Avengers Fic: "Shadow Puppets", 3/3
link to part two
In the afternoon Loki wasn’t found to be anywhere around the base. Steve was momentarily stymied until he remembered that Thor wasn’t the only person Loki showed up to visit from time to time. There was also Dr. Foster’s assistant, Darcy Lewis.
She lived right next door, technically still on the base, in SHIELD supplied housing. Steve still felt a little awkward just walking up to her apartment door and knocking.
“Hang on a sec, be right there…” The door opened a few inches and the brunette stuck her head out, peeking up at him.
“Oh! Hey.” She blinked a few times, in the manner of someone trying to play it cooler than they really felt. “Nice to see you, Captain. Uh, America.” She bit her lip. “Loki said you might be stopping by.”
He smiled at her, amused, trying to be reassuring. “It’s nice to see you again too, Ms. Lewis.”
Her nose wrinkled up. “Eww. God, please don’t. Just call me Darcy - I’m not an old lady yet. Come on in.”
She opened the door the rest of the way for him and then fairly flounced away, leading him to what passed as the living room.
Loki was stretched out on the couch, his feet on the coffee table, his Harry Potter book opened between his hands. Darcy seemed completely unperturbed about him scuffing up her furniture. Then again, it wasn’t really her furniture. Maybe that was why.
“You guys have fun playing Mystery Inc.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating another section of the apartment. “I’ve got a thing going on over there. Please don’t set the couch on fire.”
“Uh, okay,” Steve said, but Darcy was glowering at Loki, pointed.
He didn’t look up from his reading. “You already know that was an accident,” he said to her dully, in a tone of reminder. Clearly this was a story Steve had missed out on.
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she said, dismissive. “And you already know that you’re on notice because of it.”
“That was months ago-” Loki began, voice rising because she was walking away again.
“On notice!” Darcy repeated back in a yell, without missing a beat.
In the wake of her exit Steve sat down in an armchair, bemused. To say watching the completely normal civilian woman interact so carelessly with Loki was different would be an understatement.
Loki didn’t seem in any hurry to start the conversation going. Steve supposed it was up to him.
“So what did Coulson want with you this morning?” he asked, curious.
Loki’s eyes didn’t rise to meet him. His fingertips flicked, turning over a page. “There was a situation he was aware of as something I might be interested in,” he answered vaguely. When Steve kept looking at him, expecting more, he finally looked up.
“Sorry, Captain,” he told him freely. “But it’s a story I have no intention of sharing.”
Steve restrained himself from sighing. It probably wasn’t important anyway. He was supposed to be focusing on his problem, not whatever else Loki was up to.
“Fine.” He nodded at the book. “Still at it, I see.”
Loki’s mouth quirked, amused. “Yes.”
“Who’s your favorite character so far?”
Loki gave him an odd look. Like he couldn’t quite buy Steve really wanted to talk about this and was suspicious of what was really going on.
“What?” Steve demanded, calmly enough. “We not allowed to make small-talk, either?”
“I’m trying not to get too attached,” Loki said, finally. “But I’m intrigued by Sirius Black.”
Well, that was different. Though maybe looking at what type of character Sirius was - trouble maker, former criminal - it was also kind of laughably predictable. “What do you mean you’re trying not to get too attached?”
The set of Loki’s mouth turned bitter. “Because it seems obvious that he’s marked to die.”
Steve blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s a tragic figure. A wanderer and rogue that had most his life taken from him. Imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, forever in shadow because of it.”
Leaning forward to look at how much of the book Loki had actually read, Steve had to remark, “You’re not supposed to know that he’s innocent yet. That’s all the way at the end.”
“They make too much of an emphasis over his guilt, how horrid his crime was,” Loki murmured. “If he were actually just a criminal, a madman trying to kill the hero, it would be too straightforward. There would be no drama to it. The story of a wronged innocent is much more captivating.”
When he said it like that it did make sense. Steve made himself more comfortable in his chair. “I didn’t know you were so big on literary analysis.”
Loki’s sharp eyes drifted from the book over to meet Steve’s. “It has nothing to do with analysis. I know stories. How they work, the way they always unfold.”
His fingers moved absently over the pages bound in his lap, smoothing down their surface.
“Bards and poets have been telling the same tales from the beginning of speech and time. There are patterns. Devices that can be expected.” His mouth twisted. “The audience wants their hero to succeed, to triumph, but only after he has suffered. There must be loss along the way. Defeats. Someone, inevitably, has to die if only to make a point.”
“And you think that someone has to be your favorite character.”
“I did not say he was my favorite,” Loki argued, petulantly. “And, yes. It fits. Part of Harry’s definition is that he is an orphan. Sirius is supposed to be his godfather - if he lives, it would be his duty to foster the boy. Harry would have a loving, stable home.”
“And we can’t possibly have that,” Steve said, half-seriously, because Loki was starting to freak him out a bit. Steve was only one book ahead but so far he was doing a pretty good job of predicting things.
“To have a potential loving father figure revealed, something that the hero has never had or known, only to lose him,” Loki explained, agreeing. “That would be a dramatic loss. Another step along his overarching journey.”
Steve contemplated how angry Loki might be if he ruined the suspense and just told him that by the second task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Sirius was still alive and fine. That it was okay to get invested in him after all.
“Why don’t you keep reading,” he settled for saying. “Maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
Loki gave him a look both dubious and dismissive. Clearly he thought Steve was trying to placate him. Steve hid a smile.
Darcy wandered in again, holding a small device in her hand that Steve had come to know as an ‘iPhone’. From the look she was giving them it seemed she’d overheard the conversation.
“Seriously? Are you guys having a Harry Potter book club in here?” she demanded, snorting. “I thought there was some kind of top secret super-heroics going on. You know, something cool.”
“The only reason I’m reading it is because of you,” Loki insisted.
“Dude, I made you read the first one,” she returned, unimpressed. “Two later and you’re still going strong? I don’t think so. You’re just as dorky as the rest of us would-be Hogwarts students. Enjoy your time in Slytherin.”
Loki scowled in a distinctly put-out manner.
“Loki’s not a Slytherin, he’s a Ravenclaw,” Steve put in, if only because he felt like he had to contribute to this conversation somehow. Darcy’s eyes very slowly slid over to him. “…What?”
“America’s most famous, patriotic flash-frozen superhero,” Darcy replied, her words coming gradually and staccato, “and an ancient Viking alien sorcerer-god, are sitting around talking about which Hogwarts houses they think they’re in. This day just reached whole new levels of epic weird.”
“He thinks he’s a Hufflepuff,” Loki informed Darcy helpfully.
She made a scandalized sound of disbelief. “Are you kidding me?”
“What’s wrong with being a Hufflepuff?” Steve demanded, trying not to feel so hurt.
“Um, they’re kind of the loser house. I mean it’s pretty obvious JK Rowling only made up the other two so she’d have a place to put students who aren’t the good guys or budding sociopaths,” she declared. “Nothing about them is even remotely interesting. Who self-sorts as a Hufflepuff?”
“What about Cedric Diggory?” Steve asked her pointedly. “The way he’s described in the book, I thought he was supposed to be pretty neat.”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and look what happened to him.”
Steve’s amusement swiftly faded replaced by a cold shock of nervousness. “What?” He stared at her, concerned. “Why, what happens to Cedric?”
Loki meanwhile had his face wrinkled in confusion. “Who is ‘Cedric Diggory’?” he demanded, pronouncing the name with a lack of familiarity.
Darcy’s face fell. Eyes wide she looked back and forth between the two of them.
“Both of you need to read faster,” she got out eventually.
Steve would’ve gladly pressed her for more information, ominous hole in his stomach and all, but she held up a hand to stop him.
“Look, the reason I came in here is ‘cus I think I might’ve found something that could potentially help you two with your thing. I mean - no promises, but it’s interesting. Anything to help that poor kid out, right?”
He glanced at Loki, distantly surprised he told Darcy about what was going on. Loki’s only response was a slight shrug.
“Go on,” he told Darcy, not offering Steve further explanation either.
She nodded and held up her iPhone. “So I got curious, and I tried doing a Google search using the words ‘nightmare’, ‘ghost story’, and ‘teddy bear’…and, unsurprisingly, I got pages of hits that were not helpful at all. But after I weeded through a little the same thing popped up a couple times.”
There were several words in that account Steve couldn’t understand but he focused on the relevant parts. “What was that?”
Darcy focused on the device again, tapping at the screen with her fingers in a distracted way that reminded him of Tony.
“It’s something called ‘hitori kakurenbo’. It means ‘playing hide and seek by yourself’. From the description it basically sounds like a Japanese version of ‘Bloody Mary’.”
She looked up to find both Steve and Loki giving her blank, quizzical looks.
“Right. Neither of you have ever been a teenage girl,” Darcy observed. “Um, it’s like this urban legend, part ghost story part game. It’s a thing kids do when they’re having a party to try and freak themselves out. Only, I guess this is…not at a party, and in Japan.”
She trailed off sounding much less certain of herself. Steve, however, was remembering something.
“There was an exchange student staying with the Mitchells around the time Gregory first started acting out.” He looked over at Loki, meeting his eyes. “They said she was Japanese.”
It could be a coincidence. It seemed like too big of one just to ignore, though.
Evidently Loki was having the same thought. He brought his hands together, lacing his fingers and resting his chin atop.
“It bears investigating.”
“I’ll get the name of the girl and where she is now from Gregory’s father,” Steve offered. “We can probably go and talk to her by sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
“Unfortunately Captain, I’ve already made plans for tomorrow afternoon,” Loki responded, to his surprise.
In response to Steve’s skeptical look he merely shrugged. “Certainly you can handle it without me. Report back later if you uncover any significant details.”
And with that he got up from his seat and walked calmly out of the room.
Steve looked over to Darcy, but she only shook her head.
“Don’t ask me. I have no idea what ‘plans’ he’s talking about, either.”
*
With the sudden removal of Loki from the equation aside Steve’s next moves unfolded more or less exactly like he’d planned.
He talked to Dr. Mitchell again. The girl turned out to be living with her second host family a few states over. He had less trouble than he would’ve thought requisitioning one of SHIELD’s planes for a quick field trip.
The first surprise ended up being that he didn’t make the trip alone after all.
“Come on, I’m coming with you,” Darcy insisted with buoyant enthusiasm. “I know I’m not an expert in magic or anything or a superhero, but I can help anyway. And it will be so less boring than if you go alone.”
“Being bored wasn’t really on my list of concerns,” Steve told her. He was more surprised than bothered, to be honest. Up until recently he had the impression the lab assistant had been intimidated by him. He was glad to see that apparently she wasn’t.
“It should be.” Darcy sighed. “Okay, well say I’m filling in for Loki, then. I’ll be his substitute.”
“Would Loki agree with the assessment that you can be his replacement?” Steve asked her, pointed, with a wry grin.
“I didn’t say that!” she yelped, put-upon. Still she refused to leave Steve’s side, it taking some hurrying on her pat to match his stride. “Consider me your secret weapon.”
“How so?”
“This is a teenage girl you’re going to be talking to, and one from one of the most modern tech-savvy cultures on the planet,” Darcy said to him, triumphantly. “Between the two of us, who do you think stands a better chance of being able to understand her on like a deeper level?”
Now she really did have a point.
“If you’ve really got nothing better to do, I don’t mind you tagging along.”
