your enemies. Men who most people in your place wouldn’t have given a damn about.”

Loki narrowed his eyes on the man.

“I merely needed you all to be in a proper condition to work.”

“That might be so,” Barton inclined his head in agreement, “but it was not just that.”

“You were kind, Loki. Kinder to us that you were to yourself. You had travelled for who knows how many light years before getting here, and by gods you were exhausted by the way you looked, but instead of keeping all of us awake to keep watch, you had us take rounds, while you stayed awake yourself. It couldn’t have been because of trust issues, because you knew we could not have betrayed you under the Scepter’s influence.”

“Yes, but you were not the only ones around, were you?” Loki said, countering. The man was getting into things Loki was not comfortable with. “There were those who you brought to me who I didn’t put under mind control.”

“Who came willingly to help you, though. And besides, they were not actually inside the heart of the base. They were outside , and were only given the most basic information by me , who was under the Scepter’s influence.”

“I didn’t want to take the risk.”

“Why didn’t you just mind control them all, then? Speaking of which, why did you let us retain an amount of autonomy instead of just making us your mindless puppets? You could have done that. If the Sceptre is so powerful surely it would have been able to take away our full autonomy?”

Loki paused. How was he to say that it was because he knew what it felt like, to not be in full control of one's actions and emotions, how helpless and lost it felt to just do as someone was told without even being able to think about your actions, and the desperate cloying sense of wrong, wrong —

How was he to say that he knew how terrifying it must have been for Barton once he woke up, even when he had some autonomy over his actions? How was he to say that he knew what it felt like, to be unmade ?

When he focused back on Barton’s face though, his breath almost hitched, because it seemed as if Barton already knew. His words confirmed this.

“It was because you have felt the Scepter’s influence yourself, haven’t you? And you also didn’t want to mind control anyone if you didn’t have to.”

Loki kept his expression neutral.

“You are making lots of assumptions, Agent Barton, for someone who has known me for less than a week.”

“So you didn't communicate with anyone through the Scepter’s connection?”

Loki raised a careful eyebrow, while internally realising that Barton must indeed have seen something when he had turned his way while talking to Selvig. Though, that did not explain how he had worked out the communication bit.

“How would that even be possible?” he asked.

“Well I would hardly know that ,” Barton said, raising an eyebrow right back at him. “But you didn’t answer.”

“How did you come to such a conclusion then?” Loki asked, ignoring the second part.

“Gee, this isn’t supposed to be you interrogating me, you know,” Barton grumbled. Then he sighed and continued anyway. “Well. I saw the gem in the scepter glowing and then I was hit with this strange vision just for a couple of seconds, like a creepy, rocky, dark place and this weird figure in a cowl. Can’t remember anything else though. Also you came up with new information after that.”

Loki had gone cold inside. He had not known that his mind had been projecting.

“Selvig looked a bit dazed, but then he got right back to work. I don’t think he thought much more of that. I’m not even sure he saw the vision too. And I think that we were only affected because we were the closest to you.”

That brought a tiny amount of relief, even though his stomach was roiling.

“So. There.” Barton finished awkwardly. Then wonder of all wonders, his eyes softened. “I know you weren’t a willing participant in this Loki. The others are beginning to accept that too. We know you were coerced , probably by torture, heat torture, if we read the signs correctly.”

Loki stiffened, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the insults.

Instead what he got was, “It was not your fault.”

Loki looked at Barton incredulously, unable to hold his tongue. “I killed so many of your people! I may not have taken your autonomy, but I still manipulated your will. I caused so much destruction!! How can I not be guilty of that??”

“You are guilty of doing all of that. But it's not entirely your fault. You were working under threat of torture after already having been tortured, and your mind was also being messed with. The fact that you want to take responsibility for something you were forced to do already shows that you regret it. Besides, I know you could have killed more people but you made a horrible plan bound to fail and cause the least number of casualties.”

Loki was silent. He had caused so much pain to these people, especially Barton, and they—or at least, Barton—were willing to give him another chance? He wondered if Barton remembered his friend. He wondered if this was a trick, like the Widow’s.

“I killed Coulson.”

He did not meet the shorter man’s eyes as he said it and he heard a whistle of breath leave through his nose. After a tense silence the man sighed again. He was doing that a lot.

“Are you trying to make me not give you a second chance because you think you don’t deserve it?”

Loki felt thoroughly disconcerted at being called out like that.

“I can't forgive you for that,” Barton said, and for some reason Loki felt like he had been punched, but it was only to be expected.

“But I can give you a second chance despite it.”

Loki narrowed his eyes.

“Why are you so desperate to help me?”

“Because it's the right thing to do,” Baron said simply, and then he scoffed at himself. “Look at me, talking all nobly like Captain America, Jesus Christ. But anyway, that doesn't make it less true in this case.”

Loki tried very hard to smother the small spark of hope starting to flare in his chest.

“You would be willing to hear me out? All of you?”

“If you are willing to speak.”

Well, Loki thought, will wonders never cease? An interrogation on him had actually worked and left him willing to divulge more information, and that... might just have worked in his favour.

Chapter Text

Despite Barton’s reassurances, Loki was still surprised when the Avengers were in fact willing to listen to what he had to say.

He was dumbfounded when Thor came up to him and took off his magic binding cuffs. Loki somehow managed to prevent himself from looking like a gaping fish.

"Putting far too much trust in me, aren't you Thor?"

"I am."

"Shouldn't you have learnt better by now?"

"I hope I never have to." Thor said with a disconcerting smile. Loki felt extremely uncomfortable. And why weren't the other Avengers protesting? Had they all gone mad? He could have easily killed any of the fragile humans(except Banner), even with the cuffs and they were relieving him of them? And Thor had agreed to that?!?! Was this some kind of a jest?!?!

He hadn't thought it was possible, but he was, in fact, even more shocked when before having the conversation, they all sat around a table to eat 'takeout'—not to mention when he was offered to eat along with them. He did not really have an appetite after all the time he spent in the Sanctuary, but apparently Barton had remembered that and they had all merely ordered soup. Even Thor had his quietly, without complaining or asking for anything else. It was extremely awkward. He never wished to experience it again.

When they finally began the, ahem, ‘conversation’, he was careful as to what he told them. First he gauged how much they already knew—and Loki knew both the spies must have picked up on that. So it seemed, had Stark. In fact, the man went one step ahead and dropped major hints about what they knew without actually literally saying the words.

Loki was befuddled by this show of solidarity from the man, for even if he was sympathetic, it did not make sense for him to go out of his way to help Loki. After all, no one ever did.

As it was, it seemed the Avengers already knew much more than they should and as such Loki only confirmed that there had been liberal use of pain while, ahem, the Chitauri “prepared” him for the invasion. He had initially thought he would reveal a few things to garner their sympathy, but they knew far too much already. He supposed they had offered him a chance to talk only after they had learned all that; Telling them anything more would be showing weakness.

Loki made sure to avoid eye contact with Thor. He did not need to see his not-brother’s disgust at Loki’s inability to bear a little pain. Or worse, in case Thor was in a particularly benevolent mood, his pity.

Once he had said most of the important things (sans a few details he would rather keep private, such as the hierarchy of those he had fallen to his knees for and particular techniques used to bring that upon him), he folded his hands on his lap and waited.

