Becoming, Part 1a
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Part 1a
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
The Velveteen Rabbit
-
Father had stayed through the evening, speaking in quiet tones of things that didn’t matter because all Loki cared about then was the sound of his voice. It was an anchor, holding him steady in the rush threatening to tear him apart.
Memories overlapped and shrugged out of his reach as he tried to make sense of them, everything before It felt like a different world compared to the quieter thoughts of the Safe Place that were his and not his all at once. They would not stay where he set them, and so he was forced to wade against their tide. The space behind his eyes aches.
“It will pass,” Father tells him.
Loki rubs at his temples.
It is a relief when Stark stays out of the workshop for the duration of the visit, if he had come down Loki thinks he might have fled. Father would have stopped him from reacting too poorly, but when he sees the Man of Iron Loki sees fire and blows, shattered glass, and a gentle hand running through his hair while holding him near. The conflicting instincts to both huddle closer and to attack leave him disoriented; it is all he can do to focus on the one thing that is the same in all his memories.
The archer.
Who hates him with a consistency that is reassuring.
It isn’t until the sky becomes dark that the clashing has at least become manageable. When he reaches for the thread inside there are only the echoes of calm that were always missing with Thor. It is… not what he was expecting from the Allfather. From the Hjaldrgoð.
Loki can still feel the remnants of Thor in his mind where it burns raw and aches. There has been too long for it to settle into his core and he is unsure whether the feeling will pass or if it stay with him until the end of his days. He pulls the fiber of Odin over him as a balm, letting the weight of it blanket him from the part that still cries for bloodfeardestruction.
He stands on the roof of the building, watching the wisps of light that flicker around in the wake of his father’s world walking. When he finally turns, Stark is standing in the doorway.
“So,” he says. “You’re living in my tower now.” Loki wraps his arms around himself. “We should probably set some ground rules.”
-
The document is held to the door of the refrigerator with an atrociously colored magnet. Stark calls it his “Skippy’s List.”
-
For want of anything else to do, Loki has followed Tony back to the lab. He stands there (Tony carefully plays with a gauntlet, fine-tuning joints that are already as finely tuned as possible) and looks around as though he is not sure where he is. Neither speaks and when Dummy makes cautious ventures toward Loki he does not seem to notice.
Eventually the (Asgardian? Fuck if he knows) drifts to the couch and lays his hand over the tablet sitting on its edge, picking it up gingerly to examine.
At three in the morning Loki excuses himself. Tony watches him make his way to what had been Thor’s level of the tower through the security feed. Watches as Loki moves casually around the floor. Watches as he shoves everything that belonged to Thor into a closet where he would not have to look at it.
Tony leaves the feed on all night.
Dummy cries at him from the corner. He walks over and wraps his arms around his bot.
-
On the far wall where an over extravagant screen used to hang are tacked papers and rune-writing pieced together in a stilted map of the last few months. It is incomplete, but he is still working. The twisting memories that overlap and try to combine with his own are beginning to smooth down, at least when Loki stands before the wall.
The windows of his chambers are darkened. Looking through at the wide skies and hints of green makes him miss the pastures and fields and ability to leave. He blocks them out so he will not have to be reminded that he can’t. That despite Father’s assurances, he is still a prisoner and he is not sure there is anywhere worth leaving to.
Stark is flippant with him. Not cruel, but Loki can feel the edges of memories where he is held tightly and smiled at and reassured, and despite everything he wants that back (except for the times he doesn’t because if life has taught him anything it’s that being vulnerable is the worst thing you can do to yourself). When Stark looks at him he can see anger and pain and frustration, all shadowed by a sadness that Loki does not dwell on too carefully.
He avoids the lab more often than not. While the tide of his clashing memories is beginning to ebb he can’t look at Stark without it rolling back to life. Some morningsafternoonsnights he finds himself standing by the doors without memory of having gotten there. He reached out and touched them once, quietly resting his palm against the glass, but they do not open.
He can see the Man of Iron manipulating the illusions he has cast around himself, face lit up by soft blues. The man does not turn in his direction. Loki allows himself a minute to Want, and then goes back to his quarters.
It is alright, it is still better than Thor. Stark at least has reason to hate him.
One of these times, before he breaks the habit (and he will break it) he passes through the common area and pauses by the kitchen the same way he did the lab. There is a glint out of the corner of his eye and he snaps to the right, fingers closing around the shaft of an arrow centimeters away from his face. The archer crouches alongside the couch, breathing quickly and strung tight as though he had been startled out of his seat. Another arrow is in his hand, ready to be nocked. Loki studies the tip (standard) of the one fired at him before putting it down on the nearest surface and leaving immediately.
He does not pass through the common area again while the Midgardians are present.
The majority of his time is spent combing through the living space that used to belong to Thor. Or perhaps still does, but though he has not spoken to the being that runs the tower since his reawakening he has been left under the impression that his not-brother is no longer welcome.
Unless that is what they want him to think.
-
There is noise and light and fire, and all he can feel is the pressure of the air against his suit and the weight of the bomb in his hands.
He talks to no one this time. Sometimes he does; sometimes it is Fury, or the Captain. Or Pepper. Sometimes the noise fades to the sound of her voice and tears trail down his cheeks in a way he cannot control.
Through his visor are glimpses of the city falling, then the split in the sky where blue cuts to blackness and he is flying into it. He sees the bomb leave his hands while the world goes dark around him, vision fading to nothing. There is the void and silence.
Where there should be the roar of the Hulk is a softer sound and he blinks his eyes open to his Loki pleading and Thor lifting him in the air again by the neck. Knuckles strained white.
Tony wakes up.
-
Across the room Steve watches workers rebuild the wall. The larger pieces of debris, shattered out of place at the force of Thor’s fall, had been cleared within a day of Odin’s final visit, but Steve is always finding smaller bits when he walks through the area.
He had offered to help them earlier; pleased to be involved with the process of hauling construction materials to the appropriate level of the tower, but when the building was underway he stepped aside. It didn’t hurt to watch though, in that he was learning from the process and also that he was worried about the number of unknowns in the Avengers’ living space. Both Tony and JARVIS reassured him that this particular team had been involved in previous construction (Tony sometimes joining them when he was bored or needed distraction) and that they were trust-worthy. It’s not that Steve doesn’t believe them, the men had all seemed nice enough, it’s just that he has begun to lean on the side of caution. And there is little else for him to do.
It’s nice to have something to occupy himself.
The night everything happened Steve had brought Loki down to the lab as requested, left him on the couch and walked back upstairs. On his way he was passed by Tony and the visiting king, neither looked at him as focused as they were on their destination. Steve sat on the couch in the common area and rubbed his face. The first person he sees afterwards is Bruce, and that isn’t until the next morning.
It was another week before he saw Clint.
Sometimes when there are no distractions, no battles to fight, it feels like everything is closing in around him, out of his control. Like the ice. He is cold and alone and there is nothing he can do.
Thor’s gone, no two ways about it, and if he were to come back Steve can’t quite wrap his mind around the Asgardian being welcome again (at least in the tower). It hurts. There had been moments with Thor, before all of this, that Steve had felt a kinship. Both struggling with a learning curve, a rediscovery of a world long changed and foreign, and for just a while he wasn’t so desperately alone in a place he didn’t understand.
Until Steve was reminded with shocking clarity that they were not alike at all.
It could be the same, he thinks. Or maybe not, but close. Three floors up is another who is probably more lost than Steve right now. But he’s not sure how to make that work, or if he even wants to.
He does manage to call Colonel Rhodes, who has since requested leave to come to New York. During their first conversation, the tenor in the man’s voice left Steve with the impression that James Rhodes Does Not Like Them around Tony. It is a feeling that Bruce shares. Steve isn’t sure about the rest of them, but the look in the other man’s eyes is protective and while knowing that Tony is watched over pleases him, being the focus of that distrust makes him nervous. Further conversations had all cemented that feeling.
He wonders if Pepper knows yet.
He doesn’t know who tells Fury, or when it happens. It should have been him, as team leader. But it wasn’t. All he knows is that soon after the king of Asgard leaves S.H.I.E.L.D. is knocking at their door, or Tony’s specifically, and because it’s Tony they are ignored.
For whatever reason, perhaps in the renovations after the Chitauri invasion the security of the tower had been heavily upgraded, none of the agents are allowed access. Neither are they successful in over-riding the blocks as Agent Coulson had been in the past (so Steve is told).
When the next mission comes in it should have been a lot more obvious what Fury was trying to do.
They’re called out for a negligible situation that mostly involves them standing around for intimidation purposes while field agents do the real work. After being released from duty their pit stop at S.H.I.E.L.D.’s New York office is hijacked. Agent Hill is waiting when they land and leads them, stone-faced, to a conference room.
