The Dream Below, 4/8. NC-17
Title: The Dream Below
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: *deep breath* Steve/Bucky, Steve/Natasha, Steve/Bucky/Natasha, Clint/Natasha, Loki/Natasha, Tony/Pepper, Maria/Natasha, Jane/Thor.
Disclaimer: Not mine! Not even by a little bit.
Spoilers/Warnings: MCU AU. Based off of this AU gifset on Tumblr. Come on, a mashup of Inception and the MCU. *drools* Did you really think I could stay away from this? No, I didn't think so either. :D Title and chapter titles from Linkin Park's "Castle of Glass."
Summary: Thor of Odin Corp. hires Steve Rogers' elite dream sharing team to perform inception on his brother, Loki, and a shade of their ex-resident thief Bucky (who was killed when the team's last job went horribly wrong) tries his best to sabotage it.
Or: Steve extracts, Tony builds, Clint runs point, Natasha's a master of impersonation, Bruce concocts, Thor's a tourist, and things happen.
Prior chapters:
One - Through The Secrets That I Have Seen
Two - Wash The Poison From Off My Skin
Three - Warm Me Up In A Nova's Glow
Act Two - Descent
Four - Drop Me Down To The Dream Below
The Baltimore Convention Center was a large white building full of sprawling hallways, open areas within the central space, glass walls facing downtown Baltimore, skywalks to nearby hotels and terraces with some greenery and waterfall features. Its rooms and ballrooms spanned twenty-eight acres in all, so attendees to any convention there spanning its entire space easily racked up miles on a pedometer. Blisters were all too common.
This was meant to be a nondescript business practice convention, where new angles to circumvent US tax law or build up connections were commonplace. Loki arrived in the middle of registration to pick up his materials, and Natasha was in the line ahead of him. That way, after turning around to leave, she could see him, sigh dramatically and catch his attention.
Which was exactly what happened.
Loki actually smirked at Natasha, stepping closer as the line was processed. "I don't suppose I should ask what you're doing here?" he said smoothly.
"Really? Seriously, are you stalking me?"
He laughed, which was actually a very nice laugh when he wasn't trying to be a menacing asshole in the boardroom. "No. I'm here on behalf of Odin Corp. You?"
Natasha sighed, slipping a little further into the Natalie Rushman persona. "I'm not here with a company right now. I'm looking into establishing a network on my own."
Getting his name tag and bag of registration papers, Loki frowned and moved to the side with Natalie. "Oh? I thought you enjoyed your work."
"I do. It's been wonderful, seeing the entire world and what it has to offer."
"But...?" Loki prompted when she fell silent.
Starting to walk off, Natalie shrugged. "Maybe I want to see what else is out there. Have a backup in case it doesn't work out."
"Your recommendations are impeccable. I can't imagine it not working out for you."
She gave him a smile. "Well, that's very nice of you to say."
"It's not nice," he replied evenly, taking in her polite smile and studied nervous-but-hiding-it-not-too-successfully stance. "It's utter truth. I imagine that perhaps something happened with that locum tenens company? Someone too forward with their attention?"
"Someone like you, perhaps?" Natalie replied, a bit archly.
Loki laughed again. "Oh, but I never crossed any lines or broke boundaries, now did I?"
"No, you didn't," Natalie admitted. "And I wouldn't let you if you tried."
Once outside in the Baltimore summer heat, Loki started walking along the sidewalk. He stopped when he saw Natalie getting ready to move in a different direction. "Where are you staying?" he asked, curious.
"Days Inn. You?"
"Harbor Court." Loki frowned at her. "You really deserve better than that. If it's not too forward, I could ask them to set aside a room for you." When Natalie opened her mouth to object, Loki held up a hand. "I would cover the cost difference, of course. But that isn't always a good place to stay. It's flooded a few times."
Hook, line, sinker.
"I didn't know that. I don't know Baltimore well. I've walked around the Inner Harbor a few times since I got here, but that's about it."
He gave her his most charming smile. "Why don't we have dinner, then? I can show you where I like to visit."
Natalie pretended to think it over. "I suppose we can do that."
Loki accompanied her to the Days Inn, where he paid for her room as she got her belongings. It wasn't a surprise that he could obtain a suite at the Harbor Court and put that on his credit card as well. Natalie gave him a suspicious look. "Why are you being so generous?"
His charming laughter was back. "Perhaps I like giving gifts."
"They called you a lot of names behind your back, but generous wasn't one of them," Natalie pointed out, waiting for his explanation.