Stark broke the silence after a while, as was not entirely unexpected. 

“Well, now that we’ve got all of that out of the way,” he cleared his throat, “We need to inform Fury of at least a part of this, enough so he can deal with all the knuckleheads sitting up on top so that we can get you a fair trial.”

He shot Loki a slightly apologetic look, once again baffling him, because what in the Nine Realms did he have to apologise for?! He was talking about getting Loki a fair trial, which was certainly more than anything he would have got on Asgard. Surely he wasn’t apologising about having to expose Loki’s coercion to Fury and the public? That was the only thing that might get him acquitted and Loki was perfectly aware and (grudgingly) accepting of the discomfiture and humiliation it would cause him as long as it allowed him asylum on Earth and let him stay away from Asgard until he knew where to go next.

Humans were, as always, confusing creatures.

“Indeed,” Loki acknowledged with a slight tilt of his head. “I must offer you all my gratitude for hearing my side of the story even when you had absolutely no reason to and every reason to want to see me dead or furthur tortured.” He very pointedly looked at everyone except Thor, and surprised of all surprises, he remained silent.

“We wouldn’t want anyone to be tortured no matter what they’d done.” said the Captain, noble as always, “Especially not you and especially not after what you have endured.”

Loki blinked. That was…rather magnanimous … of him?

“It is very altruistic of you to say that Captain, but you don’t need to, even if we might become allies in the future. I endured some pain, yes, but I did still lead an attack and kill innocent people. I am perfectly aware of that.”

“That was not ‘some pain’ !!” Thor finally burst out. “You were tortured and threatened and hurt .”

Loki glared at Thor. “Yes, Thor I am perfectly aware I was ‘hurt’. I did say I endured pain. But we are far more durable than mortals and don’t tell me you would not have been perfectly successful in resisting all manner of agony and in persevering against them. You don’t have to show pity for your wea—”

Loki cut himself off before he could further ruin his reputation among the humans by showing what a weakling he was. Damn Thor!! He never lost his temper like this unless he was talking to his buffoon of a broth—Unless he was talking to Thor. Thor tended to  make all his insecurities swell up to the surface until he burst. And he very nearly did explode in front of the mortals.

“Loki that isn’t—”

“Loki,” Agent Romanoff cut across whatever Thor had been about to say.

She leaned forward, uncrossing her arms from in front of her chest and placing them on the table they were sitting around, in a deliberate gesture of good faith.

“You’ve suffered. You want to admit it, you don’t want to admit that someone had made you feel all the pain, you hate that you were put in that position and it’s understandable. The fact that you still accept responsibility for what you have done when you have a perfectly good opportunity to pretend to be all innocent shows what kind of a person you are, and despite what I’d thought before, that’s not a terrible person.”

Loki sat stunned, hearing this from Romanoff. Barton had shown him undeserving kindness, the Captain was irritatingly noble, Thor was Thor, Stark had been unfathomably sympathetic, Banner might have understood what it felt like to be a monster. But Romanoff was the last person he would have expected to speak in his defence, especially against himself.

“Feeling pain— hurting —is not a weakness,” Banner said quietly, speaking up for the first time.

Loki barely stopped himself from flinching. That had hit home.

He didn’t understand why they were being so kind. He didn’t deserve their kindness. He had done nothing to earn it and yet they gave it freely even if it was still addled with awareness and suspicion (as was natural).

And they didn’t understand. They could never understand. His resistance had been weak, because he was weak, because he was a coward. He was a monster .

He took in a deep breath, steadying himself. These humans had managed to get under his skin in a very short amount of time. He could not allow this to continue happening.

"Are we done here for now?"

There was a pregnant pause as everyone looked at him. Thor looked disappointed while the others looked slightly sympathetic. Loki hated it.

"Uh, I suppose so," Stark said. "but we'll need you soon again."

"Obviously,” said Loki. "Until that time comes though, I would like some peace and quiet. Since I assume I'm not going to be allowed to move around freely, which one of you is going to escort me back to the cell?"

"Uh... no one's gonna escort you back to your cell, buddy. You're not going back to the cell."

Loki blinked. Oh. He supposed that good treatment was only temporary after all. Not that he could blame the humans. And keeping him under further guard would only make more sense.

"I see. But I had thought I would be staying in Stark Tower?"

Stark blinked. "You...you are staying in this Tower. Just not in the cell. I've had a room arranged for you now. You're on the 64th floor along with Thor and Brucie."

To say Loki was shocked would be a major understatement. After everything he'd done, the humans would treat him the same as them? He had caused destruction in their realm and while he would be executed or imprisoned for life at least, for that in Asgard, the humans were not only offering him a trial that might grant him amnesty for his crimes, they were letting him— trusting him enough to stay with them, to not hurt them? They would truly allocate a room for him after his trial?

He was starting to wonder if they were, in fact, actually as insane as himself and if that was why they were helping him.

But when had Thor contracted this madness?

"You do not think that it would be unwise to allow me to stay close to where you all live?"

"Well, are you planning to attack us?" Barton asked.

"That would be counterproductive."

"I thought so," Barton said. Romanoff snorted.

This was far too kind, far more than he deserved. It had not escaped his notice that he had been put with the only two people who could hope to win in a fight against him, but that was only the barest of precautions. They mortals were trusting him far too much. They were really lucky he did not actually plan on betraying them.

"Well then," Stark said, clapping his hands together, "I see no reason to keep you behind the bars—or, well, behind the glass since you probably saved Earth from complete destruction and did as little damage as you could in the attack and don't plan to attack us again."

Loki sat stunned. How had they—

"You didn't think we'd picked up on your heroism? Give us a little more credit, Reindeer Games."

Indeed, thought Loki, I probably should . However...

"I would not call it heroism."

"That was heroic Loki," The Captain said. Of course, he would speak up now.

"You were tortured and threatened and yet you chose to protect a planet you had no connections to. Well, protected as best as you could in the given situation."

"You make me sound far nobler than I truly was, Captain.” Loki smiled self-depreciatively.“And I would not say I had no relations with Earth. Technically, I haven't been officially disowned yet , and therefore I am still a Prince of Asgard and as such, protecting Earth as part of the Nine Realms, is supposed to be my duty. But I've succeeded in doing a far worse job of it than Thor, which is not a statement I ever thought I would have the misfortune of saying."

Thor did not seem to know whether to smile or not. The others had no such compunctions though, and Stark was straight up grinning.

“Well,” Stark said, “We’ll put that spin on the story in the trial. How you were hurt and in pain and your life was in danger but you still rose to your duty as well as you could in the given situation and that without you Earth would be in a far worse condition now. All of this is true anyway.”

An almost manic gleam had entered Stark’s eyes. He grinned dangerously .

“And just think what will happen when we tell them that while you did your best to minimise the damage and caused around a hundred casualties, the World Security Council decided to nuke the city and kill millions.”

Loki raised his eyebrows.

“You seem more eager to have me acquitted than even I myself am, Stark.”

“Call me Tony. And yeah I’m very interested in getting you acquitted because I want something from you in return.”

Of course, Loki thought. Stark was a businessman after all, and he would be remiss to let this opportunity go by.

“Well, what is it that you want from me? I do not exactly possess much at the moment.”

