Chapter Text
For the past years, SHIELD has had the trickster god on their side; or under their command, at least, as a valuable tactician over the table and a powerful force on the field. The Avengers, the core members, laughed the idea off at first: a bitter, scornful laugh remembering the broken New York. The ridicule of the matter is subsiding, mutual distrust lingers on, although some have already been swayed. The Captain has long gone to believe Loki is a potential good egg waiting for the right push. Tony will never stop teasing Rogers with his wording. Although their opposition is as poisonous as ever, these two are the firm core of the peculiarly shown leniency towards the ever-flippant god.
Not like it makes Loki any happier than his other option, having Asgardian justice pour over his head. Grudgingly, he repents for his sins against the tiny mud planet as a captive of the newly built Avengers Tower. His cheeky interactions with his former enemies flow in an even course of sass by now: they’ve grown familiar with each other’s killer blows, both verbal slashes and physical attempts at betrayal or human sacrifice.
For the members united by Loki’s assault in the past, the team is like a safe haven, from solitude, from the cold past, from the merciless inner turmoil. As their souls settled, Natasha found herself loosening up, her well insulated, crusty skin melting. It happened so smoothly and unnoticed that she didn’t have time to build another wall in defence; she was sharing her most precious friend’s warmth before she knew it.
Loki was right back then, it is love. Though with only an engagement ring on her necklace for now, she and Clint want children. They want something together, something that belongs with both of them, something that is left to remember their integrity before this murderous life tears them apart. Who’d have thought she’d arrive to this point? Not her, definitely, believing that she would change and be this blessed, would be capable of such incredibly humane emotions.
But Natasha is sterilised, so their first announcement to the team went with baffled silences after the initial cheers. Adoption – the word cleared everything up. Naturally, there is no other way. They will adopt an infant. They will turn stones over for the required permits.
It’s none of Loki’s business, and he wouldn’t concern with the doings of any resident mortals; especially not with the affairs of these two, the ones most insulted and least forgiving towards his past acts. Let them have offspring if they want to. Let them adopt some, if she cannot conceive. Blood doesn’t make a true parent: choices do.
His silent conclusion passes greatly until Thor meddles in.
“How long do you plan on keeping it to yourself?” he inquires when he finds his brother in a study of the Tower.
“Don’t have it, didn’t steal it,” Loki mutters listlessly to his book.
The thunder god’s bulky form invades Loki’s vision as his elbow leans on the table, making it sag ever so slightly.
“You could mend her body without problem, with the branch of magic you’ve chosen to practice.”
“As I could help every little five-legged ant and cracked snail over the planet.”
Loki knows that the sting in his brother’s blue eyes isn’t for his unwillingness to help the couple out, although he’d love to be ignorant to that fact and have it simple as it should be, leaving him in the comfortable role of the self-righteous wacko, the indisposable pest. It unsettles him slightly when Thor seems about to flip this well working system over.
“I’ve known you from birth, brother, I-“
“You know the old me,” Loki interrupts.
“I can still tell when you deny an ambition. So I know it burdens you to stand idly without giving a hand.”
“Nonsense. Open your eyes. What business would I- what reason for me to offer them such a gift, like all is well between…?”
“I think you’re the one that needs to look closer: this folk’s grudge has subsided greatly since-”
“Oh, has it? Is their grudge gone, Thor?” Loki inquires with overacted wonder. “Is my work undone? Are the people who died back to life? Would the Widow trust me? Has the Hawk forgotten?”
“They have the mind to tell this matter apart from that year.”
“On what ground, say?”
“Instead of squabbling with me, you should just let them know what you can and are willing to do.”
“What for? You have the power to go and destroy entire armies assaulting weakened nations, and yet you idle here in this comfortable city where there is enough water and air for everyone.”
“Don’t divert this on me now. If you really abhor from standing before them, I could-”
“Not a word, Thor, or you’ll wake up tomorrow without your precious man-parts. Did you know some metals can be sharpened so well you don’t feel a thing until you move and the severed organ separates from you?”
Thor pales slightly, but his frown remains disapproving.
“They’re going to visit an orphanage next weekend, you heard them. There is still some time left for you to gather up your courage.”
“It’s not a lack of courage, you oaf, it’s common sense!” Loki hisses through a clenched jaw, his fingers craving to strangle the sibling. “How can you be so obnoxious about the people you’ve been siding with for years?”
