Chapter Text
Loki cannot lift Mjolnir.
He can, however, lift Gungnir. He can lift him, swing him around, shake him, sit on him. But Loki can't converse with him, as can't Odin, though Bor before them could; the benefit of Gungnir's counsel has been lost to Asgard's court since the day the father of Allfather broke into a thousand chips of ice and melted into the chill of Jotunheim before his son's eyes. The vows the mighty spear made for Bor's line are engraved along the slender line of his body, words of of admiration, devotion, and honor unmarred by the millennia of silence he has maintained. Bor, reads the rune curving down his middle, and his sons, his daughters, the children of their children till the day I turn to dust. No child in Asgard hasn't once wondered why it is then that Odin can do little more with this promised servant than thump his butt majestically on the dais. No child has not asked, only to be answered with a finger to the mouth and a stern direction not to inquire further. Well, none except Loki. He didn't have to ask. He was a clever child, the cleverest of them all, and knew without being told that the son of Bor had long since lost the right to that name. Betrayal Loki suspected, that the story of Bor's demise wasn't as historically accurate as the scripts made it out to be, but the thought did not concern him much- he would never repeat that with his beloved Allfather, thus the possibility was irrelevant.
Those days are long past, and it is now disinterest instead that keeps Loki from seeking out the truth. he sometimes does ponder, though, what it would have been like to speak with a Weapon that lived and slumbered through things Loki himself can only experience through text, to speak with wisdom that is said to have rivaled that of Mimir the Rememberer.
Mjolnir, on the other hand...
Loki has a difficult time believing that she possesses even the most basic of the intelligence that is bound to entail being a Weapon. She, for one, has never displayed the ability to shift her form to a breathing speaking creature, a trait that Weapons unfailingly exhibit. Strength, oh yes she has strength, that much is unquestionable; noble, blessed, endlessly powerful in her blunt-headed glory. Loki has spent an inadvisable amount of time speculating whether the great smith Sindri drew her from the forge just as mute, dumb, and insufferably judgmental as she proves to be nowadays.
The only other Weapon apart from these two that Loki has ever seen in person is Nidhoggr, and Valhalla, had that been an unpleasant experience. The Weapon- dragon- thing was, in his opinion, a living example of how cruel the Norns could weave a fate, spiteful and twisted behemoth as it was around the sacred root of Yggdrasil. It was destined for abandonment from the day it was forged, and so spent its every breath cursing the Norns with labored exhales that made the hairs stand on Loki's neck. It was, simply put, not a sight fit to be seen twice.
Rumors of Weapons are much easier to come by, seeping in from all corners of the Nine Realms. A Casket in Jotunheim, bound to its native realm by nature; several born and raised among the coddling Dwarves of Vanaheim; a sword in Midgard, even, that stubbornly refused to be extracted from a rock until its Meister stumbled upon it by pure miraculous chance.
Meisters. Well, Meisters are just as rare as Weapons, Loki supposes. Or it could be that all non-Weapon beings are potential Meisters, but only the select few discovered by their Weapons cultivate their talents. Whatever the truth is, it will be never known which of these theories are true- for just as Weapons are blessed (cursed) with single-minded devotion, so Meisters are designed for ignorance. Until the moment their counterparts pledge their loyalty and bind them to each other, Meisters are helpless to do anything but wait. A Meister, before he or she actually becomes one, is unrecognizable, indistinguishable. It is known.
Except, Loki might have just found the exception to that old and tested rule. Anthony Edward Stark. He laments, in a tiny corner of his mind still capable of independent thinking, that he came upon such academic curiosity while his eyes are blue, his voice is rusty, and his limbs are moving of their own accord. His face hurts from the hours of constant villainous smirking, and what is it about Thanos' sense of irony that makes his puppet smile so much? It does nothing for the mental calm of said puppets and the people adressed by them. Those the likes of Stark, standing frozen to the spot ten feet away from Loki.
Loki steps forward, breaking the ice, and Stark launches into a speech of freedom and heroism that Midgardians are so fond of. Asgardians are passionately in love with such speeches, and Loki has longs since honed himself into a master in listening to them with one ear and dispelling them out the other. He simply keeps smiling as Stark walks closer and closer, and when he is near enough, extends his arm and taps the man's chest with the scepter.