“You cannot honestly expect us to let him stay with you.”
Fury would probably be pacing if he allowed himself to pace, but he doesn’t so he looms instead. Behind him stands Clint, a silent sentinel.
“Where else do you expect him to stay?” Bruce looks up, tired even though he hadn’t been needed. “He’s already proven that he is fully capable of escaping from every cell you throw him in. It only worked the last time because he was compelled to stay in it by Thor. And don’t ask me how that works, because I honestly have no idea.”
Tony clears his throat loudly; if he had his phone he probably wouldn’t have bothered looking at them.
“Can we talk about this later?”
“Got somewhere more important to be, Stark?”
“Actually, yeah, I do. I’ve got a factory inspection tomorrow and a twelve hour flight because Pepper won’t let me go in the suit, and considering I would have been on my way already if I hadn’t agreed to help out with this waste of time…” Fury doesn’t actually growl at him, but Steve thinks it might be close; Tony does not appear to notice. “Snap snap. Let’s go.”
“You want right to the point? Fine. The fuck were you thinking, negotiating with Thor’s father.”
“That he was standing in my living room with two hands full of god weapons and just got done destroying the floor’s structural integrity?”
Both Fury and Hill’s wrath are directed solely at Tony, it’s as though the rest of them aren’t in the room. Quite frankly, Steve is a little relieved. “I don’t care about what he did to your tower, I care about the fact that you, without the proper clearance or training, made promises to a foreign dignitary that you had no right to make.”
“Do you realize,” Agent Hill slams her hands on the table, “that anything we do now could be perceived as a breach of contract and an act of war?!”
“What exactly makes you think you have the authority to form a treaty with alien monarchy?!”
Tony looks Fury dead in the eye. Then he shrugs.
“Well there’s not a whole lot we can do about it now.”
“GodDAMNIT, Stark!”
Laughter bubbles hysterically out of Steve and leaves him gasping. Nothing. Like the ice. There is nothing they can do.
Tony flies out as soon as they get to the tower.
-
Loki does not sleep. He does not sleep so he should not dream.
But he drifts, phasing through memories until he lands in that of his resetting, only instead of Eitri it is Thor reaching out for him with blackened narrow eyes, expression like the void he fell through after the bridge. Loki is frozen, colder than the ice of Jotunheim. The pressure of the fingers dig into his neck and he chokes, can’t lift his hands to free himself because they had turned him off until he is startled out of it only by the sound of a loud crack. He freezes, still half collapsed over the couch, for a second believing the sound had been his neck, and then he looks up. On the other side of the quarters is the kitchenette, expensive marble counter broken though, ripped apart by magic.
Loki lifts it up and wedges it back in place.
-
He is not always sure what to do with himself.
Before, during the times he was tired and empty he would close his eyes and see the string that tied him together with Thor, could see the wantscravesneeds of the other pass through it and give him direction.
The string is gone now and in its place is a different one. One that has nothing it needs of him other than to Be.
It is unsettling. He is not used to having no direction. Even when Thor was banished, Loki had stretched out for that last mission (the Jotun) to guide him.
With spending so much time trying to wrap himself around his own memories and purge the wreckage of Thor left behind, it takes Loki longer than it should to realize he didn’t bring the tablet with him the night when he left the lab. The tablet that isn’t really his, but feels like his only connection to… everything. There is so little contact between him and anything else now, trapped as he is, that the loss of the device begins to feel like the void.
He needs it.
Outside the sky is dark, Loki waits because beyond movie nights (and it is Monday, so he has no fear of this occurring) most of the Avengers have secluded themselves away in their usual haunts by this time. Nonetheless, he slinks through the common area, as close to the wall as it can be without clinging to the surface. If they should appear he wants no one at his back. Luck is with him for once.
Down the half stair he stands in front of the glass, breath heavy. He can see no one inside; the machines are in their stations. Loki presses a hand to the glass.
Nothing happens, this does not surprise him.
“JARVIS?”
The pause that lasts is longer than he thinks should be necessary, but Loki is in no position to complain and is willing to wait. Finally, when it seems as though the A.I. has accepted he will not leave, there is a response.
“Mr. Odinson.”
“May I enter?”
“During Sir’s absence the lab is in lock-down.”
“But I need to- It is only for a small thing- the tablet, I… I left it.” He cranes his head to see the couch from the angle he is standing at. “There- on the couch. I thought I had put it down on a table, but Mr. Sta- but Stark must have moved it.”
“I’m afraid I cannot allow you to enter.”
“I’ll only be a moment.”
“The length of time is irrelevant. As dictated by security protocol the workshop and all sensitive data are under freeze until Sir returns.”
“What if I fetch one of the others?” He does not want to, but if he must… perhaps the Captain. “Or one of the robots could bring it to the door; I would not have to step inside.” The A.I. has either turned his attention elsewhere (which Loki does not believe for a second) or has decided to ignore him. “I hardly see why this is such a problem.”
As the silence continues on, Loki fights against the bubble of anger growing in the pit of his stomach. He has been reasonable. It is a simple request; there is no reason that one of the presented alternatives should not be accepted. A voice inside tells him that it would not be so bad to wait for Stark’s return, surely it will not be long, but it is overshadowed by the others that want everything to Bow.
“You will open this door,” he orders.
There is no response, which is answer enough.
Loki slowly turns to the closest camera, near-rage frothing up inside him, and holds eye contact just long enough for JARVIS to know exactly what he’s going to do.
He teleports inside.
JARVIS sets off the alarms.
-
Factory inspections are dull.
When Tony strolls into the tower, Happy following him with a takeout bag and coffee, Clint and Steve are waiting.
“Awww, honey, did you miss-”
Clint immediately stalks over and looks at Tony out of the corner of his eye like Everything Was His Fault (which is ridiculous because he just got here), grumbles, “Skynet and Frankenstein got into a pissing match while you were gone,” and then walks out of the building.
Tony raises an eyebrow at Steve who makes an aborted gesture that dwindles off into nothing.
“I kind of thought they’d get along?”
There are no words. Happy taps Tony’s shoulder with his styrofoam cup, which he takes, and hands the bag of burgers to Steve with a pat on the shoulder and a smile like he’s laughing at them on the inside.
Now that he thinks about it, Tony has no idea what Happy knows about the past couple months.
He should probably figure that out. Or you know, ask, but that’s boring.
Steve follows him through to lobby and past the security check point; they don’t speak until they are alone. In the elevator Tony leans back against the wall, not actually believing this is his life, while Steve stands by the buttons and runs his gaze along the ceiling.
“Alright, just- walk me through what happened.”
“Loki broke into the lab. We-”
“What? He’s allowed in the- okay, he was allowed- he’s been in the lab since. Hasn’t he?”
JARVIS speaks up from the ceiling. “Not since the day Mr. Borson visited, Sir.”
“Really?”
“I am quite certain.”
Steve’s brow furrows in thought. Tony rubs his forehead.
“But why would you-”
“Mr. Odinson’s entrance into the lab violated safety protocol. I was forced into action.” A long drink of coffee ensures that Tony is able to collect himself before speaking again as well as mentally review the last update he remembers making to the lab’s safety procedures.
“That is not written into the protocol J, I would know-”
“You gave me permission to adjust the emergency procedures to ensure your safety. It was a matter of personal discretion.”
“My safety? JARVIS, I wasn’t even in the same country.”
“After careful processing of the current dataset and previous encounters with Mr. Odinson I was able to extrapolate possible outcomes. Lock down seemed the most prudent option available.”
“Why did he want to get in the lab?”
“His reasons are irrelevant.”
“Of course they are relevant. JARVIS you are in time out. No talking for you.”
There is a noise that Tony associates with his A.I.’s version of an irritated huff and then the sound cuts completely. Tony picks at the lid of his coffee cup; his kids are learning his bad manners, they should spend more time with Pepper.
The elevator door opens and Tony walks into the common floor, Steve still shadowing him with burgers and trying to tell him something that Tony isn’t listening to. Across the room Natasha is perched delicately on the edge of the table, phone in hand. She glances up at them for a second and then ignores their existence. Bruce steps out from the kitchen wiping his hands with a towel, hair thoroughly windswept as though he had been outside for several hours. It’s adorable.
“Where you been, buddy?”
“The roof, I needed to- needed a moment away from… things. Anyway, JARVIS suddenly stopped responding on my way downstairs. Everything alright?” Tony rolls his eyes; Bruce looks concerned for a second, but then visibly tucks the expression away since Tony isn’t worried. “I suppose as long as he’s fine…”
For the first time since the elevator doors had closed Steve is able to get a word in. “Tony put him on time out.”