“You should make that offer now before it’s too late,” Thor insists gravely. “You don’t have to make all your decisions regretful. Would you really suffocate rather than use a breath for this simple note? A question, that’s all it takes, you’d ease and they would consider.”
“They’d take the offer.”
Both of them snap their heads towards the intruder lingering at the door. Tony drinks up his gin before adding:
“After a while, at least.”
“What offer, by who?” Thor inquires with eyebrows arched in innocence. “I’m very certain we’re talking about other-”
“It’s too late for him. I’ve heard everything I needed to spill it out to them within two hours,” the billionaire points out while sitting down on the sorcerer’s other side, and he curls an arm around the tensing shoulders, making Loki straighten up to keep his insulted distance.
“Careful, he’s got his knives with him at all times,” Thor warns the mortal.
Tony pats the shoulder so much higher than his.
“Unlike your brother, I’m not scared of you, Lokes. You’ve seen how reckless danger makes me. So you’d like to help our newest lovebirds start a family?”
“In fact, I’ve been trying to evade this burden.”
“I see. And what is that traitorous sparkle? There, right there.”
Loki diverts the hand pointing at his heart.
“I’m in,” Tony tells Thor over the trickster nevertheless. “I’ll help you set up the field. It should be fun to see their gushing faces when they can’t hide their joy. It always makes them so uncomfortable.”
“The sooner we start, the sooner it’s over,” the thunder god assures his astonished little brother, who then closes his mouth tight in defeat: he’s got enough experience to know it’s wiser to let these idiots do their thing once they’ve successfully joined forces.
Natasha. It has to be her out of the two, and strictly alone. His condition stated (pride or courage be damned), the reckless duo, his undesired partners-in-crime are already working on clearing the Hawk from the perimeter. While Loki seeks out the petite assassin in the building, their first encounters swirl around in his throbbing head, and Clint’s continuing resentment for taking away his free will, the unsolvable silence of Natasha’s expressions, that one moment’s scornful triumph shining through her mask in front of the portable cell. He turns back at the last moment, knowing their private life is the last place he belongs in, but she doesn’t let him leave: typically, she knows an approach before the moment of hearing or seeing someone, and she’s at the door already, with a lukewarm greeting at his back.
She can tell his well hidden nervousness merely from the spot he chooses to sit: not very obviously the farthest corner of the room, but quite the right distance from a snarling beast. She doesn’t know yet where to place this façade. She pulls out her mental list of things that could have gone wrong for her by the god’s hands.
“I hear you want a child,” he utters before the silence would stretch uncomfortable, spine straight and chin lowering for a deepening stare at her.
“I do,” she affirms what has been discussed over the sorcerer’s head a thousand times, her tone like a question lacking interest, seething with distrust.
As expected. Loki’s lips are but a thin line while he seeks words to replace the phrase of retreat at the tip of his tongue.
“What for, again?”
That’s the emptiest thing he could say, they both sense it; with fingers intertwined between his knees, he rummages for his deserter silver tongue, and the assassin’s mind labours to decipher the true content. She tries helping out, to get to the point as soon as possible.
“I’m not adopting your child, if that’s what you’re going for. We’re not into raising a horse or a snake or anything.”
The note leaves the sorcerer frowning in confusion.
“What horse, what snake?”
“Oh. You haven’t read Edda . How unfortunate,” she mumbles.
As it dawns on him, recalling some ancient memory, cheap lies spread among gaping humans during his youth to elope certain perils, a chuckle hisses through his tense jaw. And he laughs quietly to himself at the stories, their result, and the entire present discomfort, accompanied by the wolman’s hesitant, frowning laughter.
As their unintentionally smiling eyes meet for a moment afterwards, despite the utterly senseless dialogue, he composes his expression while shifting in his seat, and the words sought find an easier path out of him now.
The discussion takes about ten minutes, but without the silences, it would fit into five. Natasha’s mask is wooden, the sorcerer is sure she’s not entirely in control; her eyes shine brightly through the secluded demeanour. When he leaves the room, he takes an indecisive answer with himself (I’ll need to think about it.), but he can tell that her answer is yes . What she didn’t intend to reveal is that she wishes to share the option to decide between herself and her betrothed.
Well, his part is done then. Time to breathe.