"This usually works." Loki hears himself say, then his eyebrows scrunch themselves up into a frown. Kill, orders Thanos in his head, and Loki glances down at the spearpoint still connected to the man's sternum. It would be neat to run him through like this, give a little push and paint the floor with his blood. Stark stands remarkably composed before him, but the tremor rattling his chest betrays the fear all mortals hold for death. But the potential... it is unmistakable, the man smells of Weaponry, his pulse sounds the birth of blades and spears. Loki might have thought it the sing of a smithing soul, but the underlying scent is telling. This mortal has met a Weapon, and has not yet bonded with it. But there is no doubt he is to become a Meister.
Loki draws the staff away, plucks the man off his feet with a casual swipe at his lapel, and throws him neatly through the bulletproof window that gives way under a spell. Disobeying without disobeying. He ducks without looking as the metal armor follows through, and thinks of how men and gods alike are envious of beauties they cannot have, but in the end still wish those happen so they may at least witness its spark.
They rarely speak of that night.
When they do- when Wanda does, calm enough for them both, she always says they held each other under the bed, that together they stared at the bomb planted three feet away from their faces. But what really happened is that Wanda held Pietro as they feared for their lives, Wanda stared at the bomb as he pushed his face into her shoulder and breathed muffled sobs against her flower-patterned pajamas.
"Wanda, I can't. I can't." He remembers rambling, cowering before the unthinkable possibility of death. "I can't die. He waits..."
It was the only thing he could think of, with a stark mix of blind loyalty and unrealized desire: he waits. There was someone in this world he must not ever fail, and to cease before they ever met would be the greatest failure of all. It was a purpose cradled in his heart for as long as he could remember, since before he and his sister realized that, despite being the children of two perfectly mortal parents, they were not human. Wanda did not feel that purpose(yet, Pietro told her). Pietro recalls thinking of it and shuddering with fright, lying still and rigid beside Wanda for three torturous days.
More than a decade later, Pietro is doubtful if he ever matured much from that terrified boy clinging to his little sister. Wanda certainly has grown up into a magnificent woman, graceful and deadly in both body and power. They are one of those sibling pairs that never managed to shed their childhood habit of walking around with their sides glued to one another's, cuddling on every available surface and providing the source of many a mortifying sneak photos. They graduated high school together, came to college overseas together, and generally have succeeded in maintaining their togetherness in every other aspect of their daily lives.
It happens during one of those many, many together moments. They are seated as usual at one of the outdoor tables of a restaurant near their university, sharing an almost palatable dish of omelette and an almost solvable assignment from class, when Pietro feels the pull. He promptly drops the handout he was holding onto their greasy, sauce-covered meal. There's a sharp crack as the plastic chair collides with the pavement, and only then does he realize that he has stood up abruptly.
"Pietro." Wanda says sharply, following him up and shattering his trance.
"I-" He begins, then falters. Understanding dawns on Wanda's face.
"Where?" She asks more quietly.
"It's," Pietro frowns. "It flickers."
And it does. His Meister is near, and it pulls at his chest; strongest in the direction of somewhere to their South, but there is also a much stronger impulse to head for Europe, which doesn't make any sense, he can feel his Meister is nowhere near that continent- no, not Europe. Much closer, to their northeast, in the direction of New York. Pietro frowns, torn between where he knows his Meister is and where he knows he should go.
"New York." He decides with difficulty, and Wanda nods.
It turns out that, of all the sensible ways of transport, Pietro chooses to run. More accurately, he is forced to run. He can't stand the thought of sitting in a confined space for the duration of their journey across two and a half states, and his Meister seems to be currently moving around in Germany or somewhere near that, so it can't hurt if they take a few days to reach New York, right? Besides, Pietro is faster than cars, and his stamina could best any engine backed with a full oil tank.
The air is marvelously harsh against his cheek as he shoots down highways at full speed, Wanda seated safely in his arms with a bag and an expression of perpetual exasperation. He ought to feel chastised, he dragged them both away from college in the middle of the term, but every time he attempts an apologetic grimace he comes up with yet another toothy grin. Everything feels unbearably delightful, and Pietro doesn't remember ever being lighter on his feet. Three days on the road with stops for rest only and he feels hardly a twinge of fatigue in his legs.