Bruce chokes on whatever he had been about to say; Tony waves him off.
“He’s sulking. It’s fine.”
As soon as the burger bag is on the table Tony takes one out and unwraps it. He thinks about poking Natasha and it’s enough for her to look at him because it’s like she’s psychic.
“Any word on hurricane Fury?”
“He’s still angry, if that’s what you mean.” She turns her attention back to her phone.
“Well obviously. I’d assumed that was his baseline with me.”
“Irritation is his baseline, this time he wants to shoot you.” Steve looks up, alarmed; Natasha gives him her version of a reassuring smile. “Not a fatal shot.”
Steve does not look reassured. Bruce smiles faintly from behind his hands.
“Where is Loki anyway?” Tony lets his eyes wander around the room, the repairs are basically done, but if he’s going to have to get the wall painted he might as well consider a new color. Steve gives an exasperated sigh, which probably means that’s what he was trying to tell him earlier. Natasha is matter of fact in her answer.
“In the Hulk Tank.”
“… you locked him up?!”
“The choice was either him or Doctor Banner after the alarm sounded.” Bruce winces a little as she gestures to him. “And at this point Bruce is the safer of the two to be left to his own devices. I watched the feed Tony, I saw him teleport inside. It was clearly breaking in. Precautions had to be taken.”
“Did anyone ask why he needed to get inside?”
A chair creaks as Steve settles down into it, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Sparks blew out of something when we got there, then Clint dropped down from the ceiling and Loki- it was-… he clammed up a bit.”
“He’s an alien with a history of hostility and aggression.” Natasha tucks her phone away. “Action first, questions later.” Tony grumbles in what Pepper would most likely call petulance.
“You have a history of hostility and aggression.”
“And that is exactly what S.H.I.E.L.D. did when Clint and Coulson brought me in. Do not act like he is above protocol because you got attached.”
Steve stands.
“Why don’t we get him, clear everything up.”
“No.” They all look over at him, but Tony doesn’t care. “You can all stay here; I am going to go fix whatever mess you made.” He looks firmly from Natasha to Steve and back again, able to hear the mom noise Steve is about to make before it comes out of his mouth. “Watch the video feed for all I care, but no one’s coming with me.”
“Tony-”
“No one, Rogers.”
When Tony opens the door to the Hulk-proof room in the tower (a veritable play pen of everything he’s discovered Bruce’s green rage monster enjoys) Loki is leaning against the far wall, knees tucked up to his chest. Instead of speaking, Tony rests against the door frame and waits him out. Loki runs a hand through his already mussed hair.
“I just wanted my tablet.”
Loki trails after him down to the lab. He slumps on a stool, arms crossed protectively in front of him. If JARVIS had a body Tony is pretty sure he would be doing the same.
The first thing Tony does after watching Loki sit is walk briskly to the couch, pick up the tablet, and plop it down on the table in front of him. The other man reaches to it slowly, fingers brushing the edge, and then snaps out to grab it; holding it close to him as though he thinks Tony will change his mind.
The second thing Tony does is pause all but the most necessary of JARVIS’s functions so that he has the A.I.’s complete attention.
“Right, no more of this.” Still hugging the tablet gently to his chest, Loki glares at him. “Obviously there are some problems here, but you are not going to resort to petty squabbling. Either of you. What do you have to say for yourselves?”
“Your machine is unstable,” Loki grumbles. JARVIS doesn’t say anything.
“Don’t be childish, J. You’re allowed to talk now.”
“I have done nothing I regret.”
“I believe he requested that you stop being childish.”
“It was an objective statement of a fact. However, if you would like me to become subjective there are many other-”
“Okay- okay, relax kiddos.”
“They will lock me away eventually,” Loki glances at Tony. “I do not see how the timing makes any difference.”
“They will not-”
“In the interest of your safety, Sir-” JARVIS starts to interrupt; the Asgardian bristles and Tony keeps talking because what else is he supposed to do.
“-because I have an agreement with Odin. They aren’t allowed to.” The desk chair rolls slightly as Tony drops down onto it. “Can we be nice to each other for a few minutes? Dad has a headache.” Loki looks down at the tablet in his hands, stares at it very intently, then looks back at Tony from under his lashes. His tone is not as adamant as Tony expects it to be.
“You are not my father.”
“I know that, I know. It’s an expression.” The desk chair leans back until he is just at risk of falling, and Tony takes a minute to close his eyes. “We’re going to have to talk about feelings, aren’t we?” He’s tired of talking, would really rather they not do this right now, but that isn’t choice. “How does feelings-talk start? Can we stay not bitter for a few minutes? Because that would be fantastic. Should I get like a talking stick? Pass it around, take turns? That’s a thing, right?”
You brings him a socket wrench which isn’t even remotely a talking stick, but whatever, except Loki ignores that Tony is holding it and speaks anyway.
“Your A.I. over-reacts and also hates me. I have very distinct memories from before of being locked in and out of places for no discernible reason.”
“Reasons for each instance have been recorded in the security log. He has also neglected to mention that all such occurrences were justified by the moment when he attempted physical harm on your person.”
“He has been deliberately making my life unnecessarily difficult since my initial arrival.”
“Mr. Odinson’s ability to form balanced and appropriate responses to negative stimuli is underwhelming.”
“I am not the one resorting to unprovoked pettiness.” Locking eyes with Tony, Loki snarls. “Your machine is having delusions of grandeur. I’m sure if you asked nicely the dwarves would come and fix it.” Tony sighs.
“This is obviously a failed experiment.”
“I have spoken with Misters Brokkr and Eitri and can assure you that they do not believe I need fixing.”
“They have been wrong in the past.”
“Oh my god, shut up.” Tony groans, burying his face in his arms, now crossed on the desk. “I will make you sit in the corner and hug each other!”
JARVIS is silent. Loki looks suitably horrified.
Then he appears to actually process what was said and, like a dam has burst, breaks into helpless uncontrollable laughter. He collapses sideways onto the table, shoulders shaking; his heels on the rungs of the stool the only thing keeping him from falling off of it.
“I’m serious; he’ll put on one of the suits.”
There’s a snort.
Tony ignores him until the laughing has stopped.
-
“So I’ve got to ask.” Stark says from across the room, buried in a new project that Loki doesn’t feel comfortable asking about. “I was used to seeing you around here a little more, why didn’t you come down?”
“I did, but was not allowed access. I am not a fool, nor do I require your pity. Now that everything is back as it once was I am no longer wanted here; I can take a hint.”
It takes a second, but Stark turns to him in confusion and then gives a hard look to one of the cameras Loki knows is there. He doesn’t confront the issue.
-
Loki starts coming down to the lab more often. More often being relative to the never that it had been before. Once a week, or if he finds himself at the doors again (he knocks now, because the A.I. still won’t let him in unless prompted by his creator).
They do not always have good days but they are better, he thinks, than many he has had before. When he was alone.
JARVIS still does not like him, which is fine because Loki does not like JARVIS either; however he does feel (a little) bad for the machines who have been caught in their crossfire. He is shadowed by one of them most times he visits; they rotate, but Loki believes Dummy is his most constant minder.
Though he can feel their eyes on him the machine does not reach out- and now that he is sure that is what was happening he can more easily identify the action- until his eighth visit.
Again there is the feather-like brush against his senses, an almost touch like a hand floating just beyond the edge of his peripheral vision, and this time Loki reaches out with his mind to wrap around it. Dummy buzzes. Loki can feel the machine as though there is body heat leaching into the silence between them. They stand and do not speak for some time. The machine comes closer.
-Unit Designation Hallr threat to Creating Unit?
Loki looks again to Stark, standing by one of the suits with its panels open to view the circuitry, the other machines flank him. You turns to them as if he is listening.
There is a touch on his wrist causing Loki to turn back, eyes meeting with Dummy’s visual sensor.
No.
They are all still and moments later Stark straightens and faces him, perhaps alerted by the lack of noise that usually generates from the machines’ movements, eyes darting around at the occupants of the room. Loki tries to smile at him in a way that is not alarming, then he returns to the couch.
Dummy leaves the link open. It is like someone is sitting beside him.
It stays open even when Loki leaves the lab
-
The others take longer to speak to him, but while he waits Loki becomes accustomed to the input of sensory details that Dummy feeds him through the connection. Some are meaningless, process narrations that the machine might not even realize he is sending, and others with strict purpose in mind. Questions, status reports, and occasionally a pull (an attempt to be gentle from something without practice at delicacy). The overall feeling is akin to standing in a misting rain, present enough that you know it’s there, but a sensation that can fade from notice through continued exposure.