This was not entirely true, of course, considering he had all manner of things stored in his pocket dimension, some of them rather valuable. Loki did not like the rather knowing look Thor was favouring him with. It did not suit Thor.

“Oh please,” Stark scoffed. “I don’t want any ‘material goods’ from you. I have all the money to buy anything this world can provide. But your centuries of knowledge is another matter entirely.”

“Basically,” Banner continued, “the two of us want to pick on your brain. We want to learn everything we can about the known Universe—well, known to you anyway, since there seems to be a lot that we don’t know.”

The humans seemed to be full of surprises, didn't they? Loki couldn’t remember the last time anyone in Asgard had ever asked him about his knowledge, since the Allmother (Thinking about her sent pang through his heart; he pushed her to the back of his mind). The only places where his learning had been truly welcomed were the Institutions of Alfheim and Vanaheim.

He would still have to be ready for their barbs of course, those never stopped. But Loki was certain that after centuries of dealing with ignorant Asgardians, these humans could not come up with something to truly hurt him. Speaking of which…

“Very well. You may ‘pick on my brain’ as you put it, however I doubt I’d be able to teach you everything in my centuries worth of knowledge, given that it required, well, centuries to acquire.”

“We’ll take what we can get,” Stark— Tony, assured him. “And I think you might be surprised by how much we can learn, even if it’s not all of what you know.”

“If you say so,” Loki indulged him. “May I leave now?”

“Wait.” Romanoff cut in. Loki felt the first tingling of irritation.

“Yes, my lady?” he asked.

Romanoff gave him a flat look before continuing. “I’m sorry for bringing this up Loki, but we need to know who captured you. If they managed to capture and hold you and had a whole fleet of Chitauri to attack us with, they might have more. We might be attacked again.”

Loki had stiffened. He had expected this to come, of course. He had only hoped it would be later.

“Oh they definitely had more,” Tony muttered darkly. 

Ah yes, Loki remembered, the man had stared into the void before almost falling to his death .

“How do you know?” The Captain asked sharply.

“I saw them,” Tony said. “When I threw the nuke into the wormhole. There were so many—The nuke took out some, but there were so many that it could not have destroyed all.”

There was a silence as the others seemed stunned by the sheer size of the proportions described by Stark. He had dealt in weapons and war in the past, his word was invaluable here.

Loki let out a humourless chuckle. It was a bitter, dark, cutting sound.

The others turned to look at him.

“What you saw Stark, was perhaps a hundredth of his entire battalion.”

Yes, Loki thought, looking at the dawning horror on the faces of the Avengers. That’s how bad it is. Could they feel a fraction of his fear even now, he wondered.

“But Loki, the Chitauri, Leviathans and Outriders are commercial mercenaries working under a few leaders. Surely not even the Kree or the Shi’Ars could afford a legion that enormous?” Thor asked, shaking his head.

“Well, dear Thor, have you never wondered who these ‘few leaders’ are? Oh, who am I asking, of course you haven’t.”

Thor shot him a look that managed to somehow be miffed and fond at once and Loki glared back at him.

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense, who are they?” Clint burst out.

“Well, the one who directly governs the Chitauri faction calls himself …‘the Other.’”

Loki swallowed.

‘The Other works under an elite team of lethal warriors called ‘The Black Order’, who in turn serve another.”

“That’s not possible.” Thor gasped. “The Black Order is a myth!”

Loki shot him a dirty look. “Oh so I must be lying, then. Making up stories, perhaps. Is that what you’re saying, Thor?”

“Oh dear,” Clint muttered and was elbowed by Agent Romanoff.

“No, no of course not. I know you’re not making this up. To have held you, your captors must have been powerful indeed, but the Black Order??!! But their leader, the leader of this gargantuan troop, he—he is dead, he cannot be alive.”

The desperation in Thor’s voice did not make Loki feel any better as he might have hoped it would. It only further drove in the severity of the situation, if even the Thunderer found it daunting.

“Uh guys, we’re kind of in the dark here,” Banner said mildly. “If you wouldn’t mind filling us in...?”

“Yes, of course,” Loki said. “The Black Order, The Other, The Chitauri, Leviathans and Outriders all serve one master: The Mad Titan.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound ominous at all.” Tony said, raising his eyebrows.

“Oh he is. He is very ominous, I assure you.”

The Mad Titan Thanos, was, well… mad,” Thor explained. “If he truly is still alive, then it is far away from the Nine Realms, for here he had regressed into a myth. According to the stories we had heard, he used to sacrifice entire planets to please Lady Death, as he wished to court her.”

There was silence.

“Jesus Christ,” The Captain whispered softly.

“Uh, Lokes? How much of this is true?” Tony asked, something in his voice.

“Well, I’m not aware if the Titan truly wants to court Lady Death or not,” Loki said, “but he does take his army to cull half the population of any planet he considers to be suffering due to overpopulation and lack of resources. He has this perverted idea of ‘Balance’. He thinks that if he destroys half the population of each planet, the remaining half will thrive on the remaining resources.”

“So basically this guy’s an idiot,” Tony surmised after a while.

A shocked bark of laughter left Loki. “Only you, Stark, would call the Mad Titan an idiot. But yes, I suppose, in a way he is.”

“So...now he was here to cull Earth? I mean, yeah the population is increasing but we’re still not in that bad of a condition, right?” Clint asked.

“The Titan’s main reason to invade earth was to obtain the Tesseract.”

“Yeah, but why is the genocidal maniac obsessed with the glowy blue cube?” Stark asked. “I mean, he’s already destroyed so many planets, he's got enough powerful weapons, why'd he need the Tesseract?"

"My dear Stark, manufacturing weapons is not why the Titan desires the Tesseract. You mortals haven't even tapped into a fraction of Tesseract's power."

"Well, this just keeps getting better and better by the minute," Agent Romanoff announced dryly.

"What do you mean?" The Captain asked, outraged. "These Tesseract weapons can level cities. They were almost used to do so seventy years ago, when they were used by the Red Skull. I understand that's not nearly powerful enough to destroy planets but I'd say that the weapons are pretty powerful."

Loki smiled indulgently at him. 

"That really is nothing, good Captain," Thor added.

"The Tesseract is one of six cosmic entities born at the beginning of the Universe, called the Infinity Stones. They are likely the most powerful entities in the Universe." Here Loki waved his hands and a hologram of them appeared suddenly, shocking a few of the Avengers.

He smirked and pointed at the stones one by one.

"Power—Somewhere in Eclipsing Binary Star System M31V in the Andromeda Galaxy, Soul—Lost for as long as any written records go, with no information about its location, Time—Lost about five centuries ago, where it was last seen on Vanaheim, Reality-I suspect hidden by Odin's father Bor about five thousand years ago when he lied about destroying the Aether."

Thor jumped. 

“What?”

“Oh yes, the Aether is the Reality Stone and it is very much not destroyed. Our whole family seems to be in the business of lying.”

Except the Great Golden Thor, of course.

Thor, who looked extremely shocked then, the history he had known his entire life slipping from beneath his feet. Loki wondered if that was even a thousandth fraction as shocking as discovering his heritage had been.

The other Avengers looked between them awkwardly. Loki shook his head and focused back on the hologram.

Now the four stones he had already spoken about moved backwards. Mind and Space came to the forefront and transformed into their vessels, causing everyone to widen their eyes.