It's the same untiring run next day, then the next. Pietro for once doesn't speak much during the day, mostly listening to Wanda's random commentary on the scenery or the truly shitty quality of her bro-ride to New York. But on the seventh day, a mere four hundred miles from New York, Pietro blurts out:
"Shit."
"What." Wanda says flatly, jarred out of her rant on greenhouse strawberries.
"No, no, it's not about that. He's just moved to New York."
Wanda tuts.
"Didn't you tell me he was in Europe? That was yesterday."
"I know. It's like he disappears off one side of the planet and pops up seconds later on the other side!" Pietro whines. His sister pats his arm comfortingly.
"Well, run faster, bro." She says, in the easy way of people who plan but don't ever participate in manual labor. Pietro grits his teeth, and does as he's told.
They arrive, panting (Pietro) and achooing over the concrete dust (Wanda), to the middle of a truly spectacular battle ongoing between a team of superheroes and a stream of air-bike riding aliens. With the added visual bonus of gigantic centipedes spewing bikes all over the city.
"I feel insignificant." Pietro mutters, depositing Wanda onto the pavement that is actually more rubble. She immediately zeroes in on a slanted sheet of broken wall, and trots to sit under its questionable shelter.
"Go on, find him." She says cheerfully, looking slightly spooked but otherwise mentally stable. Judging by the way she keeps the aliens out of the 30 meter vicinity of the wall with a wave of her hands, there's not much to worry about. He nods curtly, flashes her one last smile, and leaps over a pile of junk in the direction of the pull. It's insanely strong now, palpable in the very air around him, pulsing in his ears and bouncing with his steps. Pietro rounds a still-standing(disputably) building and races down the street, makes a sharp turn to the left, and runs straight up the near-vertical surface of another building when he finds his path blocked by debris. He comes to a perching stop on the highest point, scans the city- and almost loses his balance when he spots a tiny blob of green and black in the exposed inside of a nearby skyscraper.
He's green and black, he thinks as he jumps back to motion, throwing up a thousand mental arms in the biggest, loudest hooray he can imagine up. He's green and black. He's green and black.
And before he knows, he's there.
The earth does not flip on its axis, the ground the not shatter, no rainbows shine before his eyes. Because those things kind of already happened the second he set sights on his Meister. As he skids to a stop on the.. top surface of a (formerly) forty-story building right across his target, his eyes automatically focus on the artistic perfection of a man inspecting the battlefield with his hands behind his back. Pietro stares. Possibly for some time, he can't be expected to pay attention to petty things like that when the most important thing in his life is present just a ruined street's width away. He can't believe his luck- or his mis-luck at finding the man in such an inconvenient situation, whatever, it doesn't matter as long as he can finally stand beside his Meister. His pale, tall, gorgeous, lethal, smart-looking, secretly-kind-hearted-looking, pure-awesomeness-incarnate-looking... okay, maybe he's imagining things. Also, it's time he stopped wallowing in pure, unadulterated happiness and did something. He opens his mouth wide, schooling his wildly grinning face muscles into something capable of human speech, and says:
"Ugh." as the flying corpse of a Chitauri slams him off his feet. The world spins neatly off into oblivion.
Loki barely keeps himself from flinching when a particularly well-ground mush of dead Chitauri barrels into the boy and sends him flying. Loki first noticed the boy standing rooted to the spot some ten minutes ago, who has since been steadfastly sending a look of such pure longing in his direction that it is slightly baffling, even in his numb-minded state. A swift scanning spell was in order, wrapping around the unknowing body with stealth and invisibility. The blond shifted a little at the invasion but stayed unaware, continuing in his impression of a besotted demented youth. It was Loki who was shaken by the unexpected result the spell yielded.
A young Weapon. In Midgard, of all places. Quite likely the youngest alive in the Nine Realms, nowhere near maturity and radiating a vulnerability that should make anyone with half an eye for rare things bristle with the need to take care of him. Loki purposefully did not look in his direction, unwilling to draw Thanos' attention to this rarity. But surely the boy is supposed to have some sort of guardian or mentor- then he remembered Midgard's ignorance on matters concerning the subject of Weapon-Meister. Sindri's pupils would break down the wards of Vanaheim with their appalled wailing if they knew this, he thought morbidly.