When the thought occurs to Loki he wonders if this was how Thor had considered him through most of their (his) adolescence.
Something you know is there, but usually forget.
He shakes the thought away. A voiceless question brightens in the corner of his mind (a sign that the machine is focused on another project, else he would have used the articulation of thoughts he preferred) and Loki pushes calmness and assurances that he is fine in Dummy’s direction.
-
It is Dummy calling him Hallr that first causes it to drift through his thoughts.
Most of Loki’s active memories still draw from before; he can feel the drive at the edge of his senses that sometimes spurs him on against the all-seeing A.I, but they are mostly contained. Adjusting becomes easier when he takes the Other memories and surrounds them with the new ones he is creating. The lab is still a safe place, it is just different.
“I was someone else.” Stark’s response is garbled around the tool held in his mouth
“Hrmrhn?”
“Before, when I was still- I was someone else. Do you think it is still there?”
“… it was mostly the blocker, I think. I assumed everything was just absorbed into you. Don’t you remember what happened?”
“I do. But it still…”
Dummy had tried to bring him a smoothie earlier, Stark had taken it as he passed. After the machine droops Loki swings himself up to sit on the edge of the table. Now he reaches out and traps the machine’s claw in his hands, lifting it to eye level for study. It whirs in his loose grasp. Loki sighs and rests the claw back on his knees, petting the joint where it meets the arm and looking directly into the visual sensor attached to the robot.
“I’m sorry.”
“You say something?”
Stark walks over, wiping his hands on a filthy rag; Loki scoots away in as dignified a manner as he can so the rag won’t touch him when the inventor leans on the table.
“I killed it.”
“Who?” Stark seems remarkably unaffected by the words.
“The other one.”
“What? He was- no, he was you.”
“It was not a he Stark, there was not enough time for it to become a he.” Stark keeps staring at him, expression slowly shifting into something akin to horror. “And it wasn’t me. Not really.” His nails catch on edges as he drags them over the arm’s surface. “I’m sorry, I know you liked it.”
“Can we not-” Stark’s voice chokes off, he looks torn between reassurance and… sorrow. Like he knows it is true. “Can we not call him an it? Even if it’s true. Can we just-” He stops. Loki nods.
-
When J and Loki decide they need to snip at each other until Tony has to tell them to shut up again, which is frequently, he ‘distracts’ JARVIS by asking him to do complicated tasks (that all three of them know he could complete in sleep mode) and Loki by asking questions.
One such day Loki is slouched on the couch afterwards slowly ripping a piece of paper to shreds. Tony can’t quite make out what the paper is, hopefully nothing important; he drops down beside the irate man to pester him.
“Tell me about it.” Frowning, Loki glances in his direction. “Asgard, what it was like growing up there. What growing up was like for you.”
Small pieces of paper keep dropping to the floor for a few more minutes, but when Loki runs out he crosses his arms, tucks his knees up closer to his chest, and begins to speak. He talks about the garden, about Eir and Odin, about Frigga. He talks about how he became a prince. He talks like he doesn’t think anyone will ask him this question ever again.
“Asgard is like a swamp. Fetid and rotting.” He reaches for another piece of paper. “Living things are in flux, they evolve, like your languages. Newness appears in the strangest places, but it is not wrong because it is new, because it is different. It is natural.”
“And Asgard isn’t.”
“No.”
Tony struggles with this new (old) Loki; it was not so much of a problem earlier, but now that Loki is regularly in the lab again it feels like his face is getting rubbed in it. Occasionally he will look over and think it is his Loki before catching himself, or hours will pass and lull him into complacency before Loki does something that makes Tony remember and his chest ache.
The one saving grace is the genuine effort Loki appears to put into rebuilding his relationship with the bots, which makes Tony feel a little better. One of them is always trailing Loki when he is in the lab, usually Dummy, but (aside from JARVIS) they all seem to get on remarkably well with this Loki too.
The thing with JARVIS though, that is concerning. When he is cleaning up and Loki has excused himself to head back to his floor Tony puts a freeze on the doors and confronts his A.I.
“It was precautionary. He threw you out a window, Sir. It is the same Loki now.”
“I know that J, Jesus.”
“I do not understand how you can be so unconcerned-”
“Of course I’m concerned. But what happens if we alienate him? It’s going to go down all over again, only worse because this time it will be a personal vendetta against us. Please,” he rests his hand on the wall. “Please, just stop provoking him.”
He asks Loki to do the same, in slightly different terms, the next time he’s down.
It’s better, kind of. He at least doesn’t have to tell them to shut up as often.
-
Back in his quarters Loki finds a book about overcoming emotional abuse on the counter by his sink, propped up against the glass he set out to dry the previous afternoon.
In the early morning, after he has finished reading, he wraps himself with spells and walks undetected through the tower, lingering where he knows there are cameras to test if the technology will see through his castings.
It does not.
When Stark leaves the lab, Loki slips back in and stands quietly in the middle of the room, humming the wards he’s placed in the walls to life.
-
Just over a month after his return their commander appears with an entourage and corners him coming out of the lab. They are heavily armed, though it does not concern him; they would not act against the wishes of the King of Asgard (not yet). However Loki does not push his limits, he is tired of pushing.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Fury tells them. Loki sits, palms flat on the table and only looking at Fury because if he moves then every agent in the room might shoot him (even if being shot would not kill him, it certainly would not be comfortable). “If you are staying on Earth, because thanks to Stark we don’t have a goddamn choice, you are going to be useful. But the second you look like you’re going to throw another tantrum we will sic the Hulk on you, I don’t care what Odin says.” The captain shifts where he is standing. Doctor Banner is to his left, but Loki does not turn to view his response to the declaration. “Just because you’re playing nice now doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible for the deaths of thousands. You are a war criminal and the second I can treat you as such without risking intergalactic war I will. So for now, if you’re good, and you’re helpful, and you stay that way, then maybe I will slow down plans to kill you.”
Loki nods, and then they leave.
Tony escorts him to a meeting place once. They have him look at some images, documents describing what they would refer to as supernatural events and what Loki would refer to as child’s play. It does not last long. As soon as they have the information they want he is herded back to the black car they came in and driven to the tower.
He is still searching for a purpose. This is not a path he had considered, but it is something. There is time yet.
-
“Fucking Hammer,” Stark snarls one day.
Loki looks up from the tablet sitting on the table in front of him.
“Who?”
As if suddenly realizing he’s spoken out loud, Stark glances to him and then clears whatever he was working on off of the screen. “Nothing, no one. Just a… a guy. Don’t worry about it.” He trails off and pulls up the specs of the new suit again. Something larger this time, with posture hunched over like a beast. “Some ass that’s going to be bothering me again soon.”
If Loki had actually been reading he might have missed it, but he is not, so when he hears Stark grumble he pets the robot next to him and excuses himself from the room.
(Tried to get me killed)
In his quarters he is lying down on the couch, paging through online articles concerning Hammer Tech and its namesake on the tablet. He lofts a wordless question in Dummy’s direction and very quickly gets a response in the form of an impression of overwhelming badness that sinks in and won’t let go.
Loki hums under his breath and sits up.
The next morning Justin Hammer is found unconscious and tied to the hood of a S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle. When they get the call Loki is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, listening as JARVIS relays the audio through the tower speakers.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees the captain watching him. Loki goes back to his quarters.
-
The hacked network provides a constant stream of data on the head of Hammer Industries and his containment in one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s holding cells, possibly more restricted than is required. Dark and underground, isolated. Forgotten.
There is at one point an attempt to relocate him to a more comfortable area of the locked down facility; the paperwork and evidence thereof is easily disposed.
The man is not moved.
Captain Rogers accesses the video log of Loki’s movements from the night before. What he finds are images of the man sitting quietly in his allocated quarters with a tablet, the glow from the screen lighting up his face. What he finds are websites and articles the man had browsed through at other times, complied in a history that is labeled with yesterday’s date.
What he does not find is the video log of Loki casting by the window; it is tucked away under firewalls, the time clock changing on the earlier footage so that it appears to run all night.
The captain does not request anything beyond these. Neither does he ask about the man’s activities. And if he does not ask, JARVIS is not required to tell him.
Justin Hammer is not released.
-
When they get back from Midgard Eitri drops into a chair, too tired for the forge, and runs a hand down his face.
“There is something wrong,” he looks at his brother. “I did not notice it before because we were tucking everything away, but it is as though he is covered in webbing.”
“What does it do?”
“I do not know. It glitters as if it is meant to be there. There are no obvious changes.”
Brokkr stares at the wall, thinking, and then looks back to his brother tersely. “We will have to take it off then.”
They begin to plan. It is in the crevices, it will not be easy.