"Mind--Encased within the Scepter, and Space—The Tesseract."

"So..... Thanos wants these stones? To kill more efficiently?" 

"Precisely. If he manages to get his hands on all of them," here he paused to look each of them in the eye (except Thor), "there is little anyone could do to stop him from reaching goal to destroy half the Universe with a mere snap of his fingers."

"Well. Fuck."

Chapter Text

After everything he had been through, Tony had thought not much could rock him anymore. Shit happened, he might be surprised or a little shocked but he processed it and then almost immediately took it in stride.

Well, as the world was keen on showing almost everyday, even the great Tony Stark could be proven wrong.

Tony had figured that the guy who managed to hurt and torture a god would be quite the character, but hearing about his goals and the sheer scale of the pain and—there was no other word for it— anhillation , he caused, had left Tony deeply rattled.

“Destroy half the Universe with a snap of his fingers, ” Loki had said. He had then elaborated that Thanos would also need the Gauntlet which was kept in the Vaults of Asgard to consolidate their power in one place before he could actually commit the mass genocide on a universal scale.

Well, at least Thanos still had to go through Asgard before he could drop to visit Earth.

The thought really didn’t help much though.

There was a period of horrified silence where everyone seemed to be processing the words and maybe wondering if they were actually real. Tony had no doubt they were.

Rogers looked like he was going to throw up. Clint looked like he was about to pop a blood vessel. Natasha and Loki, and surprisingly Thor, all had grim looks on their faces that gave away nothing else. 

Bruce was looking distinctly green around the edges and Tony supposed he should be a bit more worried about it, but at the moment he really couldn’t be bothered.

He was just trying to prevent himself from going into a full blown panic attack in front of everyone.

Legions of Chitauri all chittering, gigantic space-whales looming, with metal armour meshed  with their organic parts, glittering in the dark vacuum of open space, several other creatures that he could not even see properly, let alone identify, all just ready and waiting to kill —

He shook his head, trying to dispel the images. This attracted the others’ attention but all he could care about was trying to bury the cloying fear.

Besides, Loki had seen all that and worse, he had been tortured and he had suffered so much and still he spoke about it because he knew it was necessary. Tony didn’t think he could ever bring himself to talk about his time with the Ten Rings.

(A part of him was amused by the fact that he was comparing himself with the guy who had destroyed his city and thrown him out of the window just half a day ago.)

“So, what do we do?” Rogers asked, disrupting the haunted silence.

Loki raised an eyebrow. 

“Why Captain, surely you know what to do when there is a war in the future? You prepare as best as you can in the time you have. The time Thanos decides to make his big move can be anywhere between a year or a hundred. Use that time as wisely as you can.”

The lower limit of the time range was … concerning, to say the least. They could not prepare the whole world in a year !!

“A year ?!?!” Romanoff  exclaimed, echoing his feelings. “What do you mean a year? We are going to be woefully unprepared. We can hardly assemble enough defences for the whole world in twelve months!!”

Well, that was the most genuine emotion Tony had ever heard from Romanoff. But, it was about preventing the end of the world (hopefully) so he supposed even she would be affected.

“I didn’t say it was definitely going to be a year. That’s just the lowest estimation. It's far more likely to take longer. Despite his massive legions, Thanos took at least a little bit of damage today, thanks to Stark,” Loki said, nodding at Tony, and yeah, being told that a nuke that would have decimated Manhattan and destroyed parts of surrounding areas only did a ‘ little bit’ of damage to Thanos’ army, and then being congratulated as if that ‘little bit’ was a big achievement made him feel all sorts of warm fuzzies inside.

Tony still had a little difficulty comprehending the size of Thanos’ army, and he was Tony Stark. Also, if an army warranted being called ‘ legions ’ by an ancient and powerful magical alien, then, well. It seemed they just kept sinking deeper and deeper in shit.

“Besides,” Loki added, “Earth might not even be the final battleground.”

Tony snorted. “I wouldn’t count on our luck there.”

“No, no it’s entirely possible that Earth won’t be the final battleground.” Thor argued. “ The Gauntlet is on Asgard and while two infinity stones may be on Earth at the moment, and three or four in the Nine Realms in general, the other two are elsewhere in the Universe. I truly hope for your sake, that Earth is spared this fate.”

“You and all of us Goldilocks, but we are at risk and as such we must be prepared.”

“What else can you tell us about his army? Does Thanos have any specific strategy?” Rogers pressed.

“He does not.” Loki said. “His battalion is so immense, it is practically inexhaustible. The Black Order are his generals, but they don't need any strategy. They can simply break through and overwhelm the defences of the realm they choose to cull.”

Then he stopped and looked at all of them.

“Anything else I may or may not know, I will keep to myself until I am granted amnesty on Earth.”

There was an immediate protest from Rogers and Tony felt pissed too, because how could he stop now, but he knew it was only natural to want some insurance.

“Now, there’s no need to be upset. I know we should be allies soon, but aren’t yet. I’m only trying to safeguard my interests.”

“You know we will help we help you, why aren’t you—”

“That’s not how it works, Cap,” Bruce interrupted.

“Indeed,” Loki said. “I am more aware than anyone here, of the threat Thanos poses, and only too eager to help deal with it. However, that does not mean that I will give you all the information without anything in return. And if you truly do intend to grant me amnesty and harbour me on Earth, you have no reason to fear losing out on any information that I have that is necessary for defeating Thanos.”

“Alright, that’ll give further reason to the courts to provide you amnesty after we’ve shown them proof that you weren’t orchestrating this invasion of your own accord, and that you were in fact a very unwilling participant. And once Fury and those WSC assholes realise the extent of the threat we are facing, and the help you can provide, they’ll have to agree too,” Tony reasoned, mind working furiously to build up the case and screen the information he’d have to forward to his lawyers. He did not think Loki would appreciate any information more than strictly necessary to be made public.

Just enough to get him absolved and garner the public’s sympathy, despite how much they had suffered.

Speaking of which, “Loki, you wouldn’t mind doing some community service, would you?

Natasha snorted.

“To gain the goodwill of your people once I’m absolved, I suppose?” Loki asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Yup. And well… it’s probably going to be one of the conditions of your pardon.”

“Well then, of course I’ll perform this community service. It’ll be aiding the reconstructions and repairing the damage, I suppose?”

“Yup.”

“I think we should all help in some way,” Thor piped up. “Friend Tony will be providing the money I suppose, but if Loki uses his magic for the repairs, both time and expenditure will be reduced. But I think the rest of us should help in relocation and provide aid to the people in person. It will engender further good will towards the Avengers and perhaps help improve Loki’s image, if he is seen working with the public’s ‘heroes’.”

That… was a good idea.

Everyone looked surprised that Thor had come up with the idea. Well, everyone except Loki (who had a… different sort of expression on his face, that Tony couldn’t quite decipher.).

Tony was reminded that Thor was, in fact, a prince. 

“Excellent idea Point-Break. Besides, if people see Loki’s not averse to getting down and dirty,” he winked at Loki, who rolled his eyes, “it might help reduce their fear of him.”

“Similarly it might help them in getting over their awe over Thor and Cap.” Natasha said.

“And trepidation over the Hulk,” Barton added.