“Sweet!” She pumped a fist in the air. “Does this make me an honorary Avenger?”
“You’ll have to take that up with Director Fury,” he told her. Darcy paled.
Steve had to admit he wasn’t entirely sure what it was that fueled the unlikely friendship between Darcy and Loki. Not that he didn’t think the young woman was likeable. But Loki was so prickly and difficult he would’ve assumed any “mortal” would have to be extraordinary for Loki to put up with them.
Darcy Lewis, by contrast, was so…normal.
“How did the two of you end up friends, anyway?” Steve asked her midway through the trip. He knew the two had been connected already before Loki even showed up on the team’s radar. He’d never been able to get the whole story though.
“It’s pretty complicated,” Darcy replied. “Like, seriously. There was amnesia involved and everything. His, not mine.”
“Okay,” Steve said slowly, trying to take that in. Noticing the look on his face, Darcy gave him an expressive shrug.
“Guess you could just say we got used to tolerating each other. I don’t know.” She tried thinking about it. “I don’t really put up with a lot of the stuff he tries to pull at times. But I think that might be something he likes. You know? Everyone needs a place or a person they can go to sometimes to feel like they’re having a time-out from their regular deal.”
“Yeah, sure,” Steve mused, thinking he got it. He knew there were times when he wanted to feel normal, not like a superhero or a soldier or Captain America; when he only wanted to be him.
He supposed it wasn’t much of a stretch to think somebody like Loki could want that too.
Darcy looked straight ahead, a few strands of hair moving errantly around her face, pushed there by a stray breeze from an air vent.
“He’s not a bad person, really. He’s just very, very screwed up.”
“He seems like he’s got a lot of anger,” Steve offered charitably. Darcy gave a huffing sound, rolling her eyes.
“Try like a couple centuries’ worth.”
“Did he say anything else to you about where he was going today?” he asked her, still curious. He had guessed that whatever it was it probably had to do with that conversation he’d had with Agent Coulson. Outside of that though he had no real idea.
Darcy shook her head. “All he would give me when I kept pressing him was that he was going to Maine.”
“Well I doubt he’s going for the lobster,” Steve remarked, which was a weak joke, but he was too puzzled to think of much else to say.
“See, when Loki refuses to tell anybody something? He’s either screwing around, trying to drive us crazy with the ‘mystery’ because he thinks it’s funny, or it’s something personal and he just doesn’t want anyone to know for his own reasons.”
“Which do you think this is?”
Darcy was quiet a moment. She played with the frames of her glasses. Finally, she said, “He borrowed my computer before he left and forgot to clear his browser history. He was looking up the name of some private psychiatric institute.” She paused, quiet. “Guess they specialize in treating people who are both messed up in the head and have special or weird powers.”
That basically described Loki to a T. Not to mention if the facility had enough of a reputation, it would definitely be something Coulson and SHIELD knew about.
It was however, a little difficult to imagine Loki accepting that kind of help so easily. But maybe that was what all the secrecy was about.
After a silence Darcy looked at Steve sideways. “Don’t you dare say anything to him about this,” she said intensely, actually approaching something like a threatening tone. “He would kill me if he found out I told you. I mean, not literally; I mean, I sure don’t think so, but-”
“It’s okay,” Steve reassured her. “I get it. And I wouldn’t say anything, either.”
Darcy breathed out in a heavy puff of air and neither of them said anything else to each other until they reached their destination.
Not far from the airport where they’d been able to land was an upscale suburban neighborhood, with a lot of white two or three story houses and rolling green lawns across hills. The kind of place that people Steve grew up with back in Brooklyn might’ve fantasized about moving to someday.
Maybe some of them even did, eventually. He didn’t really know. He’d lost touch with a lot of people over the years for a lot of different reasons.
As they walked up the driveway of the address they’d been given, the front door to the house opened and a girl walked out. Right away Steve knew she had to be the girl they were looking for.
“Rumiko Fujikawa?” Steve called.
She froze in her tracks, midway through the action of putting a pair of ear-buds in, looking at them with wide uneasy eyes. She was probably about sixteen, seventeen years old. Her hair was cut in a strange multilayered style with a streak each of bright pink and electric green near the front. Her nail polish was dark and metallic and her lip gloss was candy colored. And, somewhat amusingly, Steve noticed she was wearing a t-shirt that had pictures of the Mark III Iron Man and War Machine armors printed on it.
“Dibs on ‘good cop’,” Darcy quipped to Steve in an aside as they walked towards the girl.
“Knock it off,” Steve murmured back at her, distracted.
Rumiko looked back and forth between the two of them as they reached her. “Can I help you?” she offered in a timid voice that had only the barest trace of an accent.
“Hi,” Steve offered as an opening, because the last thing he wanted to scare her. “We’re from the government. You’re not in any trouble; there are just some questions we were hoping you could answer.”
She stared up at him with eyes that he quickly suspected had become wide for different reasons: “You. You’re…Captain America, aren’t you?” she asked, having recognized him even though he wasn’t wearing his costume or even his military uniform.
“Yeah. That’s me,” he confirmed. “I was wondering if there was something you could help me with.”
“Me?” she squeaked, as she looked at Steve, visibly agog.
“This is about Gregory Mitchell,” Steve told her.
“Remember? The Mitchells? The family you stayed with for a few months over the summer,” Darcy interjected. “Gregory was their son.”
Rumiko’s expression visibly went through a dramatic shift.
Steve realized aloud, “You know something. Don’t you?”
The girl swallowed. She looked guilty, afraid, but also notably, very sad.
“It was an accident,” she said tearfully. “The last thing I ever would’ve wanted was to hurt Greggy.”
“Why don’t you back up and start from the beginning,” Steve asked. “Explain just what was ‘an accident’.”
She hugged herself where she stood, her eyes closing briefly with a pained look. “It was so stupid,” she began. “Hitori kakurenbo. It’s this game, it-”
“I know what it is,” Darcy stopped her. “I looked it up on the internet.” She glanced over at Steve, explaining for his benefit.
“You take a toy animal and rip the stuffing out of it, then you fill it up again with rice that’s got pieces of your fingernail clippings inside it. Then you do all this weird stuff - you stab it with something sharp like a knife, say out loud that you’re going to play hide and seek, and then throw it in a tub full of water. Then you run and hide.” She made a face, reacting to the macabre nature of what she was describing. “You’re supposed to do it at night with all the lights off. And you hide until morning. If nothing happens to you, you go get the toy and say you’ve won the game.”
Rumiko nodded, confirming it. She still had her arms folded and wrapped around her sides. With one foot she kicked the ground.
“The girls in my homeroom made a pact,” she explained, tersely. “We said we would all play the game once before summer was over.”
“It sounds like a great way to give yourself the creeps,” Steve said slowly, frowning. He had a foreboding sense. For some reason the hair on the back of his neck was starting to stand up. “But what does that have to do with what’s happening with Greggy?”
Rumiko lifted her head to look up at him, beseeching.
“I did it the last month I was staying with the Mitchell family. Mrs. Mitchell had told me her and her husband were going to be out. I didn’t realize Greggy was already home. He was asleep in his room and I never saw him.”
When neither of them seemed to understand what she was saying, she added, miserably, “The rules say you’re supposed to make sure you’re alone in the house when you play.”
“Well, sure,” Darcy retorted. “What better way to make sure you freak yourself out?”
Rumiko gave a stiff nod. “That’s what I always thought, too. But - the explanation that goes with the story of how the game is played, is that if someone else in the house…what you’re hiding from, it might find them instead.”
Steve finally understood. “That’s what happened,” he breathed softly.
“It ‘found’ Greggy,” Rumiko said, sounding like she was going to burst into tears at any moment. “When I heard him cry out I realized. I ended the game and burned the toy, like I was supposed to, but it was too late.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to the Mitchells about this?” Steve questioned her. “When he started acting strangely, right before you left…”
“I didn’t know if they’d believe me. It sounds just like a silly story.” She admitted, “And I was too scared to take the blame for what I’d done.” She dropped her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It was an accident,” Darcy said to her, comfortingly, giving her a pat on the shoulder. “You didn’t mean for this to happen. But now that we know what’s going on, these guys can try and make it better. Right?” She turned towards Steve, hopeful.
Steve didn’t know. But having an explanation to what had caused the problem in the first place had to put them one step closer towards fixing it. Right?
He didn’t know anything about magic. He shouldn’t be making any promises.
But in spite of himself he said out loud, “I’m sure we’ll be able to fix it now.”
They hung around for a few minutes more until it felt like Rumiko had calmed down a little.
As they were leaving, she told them, haltingly, “Could you say hi to Greggy for me? And tell him I’m sorry.” She breathed. “I really hope you’re able to fix this and he goes back to being okay.”
Steve managed to give her a smile. “I’ll tell him. And, thanks for your help.” Acting on a whim, he added, “Hey, how would you like it if I got Tony Stark to send you an autograph?”
She blinked in disbelief, her cheeks coloring. “I-Iron Man-sama?” she gasped, disbelieving. “Yes! I’d…arigato gozaimasu! Thank you!”
The young girl seemed to be in a much better mood when they left.
“That was sweet,” Darcy commented. “Guess it just figured she’d be a fangirl.”
When Steve gave her a questioning glance, she returned his gaze with a knowing smile.
“Trust me, Captain. Nobody fangirls harder than Japan.”
*
Steve found himself wandering the halls of the base when he got back. His thoughts were restless to the point where it ended up channeled into his feet. He walked with only half a real aim. Trying to find Loki, trying to find someone to talk to. Trying to make sense of everything that was going on in his mind.
It had all started as a childish dare carried out by a teenager. To think, something that simple and seemingly unimportant could almost destroy a little boy’s life.
But Rumiko was young herself, no less a kid really than Gregory. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know what she was doing.
Steve still didn’t fully understand what she did, and even he knew that.
He never knew whether it made things better or worse, when bad things happened and nobody was at fault. There was no ‘bad guy’ here - there were just honest, awful mistakes.
Not sure what else to do he decided to head down to Gregory’s room again and see how the kid was doing. If he was hanging in there or if his monster had come back.
Three floors before where he would’ve needed to get off though the elevator door opened, and Loki sauntered in like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Steve could tell by the slanted, knowing look in his eyes that he had known Steve would be there. That he was looking for him.
It was probably just memories and prior bad experience that made Steve react to that idea nervously.
He cleared his throat. “So we had quite the eventful conversation with the exchange student.”
“I heard,” Loki responded calmly. Too calmly, Steve’s instincts were screaming at him. Something felt off here. Steve tried to tell that part of his head to shut up.
He still had to resist the urge to flinch or fidget as he stood there, his elbow practically brushing Loki’s. “Did Darcy fill you in on what we found out?” He turned his head to meet the other man’s eyes, not entirely sure where his reluctance was coming from.
“Oh no. We had other matters to discuss, it turns out.”
At Steve’s questioning stare, Loki gave him an incredibly thin-lipped smile.
“I regret to inform you that I’ve not decided to go in for counseling, Captain. My visit to the institute was for a far less personal matter. So sorry to be the bearer of disappointment.”
He sounded absolutely not sorry at all. His tone was all silk and venom.
Steve’s mouth open and shut, his brow furrowing as he tried to figure it out. Loki had never been a literal mind-reader before.
“How did you-?”