Part 1b (stupid word limits)
Part 1a
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
The Velveteen Rabbit
-
Father had stayed through the evening, speaking in quiet tones of things that didn’t matter because all Loki cared about then was the sound of his voice. It was an anchor, holding him steady in the rush threatening to tear him apart.
Memories overlapped and shrugged out of his reach as he tried to make sense of them, everything before It felt like a different world compared to the quieter thoughts of the Safe Place that were his and not his all at once. They would not stay where he set them, and so he was forced to wade against their tide. The space behind his eyes aches.
“It will pass,” Father tells him.
Loki rubs at his temples.
It is a relief when Stark stays out of the workshop for the duration of the visit, if he had come down Loki thinks he might have fled. Father would have stopped him from reacting too poorly, but when he sees the Man of Iron Loki sees fire and blows, shattered glass, and a gentle hand running through his hair while holding him near. The conflicting instincts to both huddle closer and to attack leave him disoriented; it is all he can do to focus on the one thing that is the same in all his memories.
The archer.
Who hates him with a consistency that is reassuring.
It isn’t until the sky becomes dark that the clashing has at least become manageable. When he reaches for the thread inside there are only the echoes of calm that were always missing with Thor. It is… not what he was expecting from the Allfather. From the Hjaldrgoð.
Loki can still feel the remnants of Thor in his mind where it burns raw and aches. There has been too long for it to settle into his core and he is unsure whether the feeling will pass or if it stay with him until the end of his days. He pulls the fiber of Odin over him as a balm, letting the weight of it blanket him from the part that still cries for bloodfeardestruction.
He stands on the roof of the building, watching the wisps of light that flicker around in the wake of his father’s world walking. When he finally turns, Stark is standing in the doorway.
“So,” he says. “You’re living in my tower now.” Loki wraps his arms around himself. “We should probably set some ground rules.”
-
The document is held to the door of the refrigerator with an atrociously colored magnet. Stark calls it his “Skippy’s List.”
-
For want of anything else to do, Loki has followed Tony back to the lab. He stands there (Tony carefully plays with a gauntlet, fine-tuning joints that are already as finely tuned as possible) and looks around as though he is not sure where he is. Neither speaks and when Dummy makes cautious ventures toward Loki he does not seem to notice.
Eventually the (Asgardian? Fuck if he knows) drifts to the couch and lays his hand over the tablet sitting on its edge, picking it up gingerly to examine.
At three in the morning Loki excuses himself. Tony watches him make his way to what had been Thor’s level of the tower through the security feed. Watches as Loki moves casually around the floor. Watches as he shoves everything that belonged to Thor into a closet where he would not have to look at it.
Tony leaves the feed on all night.
Dummy cries at him from the corner. He walks over and wraps his arms around his bot.
-
On the far wall where an over extravagant screen used to hang are tacked papers and rune-writing pieced together in a stilted map of the last few months. It is incomplete, but he is still working. The twisting memories that overlap and try to combine with his own are beginning to smooth down, at least when Loki stands before the wall.
The windows of his chambers are darkened. Looking through at the wide skies and hints of green makes him miss the pastures and fields and ability to leave. He blocks them out so he will not have to be reminded that he can’t. That despite Father’s assurances, he is still a prisoner and he is not sure there is anywhere worth leaving to.
Stark is flippant with him. Not cruel, but Loki can feel the edges of memories where he is held tightly and smiled at and reassured, and despite everything he wants that back (except for the times he doesn’t because if life has taught him anything it’s that being vulnerable is the worst thing you can do to yourself). When Stark looks at him he can see anger and pain and frustration, all shadowed by a sadness that Loki does not dwell on too carefully.
He avoids the lab more often than not. While the tide of his clashing memories is beginning to ebb he can’t look at Stark without it rolling back to life. Some morningsafternoonsnights he finds himself standing by the doors without memory of having gotten there. He reached out and touched them once, quietly resting his palm against the glass, but they do not open.
He can see the Man of Iron manipulating the illusions he has cast around himself, face lit up by soft blues. The man does not turn in his direction. Loki allows himself a minute to Want, and then goes back to his quarters.
It is alright, it is still better than Thor. Stark at least has reason to hate him.
One of these times, before he breaks the habit (and he will break it) he passes through the common area and pauses by the kitchen the same way he did the lab. There is a glint out of the corner of his eye and he snaps to the right, fingers closing around the shaft of an arrow centimeters away from his face. The archer crouches alongside the couch, breathing quickly and strung tight as though he had been startled out of his seat. Another arrow is in his hand, ready to be nocked. Loki studies the tip (standard) of the one fired at him before putting it down on the nearest surface and leaving immediately.
He does not pass through the common area again while the Midgardians are present.
The majority of his time is spent combing through the living space that used to belong to Thor. Or perhaps still does, but though he has not spoken to the being that runs the tower since his reawakening he has been left under the impression that his not-brother is no longer welcome.
Unless that is what they want him to think.
-
There is noise and light and fire, and all he can feel is the pressure of the air against his suit and the weight of the bomb in his hands.
He talks to no one this time. Sometimes he does; sometimes it is Fury, or the Captain. Or Pepper. Sometimes the noise fades to the sound of her voice and tears trail down his cheeks in a way he cannot control.
Through his visor are glimpses of the city falling, then the split in the sky where blue cuts to blackness and he is flying into it. He sees the bomb leave his hands while the world goes dark around him, vision fading to nothing. There is the void and silence.
Where there should be the roar of the Hulk is a softer sound and he blinks his eyes open to his Loki pleading and Thor lifting him in the air again by the neck. Knuckles strained white.
Tony wakes up.
-
Across the room Steve watches workers rebuild the wall. The larger pieces of debris, shattered out of place at the force of Thor’s fall, had been cleared within a day of Odin’s final visit, but Steve is always finding smaller bits when he walks through the area.
He had offered to help them earlier; pleased to be involved with the process of hauling construction materials to the appropriate level of the tower, but when the building was underway he stepped aside. It didn’t hurt to watch though, in that he was learning from the process and also that he was worried about the number of unknowns in the Avengers’ living space. Both Tony and JARVIS reassured him that this particular team had been involved in previous construction (Tony sometimes joining them when he was bored or needed distraction) and that they were trust-worthy. It’s not that Steve doesn’t believe them, the men had all seemed nice enough, it’s just that he has begun to lean on the side of caution. And there is little else for him to do.
It’s nice to have something to occupy himself.
The night everything happened Steve had brought Loki down to the lab as requested, left him on the couch and walked back upstairs. On his way he was passed by Tony and the visiting king, neither looked at him as focused as they were on their destination. Steve sat on the couch in the common area and rubbed his face. The first person he sees afterwards is Bruce, and that isn’t until the next morning.
It was another week before he saw Clint.
Sometimes when there are no distractions, no battles to fight, it feels like everything is closing in around him, out of his control. Like the ice. He is cold and alone and there is nothing he can do.
Thor’s gone, no two ways about it, and if he were to come back Steve can’t quite wrap his mind around the Asgardian being welcome again (at least in the tower). It hurts. There had been moments with Thor, before all of this, that Steve had felt a kinship. Both struggling with a learning curve, a rediscovery of a world long changed and foreign, and for just a while he wasn’t so desperately alone in a place he didn’t understand.
Until Steve was reminded with shocking clarity that they were not alike at all.
It could be the same, he thinks. Or maybe not, but close. Three floors up is another who is probably more lost than Steve right now. But he’s not sure how to make that work, or if he even wants to.
He does manage to call Colonel Rhodes, who has since requested leave to come to New York. During their first conversation, the tenor in the man’s voice left Steve with the impression that James Rhodes Does Not Like Them around Tony. It is a feeling that Bruce shares. Steve isn’t sure about the rest of them, but the look in the other man’s eyes is protective and while knowing that Tony is watched over pleases him, being the focus of that distrust makes him nervous. Further conversations had all cemented that feeling.
He wonders if Pepper knows yet.
He doesn’t know who tells Fury, or when it happens. It should have been him, as team leader. But it wasn’t. All he knows is that soon after the king of Asgard leaves S.H.I.E.L.D. is knocking at their door, or Tony’s specifically, and because it’s Tony they are ignored.
For whatever reason, perhaps in the renovations after the Chitauri invasion the security of the tower had been heavily upgraded, none of the agents are allowed access. Neither are they successful in over-riding the blocks as Agent Coulson had been in the past (so Steve is told).
When the next mission comes in it should have been a lot more obvious what Fury was trying to do.
They’re called out for a negligible situation that mostly involves them standing around for intimidation purposes while field agents do the real work. After being released from duty their pit stop at S.H.I.E.L.D.’s New York office is hijacked. Agent Hill is waiting when they land and leads them, stone-faced, to a conference room.