And now the boy falls, twenty something stories down to the asphalt below. Loki almost unthinkingly throws a cushioning spell and engulfs the entire street in a translucent layer of jelly-soft magic. He frowns, watching a streetlamp wobble like seaweed in its socket. Perhaps he overdid it. He turns his eyes back to the boy just as a fresh command presses into his mind- assist Selvig. Loki is lost again.
The first thing Pietro says upon waking, desperate and miserable, is:
"Water."
Which Wanda, angel that she is, feeds him from a carefully tilted paper cup. The second thing he does, of course, is to ask where the hell is his pale, tall, gorgeous, lethal etc etc beautiful majestic Meister is.
"I don't actually know who he is, Pietro. You haven't told me." She says with an air of long-suffering patience.
He hastily supplies the details, doing his best to leave out the glorifications his minds keeps attaching to the description.
"Oh." She says softly, when he's done. "Loki. He... left."
Left turns out to mean disappeared off the surface of the Earth. Literally. Pietro hangs his head and follows his sister out of the hospital.
"Hello." is the first thing they hear when Wanda takes him to the towering tower with the big A, the same one he saw his Meister in before he so ungracefully lost consciously (Pietro desperately hopes the guy didn't see that happen, because, some first impression that makes, urgh).
"Uh." Pietro says, none too polite, trying not to gape at how the guy is wearing nothing but a pair of excellently shredded shorts. Wanda elbows him in his tender side, and he doubles over in an imitation of an excessively polite bow.
"I'm Bruce Banner. Nice to meet you." The man says serenely, gesturing at the... open space behind him where the Avengers sit and endure the wind blowing through the shattered window.
"Before I hire people to fix the window, again, and Hulk gets a chance to break them, again, can I have a lengthy chat with him about what's tolerable housemate behavior and what's not?" Grits out another man- Tony Stark. Pietro feels Wanda tense beside him and curls an arm around her shoulder, silently reminding her of how they've promised to get over this. The man has paid. Not enough, maybe, probably, but the sins of a stranger is no reason to waste their lives over revenge.
A much bulkier man pushes himself off the relatively intact couch. His eyes are very, very blue, his hair is very, very, blond, and the halo of projected inner virtue around him is practically tangible in the air. Pietro is impressed.
There is also the strange fact that he smells overwhelmingly like a fellow Weapon, but tinged with an acrid tang of medicine and steel. Half-human, half-Weapon, the scent is very confusing. Artificial. And he seems oblivious to Wanda and Pietro's nature, which in itself is proof that he isn't one of them.
"Steve Rogers." The man says, walking up to them and sticking out a hand somewhere to the middle of the siblings. Wanda and Pietro take it at the same time. Steve politely pretends not to see.
"Pietro and Wanda Maximoff." Wanda says for the both of them.
"And I'm Tony Stark." Says Tony, peeking out from behind the muscle-mountain of Steve. He feels like- they feel like- huh. Interesting. "And that's Natasha and that's Clint, our residential assassins. There's also a neighbor thunder god visiting now and then called Thor but he's off to his planet right now. So, we're done with all the niceties, let's skip the rest of civility and get to the important stuff. Why'd you get in the middle of that mess? I mean, I get you're not civilians, but... you're not, are you?"
"Tony, they're barely adults .Of course they are-"
"That's age-cist, Cap, I'm disappointed. You obviously haven't had the pleasure of encountering Professor X's kindergarten squad. Jean Gray is twelve and she's one of the most frightening-"
"We're civilians." Wanda interrupts, clear and simple. The room instantly focuses on her, and Pietro can't help admiring the way she commands their attention like a knife cutting effortlessly through water. She purses her lips, looking even more radiant than usual. Well, maybe Pietro's a bit smitten. But then, when is he not?
"But we don't want to be. We want to be part of the Avengers." She barrages on. Pietro spares a moment to marvel at her cleverness- what better way to gather information about Loki than joining a team that defeated him?- then proceeds to nod vigorously in agreement. If the room was quiet before her announcement, now it is fast approaching stunned silence.