“Darcy confessed,” Loki informed him, curtly. “I had hardly to look at her funny and she blurted out the whole story.” He smiled with distant amusement, eyes half-lidded. “For some reason people oft lose the ability to lie very convincingly around me. Even when it comes to lies of omission.”
“Takes one to know one, you mean,” Steve offered in return, brusque. He’d no idea what was up with the attitude Loki was working, but he was burning through all the goodwill Steve had developed towards him exceptionally fast. Like that, he was back to the old feelings of mistrust and barely restrained resentment.
Loki was unmoved. “Something like that.”
“What the heck’s gotten into you all of a sudden? I thought-”
“You thought what, Captain? That I was ‘safe’? That I was powerless? That I could be tolerated, that I was alright to be around now because I was forced to operate at the same level, that at last you understood me?”
“Yeah,” Steve retorted, “you know what; I did. I did think I understood you. All this time, it was hard to think of you as anything other than an alien, because that’s how your actions always seemed to me: alien. But these past couple of days, I’ve thought, ‘You know, he’s not so bad. Who knows, maybe even underneath it all he might actually be a decent guy’.” He looked Loki up and down, angry and disgusted. “But now I guess you’re trying to tell me that I’m wrong.”
Loki drew in a breath, up at his full height, bristling. “You were wrong the moment you supposed that you and I could have anything in common.”
With a ding the elevator door slid open. Loki moved to exit. As soon as he saw that, Steve lunged, blocking the way from him by stretching his arm and part of his upper body across the door.
“No. You don’t get to walk away in the middle of this,” Steve ordered. “Not until you’ve helped me with that kid. You promised.”
Loki scowled at him. “I made no such promise.”
“Maybe not in so many words,” Steve replied, hot. “But I need your help on this. You’re the only shot I’ve got, and that’s more important to me than whatever issues it is that you’re having.”
“Get out of my way,” Loki snapped.
“No,” Steve refused. The sorcerer leaned in, the confines of the elevator making it possible to look down into his face at such an angle that it seemed like he was looming over him.
“Remove yourself from my path, mortal, or I will-”
“…Um.” They were both interrupted by the meek sound of a throat clearing.
Loki and Steve slowly turned their heads to discover three SHIELD office workers standing there, waiting for the elevator, all of them with looks on their faces like they might be about to wet themselves.
“It’s okay,” the one in the middle, a bespectacled man that looked like an engineer, said feebly. “We’ll just catch the next one.”
Some of the tension that had been riding Steve broke off, crumbling. He turned his head and exchanged a look with Loki.
By some silent accord, Steve dropped his arm. Loki slid a step back. The elevator doors closed again, trapping them in there alone. They both gazed straight ahead, arms limply at their sides, and didn’t say anything, didn’t look at or touch one another.
The way Steve figured it was that they’d both lost control and were both embarrassed. Maybe for different reasons, but still.
“Seriously,” he said, after the silence had thickened to the point to be considered too awkward, “what’s the deal? You - don’t have to talk about it, if you really don’t want to, but I can’t help feeling that I’m owed some sort of explanation.”
It took Loki several seconds to respond. When he did every syllable was grated, like he needed to force them out past his teeth.
“I dislike being seen as weak.”
Steve was taken aback. “I can guarantee that I will never think of you as weak. I’ve been almost killed by you one too many times to ever think that.”
Loki shook his head ruefully. “There is more than one type of vulnerability.”
“You’re upset that I thought you might be feeling like you needed a shrink?” He supposed he had heard slightly less crazy explanations. “I…I don’t even know if I need to apologize for that. It’s not much of a stretch. Pretty much anyone can see that you’ve been through a lot.”
“I am incredibly damaged,” Loki concurred with such bluntness it took Steve’s breath away. “But I’m capable of managing my own affairs. I function, from one day to the next. And my mind is a chaotic enough space without anyone’s fingers in it but mine own.”
He stood there and breathed in and out, and for once it really hit Steve just how hard it had to be sometimes to even do that much. That Loki was easily more messed up than anyone on the team - and considering who they had on their roster, that was really saying something.
“If it wasn’t for you, then, why did you go to Maine?” Not that it really mattered anymore. But Steve needed something else to focus on.
Loki closed his eyes briefly, rubbing at his forehead.
“They have a patient there - a young woman with an incredibly fragile mind and an equally powerful affinity for chaos magic,” he explained tiredly. “The healers are doing what they can for the former, but they’ve no real experience with the latter. Your Agent Coulson thought I might take an interest in the case.”
Steve watched him. “So, have you? Are you going to help her?”
Loki’s eyes moved, but he wasn’t looking at him. “She could be extraordinary, if she learned how to control it,” he breathed. “Her power would be beautiful. I want to see that.”
Steve gathered that was supposed to be a yes.
“Good. Uh…I’m glad to hear that,” he offered.
The elevator finally reached the right floor. They exchanged a look after the door opened, each waiting for the other to go first.
Steve made a gesture with a semi-forced, sheepish smile, a look which to his surprise Loki weakly returned, and they stepped off at the same time.
Apparently now that they’d had their little blow-out, they were back to being able to work together once more.
“So,” Loki began, sounding much more composed, “why don’t you go ahead and tell me whatever this was you learned.”
*
It took less time than Steve would’ve thought for him to relate everything to Loki. Rumiko’s story. The way that the strange, dark game she had played had worked. How they thought Gregory had accidently gotten caught in the middle.
When he had finished he lifted his eyes up to examine Loki.
The sorcerer was leaning against the wall with one arm folded across his midsection, the pointer finger of his free hand pressed against his mouth. He was considering the information with deep scrutiny.
“It all makes a kind of sense,” he said, at last.
“Does it?” Steve asked. “I have to admit, I’m still not sure how we get from this game that kids play to this fear spirit or whatever following Gregory Mitchell around.”
Loki gave him a look of nearly condescending impatience. “The ‘game’, as you call it, obviously has its roots in some other, older tradition,” he said flippantly. “The steps to it contain everything necessary to perform a summoning ritual.”
“Summoning ritual?” Steve repeated, not so much not following as uncertain he wanted to.
“The use of fingernail clippings to bind the creature to one’s personal essence, and as a sacrifice. The speaking of commands out loud as invocation. The darkness, the knife, the fire.” Loki ticked it off on his upraised fingers. “Even the premise of the game itself - it creates a form, a contract that the summoned creature must follow. The terms are that it has to find a host in order to remain in this realm, otherwise it be cast back to where it came from.”
Steve all but gaped at him, taking it in.
“Are you telling me,” he finally asked, slow, “that every time teenagers in Japan play this game, they’re unknowingly summoning up an evil spirit?”
“As long as they do everything the way they’re supposed to, it can do them no harm.” Loki shrugged. “But this girl you spoke of failed to follow instructions. What she called forth found a body to attach itself to. That it was not the same soul that originally entered into contract with it is irrelevant.”
“So what do we do now?” Steve asked. “Can we use the same ritual to send it back again?”
Loki shook his head. “Too late. It won the game - it ‘found’ the boy. The spell that first drew it here can do nothing to it now.”
“There has to be something,” Steve insisted, sounding as anxious as he felt. He couldn’t begin to think they’d gone through all this for nothing, no answers.
“There might be a way,” Loki stated.
Steve looked at him unblinkingly, hopeful. He waited.
“Well?”
Loki gave a smirk, a slightly less malevolent version of a look Steve realized he recognized. It was a look that spoke of excitement about creating trouble and facing something dangerous.
“On this plane of existence there’s nothing we can do to hurt it. It has no physical self. But elsewhere is another story.”
“Elsewhere, like…where?” Steve asked slowly, suspicious.
“Inside the boy’s dreams,” Loki explained, like it was the most straightforward thing in the world. “His mind.”
Steve tried to wrap his head around that. Funny how this whole misadventure kept finding whole new ways to push his limits. Here when he’d thought he didn’t even have any limits left.
“You…we can do that?”
Still smiling, Loki simply nodded.
Steve took a deep breath. Anything he could do, he’d said. He’d promised.
“Okay. Let’s go, then.”
*
Late that night found them back in Gregory Mitchell’s room.
The little boy was sound asleep in the bed. The doctor had sedated him again.
According to Loki, that was a good thing. They needed to be certain the boy stayed entirely asleep all the way through what they were about to do.
“Are you ready, Captain?” Loki asked.
Steve noticed that in his curled fist Gregory still clutched the pebble Loki had given him, and sagely decided against saying anything.
“I’m ready,” he answered.
Loki gestured to the floor. “Sit,” he commanded him. Steve went where he bid, crossing his legs and making himself comfortable as he could.
With a piece of what looked like ordinary chalk Loki sketched a figure eight around Steve and the bed that held Gregory. Then he started adding more around it, filling in complicated symbols and runes.
Steve tried not to watch him too hard, focusing instead on keeping his breathing nice and slow.
Loki would use his magic to open up a door into the world inside Gregory’s dreams. He’d send Steve’s mental self there, where he’d be able to fight a version of the monster that he could see and hit. Bringing it to a level that Captain America was actually capable of doing something about it.
Neither of them had the easy part. It would take intense concentration from Loki. And Steve…if the thing hurt him in the dream, it could very well be the death of him in reality.
Just another day in the life of a ‘hero’, he supposed.
“That should be it.” Loki straightened at last, briefly rubbing his hands against each other to roll off the last traces of chalk. “I can begin, now.” He paused, slowly pivoting to fix Steve with an unblinking look. “If it comes down to it I can probably give you some assistance in there, but for the most part it will be entirely up to you. I ask you again, Captain - are you ready?”
Steve felt unnerved, and had the idea that was exactly what Loki was going for. “Yeah,” he replied, more slowly this time. “Why do you ask?”
Loki’s smile was humorless. It looked like a mask. There was something strange, glimmering, in his eyes.
“Do you trust me?”
There was a nagging sensation, like Steve was supposed to think long and hard before he decided to answer. But he couldn’t find that there was anything left to weigh. He had already made up his mind he was doing this.
“Yes.”
Loki’s smile grew wider. It stretched the corners of his face; Steve half expected to see his skin start splitting at the seams.
“You realize that you’re putting yourself completely at my mercy,” Loki spelled out for him, smooth. “Your mind and soul will be in my hands. And while you are away, I will be the one who is left alone with your unconscious body.”
Steve felt a sudden surge of panic and anger. “Why are you doing this?” he demanded. He didn’t understand why Loki felt the need to keep pushing this way. Like he wanted to be hated.
Maybe he did prefer it. Maybe it was what he was used to - easier.
Loki never blinked. He only continued to look at Steve, gazing down at him, calmly.
“I want to make certain you understand. What exactly it is that you’re doing. What it is, fully, you’re running the risk of, when I ask you - do you trust me?”
This time Steve knew better than to answer right away, if only because he was sure if he did Loki would keep on asking.
Did he trust Loki? He had more than enough reasons, and experience, that he shouldn’t. What did he even know about the guy anyway?
He was Thor’s brother. He was a sorcerer. He had hurt people and was too proud to say that he was sorry. He seemed to know what to do with enemies better than he did friends.
He was willing to help other people when it came down to it. He made a lot of bad choices but now it looked like he was trying to walk a different path. He was both indifferent and terribly concerned with what other people thought of him.
He valued knowledge over ambition. He knew how to talk to little kids when they were scared. He could appreciate a joke.
“Yes,” Steve said, more firmly this time, completely certain. “I do trust you. But if we’re going to do this, I want you to promise me something. And I mean give me your word.”