“You cannot honestly expect us to let him stay with you.”
Fury would probably be pacing if he allowed himself to pace, but he doesn’t so he looms instead. Behind him stands Clint, a silent sentinel.
“Where else do you expect him to stay?” Bruce looks up, tired even though he hadn’t been needed. “He’s already proven that he is fully capable of escaping from every cell you throw him in. It only worked the last time because he was compelled to stay in it by Thor. And don’t ask me how that works, because I honestly have no idea.”
Tony clears his throat loudly; if he had his phone he probably wouldn’t have bothered looking at them.
“Can we talk about this later?”
“Got somewhere more important to be, Stark?”
“Actually, yeah, I do. I’ve got a factory inspection tomorrow and a twelve hour flight because Pepper won’t let me go in the suit, and considering I would have been on my way already if I hadn’t agreed to help out with this waste of time…” Fury doesn’t actually growl at him, but Steve thinks it might be close; Tony does not appear to notice. “Snap snap. Let’s go.”
“You want right to the point? Fine. The fuck were you thinking, negotiating with Thor’s father.”
“That he was standing in my living room with two hands full of god weapons and just got done destroying the floor’s structural integrity?”
Both Fury and Hill’s wrath are directed solely at Tony, it’s as though the rest of them aren’t in the room. Quite frankly, Steve is a little relieved. “I don’t care about what he did to your tower, I care about the fact that you, without the proper clearance or training, made promises to a foreign dignitary that you had no right to make.”
“Do you realize,” Agent Hill slams her hands on the table, “that anything we do now could be perceived as a breach of contract and an act of war?!”
“What exactly makes you think you have the authority to form a treaty with alien monarchy?!”
Tony looks Fury dead in the eye. Then he shrugs.
“Well there’s not a whole lot we can do about it now.”
“GodDAMNIT, Stark!”
Laughter bubbles hysterically out of Steve and leaves him gasping. Nothing. Like the ice. There is nothing they can do.
Tony flies out as soon as they get to the tower.
-
Loki does not sleep. He does not sleep so he should not dream.
But he drifts, phasing through memories until he lands in that of his resetting, only instead of Eitri it is Thor reaching out for him with blackened narrow eyes, expression like the void he fell through after the bridge. Loki is frozen, colder than the ice of Jotunheim. The pressure of the fingers dig into his neck and he chokes, can’t lift his hands to free himself because they had turned him off until he is startled out of it only by the sound of a loud crack. He freezes, still half collapsed over the couch, for a second believing the sound had been his neck, and then he looks up. On the other side of the quarters is the kitchenette, expensive marble counter broken though, ripped apart by magic.
Loki lifts it up and wedges it back in place.
-
He is not always sure what to do with himself.
Before, during the times he was tired and empty he would close his eyes and see the string that tied him together with Thor, could see the wantscravesneeds of the other pass through it and give him direction.
The string is gone now and in its place is a different one. One that has nothing it needs of him other than to Be.
It is unsettling. He is not used to having no direction. Even when Thor was banished, Loki had stretched out for that last mission (the Jotun) to guide him.
With spending so much time trying to wrap himself around his own memories and purge the wreckage of Thor left behind, it takes Loki longer than it should to realize he didn’t bring the tablet with him the night when he left the lab. The tablet that isn’t really his, but feels like his only connection to… everything. There is so little contact between him and anything else now, trapped as he is, that the loss of the device begins to feel like the void.
He needs it.
Outside the sky is dark, Loki waits because beyond movie nights (and it is Monday, so he has no fear of this occurring) most of the Avengers have secluded themselves away in their usual haunts by this time. Nonetheless, he slinks through the common area, as close to the wall as it can be without clinging to the surface. If they should appear he wants no one at his back. Luck is with him for once.
Down the half stair he stands in front of the glass, breath heavy. He can see no one inside; the machines are in their stations. Loki presses a hand to the glass.
Nothing happens, this does not surprise him.
“JARVIS?”
The pause that lasts is longer than he thinks should be necessary, but Loki is in no position to complain and is willing to wait. Finally, when it seems as though the A.I. has accepted he will not leave, there is a response.
“Mr. Odinson.”
“May I enter?”
“During Sir’s absence the lab is in lock-down.”
“But I need to- It is only for a small thing- the tablet, I… I left it.” He cranes his head to see the couch from the angle he is standing at. “There- on the couch. I thought I had put it down on a table, but Mr. Sta- but Stark must have moved it.”
“I’m afraid I cannot allow you to enter.”
“I’ll only be a moment.”
“The length of time is irrelevant. As dictated by security protocol the workshop and all sensitive data are under freeze until Sir returns.”
“What if I fetch one of the others?” He does not want to, but if he must… perhaps the Captain. “Or one of the robots could bring it to the door; I would not have to step inside.” The A.I. has either turned his attention elsewhere (which Loki does not believe for a second) or has decided to ignore him. “I hardly see why this is such a problem.”
As the silence continues on, Loki fights against the bubble of anger growing in the pit of his stomach. He has been reasonable. It is a simple request; there is no reason that one of the presented alternatives should not be accepted. A voice inside tells him that it would not be so bad to wait for Stark’s return, surely it will not be long, but it is overshadowed by the others that want everything to Bow.
“You will open this door,” he orders.
There is no response, which is answer enough.
Loki slowly turns to the closest camera, near-rage frothing up inside him, and holds eye contact just long enough for JARVIS to know exactly what he’s going to do.
He teleports inside.
JARVIS sets off the alarms.
-
Factory inspections are dull.
When Tony strolls into the tower, Happy following him with a takeout bag and coffee, Clint and Steve are waiting.
“Awww, honey, did you miss-”
Clint immediately stalks over and looks at Tony out of the corner of his eye like Everything Was His Fault (which is ridiculous because he just got here), grumbles, “Skynet and Frankenstein got into a pissing match while you were gone,” and then walks out of the building.
Tony raises an eyebrow at Steve who makes an aborted gesture that dwindles off into nothing.
“I kind of thought they’d get along?”
There are no words. Happy taps Tony’s shoulder with his styrofoam cup, which he takes, and hands the bag of burgers to Steve with a pat on the shoulder and a smile like he’s laughing at them on the inside.
Now that he thinks about it, Tony has no idea what Happy knows about the past couple months.
He should probably figure that out. Or you know, ask, but that’s boring.
Steve follows him through to lobby and past the security check point; they don’t speak until they are alone. In the elevator Tony leans back against the wall, not actually believing this is his life, while Steve stands by the buttons and runs his gaze along the ceiling.
“Alright, just- walk me through what happened.”
“Loki broke into the lab. We-”
“What? He’s allowed in the- okay, he was allowed- he’s been in the lab since. Hasn’t he?”
JARVIS speaks up from the ceiling. “Not since the day Mr. Borson visited, Sir.”
“Really?”
“I am quite certain.”
Steve’s brow furrows in thought. Tony rubs his forehead.
“But why would you-”
“Mr. Odinson’s entrance into the lab violated safety protocol. I was forced into action.” A long drink of coffee ensures that Tony is able to collect himself before speaking again as well as mentally review the last update he remembers making to the lab’s safety procedures.
“That is not written into the protocol J, I would know-”
“You gave me permission to adjust the emergency procedures to ensure your safety. It was a matter of personal discretion.”
“My safety? JARVIS, I wasn’t even in the same country.”
“After careful processing of the current dataset and previous encounters with Mr. Odinson I was able to extrapolate possible outcomes. Lock down seemed the most prudent option available.”
“Why did he want to get in the lab?”
“His reasons are irrelevant.”
“Of course they are relevant. JARVIS you are in time out. No talking for you.”
There is a noise that Tony associates with his A.I.’s version of an irritated huff and then the sound cuts completely. Tony picks at the lid of his coffee cup; his kids are learning his bad manners, they should spend more time with Pepper.
The elevator door opens and Tony walks into the common floor, Steve still shadowing him with burgers and trying to tell him something that Tony isn’t listening to. Across the room Natasha is perched delicately on the edge of the table, phone in hand. She glances up at them for a second and then ignores their existence. Bruce steps out from the kitchen wiping his hands with a towel, hair thoroughly windswept as though he had been outside for several hours. It’s adorable.
“Where you been, buddy?”
“The roof, I needed to- needed a moment away from… things. Anyway, JARVIS suddenly stopped responding on my way downstairs. Everything alright?” Tony rolls his eyes; Bruce looks concerned for a second, but then visibly tucks the expression away since Tony isn’t worried. “I suppose as long as he’s fine…”
For the first time since the elevator doors had closed Steve is able to get a word in. “Tony put him on time out.”