Bruce frowned. “I’m… not sure that’s a very good idea. Not that I don’t want to help,” he clarified, “just… I don’t want to put anyone at risk. I can’t control the Hulk after all, and… I don’t want to put people at risk.”

“You won’t,” Tony said. He had to do something about Bruce’s self-confidence too. “Brucie-Bee, you have an almost-iron grip on the Hulk, whatever you say.”

When Bruce opened his mouth to protest, Tony continued, “You became the Hulk on the Helicarrier, only by being affected by the Sceptre, and later in the battle, when you let go on purpose. I don’t think you’ve got too much to fear.”

“You were helping people back in Kolkata without anyone getting hurt, Dr. Banner.” Natasha said. “You’ll be doing something similar now.”

Bruce sighed, but he smiled slightly too. Mission successful. “Okay then,” he agreed.

“Look at us all, talking things out like adults.” Tony said suddenly, “I’m proud of us.”

There were several eye rolls and snorts to be heard. Rude. 

“Alrighty then, let’s wrap this up for now,” Tony declared. “You won’t mind speaking with me and Brucie about your ‘magical science’ later, would you?” Tony asked Loki.

Loki just looked at him for a moment. “Of course not.”

“We’ll fill Fury in, on the necessary topics.” Natasha said, gesturing towards her and Clint.

“I bet he’s going to swear up a storm.” Rogers said.

Tony snorted.

“No bet.” Barton said.

“Right.” Tony said, standing up. “You lot know where your rooms are. Jarvis will give further instructions if needed. This has been a very long day for all of us and I’m sure we all just want to drop into comfortable beds.”

Amongst the answering groans of agreement, Tony met Loki’s eyes. He didn’t think either of them would be sleeping well that night. Loki gave him a slight nod of acknowledgement.

Tony turned away to see the Spy Kids whispering to each other across the room. Yes, well, he didn’t think Barton would be sleeping well either.

Well, Tony would call Pepper again and he would actually have to talk to Rhodey now. 

Ugh he loved his Sourpatch so much but he was gonna get shouted at again. Maybe more than he even got from Pepper, which was scary, but it was Rhodey. Or maybe he’d just look at him disappointedly and that would be even worse.

And of course there was Happy. He should honestly give the man a raise for all the heart attacks he must go through on a daily basis. Hmm, maybe a promotion? Iron Man didn’t need a security guard anyway.

As they were walking out, he saw Thor lingering. Probably to catch Loki alone. 

He heard Thor ask, “I know you have your own chambers, but would you stay with me tonight?”

Tony raised his eyebrows. That wasn’t gonna end well. He didn’t stick around long enough to hear Loki’s answer however, for once respecting people’s privacy. Pepper would be proud.

Thor waited slightly anxiously for Loki’s answer to come.

Loki stared at the ground for what was probably less than a minute but seemed like hours.

“It’s not like I have a choice,” he finally replied.

Thor grinned. Loki was a little grumpy, but that was to be expected.

He was finally going to spend a night with Loki. After a year of thinking he was dead, he was going to have his brother close to him again.

To say he was happy would be a massive understatement. He wanted to pick Loki up and twirl him around, though he was almost certain he would get stabbed for it—and really, getting stabbed by Loki twice in a day was too much even for him—so he refrained. 

Even though they had all learned absolutely disastrous news he could not stop being happy because he had his little brother back.

Even though Thor felt anger course through his veins like lightning at the mere thought of what Thanos and his minions and done to Loki, and he wanted to kill them all slowly and painfully, making them regret every wound they had ever inflicted on his brother, he still couldn’t help but be happy because he had his brother back.

And his brother had agreed to share his chambers for the night even if he wasn’t particularly happy about it. He had agreed to it nonetheless, and it gave him hope for their relationship.

It was all he could do to not drag Loki by the hand. Every step as they walked towards their destination, Thor seemed to buzz with excitement. 

When they finally reached the room and the door closed, Thor turned to look at Loki with a bright smile on his face. 

Loki didn’t seem to share his excitement (then again, he’d rarely let any excitement show on his face once they were adults) and raised his eyebrows. Thor noticed they weren’t as perfectly maintained as they used to be and felt another spark of anger at the reason, but didn’t let it show. It wasn’t meant for Loki after all.

Thor stepped forward and placed his hand on the back of Loki’s neck in their signature gesture. He made sure to be gentle but as he moved his face forward to place his forehead against his brother’s, he felt Loki stiffen anyway.

Thor waited for a few moments to see if Loki would relax into it but when he didn’t, he pulled away.

Loki was staring at the floor as if it was the most interesting thing he had ever laid his eyes on.

Thor nudged him slightly but Loki wouldn’t meet his eyes. He removed his hand from Loki’s neck, heartbroken.

He had thought— he had thought now that they knew that Loki had not conducted the invasion of his own volition, that Loki wouldn’t have to pretend to hate him to satisfy the Other.

A dreadful thought crossed his mind: What if Loki really hates me?  

But he brushed it away. Loki didn’t hate him. He couldn’t. Thor refused to believe it.

Then he remembered—Loki didn't know that Thor accepted him for his Jotunn heritage now, that he had read about his heritage because how could he not do what he could to learn about his brother? Especially when it was the only way to connect with him when Thor thought he was dead.

The thought was almost relieving, because it meant Loki didn’t hate him and that he could do something to remedy the situation.

“Sit.” When Loki seemed reluctant to move, he added, “Please.”

Loki slowly moved to sit at the edge of the king-sized bed at the center of the room and Thor followed to sit beside him.

The silence stretched as Thor wondered how to bring up the topic.

Loki spoke first. 

“Not that this isn’t nice or anything,” he drawled, “But do you actually have anything to say?”

“Yes!” Thor said hurriedly. “Yes, I did. I mean—I do. I do have something to say to you.”

“Well then, get on with it,” Loki said tiredly.

“I will! I just— I just, I’m thinking how to say it.”

Loki raised a single eyebrow. As always, it annoyed the Hel out of Thor as he had never figured out how to do that. “Don’t hurt yourself. You know how hard thinking is for you.”

“Shut up,” Thor grumbled, but he felt momentary happiness at the small slice of normality. It evaporated again as he realised he still couldn’t think of a way to delicately bring up the matter of Loki’s heritage.

He also realised that at some point he would also have to tell Loki how he came across this information in Asgard’s library and that was a different headache. He did not believe it would help improve relations between their family.

“Loki, over the past year I’ve, uh… done some reading.”

“Really,” said Loki dryly. “I mean, had anyone else told this to me I would have asked them why they were wasting my time saying useless things but it’s you, and I suppose reading something is in fact such a great achievement for you that you had to tell me about it, at this very moment.”

Alright, Thor had walked right into that one.

He took a deep breath. He had to accept that it wasn't possible for him to phrase this delicately.

“I did some reading about the Jotnar.”

He saw Loki stiffen. He hurried on.

“We were wrong. Asgard was wrong about them.”

Now Loki looked taken aback and Thor allowed himself a moment to be smug at being able to put that expression on Loki’s face.

“They’re not monsters. They’re not. They had some pretty great things in place before the war, actually.” Here Thor winced because he had to bring up the war right then . But he ploughed on undeterred. 