“Oh?” Loki eyed him, snide but peaceable, like he had expected as much. “And what is it that you want me to promise?”
Steve grinned.
“If this works, and we both make it out okay, we’re taking a trip to that place in Brooklyn I told you about so you can finally try a decent slice of pizza.”
Loki blinked, taken aback.
“I…alright.” It took him a few more seconds to regain his composure, to manage a funny sort of smile. “Your terms are acceptable.”
“Great,” Steve said. “Now let’s get this show on the road.”
Loki nodded in agreement, his smile looking slightly more genuine.
Magic seemed to look different just about every time Steve saw it. He supposed it would have to, if it was for doing different things. Sometimes it really did almost seem scientific, like something that could be explained in the terms of the reality he already knew. Other times it was more chaotic with energy thrown around, seeming like a natural disaster.
The spell Loki was doing now looked the most like the wizardry of Steve’s childhood imagination. There were gestures and chanting in a language he couldn’t recognize, flickering candles and spooky flashes of light.
Steve closed his eyes. His head was starting to spin. Loki had warned him about this part.
There was a pulling sensation at his body, like he was being dragged off even though he wasn’t moving anywhere. He tried to keep his mind clear.
There was a perceptible shift in the world around him.
The next thing he knew, the sounds and sensations of that dark little room had faded away. He was standing on his feet somewhere. He could feel the layer of his costume against his skin, the cowl over his head, the weight of his shield on his arm. Steve opened his eyes.
A vast and strange, empty terrain stretched out before him. It looked like a dried-out desert. Overhead the sky was a faded yellow color, devoid of any clouds.
He could tell this was a dream-world, and not just by how it looked. Everything seemed…off. He could feel his arms and legs but not with the right amount of sensation. What he took in with his eyes and ears was weaker, detached. It felt realer than a dream but not quite as real as reality.
He wondered what pain would feel like here, though.
Not the time to think about that. Turning his head he looked around him. It was bright but he didn’t feel the need to shade his eyes. Straight ahead of him was what looked like a forest, covering rolling hills and surrounded by scrub. It seemed as good a place as any to start.
There wasn’t a single sound but that of his boots as he walked forward.
Which made it all the more obvious when from beneath him came a sharp, slow cracking sound.
Automatically he leapt back. Looking down he realized what he thought was simple dirt was much stranger than that. Beneath it there was some kind of unnatural looking honeycomb structure, large octagonal gaps filled in with thick frosted glass. Or maybe not all that thick, since it had started to break when he put his weight on it.
He had to look around carefully but was able to pick out where the gaps were. He continued walking. Some of them he maneuvered his path around, others he had no choice but to gingerly walk over - or bolt across, when they started to give that warning creak.
It took longer to reach the edge of the forest than it had looked like it would from the other side. But eventually he made it.
He couldn’t tell how far the forest stretched on for. The trees were tall, thinner around than Steve’s arm, but covered in dense foliage at the top in a variety of blue and purple hues. The ground seemed to roll without moving, leading to twisting natural paths.
Walking in there should be easy enough. After what happened in the desert though, he was on his guard. Sliding his shield across his shoulder onto his back he began cutting a path through.
It was still unnaturally quiet, motionless, no sounds save for when he breathed. His hands brushed silently across the trees’ trunks. The ground absorbed his steps like sponge.
“Greggy!” he decided to try calling out. “Greggy, can you hear me? It’s me, Captain America!”
He yelled out at the expanse at the top of his lungs but got no reply.
Loki hadn’t really told him what to expect once he was in here. He’d spoken like it’d be easy to figure out. Steve supposed he had thought the spirit or whatever it was would’ve appeared in front of him right away. He didn’t think he’d have to go searching for it like the world’s most clueless knight in shining armor.
Well, nothing to do but keep moving forward. Maybe whatever was on the other side of the forest would offer him more answers than this.
As soon as he broke free of the forest’s cover and walked the first couple yards onto the flattest meadow he’d ever seen, warning bells of panic went off in Steve’s head, his instincts picking up on something.
What did they say: be careful what you wish for?
There was a sound from before him, a low deep grumble, like a growl and a snarl mixed together, and coming from something really big.
Slowly, very gradually, he lifted his head. He looked up…and up…and up.
Steve sucked in a breath.
It was massive. Covered in dark fur with a squat body and four limbs. Outside of that, it was strangely hard to describe.
Maybe he just couldn’t wrap his head around what he looked at. It seemed like a mix between the picture Loki had shown him, a giant grizzly bear and…he wasn’t sure what else. What he’d thought the monster living inside his closet was supposed to look like when he was a kid, maybe.
All he knew for certain was it had the biggest mouth he had ever seen, going from one side of its squat no-necked face to the other, filled with long sharp jutting teeth. Above the mouth was a pair of huge, black dead eyes, filled with hunger and evil.
And they were staring directly at him.
Steve took a reflexive step back, and quickly moved to grab his shield.
The monster breathed in a growl and then it gave an ear-splitting roar. It sank down onto four legs with a thud and galloped towards him.
He had a split second to decide: throw the shield, and risk being defenseless if it missed the mark, or hang onto it to defend himself?
He went with the second option just in time. As it reached him the thing pulled one front limb back and swiped at him with claws the size of his forearm.
He braced his legs and ducked his head, lifting the shield up to cover him. The blow ricocheted off with a metallic slicing sound and a bang. The monster roared again, angry.
Taking advantage of the opening he pushed forward and used his shield to bash it in the nose.
It stumbled back with a bellow of pain. While it was distracted Steve turned and with a glance back he bolted.
He wanted to stand his ground but it was far too close for comfort. Better to try wearing it down with a chase, lead it somewhere else and see if he couldn’t formulate a different strategy.
So he ran. Fast as he could, back through the forest, back towards the desert, with a creature bigger than a tank and fueled entirely by terror in hot pursuit of him the entire way. It never lost track of him. Even when he was too far ahead to see it he could hear its heavy tread, hear it growl and breathe.
And then he made the mistake of heading into the swamp, where he sank into the mud.
Where he ended up stuck all the way to his arms, unable to move with the monster right behind him and getting ever closer, while Steve called in futility at Loki for help.
He was going to be eaten alive and Loki wasn’t even pretending not to laugh at him.
“What’s the matter, Captain? I thought you trusted me,” that disembodied voice sneered.
Steve shut his eyes and let his face rest on the side of his cheek in the mud. He was too furious and frustrated in this moment to even feel afraid.
Yeah, he thought. Yeah; he had trusted Loki. He had thought he could actually believe in him and rely on him. And look where that had gotten him, pinned, helpless, with a giant man-eater close behind him…
And Loki was far too clever to leave him there like that.
Unless there was something he was trying to tell him.
Steve wasn’t sure if he was having an epiphany or just grasping at straws. Either way he sucked in air, filling his lungs, and stopped fighting to free himself from the pit. He let himself sink down into the mud.
He was covered past his nose and unable to look up when he heard a creaking shudder and a crash as the creature leapt through the air right where he had been, landing on the other side.
Great, Steve thought, now what?
Thrilled as he was to escape another close one he couldn’t hold his breath forever and he was even more stuck now than he’d been before.
From what sounding like far away there was a strange sound, like a howling of wind. Steve tried to lift his neck but it was hopeless.
Then there was a crack, the sizzle of fire, and a different howl - one that he recognized as coming from the monster’s mouth.
Its enraged, pained sounds still hadn’t stopped when something was lowered into the pit next to Steve and he found himself looking at one ornate end of a metal staff right in front of his face.
He swallowed some mud in the process but managed to free one arm to grab onto it. With relative ease he found himself hoisted up. His shoulder made some complaint but he didn’t dare let go. Once he was free and on the surface he dropped to his hands and knees, coughing.
A pair of familiar boots came into his field of vision. Steve looked up to find Loki standing over him in full armor. The dingy light glinted off the horns of his helmet.
“I told you that I would be able to assist you were it needed,” Loki remarked, mildly. “What - didn’t you believe it?”
Steve couldn’t resist glaring at him. “You could’ve just told me to duck, instead of having to be a wise guy about it.”
“I had faith that you would be clever enough to figure it out on your own.” Loki smirked. “Thank you for not disappointing me.”
Steve had this weird feeling like if Thor were there, he’d be laughing right about now.
He didn’t have an Asgardian’s sense of humor though. He only shook his head and started climbing to his feet.
“Need a hand?” Loki offered, but Steve brushed him off.
“No, no. I’m good.” Glancing around he retrieved his shield from where it lay and reached to adjust his cowl. He turned to look at their foe - one front limb was blackened from where Loki had set its fur on fire and it was favoring that one slightly.
But it rotated to face them. And now it just looked really mad.
Frothing spit dripped from between the teeth in its bared maw. Its whole huge body seemed to vibrate with its snarl. It was preparing itself for a charge.
Steve shifted his stance, getting ready to move as he brought his shield up. Loki twirled his staff around once before adopting a more battle-ready pose, gripping it in both hands. They stood side by side, backing each other up, shoulders practically touching.
“I’ll hit him low,” Steve nodded, offering. “You hit him high.”
Loki agreed, “Sounds like as good a plan as any.”
Without moving from their positions their eyes met, and on a wordless agreement they both launched themselves at the monster at once.
And this time, there wasn’t any room left for doubt.
*
It was the next night and Tony was standing by the front gate outside of the base, smirking proudly to himself as his driver drove up to him in his newest car, the one he’d been bragging about all week.
As the driver got out, Tony reached out a hand, gesturing he should toss the keys over.
The CEO’s smile disappeared in confusion and dismay as just when they were about to reach him, a hand suddenly shot out from beside him and snatched the keys out of midair.
Tony swiveled to find Loki standing next to him, wearing normal ‘mortal’ clothes and a smug look of his own.
“Uh, hey,” Tony objected, angry and off-put. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
He fell silent as a second person entered his field of vision: Steve, who grinned at him.
“You said I could borrow your car.”
Tony blinked several times before he registered that. “I was kidding! I didn’t think for one second you would ever actually take me up on that offer-”
“Uh huh. Well, too late.” Steve dismissively looked away from him and gave Loki a slight frown. “You’re not driving, though.”
Loki raised his eyebrows. Steve held out his palm, giving a severe look.
“Come on. In case we get pulled over, I’m thinking whoever’s behind the wheel should have an actual valid driver’s license.”
Loki relented and dropped the keys into his hand with a long-suffering sigh. He stalked off in the direction of the passenger’s seat door.
Steve looked back over at Tony, who was still visibly bewildered.
“Thanks.” Steve gestured with the keys, happily. “I promise I’ll fill it up again before we bring it back.”
“What…you guys are going on a road trip?” Tony managed, his voice thick with disbelief.
“Yep. Next stop, New York.” Steve walked off, waving at him. “See you in a couple of days! And thanks again!”
Tony was still standing there gaping when they drove off. Through the open windows (of his brand new car) he could hear the faint strains of “Born This Way” blaring from the speakers, and Loki’s laughter.
His bemusement didn’t end when later on that evening he went into the Avengers’ kitchen.
Pinned to the center of the fridge with a couple of magnets was a crayon drawing by a small child, signed in the corner with the name of Gregory Mitchell. It was titled ‘My Heroes’ and was a picture of two figures.
One of them, decked out in red white and blue stars, was Captain America. And the other one, in green and gold with horns and all, was Loki.