"You..." Captain America says, then trails away. Pietro grins and mentally wills this batch of superheroes to sooner embrace the beauty of his sister's no-bullshit attitude.
Later that day, when all is settled in their favor (after casual demonstrations of spontaneous window repair by Wanda and I-can-pinch-all-your-asses-in-0.5-seconds by Pietro), and it is revealed that Pietro's Meister is actually a god of mischief who has daddy issues and apparently does planet invasion for a living, they are assigned a place for sleeping that Tony Stark calls a room and the rest of the world are more inclined to call a floor. Pietro buries his face in the softest sheets he's ever had the honor to rub his nose in and replays the day over and over in his mind. Well, replays the 30 minutes of glorious Loki-sighting moment. His whole body itches to move, to get closer, to do anything at all, and he rolls over onto his back with a miserably huff.
"He waits." He breathes to himself, staring up at the smooth ceiling.
A sigh comes from the bed beside his, and Wanda shifts to face him.
"He doesn't." She says gently. "You do."
Disownment Loki expected- the official one, since the familial relation seems to have been nonexistent from the start. He also expected exile, possibly execution if the Allfather sees fit to attribute the disaster of the Chitauri to his mind-controlled ex-son.
Asgard, for once, does not disappoint his expectation.
He stands before Odin as witness and victim to Thanos' plan, which throws the execution sentence off the table. But treason for his aiding the Jotun in their invasion before that, he stands as convict. Gungnir cracks three heavy clangs across the silent throne room, wordless as ever, and the guards lead Loki away to be exiled off the realm he spent the better part of his lifetime in. He surveys the unsmiling crowd of Aesir amassed before the palace as he passes, and does not think of the beaming boy he could have grown to know better.
Two long years pass with too much world-saving and too little sign of Loki. Without the slightest faintest sign of Loki, in fact. Pietro is tired. Anticipation is a withered shriveled thing in him, and Wanda is the only one who recognizes it and lends her shoulder to hide his face in.
Ultron... happens. There is no other way to describe it. There are robots everywhere. SHIELD agents are everywhere. Pietro's wits are flying everywhere. And the capital of Sokovia is floating, about to crash down and destroy humanity. Pietro darts around the city evacuating people to the SHIELD Helicarrier while the airborne part of the Avengers execute a makeshift plan of blowing apart the land before it can impact the earth below. Wanda stands guard over the beast of a machine that pierces all the way through to the bottom of the floating land, blasting away Ultron-clonesd with a ferocity that should make anything smarter than metal cower and flee. And somehow, in the middle of that mess, in a sweat-marred moment of instinctive interruption, Pietro's stomach is torn apart by a hail of bullets meant for Clint Barton.
Pietro has never been shot with a bullet before, much less with a half dozen of them. It doesn't hurt. If it does, it hurts so much that his mind can't accept the sensation as falling under the category of pain. It feels a little like it does after being backhanded across the face, that moment of harsh shock that overpowers awareness of the injury blooming beneath the skin. Pietro can't even think of a sassy, heroic comment to throw at Barton, much less speak it, and their eyes meet briefly before the cool of concrete is on his back and he is staring blankly up at the obscenely clear sky.
Pietro, he hears distantly, the frantic cry of his sister squirming its way into his head. She's panicking, he can sense it, and he guesses panicking is the standard procedure for situations involving bullet-ridden brothers sprawled motionless in a pool of rapidly spreading blood. He feels something ripple in his bones, shifting to accommodate- expel?- the unwelcome blobs of steel lodged in his body, and he shouts in agony, he does, except all that spills out of his mouth is a choked-off whimper. Clint is crouched over his body, feeling for a pulse, running his other hand over Pietro's shoulders, his chest. Pietro will live, although he'll have to explain his non-human nature to his teammates for surviving this injury. He'll live. Somebody has to tell Wanda that. She's absolutely losing her shit over this, Pietro knows, mind grappling at his and body frozen beside the machine she's supposed to keep the robots from activating. He sees, through her eyes, a flash of silver in the periphery of her vision-
Pietro jerks upright on the ground. He is dead. No, he's alive, there's fresh living blood oozing its way out of his body. But then, why is he dead? Why is his mind vacant, and his chest crushed, and his neck twisted at an unnatural angle?
Why-
Pietro throws his head back and screams.