“Did you know Utgard was beautiful? And—and the Jotnar have night vision. That explains why you can see so well in the dark! And did you know we've been calling them the wrong thing forever. The plural is Jotnar. And they had to develop all these special methods to farm because of all the ice. Obviously, magic played a big part. And they have more inherent seidr than Aesir or Vanir or even the Elves. That might be why you are so strong in magic!”

Thor was really catching his stride now. He knew he was rambling but he had to go on. He could tell Loki about the ruling system—maybe it would make him happy to know that one day they could rule together as kings.

“And their system of choosing the next ruler, Loki, it’s slightly different. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it might even be better.”

"Thor—"

"If there are—

" Thor —”

“—more than one—”

“Thor, stop. ”

Thor stopped to see Loki glaring at him. He didn’t understand why. He was only trying to show Loki that he had done his research and he didn’t care that Loki was a Jotunn.

Loki seemed to gather himself and plastered a patently fake smile on his face. 

“It's sweet that you've researched, but was there something you wanted to talk about?” he asked pointedly.

Now Thor really did not understand. 

“This is what I want to talk about!”

Loki’s eyes hardened. 

“Why?”

Thor gaped at him.

“Why? Because I want to tell you that I don’t care that you are a Jotunn, Loki.”

Loki’s eyes widened for a moment and then settled back into an indifferent mask.

“Don’t you? How kind.”

Thor was getting frustrated now. He was extending an olive branch! No, he was extending the whole Norns-damned olive tree!! Why wouldn't Loki take it??!!

Why wouldn't he see that Thor loved him?

To Hel with it all, he thought. He was just going to say it.

“I love you.”

Finally, Loki‘s mask broke. His face gathered into a pinched look, and Thor could see the hurt in his eyes.

“Don’t,” he said, again.

“But—” Thor tried to protest but Loki glared at him.

“Just. Don’t. I don’t want to hear it.”

His voice cracked just the tiniest bit at the end.

“But Loki, I am telling the truth!”

“I don't believe you!” Loki snapped, breathing heavily.

Thor stared at him in despair. He had tried his best—He didn’t understand what it would take to show Loki that Thor was still his brother and that he loved him more than anything.

“Now,” Loki said, seemingly gathering his composure. “If we’re done wasting time, we should probably go to sleep.”

Saying this, he moved to the other side of the bed, changing into a simple night shirt and breeches with a flash of green and gracefully sliding under the covers.

Thor tried not to gape. Then he realised that Loki wasn’t looking at him anyway, and decided to go for it.

Why was Loki still in this room and sleeping on this bed if he was so angry with Thor? He could just… leave and go to the room prepared for him, if he was so full of hate.

Thor was already dressed in the comfortable clothes provided so kindly by Stark, so he decided to follow suit.

They were in the usual positions that they were in, whenever they shared a sleeping space, with Thor on the left and Loki on the right. The fact they had slipped into old habits would have made him smile, but he was just extremely upset, not to mention confused after the conversation-turned-argument.

He didn’t want Loki to leave but he couldn't resist the urge to prod.

“If you’re so angry with me, why don’t you retire to your own chamber?”

He heard a scoff. “Believe me, if I could, I would.”

Thor frowned in confusion. “What? What do you mean if you could ?”

“I’m still not absolved of my crimes, you fool. The mortals would be foolish to let me entirely out of supervision before that.”

Alright, Thor felt like he was missing something.

“Yes,” Thor agreed. “But you’d still be under JARVIS’ supervision.”

“JARVIS can’t stop me though, can he?” 

Thor felt flattered at the implication that he could, since despite the fact that he’d never admit it out loud, they both knew that if Loki decided to teleport away, Thor could do precisely nothing to stop him. (Thor had drawn this conclusion from past experiences.)

But things still didn’t add up. 

“They gave you your own room.”

“Norns, you’re thick, aren’t you.” Alright that was not fair at all since in this particular situation, he actually wasn’t the one being thick.

“That room is for me after I’ve been tried and absolved. Before that, I’m obviously stuck with you, since Stark said I would not be going back to the cell.” came Loki’s muffled voice.

“From where in the Nine Realms did you draw that conclusion?”

“How about the fact that they told you to ask me to share your room?!?! Obviously, I would not be left alone before the trial.”

Thor sat up, reeling. Loki… Loki thought that the other Avengers had asked Thor to share his room with Loki?! What?! Of all the ridiculous conclusions, how was this the one Loki settled on? Thor felt offended. He was beyond offended. He thought Loki was supposed to be the smart one.

“You think they asked me to— Do you hear the words coming out of your mouth, Loki?! Are you out of your mind? I asked you to stay with me because you are my brother and I wanted to spend some time with you!!”

Silence.

Thor waited for a response but when he didn’t get any he flopped back onto the bed with a huff.

“Want ed ?” came an eventual quiet reply.

Thor blinked at the emphasis. It took him a moment to realise what Loki was talking about. He turned his head towards Loki’s back.

“I still want to. Just… ugh you—you just make it all so difficult. ”

“Well,” said Loki, “I’ve always been difficult.”

“I know,” said Thor half annoyed, half fond.

Then he sighed. 

“I’m not going to force you to stay here Loki. I want you to of course, but if you wish you can leave now, or if you really want to confirm that you are, in fact, allowed to go to the room that was specifically set aside for you , you can ask Friend Tony tomorrow.”

Again silence.

Thor wished he could understand his brother. He had stopped understanding Loki quite sometime before his Fall, but he hadn’t cared then. Hadn’t even realised he was losing his brother, but now he’d give anything to understand Loki again.

Thor didn’t want Loki to leave. He wished desperately that Loki would just stay with him for however long they stayed here. He wanted to be close to his brother. He felt this cloying fear that if they were separate for too long, he’d lose Loki again. He didn’t think he would be able to bear it again.

Thor was a prince. And not just any prince, but the Crown Prince of the Golden Realm of Asgard. He was not used to being denied things in his life (The incident in Jotunheim was proof of that.).

But if Loki chose to leave—which seemed very likely once he realised that he could leave—, he supposed he would… just have to accept it.

Chapter Text

Thor had given him quite the shock by having actually read up about the Jotunns— well, Jotnar apparently, to try and—and accept him? Accept that he was a monster? Or if Thor was to be believed, they weren’t monsters. They were apparently interesting. According to ‘I will hunt the monsters down and slay them all’ Thor. 

Other than the utter shock and bewilderment those words caused, they also caused a very peculiar feeling in his chest. He feared that if he tried to unpack it, what little of himself he had managed to build back up would shatter again. So he locked it in a box and hid it in the deep vaults of his mind (— like a stolen relic, —).

He and Thor walked on eggshells around each other, and that frustrated Loki, just as it also relieved him to not have to actually talk about real things. (After the first night, Loki had in fact moved into the room that had been offered to him. It seemed that for once Thor had been right. Thor didn't bring up the fact that Loki had doubted being allowed to stay in his room before he got officially pardoned—Thank the Norns for small mercies).

After that first never ending day of the invasions and discussions and revelations, things picked up speed and days turned to weeks.

Stark—or Tony as he repeatedly asked to be addressed as— was working hard with his team of lawyers to ensure that he was pardoned. Clint and Agent Romanoff had convinced Fury of the benefit of his help and were doing the same with SHIELD. And they hoped that seeing America’s greatest symbol speak on Loki’s behalf would stack the odds further in their favour. 