In the afternoon Loki wasn’t found to be anywhere around the base. Steve was momentarily stymied until he remembered that Thor wasn’t the only person Loki showed up to visit from time to time. There was also Dr. Foster’s assistant, Darcy Lewis.
She lived right next door, technically still on the base, in SHIELD supplied housing. Steve still felt a little awkward just walking up to her apartment door and knocking.
“Hang on a sec, be right there…” The door opened a few inches and the brunette stuck her head out, peeking up at him.
“Oh! Hey.” She blinked a few times, in the manner of someone trying to play it cooler than they really felt. “Nice to see you, Captain. Uh, America.” She bit her lip. “Loki said you might be stopping by.”
He smiled at her, amused, trying to be reassuring. “It’s nice to see you again too, Ms. Lewis.”
Her nose wrinkled up. “Eww. God, please don’t. Just call me Darcy - I’m not an old lady yet. Come on in.”
She opened the door the rest of the way for him and then fairly flounced away, leading him to what passed as the living room.
Loki was stretched out on the couch, his feet on the coffee table, his Harry Potter book opened between his hands. Darcy seemed completely unperturbed about him scuffing up her furniture. Then again, it wasn’t really her furniture. Maybe that was why.
“You guys have fun playing Mystery Inc.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating another section of the apartment. “I’ve got a thing going on over there. Please don’t set the couch on fire.”
“Uh, okay,” Steve said, but Darcy was glowering at Loki, pointed.
He didn’t look up from his reading. “You already know that was an accident,” he said to her dully, in a tone of reminder. Clearly this was a story Steve had missed out on.
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she said, dismissive. “And you already know that you’re on notice because of it.”
“That was months ago-” Loki began, voice rising because she was walking away again.
“On notice!” Darcy repeated back in a yell, without missing a beat.
In the wake of her exit Steve sat down in an armchair, bemused. To say watching the completely normal civilian woman interact so carelessly with Loki was different would be an understatement.
Loki didn’t seem in any hurry to start the conversation going. Steve supposed it was up to him.
“So what did Coulson want with you this morning?” he asked, curious.
Loki’s eyes didn’t rise to meet him. His fingertips flicked, turning over a page. “There was a situation he was aware of as something I might be interested in,” he answered vaguely. When Steve kept looking at him, expecting more, he finally looked up.
“Sorry, Captain,” he told him freely. “But it’s a story I have no intention of sharing.”
Steve restrained himself from sighing. It probably wasn’t important anyway. He was supposed to be focusing on his problem, not whatever else Loki was up to.
“Fine.” He nodded at the book. “Still at it, I see.”
Loki’s mouth quirked, amused. “Yes.”
“Who’s your favorite character so far?”
Loki gave him an odd look. Like he couldn’t quite buy Steve really wanted to talk about this and was suspicious of what was really going on.
“What?” Steve demanded, calmly enough. “We not allowed to make small-talk, either?”
“I’m trying not to get too attached,” Loki said, finally. “But I’m intrigued by Sirius Black.”
Well, that was different. Though maybe looking at what type of character Sirius was - trouble maker, former criminal - it was also kind of laughably predictable. “What do you mean you’re trying not to get too attached?”
The set of Loki’s mouth turned bitter. “Because it seems obvious that he’s marked to die.”
Steve blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s a tragic figure. A wanderer and rogue that had most his life taken from him. Imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, forever in shadow because of it.”
Leaning forward to look at how much of the book Loki had actually read, Steve had to remark, “You’re not supposed to know that he’s innocent yet. That’s all the way at the end.”
“They make too much of an emphasis over his guilt, how horrid his crime was,” Loki murmured. “If he were actually just a criminal, a madman trying to kill the hero, it would be too straightforward. There would be no drama to it. The story of a wronged innocent is much more captivating.”
When he said it like that it did make sense. Steve made himself more comfortable in his chair. “I didn’t know you were so big on literary analysis.”
Loki’s sharp eyes drifted from the book over to meet Steve’s. “It has nothing to do with analysis. I know stories. How they work, the way they always unfold.”
His fingers moved absently over the pages bound in his lap, smoothing down their surface.
“Bards and poets have been telling the same tales from the beginning of speech and time. There are patterns. Devices that can be expected.” His mouth twisted. “The audience wants their hero to succeed, to triumph, but only after he has suffered. There must be loss along the way. Defeats. Someone, inevitably, has to die if only to make a point.”
“And you think that someone has to be your favorite character.”
“I did not say he was my favorite,” Loki argued, petulantly. “And, yes. It fits. Part of Harry’s definition is that he is an orphan. Sirius is supposed to be his godfather - if he lives, it would be his duty to foster the boy. Harry would have a loving, stable home.”
“And we can’t possibly have that,” Steve said, half-seriously, because Loki was starting to freak him out a bit. Steve was only one book ahead but so far he was doing a pretty good job of predicting things.
“To have a potential loving father figure revealed, something that the hero has never had or known, only to lose him,” Loki explained, agreeing. “That would be a dramatic loss. Another step along his overarching journey.”
Steve contemplated how angry Loki might be if he ruined the suspense and just told him that by the second task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Sirius was still alive and fine. That it was okay to get invested in him after all.
“Why don’t you keep reading,” he settled for saying. “Maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
Loki gave him a look both dubious and dismissive. Clearly he thought Steve was trying to placate him. Steve hid a smile.
Darcy wandered in again, holding a small device in her hand that Steve had come to know as an ‘iPhone’. From the look she was giving them it seemed she’d overheard the conversation.
“Seriously? Are you guys having a Harry Potter book club in here?” she demanded, snorting. “I thought there was some kind of top secret super-heroics going on. You know, something cool.”
“The only reason I’m reading it is because of you,” Loki insisted.
“Dude, I made you read the first one,” she returned, unimpressed. “Two later and you’re still going strong? I don’t think so. You’re just as dorky as the rest of us would-be Hogwarts students. Enjoy your time in Slytherin.”
Loki scowled in a distinctly put-out manner.
“Loki’s not a Slytherin, he’s a Ravenclaw,” Steve put in, if only because he felt like he had to contribute to this conversation somehow. Darcy’s eyes very slowly slid over to him. “…What?”
“America’s most famous, patriotic flash-frozen superhero,” Darcy replied, her words coming gradually and staccato, “and an ancient Viking alien sorcerer-god, are sitting around talking about which Hogwarts houses they think they’re in. This day just reached whole new levels of epic weird.”
“He thinks he’s a Hufflepuff,” Loki informed Darcy helpfully.
She made a scandalized sound of disbelief. “Are you kidding me?”
“What’s wrong with being a Hufflepuff?” Steve demanded, trying not to feel so hurt.
“Um, they’re kind of the loser house. I mean it’s pretty obvious JK Rowling only made up the other two so she’d have a place to put students who aren’t the good guys or budding sociopaths,” she declared. “Nothing about them is even remotely interesting. Who self-sorts as a Hufflepuff?”
“What about Cedric Diggory?” Steve asked her pointedly. “The way he’s described in the book, I thought he was supposed to be pretty neat.”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and look what happened to him.”
Steve’s amusement swiftly faded replaced by a cold shock of nervousness. “What?” He stared at her, concerned. “Why, what happens to Cedric?”
Loki meanwhile had his face wrinkled in confusion. “Who is ‘Cedric Diggory’?” he demanded, pronouncing the name with a lack of familiarity.
Darcy’s face fell. Eyes wide she looked back and forth between the two of them.
“Both of you need to read faster,” she got out eventually.
Steve would’ve gladly pressed her for more information, ominous hole in his stomach and all, but she held up a hand to stop him.
“Look, the reason I came in here is ‘cus I think I might’ve found something that could potentially help you two with your thing. I mean - no promises, but it’s interesting. Anything to help that poor kid out, right?”
He glanced at Loki, distantly surprised he told Darcy about what was going on. Loki’s only response was a slight shrug.
“Go on,” he told Darcy, not offering Steve further explanation either.
She nodded and held up her iPhone. “So I got curious, and I tried doing a Google search using the words ‘nightmare’, ‘ghost story’, and ‘teddy bear’…and, unsurprisingly, I got pages of hits that were not helpful at all. But after I weeded through a little the same thing popped up a couple times.”
There were several words in that account Steve couldn’t understand but he focused on the relevant parts. “What was that?”
Darcy focused on the device again, tapping at the screen with her fingers in a distracted way that reminded him of Tony.
“It’s something called ‘hitori kakurenbo’. It means ‘playing hide and seek by yourself’. From the description it basically sounds like a Japanese version of ‘Bloody Mary’.”
She looked up to find both Steve and Loki giving her blank, quizzical looks.
“Right. Neither of you have ever been a teenage girl,” Darcy observed. “Um, it’s like this urban legend, part ghost story part game. It’s a thing kids do when they’re having a party to try and freak themselves out. Only, I guess this is…not at a party, and in Japan.”
She trailed off sounding much less certain of herself. Steve, however, was remembering something.
“There was an exchange student staying with the Mitchells around the time Gregory first started acting out.” He looked over at Loki, meeting his eyes. “They said she was Japanese.”
It could be a coincidence. It seemed like too big of one just to ignore, though.
Evidently Loki was having the same thought. He brought his hands together, lacing his fingers and resting his chin atop.
“It bears investigating.”
“I’ll get the name of the girl and where she is now from Gregory’s father,” Steve offered. “We can probably go and talk to her by sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
“Unfortunately Captain, I’ve already made plans for tomorrow afternoon,” Loki responded, to his surprise.
In response to Steve’s skeptical look he merely shrugged. “Certainly you can handle it without me. Report back later if you uncover any significant details.”
And with that he got up from his seat and walked calmly out of the room.
Steve looked over to Darcy, but she only shook her head.
“Don’t ask me. I have no idea what ‘plans’ he’s talking about, either.”
*
With the sudden removal of Loki from the equation aside Steve’s next moves unfolded more or less exactly like he’d planned.
He talked to Dr. Mitchell again. The girl turned out to be living with her second host family a few states over. He had less trouble than he would’ve thought requisitioning one of SHIELD’s planes for a quick field trip.
The first surprise ended up being that he didn’t make the trip alone after all.
“Come on, I’m coming with you,” Darcy insisted with buoyant enthusiasm. “I know I’m not an expert in magic or anything or a superhero, but I can help anyway. And it will be so less boring than if you go alone.”
“Being bored wasn’t really on my list of concerns,” Steve told her. He was more surprised than bothered, to be honest. Up until recently he had the impression the lab assistant had been intimidated by him. He was glad to see that apparently she wasn’t.
“It should be.” Darcy sighed. “Okay, well say I’m filling in for Loki, then. I’ll be his substitute.”
“Would Loki agree with the assessment that you can be his replacement?” Steve asked her, pointed, with a wry grin.
“I didn’t say that!” she yelped, put-upon. Still she refused to leave Steve’s side, it taking some hurrying on her pat to match his stride. “Consider me your secret weapon.”
“How so?”
“This is a teenage girl you’re going to be talking to, and one from one of the most modern tech-savvy cultures on the planet,” Darcy said to him, triumphantly. “Between the two of us, who do you think stands a better chance of being able to understand her on like a deeper level?”
Now she really did have a point.
“If you’ve really got nothing better to do, I don’t mind you tagging along.”
“Sweet!” She pumped a fist in the air. “Does this make me an honorary Avenger?”