Bruce chokes on whatever he had been about to say; Tony waves him off.
“He’s sulking. It’s fine.”
As soon as the burger bag is on the table Tony takes one out and unwraps it. He thinks about poking Natasha and it’s enough for her to look at him because it’s like she’s psychic.
“Any word on hurricane Fury?”
“He’s still angry, if that’s what you mean.” She turns her attention back to her phone.
“Well obviously. I’d assumed that was his baseline with me.”
“Irritation is his baseline, this time he wants to shoot you.” Steve looks up, alarmed; Natasha gives him her version of a reassuring smile. “Not a fatal shot.”
Steve does not look reassured. Bruce smiles faintly from behind his hands.
“Where is Loki anyway?” Tony lets his eyes wander around the room, the repairs are basically done, but if he’s going to have to get the wall painted he might as well consider a new color. Steve gives an exasperated sigh, which probably means that’s what he was trying to tell him earlier. Natasha is matter of fact in her answer.
“In the Hulk Tank.”
“… you locked him up?!”
“The choice was either him or Doctor Banner after the alarm sounded.” Bruce winces a little as she gestures to him. “And at this point Bruce is the safer of the two to be left to his own devices. I watched the feed Tony, I saw him teleport inside. It was clearly breaking in. Precautions had to be taken.”
“Did anyone ask why he needed to get inside?”
A chair creaks as Steve settles down into it, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Sparks blew out of something when we got there, then Clint dropped down from the ceiling and Loki- it was-… he clammed up a bit.”
“He’s an alien with a history of hostility and aggression.” Natasha tucks her phone away. “Action first, questions later.” Tony grumbles in what Pepper would most likely call petulance.
“You have a history of hostility and aggression.”
“And that is exactly what S.H.I.E.L.D. did when Clint and Coulson brought me in. Do not act like he is above protocol because you got attached.”
Steve stands.
“Why don’t we get him, clear everything up.”
“No.” They all look over at him, but Tony doesn’t care. “You can all stay here; I am going to go fix whatever mess you made.” He looks firmly from Natasha to Steve and back again, able to hear the mom noise Steve is about to make before it comes out of his mouth. “Watch the video feed for all I care, but no one’s coming with me.”
“Tony-”
“No one, Rogers.”
When Tony opens the door to the Hulk-proof room in the tower (a veritable play pen of everything he’s discovered Bruce’s green rage monster enjoys) Loki is leaning against the far wall, knees tucked up to his chest. Instead of speaking, Tony rests against the door frame and waits him out. Loki runs a hand through his already mussed hair.
“I just wanted my tablet.”
Loki trails after him down to the lab. He slumps on a stool, arms crossed protectively in front of him. If JARVIS had a body Tony is pretty sure he would be doing the same.
The first thing Tony does after watching Loki sit is walk briskly to the couch, pick up the tablet, and plop it down on the table in front of him. The other man reaches to it slowly, fingers brushing the edge, and then snaps out to grab it; holding it close to him as though he thinks Tony will change his mind.
The second thing Tony does is pause all but the most necessary of JARVIS’s functions so that he has the A.I.’s complete attention.
“Right, no more of this.” Still hugging the tablet gently to his chest, Loki glares at him. “Obviously there are some problems here, but you are not going to resort to petty squabbling. Either of you. What do you have to say for yourselves?”
“Your machine is unstable,” Loki grumbles. JARVIS doesn’t say anything.
“Don’t be childish, J. You’re allowed to talk now.”
“I have done nothing I regret.”
“I believe he requested that you stop being childish.”
“It was an objective statement of a fact. However, if you would like me to become subjective there are many other-”
“Okay- okay, relax kiddos.”
“They will lock me away eventually,” Loki glances at Tony. “I do not see how the timing makes any difference.”
“They will not-”
“In the interest of your safety, Sir-” JARVIS starts to interrupt; the Asgardian bristles and Tony keeps talking because what else is he supposed to do.
“-because I have an agreement with Odin. They aren’t allowed to.” The desk chair rolls slightly as Tony drops down onto it. “Can we be nice to each other for a few minutes? Dad has a headache.” Loki looks down at the tablet in his hands, stares at it very intently, then looks back at Tony from under his lashes. His tone is not as adamant as Tony expects it to be.
“You are not my father.”
“I know that, I know. It’s an expression.” The desk chair leans back until he is just at risk of falling, and Tony takes a minute to close his eyes. “We’re going to have to talk about feelings, aren’t we?” He’s tired of talking, would really rather they not do this right now, but that isn’t choice. “How does feelings-talk start? Can we stay not bitter for a few minutes? Because that would be fantastic. Should I get like a talking stick? Pass it around, take turns? That’s a thing, right?”
You brings him a socket wrench which isn’t even remotely a talking stick, but whatever, except Loki ignores that Tony is holding it and speaks anyway.
“Your A.I. over-reacts and also hates me. I have very distinct memories from before of being locked in and out of places for no discernible reason.”
“Reasons for each instance have been recorded in the security log. He has also neglected to mention that all such occurrences were justified by the moment when he attempted physical harm on your person.”
“He has been deliberately making my life unnecessarily difficult since my initial arrival.”
“Mr. Odinson’s ability to form balanced and appropriate responses to negative stimuli is underwhelming.”
“I am not the one resorting to unprovoked pettiness.” Locking eyes with Tony, Loki snarls. “Your machine is having delusions of grandeur. I’m sure if you asked nicely the dwarves would come and fix it.” Tony sighs.
“This is obviously a failed experiment.”
“I have spoken with Misters Brokkr and Eitri and can assure you that they do not believe I need fixing.”
“They have been wrong in the past.”
“Oh my god, shut up.” Tony groans, burying his face in his arms, now crossed on the desk. “I will make you sit in the corner and hug each other!”
JARVIS is silent. Loki looks suitably horrified.
Then he appears to actually process what was said and, like a dam has burst, breaks into helpless uncontrollable laughter. He collapses sideways onto the table, shoulders shaking; his heels on the rungs of the stool the only thing keeping him from falling off of it.
“I’m serious; he’ll put on one of the suits.”
There’s a snort.
Tony ignores him until the laughing has stopped.
-
“So I’ve got to ask.” Stark says from across the room, buried in a new project that Loki doesn’t feel comfortable asking about. “I was used to seeing you around here a little more, why didn’t you come down?”
“I did, but was not allowed access. I am not a fool, nor do I require your pity. Now that everything is back as it once was I am no longer wanted here; I can take a hint.”
It takes a second, but Stark turns to him in confusion and then gives a hard look to one of the cameras Loki knows is there. He doesn’t confront the issue.
-
Loki starts coming down to the lab more often. More often being relative to the never that it had been before. Once a week, or if he finds himself at the doors again (he knocks now, because the A.I. still won’t let him in unless prompted by his creator).
They do not always have good days but they are better, he thinks, than many he has had before. When he was alone.
JARVIS still does not like him, which is fine because Loki does not like JARVIS either; however he does feel (a little) bad for the machines who have been caught in their crossfire. He is shadowed by one of them most times he visits; they rotate, but Loki believes Dummy is his most constant minder.
Though he can feel their eyes on him the machine does not reach out- and now that he is sure that is what was happening he can more easily identify the action- until his eighth visit.
Again there is the feather-like brush against his senses, an almost touch like a hand floating just beyond the edge of his peripheral vision, and this time Loki reaches out with his mind to wrap around it. Dummy buzzes. Loki can feel the machine as though there is body heat leaching into the silence between them. They stand and do not speak for some time. The machine comes closer.
-Unit Designation Hallr threat to Creating Unit?
Loki looks again to Stark, standing by one of the suits with its panels open to view the circuitry, the other machines flank him. You turns to them as if he is listening.
There is a touch on his wrist causing Loki to turn back, eyes meeting with Dummy’s visual sensor.
No.
They are all still and moments later Stark straightens and faces him, perhaps alerted by the lack of noise that usually generates from the machines’ movements, eyes darting around at the occupants of the room. Loki tries to smile at him in a way that is not alarming, then he returns to the couch.
Dummy leaves the link open. It is like someone is sitting beside him.
It stays open even when Loki leaves the lab
-
The others take longer to speak to him, but while he waits Loki becomes accustomed to the input of sensory details that Dummy feeds him through the connection. Some are meaningless, process narrations that the machine might not even realize he is sending, and others with strict purpose in mind. Questions, status reports, and occasionally a pull (an attempt to be gentle from something without practice at delicacy). The overall feeling is akin to standing in a misting rain, present enough that you know it’s there, but a sensation that can fade from notice through continued exposure.