It still baffled him that these heroes who had fought their hardest to protect their world from an army he had led would forgive him and fight for him to stay on this world. Never mind that he had been tortured and coerced, he still had destroyed one of their greatest cities. They even tried to convince him that he wasn’t weak for having succumbed to mere pain. The only thing they asked for in return was information about Thanos, and he would have given it anyway, to try to stop the Titan. 

Well. Tony and Banner asked for something more.

“Well, Reindeer Games,” Tony said, after dragging Loki to one of his labs along with Banner. “It’s time you hold up your end of the bargain and tell us all about the universe like you promised.”

Loki raised an eyebrow. “I hardly know all about the Universe myself.”

Tony gestured impatiently. “Tell us all you know, then.”

Loki stared at them. “You can’t honestly expect me to randomly start rambling about ‘the Universe’. Give me a specific topic. Tell me what you know. I’ll expand on that.”

“What about magic?” Banner asked. “We don’t know anything about it so maybe it’s better that we start with that and you can start from the beginning.”

Loki paused for a moment, stunned. They wanted to know about his magic. His magic. Well, more magic in general, than his magic, but still. It was after all, by common belief in Asgard, not something a respectable warrior would use in a battle(Ignoring the fact the Odin himself used magic in battle. But of course, no one ever seemed to remember that.) He couldn't remember anyone outside of Frigga (except for the scholarly circles and institutions of seidr of Asgard, Vanaheim and Alfheim, but those didn’t really count) ever voluntarily wishing to know more about magic. 

Well, not unless they had something to gain. 

Well. It could be that the Avengers wanted to find out more about his weaknesses and he certainly wouldn’t blame them for it. Regardless, he was rather certain that there was genuine curiosity behind it too. And while Loki would certainly be careful with how much he said, telling them the basics would not hurt. And besides, the curious creature that he himself was, he could definitely understand the urge to learn about the mysteries of the unknown. 

He debated where to begin, when Tony piped up. “You know I still find it really hard to believe that magic exists. Like come on, magic? ”

Loki gave him a deadpan look. “It's very easy to say that magic doesn't exist, but ultimately doesn’t the working of your computers boil down to the channeling, storage and conduction of information in the form of lightning through a series of crystals?”

There was a beat where Loki felt his lips curl in amusement as both scientists gaped at him.

“No— no, sorry what ?” Tony sputtered. “That’s not it at all! What crystals ?!?! That is not how computers work! That is so entirely incorrect, I don’t even know where to start. Computers receive data through an input route, store it, process it, either live or through a digital storage unit, and send out an output. And that’s just the beginning. They—”

“Well,” Loki interrupted, barely stopping himself from grinning. “I did say that was what it boiled down to. And if you really match your definition with mine, they’re not really that different. Lightning is electricity after all, and that’s what your computers run on. Perhaps it’s my use of the word crystal that annoys you, but crystals are used for storing information in other areas of the Nine Realms.”

Tony opened and closed his mouth several times trying to process that. Banner caught on to what Loki was trying to say and smiled slightly. 

Tony’s face on the other hand morphed into confusion. “Wait, are you agreeing or disagreeing with me on the magic point 'cause I really can’t tell.”

“That is because,” Loki explained, “science and seidr are not so different after all.”

Tony paused. “You said it like that on purpose to annoy me,” he accused.

“Ah, but of course.” Loki said, smirking.

“So,” Banner said, “there is science involved in what you do, like—like making illusions and duplicates and all the other stuff.”

“Yes, there is.” Loki said. “Starting with illusions and duplicates, they are actually two different things. Illusion projection is depicting a detailed image outside oneself which is perceptible in the external world while duplication casting means creating an exact facsimile of one's own body... a true holographic mirror of its molecular structure. In simpler terms, an illusion is not solid, a duplicate is. You can see an illusion but you can feel a duplicate.”

Both Tony and Banner listened with rapt attention. It created a strange feeling within Loki’s chest. Being listened to like that, being paid attention to like that, oh how he had missed it. Loki had always loved teaching when students were eager to learn and now it seemed he had an outlet for that.

“Yes, but how do you do it? Like, how do you create them?”

“Well, making illusions is definitely easier and takes far less energy than creating duplicates,” Loki said. “Illusions involve the manipulation of light and air molecules. They require more energy depending on how detailed they are. Giving a voice to them is trickier.” Loki frowned, thinking for a moment how to elaborate this to someone without any seidr, because all of the students he had given lectures to before, had had magic themselves.

“The closest approximation would be a ventriloquist, except I wouldn’t actually need to create any sound with my vocal chords. The illusion would be connected to my mind and it would speak whatever I make it speak with my mind. As it is with any skill, it requires great expertise and practice to be able to build up enough focus to maintain an illusion and have it maintain a separate conversation or appear to do a different action than what one is doing at the moment. The more the number of illusions, the more difficult it is and the greater is the focus required. This part, at least, is the same for both duplicates and illusions.”

Loki saw both Tony and Bruce taking notes and jotting down questions to ask him later on their tablets. He just. He felt satisfied for the first time in over who knew how long. He was sharing his knowledge. He was sating people’s curiosity. And he had this other warm buzzing feeling inside his chest that he didn’t quite know how to name.

He continued. 

“Now as for creating the doubles, it’s more complicated than illusions. Since they are solid doubles, and their molecular structure would essentially be the same as the person creating them—all that, well, matter, that makes them has to come from somewhere. So here, energy is not just used to manipulate already existing matter, here the energy has to be converted into matter.”

“Hey, now hold up, what ?” Tony shrieked. “You can convert energy into matter? Are you shitting me right now?!”

Loki merely smiled. “I assure you I am not.”

“But it takes whole nuclear power plants to do that!” Banner exclaimed.

“I did say it was very energy consuming, and not everyone can maintain duplicates for a long time,” Loki said, “but what makes you think I’m any less of a power house than your nuclear plants? I find that rather insulting.”

Loki was quite enjoying making the scientists speechless again and again.

“Right,” Banner muttered, fidgeting with his glasses. “Gods.”

Tony harrumphed. “Moving on from that not at all staggering revelation, I am going to guess that seidr is this energy that you keep talking about?”

“It is, yes.” 

“Is this energy inside you then? Where’s it stored?”

“Well, some of it is inside me, yes.” Loki said. “Some species are specifically genetically wired in a way such that their cells have space to store seidr in them. It gets naturally replenished after getting depleted. But the skill and power of a seidrmadr doesn’t just depend on their body’s capacity to store seidr, because that of course, varies from person to person. That certainly helps of course, and is much easier to tap into but even those with less seidr in their own body can become powerful sorcerers by conducting the energy of the Yggdrasil through themselves.”

“The Yggdrasil is the uh, World Tree, right?” Banner checked.

“Yes. Obviously it’s not a real tree. It’s— well, I’ll show you.”

Loki waved a hand and felt the familiar thrum of his seidr flow through his veins. In front of them and about three times their size, appeared a holographic illusion of the Nine Realms and Yggdrasil.

He heard gasps from both Tony and Banner.

“It’s beautiful,” Tony murmured and Banner nodded his agreement. Loki smiled.