Now, she is in the position to feed the bold suggestion to the Hawk without Loki being offered a way to Hel. The trickster shall make himself busy out of town in the upcoming period. And by the time he’s back, the baby is adopted, his mortifying rejection is overdebated and dead without him having participated in it personally. And life can get back to its usual rhythm of working together, weaving private plots, attempting to desert the team, getting imprisoned along with the enemy until need for his aid rises against the next opponent. A comfortable cycle until this generation enjoying Thor’s favour dies out finally, and Loki is free to goad the meek nation into letting him disappear from here.
He doesn’t get to elope as intended, but fortunately, no one has time left to confront him about anything for the time, while the new alien menace is urgent to be taken care of. Then, a few days’ skipped sleep and several battles later, after the brood mother of the entire menacing army collapses on the ground in smithereens and Loki is off-guard while taking in the city-wide victory, Clint approaches him over the slippery rubble, a previously impaled leg causing him to limp in a pained hurry, the agony of the carelessly strained muscle further heating his anger.
“Don’t you dare move!” he barks after the subtly eloping sorcerer. “You drag it out, I’ll shoot you in both knees.”
There is no denying he’s got a point, so Loki awaits him with straight shoulders.
“What is your hurry, Agent Barton?” he inquires lightly before leaning back a bit from the man’s challenging close-up.
“You have no sense of shame, do you?” Clint hisses following the taller figure’s mildly abhorred step back. “You have the nerve to come and try to appease me.”
“Not in this life, no,” Loki reassures him, although it goes unheeded. He represses the urge to pull out a knife in defence; he plays at finishing the scene as soon as possible instead of inducing a lengthy competition of dominance. This little human has every right to be vengeful, after all.
“I don’t forgive people who fuck me over. Trusting you is out of question. And then you go and drive me into a corner, how do you have the nerve, the face, the spine?”
“I assure you, it’s not what’s happened-”
“Not my ass. No matter that I want to laugh at your pretentious betterment, because you’ve made all the others fucking like you, and now you’re forcing me to play along. Because refusing it would hurt her. I would hurt her if I said what I want to say to you, and you know it. I’ll accept your offer, if you can settle with this from me. If it still stands, I’ll accept it, to avoid hurting Nat, and not because I’m touched or interested in the least.”
“Well, then I’ll accept your answer,” Loki settles in a voice carelessly mild, empowered by the treacherous trembling in the sharpshooter’s voice; “since your forgiveness has never been my ambition either.”
Clint steps back with the hint of a nod, and after he leaves, the sorcerer lets out a breath he’s been holding in unnoticed.
He’s alone with Natasha while he performs the spell, at which he is infinitely relieved, although if asked, he’d deny his concern to the end. He is sure it has much to do with the Widow’s own demand towards the others, mainly her spouse.
The tones used among the three remain cool; perhaps a bit more distant from Loki’s side, more matter-of-factly and less cheeky than before. By having declared his willingness to help (though it was accepted), he feels exposed, voluntarily cornered, clownish. Not what he expected for an outcome.
“They’re constipated from the truckload of feels, don’t know how to express what a pumpkin you are,” Tony insists as an apology in the couple’s place, which does nothing but piss Loki off (as intended).
And then, two-or-so months into the new situation, his neck is dragged down for an embrace by Natasha, his sharp defence halting at the last moment as he perceives the lack of offence.
“It’s not forgiven,” she announces into his awkwardly crooked shoulder. “One life is. Only one.”
“It's not worth starting a list,” he answers while labouring to peer the intrusive arms off him.
But Clint finds him mid-way, his arm around the trickster’s shoulder, his nose and mouth in Natasha’s hair, sunglasses hiding his eyes, soundless. That’s all Loki gets from him that day, and he’s grateful for the lack of anything more.
He wishes he had stabbed Thor in the heart at one point during their childhood when the time comes and he’s firmly ushered into the automated Stark vehicle towards the hospital.
“So I can kill you without a hassle if anything goes wrong that you can’t fix,” Clint explains, goaded on by Tony through the video conference before they shoot out along the street.
The five minute ride goes by in three kinds of frantic silence. Loki glares at the world rushing by in his plotting posture, a perfect display of dignity and nonchalance toward the present matters. Clint watches his lover’s flinches unblinking, ready to help if needed. And Natasha endures the stubborn care alongside her pains with a tight jaw, for now.