“You’ll have to take that up with Director Fury,” he told her. Darcy paled.
Steve had to admit he wasn’t entirely sure what it was that fueled the unlikely friendship between Darcy and Loki. Not that he didn’t think the young woman was likeable. But Loki was so prickly and difficult he would’ve assumed any “mortal” would have to be extraordinary for Loki to put up with them.
Darcy Lewis, by contrast, was so…normal.
“How did the two of you end up friends, anyway?” Steve asked her midway through the trip. He knew the two had been connected already before Loki even showed up on the team’s radar. He’d never been able to get the whole story though.
“It’s pretty complicated,” Darcy replied. “Like, seriously. There was amnesia involved and everything. His, not mine.”
“Okay,” Steve said slowly, trying to take that in. Noticing the look on his face, Darcy gave him an expressive shrug.
“Guess you could just say we got used to tolerating each other. I don’t know.” She tried thinking about it. “I don’t really put up with a lot of the stuff he tries to pull at times. But I think that might be something he likes. You know? Everyone needs a place or a person they can go to sometimes to feel like they’re having a time-out from their regular deal.”
“Yeah, sure,” Steve mused, thinking he got it. He knew there were times when he wanted to feel normal, not like a superhero or a soldier or Captain America; when he only wanted to be him.
He supposed it wasn’t much of a stretch to think somebody like Loki could want that too.
Darcy looked straight ahead, a few strands of hair moving errantly around her face, pushed there by a stray breeze from an air vent.
“He’s not a bad person, really. He’s just very, very screwed up.”
“He seems like he’s got a lot of anger,” Steve offered charitably. Darcy gave a huffing sound, rolling her eyes.
“Try like a couple centuries’ worth.”
“Did he say anything else to you about where he was going today?” he asked her, still curious. He had guessed that whatever it was it probably had to do with that conversation he’d had with Agent Coulson. Outside of that though he had no real idea.
Darcy shook her head. “All he would give me when I kept pressing him was that he was going to Maine.”
“Well I doubt he’s going for the lobster,” Steve remarked, which was a weak joke, but he was too puzzled to think of much else to say.
“See, when Loki refuses to tell anybody something? He’s either screwing around, trying to drive us crazy with the ‘mystery’ because he thinks it’s funny, or it’s something personal and he just doesn’t want anyone to know for his own reasons.”
“Which do you think this is?”
Darcy was quiet a moment. She played with the frames of her glasses. Finally, she said, “He borrowed my computer before he left and forgot to clear his browser history. He was looking up the name of some private psychiatric institute.” She paused, quiet. “Guess they specialize in treating people who are both messed up in the head and have special or weird powers.”
That basically described Loki to a T. Not to mention if the facility had enough of a reputation, it would definitely be something Coulson and SHIELD knew about.
It was however, a little difficult to imagine Loki accepting that kind of help so easily. But maybe that was what all the secrecy was about.
After a silence Darcy looked at Steve sideways. “Don’t you dare say anything to him about this,” she said intensely, actually approaching something like a threatening tone. “He would kill me if he found out I told you. I mean, not literally; I mean, I sure don’t think so, but-”
“It’s okay,” Steve reassured her. “I get it. And I wouldn’t say anything, either.”
Darcy breathed out in a heavy puff of air and neither of them said anything else to each other until they reached their destination.
Not far from the airport where they’d been able to land was an upscale suburban neighborhood, with a lot of white two or three story houses and rolling green lawns across hills. The kind of place that people Steve grew up with back in Brooklyn might’ve fantasized about moving to someday.
Maybe some of them even did, eventually. He didn’t really know. He’d lost touch with a lot of people over the years for a lot of different reasons.
As they walked up the driveway of the address they’d been given, the front door to the house opened and a girl walked out. Right away Steve knew she had to be the girl they were looking for.
“Rumiko Fujikawa?” Steve called.
She froze in her tracks, midway through the action of putting a pair of ear-buds in, looking at them with wide uneasy eyes. She was probably about sixteen, seventeen years old. Her hair was cut in a strange multilayered style with a streak each of bright pink and electric green near the front. Her nail polish was dark and metallic and her lip gloss was candy colored. And, somewhat amusingly, Steve noticed she was wearing a t-shirt that had pictures of the Mark III Iron Man and War Machine armors printed on it.
“Dibs on ‘good cop’,” Darcy quipped to Steve in an aside as they walked towards the girl.
“Knock it off,” Steve murmured back at her, distracted.
Rumiko looked back and forth between the two of them as they reached her. “Can I help you?” she offered in a timid voice that had only the barest trace of an accent.
“Hi,” Steve offered as an opening, because the last thing he wanted to scare her. “We’re from the government. You’re not in any trouble; there are just some questions we were hoping you could answer.”
She stared up at him with eyes that he quickly suspected had become wide for different reasons: “You. You’re…Captain America, aren’t you?” she asked, having recognized him even though he wasn’t wearing his costume or even his military uniform.
“Yeah. That’s me,” he confirmed. “I was wondering if there was something you could help me with.”
“Me?” she squeaked, as she looked at Steve, visibly agog.
“This is about Gregory Mitchell,” Steve told her.
“Remember? The Mitchells? The family you stayed with for a few months over the summer,” Darcy interjected. “Gregory was their son.”
Rumiko’s expression visibly went through a dramatic shift.
Steve realized aloud, “You know something. Don’t you?”
The girl swallowed. She looked guilty, afraid, but also notably, very sad.
“It was an accident,” she said tearfully. “The last thing I ever would’ve wanted was to hurt Greggy.”
“Why don’t you back up and start from the beginning,” Steve asked. “Explain just what was ‘an accident’.”
She hugged herself where she stood, her eyes closing briefly with a pained look. “It was so stupid,” she began. “Hitori kakurenbo. It’s this game, it-”
“I know what it is,” Darcy stopped her. “I looked it up on the internet.” She glanced over at Steve, explaining for his benefit.
“You take a toy animal and rip the stuffing out of it, then you fill it up again with rice that’s got pieces of your fingernail clippings inside it. Then you do all this weird stuff - you stab it with something sharp like a knife, say out loud that you’re going to play hide and seek, and then throw it in a tub full of water. Then you run and hide.” She made a face, reacting to the macabre nature of what she was describing. “You’re supposed to do it at night with all the lights off. And you hide until morning. If nothing happens to you, you go get the toy and say you’ve won the game.”
Rumiko nodded, confirming it. She still had her arms folded and wrapped around her sides. With one foot she kicked the ground.
“The girls in my homeroom made a pact,” she explained, tersely. “We said we would all play the game once before summer was over.”
“It sounds like a great way to give yourself the creeps,” Steve said slowly, frowning. He had a foreboding sense. For some reason the hair on the back of his neck was starting to stand up. “But what does that have to do with what’s happening with Greggy?”
Rumiko lifted her head to look up at him, beseeching.
“I did it the last month I was staying with the Mitchell family. Mrs. Mitchell had told me her and her husband were going to be out. I didn’t realize Greggy was already home. He was asleep in his room and I never saw him.”
When neither of them seemed to understand what she was saying, she added, miserably, “The rules say you’re supposed to make sure you’re alone in the house when you play.”
“Well, sure,” Darcy retorted. “What better way to make sure you freak yourself out?”
Rumiko gave a stiff nod. “That’s what I always thought, too. But - the explanation that goes with the story of how the game is played, is that if someone else in the house…what you’re hiding from, it might find them instead.”
Steve finally understood. “That’s what happened,” he breathed softly.
“It ‘found’ Greggy,” Rumiko said, sounding like she was going to burst into tears at any moment. “When I heard him cry out I realized. I ended the game and burned the toy, like I was supposed to, but it was too late.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to the Mitchells about this?” Steve questioned her. “When he started acting strangely, right before you left…”
“I didn’t know if they’d believe me. It sounds just like a silly story.” She admitted, “And I was too scared to take the blame for what I’d done.” She dropped her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It was an accident,” Darcy said to her, comfortingly, giving her a pat on the shoulder. “You didn’t mean for this to happen. But now that we know what’s going on, these guys can try and make it better. Right?” She turned towards Steve, hopeful.
Steve didn’t know. But having an explanation to what had caused the problem in the first place had to put them one step closer towards fixing it. Right?
He didn’t know anything about magic. He shouldn’t be making any promises.
But in spite of himself he said out loud, “I’m sure we’ll be able to fix it now.”
They hung around for a few minutes more until it felt like Rumiko had calmed down a little.
As they were leaving, she told them, haltingly, “Could you say hi to Greggy for me? And tell him I’m sorry.” She breathed. “I really hope you’re able to fix this and he goes back to being okay.”
Steve managed to give her a smile. “I’ll tell him. And, thanks for your help.” Acting on a whim, he added, “Hey, how would you like it if I got Tony Stark to send you an autograph?”
She blinked in disbelief, her cheeks coloring. “I-Iron Man-sama?” she gasped, disbelieving. “Yes! I’d…arigato gozaimasu! Thank you!”
The young girl seemed to be in a much better mood when they left.
“That was sweet,” Darcy commented. “Guess it just figured she’d be a fangirl.”
When Steve gave her a questioning glance, she returned his gaze with a knowing smile.
“Trust me, Captain. Nobody fangirls harder than Japan.”
*
Steve found himself wandering the halls of the base when he got back. His thoughts were restless to the point where it ended up channeled into his feet. He walked with only half a real aim. Trying to find Loki, trying to find someone to talk to. Trying to make sense of everything that was going on in his mind.
It had all started as a childish dare carried out by a teenager. To think, something that simple and seemingly unimportant could almost destroy a little boy’s life.
But Rumiko was young herself, no less a kid really than Gregory. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know what she was doing.
Steve still didn’t fully understand what she did, and even he knew that.
He never knew whether it made things better or worse, when bad things happened and nobody was at fault. There was no ‘bad guy’ here - there were just honest, awful mistakes.
Not sure what else to do he decided to head down to Gregory’s room again and see how the kid was doing. If he was hanging in there or if his monster had come back.
Three floors before where he would’ve needed to get off though the elevator door opened, and Loki sauntered in like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Steve could tell by the slanted, knowing look in his eyes that he had known Steve would be there. That he was looking for him.
It was probably just memories and prior bad experience that made Steve react to that idea nervously.
He cleared his throat. “So we had quite the eventful conversation with the exchange student.”
“I heard,” Loki responded calmly. Too calmly, Steve’s instincts were screaming at him. Something felt off here. Steve tried to tell that part of his head to shut up.
He still had to resist the urge to flinch or fidget as he stood there, his elbow practically brushing Loki’s. “Did Darcy fill you in on what we found out?” He turned his head to meet the other man’s eyes, not entirely sure where his reluctance was coming from.
“Oh no. We had other matters to discuss, it turns out.”
At Steve’s questioning stare, Loki gave him an incredibly thin-lipped smile.
“I regret to inform you that I’ve not decided to go in for counseling, Captain. My visit to the institute was for a far less personal matter. So sorry to be the bearer of disappointment.”
He sounded absolutely not sorry at all. His tone was all silk and venom.
Steve’s mouth open and shut, his brow furrowing as he tried to figure it out. Loki had never been a literal mind-reader before.
“How did you-?”