“These are the Nine Realms. They’re all located in different star systems of course, but connecting them all are these metaphysical branches,” he said pointing to the ethereal paths connecting the realms. The pathways all shimmered, bathing the lab in a silver-blue-purple glow. 

Galaxies swirled around the realms in each of the branches and even more of them appeared congregated at the roots. Stars shimmered all around.

"Wait, there are eight realms here," Banner pointed out.

"Ah yes," Loki said "Asgard should be at the top, but you see, Asgard is not really a planet. It's more a planetoid built on an Asteroid with the smallest population of all the Nine realms at just over twenty million. Regardless," He waved a hand and the Golden Realm appeared at the head of the World Tree.

"Holy shit," Tony said, running a hand through his hair, "the climatic controls and atmosphere must be entirely different. How does it work? Also, why is only Asgard a planetoid when all the others are planets?"

"Good questions," Loki acknowledged with a tilt of his head, "and we will be coming back to those later, but at the present moment, I don't want to deviate too far from the topic of discussion."

"Jeez, professor." Tony snorted. "But sure." 

Loki turned back to the illusion with a smile.

“These metaphysical branches that you see, can be used as pathways for travel between realms, but it’s very dangerous to attempt to do so and even the slightest mistake can result in a very painful death. However, these pathways can also channel the dark energy of the Universe. Now, directly conducting dark energy through oneself can result in extreme fatigue and exhaustion.”

“That’s what happened to Odin?” Tony guessed. 

“Yes,” Loki agreed with a tilt of his head, doing his best to not let the mention of Odin ruin his mood or make his flow falter.

“Direct conduction also allows a significantly greater amount of energy to flow through a person within one instant. That was what was required to send Thor here. Meanwhile, conducting the seidr through the channels of Yggdrasil needs much more practice but takes far less toll since not all the energy passes through the body at once. A seidmadr or seidkonna can control how much energy they want to access at a given moment.”

“So,” Bruce said, his tone filled with wonder, “If any of us wanted, could we also, uh, access this seidr from the World Tree?”

Loki sighed and dismissed the illusion with another wave of his hand. The two scientists jolted as it suddenly vanished and the lab returned to its normal environment. 

“Unfortunately, no.” Loki said. “Even to conduct the seidr via the world tree, the person must have at least the genetic composition to store a minimal amount of seidr. Obviously, humans are not made that way.”

Tony pouted. “We get the shortest lifespans in the Nine Realms and the inability to do cool shit like that? Not fair.” 

Bruce looked similarly disappointed to hear that.

Loki raised his eyebrows. “Given your reluctance to believe in magic, I would not have thought that you would be so aggrieved for not being able to access it.”

“Yeah, but,” Tony floundered, “this is basically science in a way. It’s energy!”

“Come now, surely even with your stories, you must have known that magic, if it existed, would be a form of energy? They’re literally called magic powers aren't they? And after all, power is how fast energy is used or transmitted.”

Tony glared at him. “That does not even make sense.”

“You just don’t want to admit that you never thought of it that way,” Loki said airily.

Tony started to protest but Bruce interrupted with a “I guess you’re right.”

Tony turned his glare to him. “What? He’s right,” Bruce defended.

This is nice, Loki thought. He knew they weren’t, but it almost felt as if they were all friends bickering amongst themselves.

Out loud he continued. “In any case, being human doesn’t actually impede you from doing magic. And no, I don’t mean ‘the sleight of hand’ sort. I mean actual magic.”

“But you just said—”

“No, I know what I said. But it’s a different sort of magic. There is no inherent seidr or energy involved. It purely depends on humans manipulating the natural energy around them. It took me a long time to master that skill without using my inherent seidr. And yes, that is a particularly useful skill to learn, since, if my inherent seidr was ever to be depleted or weakened outside the Nine Realms System, I would not be able to channel the energy via the Yggdrasil.”

Looking at the two scientists’ baffled expressions, Loki added on, relishing dropping another metaphorical bomb on the two of them. “There are sorcerers on Earth, of course. They just like to live hidden, in seclusion.” 

As expected, the following silence was broken by a resounding “WHAT?! ” from both men.

Loki smiled and prepared himself for another long explanation as both scientists bombarded him with more questions. Oh, it felt so good to be surrounded by people who, it seemed, truly wanted his knowledge without ulterior motives, people who would truly listen to him without making snide, disparaging comments, people who—as much as Loki hated to admit it— would be amazed by his knowledge and wouldn't hesitate to let him know that. 

As odd as it felt to think so, Loki felt like he would get along just fine with these two.

Loki had very quickly taken to Bruce and Tony, Clint thought. But, well, he supposed, as the saying went, that ‘great minds thought alike.’

Thor and Loki’s relationship was still rocky, but that was only to be expected. Clint was rather surprised they hadn’t come to blows; instead of being explosive as he had thought they would be, all their arguments had been quiet, whispered and private.

It seemed that Thor was trying to get Loki to talk about his fall and Loki and been either ignoring him or viciously rebuffing his attempts. Clint had recently taken Thor aside to let him know that it was not cool to force someone to talk about their trauma and that he had to wait for Loki to get comfortable around him again, before he could trust him with such a thing. Clint internally thought that it would be miraculous if that ever happened, but Thor looked enough like a kicked puppy that Clint didn’t mention it.

The only time the two of them interacted civilly was when discussing the upcoming trial. And honestly, watching the two of them being all polite and proper to each other just felt wrong for some reason—as if, while it was not the natural state of being when their every other conversation was filled with conflict, it wasn’t normal when their conversations were entirely free of it either. Considering who they were, and the fact that they were brothers… it almost certainly wasn’t how they were most of the time. Like a switch being flipped.

As for Loki’s trial, everyone was doing their best. And when you had the best of the best from both SHIELD and Stark Enterprises working together, best meant pretty damn good. Clint was rather certain they would win the trial, next fortnight. With the evidence they had gathered, the United Nations would be very hard pressed to not pardon Loki, especially after his offer of information on Thanos and his promise to help defend Earth against the Titan in exchange for the pardon. 

The Titan. 

That thought was still terrifying. This whole ordeal with Loki had been bad enough and had given him enough nightmare fodder for a lifetime. Thanos was something that seemed so unbelievable that even after everything he had seen, and despite the evidence that pointed to his existence, Clint still couldn’t wrap his head around the concept of him.

A being that had culled half the populations of entire planets. A being that had an endless army that could destroy entire civilisations and worlds across the universe. A being that could break an Asgardian as strong-willed and powerful as Loki both physically and mentally. 

What could Clint possibly do against such a being? Shoot arrows at him, when he could swat Clint aside like a bug? What could Natasha do against him, or even Steve? They were still just human, no matter how competent or strong. The more he tried to understand and accept the looming threat, the more useless he felt.

Would Earth even be able to gather enough weapons and resources to take a stand against him? Would even their best and most damaging weapons like missiles and nuclear bombs be enough to fight against his massive armies? Or would any damage caused by those be insignificant and overwhelmed by the sheer number of his forces? 

Would the world even be able to set aside their differences to come together to work against such a threat in the first place? Would they get help from all these other realms that Thor and Loki spoke about?

Or was it futile to even hope of being able to defeat someone like Thanos even with tanks like Thor and Loki on their side?

In this vast universe of beings more powerful than he could even begin to imagine, of what use was he, in the grand scheme of things?