When the thought occurs to Loki he wonders if this was how Thor had considered him through most of their (his) adolescence.
Something you know is there, but usually forget.
He shakes the thought away. A voiceless question brightens in the corner of his mind (a sign that the machine is focused on another project, else he would have used the articulation of thoughts he preferred) and Loki pushes calmness and assurances that he is fine in Dummy’s direction.
-
It is Dummy calling him Hallr that first causes it to drift through his thoughts.
Most of Loki’s active memories still draw from before; he can feel the drive at the edge of his senses that sometimes spurs him on against the all-seeing A.I, but they are mostly contained. Adjusting becomes easier when he takes the Other memories and surrounds them with the new ones he is creating. The lab is still a safe place, it is just different.
“I was someone else.” Stark’s response is garbled around the tool held in his mouth
“Hrmrhn?”
“Before, when I was still- I was someone else. Do you think it is still there?”
“… it was mostly the blocker, I think. I assumed everything was just absorbed into you. Don’t you remember what happened?”
“I do. But it still…”
Dummy had tried to bring him a smoothie earlier, Stark had taken it as he passed. After the machine droops Loki swings himself up to sit on the edge of the table. Now he reaches out and traps the machine’s claw in his hands, lifting it to eye level for study. It whirs in his loose grasp. Loki sighs and rests the claw back on his knees, petting the joint where it meets the arm and looking directly into the visual sensor attached to the robot.
“I’m sorry.”
“You say something?”
Stark walks over, wiping his hands on a filthy rag; Loki scoots away in as dignified a manner as he can so the rag won’t touch him when the inventor leans on the table.
“I killed it.”
“Who?” Stark seems remarkably unaffected by the words.
“The other one.”
“What? He was- no, he was you.”
“It was not a he Stark, there was not enough time for it to become a he.” Stark keeps staring at him, expression slowly shifting into something akin to horror. “And it wasn’t me. Not really.” His nails catch on edges as he drags them over the arm’s surface. “I’m sorry, I know you liked it.”
“Can we not-” Stark’s voice chokes off, he looks torn between reassurance and… sorrow. Like he knows it is true. “Can we not call him an it? Even if it’s true. Can we just-” He stops. Loki nods.
-
When J and Loki decide they need to snip at each other until Tony has to tell them to shut up again, which is frequently, he ‘distracts’ JARVIS by asking him to do complicated tasks (that all three of them know he could complete in sleep mode) and Loki by asking questions.
One such day Loki is slouched on the couch afterwards slowly ripping a piece of paper to shreds. Tony can’t quite make out what the paper is, hopefully nothing important; he drops down beside the irate man to pester him.
“Tell me about it.” Frowning, Loki glances in his direction. “Asgard, what it was like growing up there. What growing up was like for you.”
Small pieces of paper keep dropping to the floor for a few more minutes, but when Loki runs out he crosses his arms, tucks his knees up closer to his chest, and begins to speak. He talks about the garden, about Eir and Odin, about Frigga. He talks about how he became a prince. He talks like he doesn’t think anyone will ask him this question ever again.
“Asgard is like a swamp. Fetid and rotting.” He reaches for another piece of paper. “Living things are in flux, they evolve, like your languages. Newness appears in the strangest places, but it is not wrong because it is new, because it is different. It is natural.”
“And Asgard isn’t.”
“No.”
Tony struggles with this new (old) Loki; it was not so much of a problem earlier, but now that Loki is regularly in the lab again it feels like his face is getting rubbed in it. Occasionally he will look over and think it is his Loki before catching himself, or hours will pass and lull him into complacency before Loki does something that makes Tony remember and his chest ache.
The one saving grace is the genuine effort Loki appears to put into rebuilding his relationship with the bots, which makes Tony feel a little better. One of them is always trailing Loki when he is in the lab, usually Dummy, but (aside from JARVIS) they all seem to get on remarkably well with this Loki too.
The thing with JARVIS though, that is concerning. When he is cleaning up and Loki has excused himself to head back to his floor Tony puts a freeze on the doors and confronts his A.I.
“It was precautionary. He threw you out a window, Sir. It is the same Loki now.”
“I know that J, Jesus.”
“I do not understand how you can be so unconcerned-”
“Of course I’m concerned. But what happens if we alienate him? It’s going to go down all over again, only worse because this time it will be a personal vendetta against us. Please,” he rests his hand on the wall. “Please, just stop provoking him.”
He asks Loki to do the same, in slightly different terms, the next time he’s down.
It’s better, kind of. He at least doesn’t have to tell them to shut up as often.
-
Back in his quarters Loki finds a book about overcoming emotional abuse on the counter by his sink, propped up against the glass he set out to dry the previous afternoon.
In the early morning, after he has finished reading, he wraps himself with spells and walks undetected through the tower, lingering where he knows there are cameras to test if the technology will see through his castings.
It does not.
When Stark leaves the lab, Loki slips back in and stands quietly in the middle of the room, humming the wards he’s placed in the walls to life.
-
Just over a month after his return their commander appears with an entourage and corners him coming out of the lab. They are heavily armed, though it does not concern him; they would not act against the wishes of the King of Asgard (not yet). However Loki does not push his limits, he is tired of pushing.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Fury tells them. Loki sits, palms flat on the table and only looking at Fury because if he moves then every agent in the room might shoot him (even if being shot would not kill him, it certainly would not be comfortable). “If you are staying on Earth, because thanks to Stark we don’t have a goddamn choice, you are going to be useful. But the second you look like you’re going to throw another tantrum we will sic the Hulk on you, I don’t care what Odin says.” The captain shifts where he is standing. Doctor Banner is to his left, but Loki does not turn to view his response to the declaration. “Just because you’re playing nice now doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible for the deaths of thousands. You are a war criminal and the second I can treat you as such without risking intergalactic war I will. So for now, if you’re good, and you’re helpful, and you stay that way, then maybe I will slow down plans to kill you.”
Loki nods, and then they leave.
Tony escorts him to a meeting place once. They have him look at some images, documents describing what they would refer to as supernatural events and what Loki would refer to as child’s play. It does not last long. As soon as they have the information they want he is herded back to the black car they came in and driven to the tower.
He is still searching for a purpose. This is not a path he had considered, but it is something. There is time yet.
-
“Fucking Hammer,” Stark snarls one day.
Loki looks up from the tablet sitting on the table in front of him.
“Who?”
As if suddenly realizing he’s spoken out loud, Stark glances to him and then clears whatever he was working on off of the screen. “Nothing, no one. Just a… a guy. Don’t worry about it.” He trails off and pulls up the specs of the new suit again. Something larger this time, with posture hunched over like a beast. “Some ass that’s going to be bothering me again soon.”
If Loki had actually been reading he might have missed it, but he is not, so when he hears Stark grumble he pets the robot next to him and excuses himself from the room.
(Tried to get me killed)
In his quarters he is lying down on the couch, paging through online articles concerning Hammer Tech and its namesake on the tablet. He lofts a wordless question in Dummy’s direction and very quickly gets a response in the form of an impression of overwhelming badness that sinks in and won’t let go.
Loki hums under his breath and sits up.
The next morning Justin Hammer is found unconscious and tied to the hood of a S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle. When they get the call Loki is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, listening as JARVIS relays the audio through the tower speakers.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees the captain watching him. Loki goes back to his quarters.
-
The hacked network provides a constant stream of data on the head of Hammer Industries and his containment in one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s holding cells, possibly more restricted than is required. Dark and underground, isolated. Forgotten.
There is at one point an attempt to relocate him to a more comfortable area of the locked down facility; the paperwork and evidence thereof is easily disposed.
The man is not moved.
Captain Rogers accesses the video log of Loki’s movements from the night before. What he finds are images of the man sitting quietly in his allocated quarters with a tablet, the glow from the screen lighting up his face. What he finds are websites and articles the man had browsed through at other times, complied in a history that is labeled with yesterday’s date.
What he does not find is the video log of Loki casting by the window; it is tucked away under firewalls, the time clock changing on the earlier footage so that it appears to run all night.
The captain does not request anything beyond these. Neither does he ask about the man’s activities. And if he does not ask, JARVIS is not required to tell him.
Justin Hammer is not released.
-
When they get back from Midgard Eitri drops into a chair, too tired for the forge, and runs a hand down his face.
“There is something wrong,” he looks at his brother. “I did not notice it before because we were tucking everything away, but it is as though he is covered in webbing.”
“What does it do?”
“I do not know. It glitters as if it is meant to be there. There are no obvious changes.”
Brokkr stares at the wall, thinking, and then looks back to his brother tersely. “We will have to take it off then.”
They begin to plan. It is in the crevices, it will not be easy.
Part 1b (stupid word limits)