“Darcy confessed,” Loki informed him, curtly. “I had hardly to look at her funny and she blurted out the whole story.” He smiled with distant amusement, eyes half-lidded. “For some reason people oft lose the ability to lie very convincingly around me. Even when it comes to lies of omission.”
“Takes one to know one, you mean,” Steve offered in return, brusque. He’d no idea what was up with the attitude Loki was working, but he was burning through all the goodwill Steve had developed towards him exceptionally fast. Like that, he was back to the old feelings of mistrust and barely restrained resentment.
Loki was unmoved. “Something like that.”
“What the heck’s gotten into you all of a sudden? I thought-”
“You thought what, Captain? That I was ‘safe’? That I was powerless? That I could be tolerated, that I was alright to be around now because I was forced to operate at the same level, that at last you understood me?”
“Yeah,” Steve retorted, “you know what; I did. I did think I understood you. All this time, it was hard to think of you as anything other than an alien, because that’s how your actions always seemed to me: alien. But these past couple of days, I’ve thought, ‘You know, he’s not so bad. Who knows, maybe even underneath it all he might actually be a decent guy’.” He looked Loki up and down, angry and disgusted. “But now I guess you’re trying to tell me that I’m wrong.”
Loki drew in a breath, up at his full height, bristling. “You were wrong the moment you supposed that you and I could have anything in common.”
With a ding the elevator door slid open. Loki moved to exit. As soon as he saw that, Steve lunged, blocking the way from him by stretching his arm and part of his upper body across the door.
“No. You don’t get to walk away in the middle of this,” Steve ordered. “Not until you’ve helped me with that kid. You promised.”
Loki scowled at him. “I made no such promise.”
“Maybe not in so many words,” Steve replied, hot. “But I need your help on this. You’re the only shot I’ve got, and that’s more important to me than whatever issues it is that you’re having.”
“Get out of my way,” Loki snapped.
“No,” Steve refused. The sorcerer leaned in, the confines of the elevator making it possible to look down into his face at such an angle that it seemed like he was looming over him.
“Remove yourself from my path, mortal, or I will-”
“…Um.” They were both interrupted by the meek sound of a throat clearing.
Loki and Steve slowly turned their heads to discover three SHIELD office workers standing there, waiting for the elevator, all of them with looks on their faces like they might be about to wet themselves.
“It’s okay,” the one in the middle, a bespectacled man that looked like an engineer, said feebly. “We’ll just catch the next one.”
Some of the tension that had been riding Steve broke off, crumbling. He turned his head and exchanged a look with Loki.
By some silent accord, Steve dropped his arm. Loki slid a step back. The elevator doors closed again, trapping them in there alone. They both gazed straight ahead, arms limply at their sides, and didn’t say anything, didn’t look at or touch one another.
The way Steve figured it was that they’d both lost control and were both embarrassed. Maybe for different reasons, but still.
“Seriously,” he said, after the silence had thickened to the point to be considered too awkward, “what’s the deal? You - don’t have to talk about it, if you really don’t want to, but I can’t help feeling that I’m owed some sort of explanation.”
It took Loki several seconds to respond. When he did every syllable was grated, like he needed to force them out past his teeth.
“I dislike being seen as weak.”
Steve was taken aback. “I can guarantee that I will never think of you as weak. I’ve been almost killed by you one too many times to ever think that.”
Loki shook his head ruefully. “There is more than one type of vulnerability.”
“You’re upset that I thought you might be feeling like you needed a shrink?” He supposed he had heard slightly less crazy explanations. “I…I don’t even know if I need to apologize for that. It’s not much of a stretch. Pretty much anyone can see that you’ve been through a lot.”
“I am incredibly damaged,” Loki concurred with such bluntness it took Steve’s breath away. “But I’m capable of managing my own affairs. I function, from one day to the next. And my mind is a chaotic enough space without anyone’s fingers in it but mine own.”
He stood there and breathed in and out, and for once it really hit Steve just how hard it had to be sometimes to even do that much. That Loki was easily more messed up than anyone on the team - and considering who they had on their roster, that was really saying something.
“If it wasn’t for you, then, why did you go to Maine?” Not that it really mattered anymore. But Steve needed something else to focus on.
Loki closed his eyes briefly, rubbing at his forehead.
“They have a patient there - a young woman with an incredibly fragile mind and an equally powerful affinity for chaos magic,” he explained tiredly. “The healers are doing what they can for the former, but they’ve no real experience with the latter. Your Agent Coulson thought I might take an interest in the case.”
Steve watched him. “So, have you? Are you going to help her?”
Loki’s eyes moved, but he wasn’t looking at him. “She could be extraordinary, if she learned how to control it,” he breathed. “Her power would be beautiful. I want to see that.”
Steve gathered that was supposed to be a yes.
“Good. Uh…I’m glad to hear that,” he offered.
The elevator finally reached the right floor. They exchanged a look after the door opened, each waiting for the other to go first.
Steve made a gesture with a semi-forced, sheepish smile, a look which to his surprise Loki weakly returned, and they stepped off at the same time.
Apparently now that they’d had their little blow-out, they were back to being able to work together once more.
“So,” Loki began, sounding much more composed, “why don’t you go ahead and tell me whatever this was you learned.”
*
It took less time than Steve would’ve thought for him to relate everything to Loki. Rumiko’s story. The way that the strange, dark game she had played had worked. How they thought Gregory had accidently gotten caught in the middle.
When he had finished he lifted his eyes up to examine Loki.
The sorcerer was leaning against the wall with one arm folded across his midsection, the pointer finger of his free hand pressed against his mouth. He was considering the information with deep scrutiny.
“It all makes a kind of sense,” he said, at last.
“Does it?” Steve asked. “I have to admit, I’m still not sure how we get from this game that kids play to this fear spirit or whatever following Gregory Mitchell around.”
Loki gave him a look of nearly condescending impatience. “The ‘game’, as you call it, obviously has its roots in some other, older tradition,” he said flippantly. “The steps to it contain everything necessary to perform a summoning ritual.”
“Summoning ritual?” Steve repeated, not so much not following as uncertain he wanted to.
“The use of fingernail clippings to bind the creature to one’s personal essence, and as a sacrifice. The speaking of commands out loud as invocation. The darkness, the knife, the fire.” Loki ticked it off on his upraised fingers. “Even the premise of the game itself - it creates a form, a contract that the summoned creature must follow. The terms are that it has to find a host in order to remain in this realm, otherwise it be cast back to where it came from.”
Steve all but gaped at him, taking it in.
“Are you telling me,” he finally asked, slow, “that every time teenagers in Japan play this game, they’re unknowingly summoning up an evil spirit?”
“As long as they do everything the way they’re supposed to, it can do them no harm.” Loki shrugged. “But this girl you spoke of failed to follow instructions. What she called forth found a body to attach itself to. That it was not the same soul that originally entered into contract with it is irrelevant.”
“So what do we do now?” Steve asked. “Can we use the same ritual to send it back again?”
Loki shook his head. “Too late. It won the game - it ‘found’ the boy. The spell that first drew it here can do nothing to it now.”
“There has to be something,” Steve insisted, sounding as anxious as he felt. He couldn’t begin to think they’d gone through all this for nothing, no answers.
“There might be a way,” Loki stated.
Steve looked at him unblinkingly, hopeful. He waited.
“Well?”
Loki gave a smirk, a slightly less malevolent version of a look Steve realized he recognized. It was a look that spoke of excitement about creating trouble and facing something dangerous.
“On this plane of existence there’s nothing we can do to hurt it. It has no physical self. But elsewhere is another story.”
“Elsewhere, like…where?” Steve asked slowly, suspicious.
“Inside the boy’s dreams,” Loki explained, like it was the most straightforward thing in the world. “His mind.”
Steve tried to wrap his head around that. Funny how this whole misadventure kept finding whole new ways to push his limits. Here when he’d thought he didn’t even have any limits left.
“You…we can do that?”
Still smiling, Loki simply nodded.
Steve took a deep breath. Anything he could do, he’d said. He’d promised.
“Okay. Let’s go, then.”
*
Late that night found them back in Gregory Mitchell’s room.
The little boy was sound asleep in the bed. The doctor had sedated him again.
According to Loki, that was a good thing. They needed to be certain the boy stayed entirely asleep all the way through what they were about to do.
“Are you ready, Captain?” Loki asked.
Steve noticed that in his curled fist Gregory still clutched the pebble Loki had given him, and sagely decided against saying anything.
“I’m ready,” he answered.
Loki gestured to the floor. “Sit,” he commanded him. Steve went where he bid, crossing his legs and making himself comfortable as he could.
With a piece of what looked like ordinary chalk Loki sketched a figure eight around Steve and the bed that held Gregory. Then he started adding more around it, filling in complicated symbols and runes.
Steve tried not to watch him too hard, focusing instead on keeping his breathing nice and slow.
Loki would use his magic to open up a door into the world inside Gregory’s dreams. He’d send Steve’s mental self there, where he’d be able to fight a version of the monster that he could see and hit. Bringing it to a level that Captain America was actually capable of doing something about it.
Neither of them had the easy part. It would take intense concentration from Loki. And Steve…if the thing hurt him in the dream, it could very well be the death of him in reality.
Just another day in the life of a ‘hero’, he supposed.
“That should be it.” Loki straightened at last, briefly rubbing his hands against each other to roll off the last traces of chalk. “I can begin, now.” He paused, slowly pivoting to fix Steve with an unblinking look. “If it comes down to it I can probably give you some assistance in there, but for the most part it will be entirely up to you. I ask you again, Captain - are you ready?”
Steve felt unnerved, and had the idea that was exactly what Loki was going for. “Yeah,” he replied, more slowly this time. “Why do you ask?”
Loki’s smile was humorless. It looked like a mask. There was something strange, glimmering, in his eyes.
“Do you trust me?”
There was a nagging sensation, like Steve was supposed to think long and hard before he decided to answer. But he couldn’t find that there was anything left to weigh. He had already made up his mind he was doing this.
“Yes.”
Loki’s smile grew wider. It stretched the corners of his face; Steve half expected to see his skin start splitting at the seams.
“You realize that you’re putting yourself completely at my mercy,” Loki spelled out for him, smooth. “Your mind and soul will be in my hands. And while you are away, I will be the one who is left alone with your unconscious body.”
Steve felt a sudden surge of panic and anger. “Why are you doing this?” he demanded. He didn’t understand why Loki felt the need to keep pushing this way. Like he wanted to be hated.
Maybe he did prefer it. Maybe it was what he was used to - easier.
Loki never blinked. He only continued to look at Steve, gazing down at him, calmly.
“I want to make certain you understand. What exactly it is that you’re doing. What it is, fully, you’re running the risk of, when I ask you - do you trust me?”
This time Steve knew better than to answer right away, if only because he was sure if he did Loki would keep on asking.
Did he trust Loki? He had more than enough reasons, and experience, that he shouldn’t. What did he even know about the guy anyway?
He was Thor’s brother. He was a sorcerer. He had hurt people and was too proud to say that he was sorry. He seemed to know what to do with enemies better than he did friends.
He was willing to help other people when it came down to it. He made a lot of bad choices but now it looked like he was trying to walk a different path. He was both indifferent and terribly concerned with what other people thought of him.
He valued knowledge over ambition. He knew how to talk to little kids when they were scared. He could appreciate a joke.
“Yes,” Steve said, more firmly this time, completely certain. “I do trust you. But if we’re going to do this, I want you to promise me something. And I mean give me your word.”
“Oh?” Loki eyed him, snide but peaceable, like he had expected as much. “And what is it that you want me to promise?”
Steve grinned.
“If this works, and we both make it out okay, we’re taking a trip to that place in Brooklyn I told you about so you can finally try a decent slice of pizza.”
Loki blinked, taken aback.
“I…alright.” It took him a few more seconds to regain his composure, to manage a funny sort of smile. “Your terms are acceptable.”
“Great,” Steve said. “Now let’s get this show on the road.”
Loki nodded in agreement, his smile looking slightly more genuine.
Magic seemed to look different just about every time Steve saw it. He supposed it would have to, if it was for doing different things. Sometimes it really did almost seem scientific, like something that could be explained in the terms of the reality he already knew. Other times it was more chaotic with energy thrown around, seeming like a natural disaster.
The spell Loki was doing now looked the most like the wizardry of Steve’s childhood imagination. There were gestures and chanting in a language he couldn’t recognize, flickering candles and spooky flashes of light.
Steve closed his eyes. His head was starting to spin. Loki had warned him about this part.
There was a pulling sensation at his body, like he was being dragged off even though he wasn’t moving anywhere. He tried to keep his mind clear.
There was a perceptible shift in the world around him.
The next thing he knew, the sounds and sensations of that dark little room had faded away. He was standing on his feet somewhere. He could feel the layer of his costume against his skin, the cowl over his head, the weight of his shield on his arm. Steve opened his eyes.
A vast and strange, empty terrain stretched out before him. It looked like a dried-out desert. Overhead the sky was a faded yellow color, devoid of any clouds.
He could tell this was a dream-world, and not just by how it looked. Everything seemed…off. He could feel his arms and legs but not with the right amount of sensation. What he took in with his eyes and ears was weaker, detached. It felt realer than a dream but not quite as real as reality.
He wondered what pain would feel like here, though.
Not the time to think about that. Turning his head he looked around him. It was bright but he didn’t feel the need to shade his eyes. Straight ahead of him was what looked like a forest, covering rolling hills and surrounded by scrub. It seemed as good a place as any to start.
There wasn’t a single sound but that of his boots as he walked forward.
Which made it all the more obvious when from beneath him came a sharp, slow cracking sound.
Automatically he leapt back. Looking down he realized what he thought was simple dirt was much stranger than that. Beneath it there was some kind of unnatural looking honeycomb structure, large octagonal gaps filled in with thick frosted glass. Or maybe not all that thick, since it had started to break when he put his weight on it.
He had to look around carefully but was able to pick out where the gaps were. He continued walking. Some of them he maneuvered his path around, others he had no choice but to gingerly walk over - or bolt across, when they started to give that warning creak.
It took longer to reach the edge of the forest than it had looked like it would from the other side. But eventually he made it.
He couldn’t tell how far the forest stretched on for. The trees were tall, thinner around than Steve’s arm, but covered in dense foliage at the top in a variety of blue and purple hues. The ground seemed to roll without moving, leading to twisting natural paths.
Walking in there should be easy enough. After what happened in the desert though, he was on his guard. Sliding his shield across his shoulder onto his back he began cutting a path through.
It was still unnaturally quiet, motionless, no sounds save for when he breathed. His hands brushed silently across the trees’ trunks. The ground absorbed his steps like sponge.
“Greggy!” he decided to try calling out. “Greggy, can you hear me? It’s me, Captain America!”
He yelled out at the expanse at the top of his lungs but got no reply.
Loki hadn’t really told him what to expect once he was in here. He’d spoken like it’d be easy to figure out. Steve supposed he had thought the spirit or whatever it was would’ve appeared in front of him right away. He didn’t think he’d have to go searching for it like the world’s most clueless knight in shining armor.
Well, nothing to do but keep moving forward. Maybe whatever was on the other side of the forest would offer him more answers than this.
As soon as he broke free of the forest’s cover and walked the first couple yards onto the flattest meadow he’d ever seen, warning bells of panic went off in Steve’s head, his instincts picking up on something.
What did they say: be careful what you wish for?
There was a sound from before him, a low deep grumble, like a growl and a snarl mixed together, and coming from something really big.
Slowly, very gradually, he lifted his head. He looked up…and up…and up.
Steve sucked in a breath.
It was massive. Covered in dark fur with a squat body and four limbs. Outside of that, it was strangely hard to describe.
Maybe he just couldn’t wrap his head around what he looked at. It seemed like a mix between the picture Loki had shown him, a giant grizzly bear and…he wasn’t sure what else. What he’d thought the monster living inside his closet was supposed to look like when he was a kid, maybe.
All he knew for certain was it had the biggest mouth he had ever seen, going from one side of its squat no-necked face to the other, filled with long sharp jutting teeth. Above the mouth was a pair of huge, black dead eyes, filled with hunger and evil.
And they were staring directly at him.
Steve took a reflexive step back, and quickly moved to grab his shield.
The monster breathed in a growl and then it gave an ear-splitting roar. It sank down onto four legs with a thud and galloped towards him.
He had a split second to decide: throw the shield, and risk being defenseless if it missed the mark, or hang onto it to defend himself?
He went with the second option just in time. As it reached him the thing pulled one front limb back and swiped at him with claws the size of his forearm.
He braced his legs and ducked his head, lifting the shield up to cover him. The blow ricocheted off with a metallic slicing sound and a bang. The monster roared again, angry.
Taking advantage of the opening he pushed forward and used his shield to bash it in the nose.
It stumbled back with a bellow of pain. While it was distracted Steve turned and with a glance back he bolted.
He wanted to stand his ground but it was far too close for comfort. Better to try wearing it down with a chase, lead it somewhere else and see if he couldn’t formulate a different strategy.
So he ran. Fast as he could, back through the forest, back towards the desert, with a creature bigger than a tank and fueled entirely by terror in hot pursuit of him the entire way. It never lost track of him. Even when he was too far ahead to see it he could hear its heavy tread, hear it growl and breathe.
And then he made the mistake of heading into the swamp, where he sank into the mud.
Where he ended up stuck all the way to his arms, unable to move with the monster right behind him and getting ever closer, while Steve called in futility at Loki for help.
He was going to be eaten alive and Loki wasn’t even pretending not to laugh at him.
“What’s the matter, Captain? I thought you trusted me,” that disembodied voice sneered.
Steve shut his eyes and let his face rest on the side of his cheek in the mud. He was too furious and frustrated in this moment to even feel afraid.
Yeah, he thought. Yeah; he had trusted Loki. He had thought he could actually believe in him and rely on him. And look where that had gotten him, pinned, helpless, with a giant man-eater close behind him…
And Loki was far too clever to leave him there like that.
Unless there was something he was trying to tell him.
Steve wasn’t sure if he was having an epiphany or just grasping at straws. Either way he sucked in air, filling his lungs, and stopped fighting to free himself from the pit. He let himself sink down into the mud.
He was covered past his nose and unable to look up when he heard a creaking shudder and a crash as the creature leapt through the air right where he had been, landing on the other side.
Great, Steve thought, now what?
Thrilled as he was to escape another close one he couldn’t hold his breath forever and he was even more stuck now than he’d been before.
From what sounding like far away there was a strange sound, like a howling of wind. Steve tried to lift his neck but it was hopeless.
Then there was a crack, the sizzle of fire, and a different howl - one that he recognized as coming from the monster’s mouth.
Its enraged, pained sounds still hadn’t stopped when something was lowered into the pit next to Steve and he found himself looking at one ornate end of a metal staff right in front of his face.
He swallowed some mud in the process but managed to free one arm to grab onto it. With relative ease he found himself hoisted up. His shoulder made some complaint but he didn’t dare let go. Once he was free and on the surface he dropped to his hands and knees, coughing.
A pair of familiar boots came into his field of vision. Steve looked up to find Loki standing over him in full armor. The dingy light glinted off the horns of his helmet.
“I told you that I would be able to assist you were it needed,” Loki remarked, mildly. “What - didn’t you believe it?”
Steve couldn’t resist glaring at him. “You could’ve just told me to duck, instead of having to be a wise guy about it.”
“I had faith that you would be clever enough to figure it out on your own.” Loki smirked. “Thank you for not disappointing me.”
Steve had this weird feeling like if Thor were there, he’d be laughing right about now.
He didn’t have an Asgardian’s sense of humor though. He only shook his head and started climbing to his feet.
“Need a hand?” Loki offered, but Steve brushed him off.
“No, no. I’m good.” Glancing around he retrieved his shield from where it lay and reached to adjust his cowl. He turned to look at their foe - one front limb was blackened from where Loki had set its fur on fire and it was favoring that one slightly.
But it rotated to face them. And now it just looked really mad.
Frothing spit dripped from between the teeth in its bared maw. Its whole huge body seemed to vibrate with its snarl. It was preparing itself for a charge.
Steve shifted his stance, getting ready to move as he brought his shield up. Loki twirled his staff around once before adopting a more battle-ready pose, gripping it in both hands. They stood side by side, backing each other up, shoulders practically touching.
“I’ll hit him low,” Steve nodded, offering. “You hit him high.”
Loki agreed, “Sounds like as good a plan as any.”
Without moving from their positions their eyes met, and on a wordless agreement they both launched themselves at the monster at once.
And this time, there wasn’t any room left for doubt.
*
It was the next night and Tony was standing by the front gate outside of the base, smirking proudly to himself as his driver drove up to him in his newest car, the one he’d been bragging about all week.
As the driver got out, Tony reached out a hand, gesturing he should toss the keys over.
The CEO’s smile disappeared in confusion and dismay as just when they were about to reach him, a hand suddenly shot out from beside him and snatched the keys out of midair.
Tony swiveled to find Loki standing next to him, wearing normal ‘mortal’ clothes and a smug look of his own.
“Uh, hey,” Tony objected, angry and off-put. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
He fell silent as a second person entered his field of vision: Steve, who grinned at him.
“You said I could borrow your car.”
Tony blinked several times before he registered that. “I was kidding! I didn’t think for one second you would ever actually take me up on that offer-”
“Uh huh. Well, too late.” Steve dismissively looked away from him and gave Loki a slight frown. “You’re not driving, though.”
Loki raised his eyebrows. Steve held out his palm, giving a severe look.
“Come on. In case we get pulled over, I’m thinking whoever’s behind the wheel should have an actual valid driver’s license.”
Loki relented and dropped the keys into his hand with a long-suffering sigh. He stalked off in the direction of the passenger’s seat door.
Steve looked back over at Tony, who was still visibly bewildered.
“Thanks.” Steve gestured with the keys, happily. “I promise I’ll fill it up again before we bring it back.”
“What…you guys are going on a road trip?” Tony managed, his voice thick with disbelief.
“Yep. Next stop, New York.” Steve walked off, waving at him. “See you in a couple of days! And thanks again!”
Tony was still standing there gaping when they drove off. Through the open windows (of his brand new car) he could hear the faint strains of “Born This Way” blaring from the speakers, and Loki’s laughter.
His bemusement didn’t end when later on that evening he went into the Avengers’ kitchen.
Pinned to the center of the fridge with a couple of magnets was a crayon drawing by a small child, signed in the corner with the name of Gregory Mitchell. It was titled ‘My Heroes’ and was a picture of two figures.
One of them, decked out in red white and blue stars, was Captain America. And the other one, in green and gold with horns and all, was Loki.