"Should we discuss it over dinner?" he asked.
Rolling her eyes, Natalie shook her head in a bemused manner. "Ever mysterious. Fine, fine, we can talk about it then. Seven?"
"I'll come up at six thirty," he suggested. "If we walk to the Inner Harbor, we'll get there at seven. It can get pretty busy there."
Most of the restaurants in that area were casual, though a few were a little more upscale. She nodded and was pleasantly surprised by the courtly way he grasped her hand and kissed the back of it. "Oh. That's new."
He grinned, lips still pressed against her skin. "I do try to be full of tricks."
"I can see that," Natalie replied with a smile. "Dinner ought to be interesting, then."
It was. Loki was a gentleman, courtly in an old fashioned romance novel sort of way, telling stories about business in a way that made him look like a misunderstood hero rather than the amoral villain most would paint him as. Natalie made a few pithy comments here and there in the middle of his stories, enough to keep him laughing and engaged. She didn't really talk much about her own past or family, following his lead.
It wasn't the place for it, anyway. The place for the family discussion was in her suite, where she had spent the afternoon settling in and putting up personal touches. After all, Natalie Rushman was planning on staying in Baltimore for a while to set up contacts and a network of people she could approach for freelance work. She wouldn't be living out of her suitcase for the interim, but would want a home base.
Loki was inordinately pleased with himself when she let him into the suite after dinner. "I might have been hoping for an invite," he admitted with a smile.
Natalie laughed. "I might have wondered if this is appropriate. But I don't work for you, so it should be okay. I made the suite look homey," she said, sweeping her arms around to indicate the room and its contents. "Want a drink? There's only the minibar for options. I hadn't gone to one of the local stores to pick up anything, but I can if you have a particular preference."
"You don't have to go through that trouble tonight," he replied, taking a look around to see that she had put photos on the desk and dresser, as well as several knickknacks and even a small aloe plant near the window.
"Well, maybe for future reference," she said with a sly grin.
He chuckled as he stepped closer to the dresser to inspect the framed photos. Loki looked up from the photos as Natalie poured drinks. "They look nothing like you."
"Hm?" she looked up nonchalantly, and saw the frown on his face. "Oh, yeah. Those are my parents, though."
"But..."
"I'm adopted."
His mouth snapped shut at her easygoing tone, and his brows furrowed as he turned back to look at the photos. He put that photo down, then stepped closer to her. "May I?" he murmured, gesturing to pick one up off of the table.
"Sure. Go right ahead. I think there's one of my sister Karin in there somewhere."
"Sister," he echoed faintly, not looking at her.
"Also adopted."
Natalie's parents were stocky, short and had olive skin. Her mother bordered on obese, actually. Natalie was short as well, but slender and very fair, with curly red hair and green eyes. The girl that had to be Karin was tall with black straight hair and brown eyes. The four of them on the photo looked happy together, and even the candid shots revealed joy in each others' presence.
She handed him the drink, startling him badly. "You don't have to feel weird about it. I can tell by your face. I get that look a lot," she added. "I was adopted at birth." She gave him a sweet smile. "I know the whole story, if that makes you feel better."
"Wait, what?"
"I know some people hide that they adopted kids, some tell kids when they're older, some tell right away. I always knew. Hard not to in this case, I guess. But you don't have to feel badly about that," she said, giving his arm a gentle squeeze when Loki remained staring at the photo with a frown.
"Why not?" he demanded, then knocked back the entire drink. "They weren't your real parents."
"Of course they were," Natalie corrected. "Mom just didn't give birth to me. She was there since the day I was born, she's the one that took care of me. I was chosen. That's important, you know. I wasn't some accident to my parents, they chose me. I was special that way."
Loki's gaze sharpened. "Were you an accident to your birth parents?"
"Yup." She sipped her own glass. "Birth mother was sixteen, still in high school and scared shitless about being a mother since her loser boyfriend skipped out as soon as she got pregnant. She wasn't a bad person, just... You know, clueless."
"You met her?" he asked, surprised.
"Yeah. I was sixteen and curious. Didn't want Mom with me, that would've been too awkward. She was nice enough, I guess. But it was sad. She didn't really do much with her life." Natalie sipped at her glass, then put it down. She plucked the photo from his hands and put it down on the desk, sliding between it and Loki. "But that's not important, is it?" she asked in a sultry tone, sliding her arms around his neck.
"How could you not care about your family if they share your blood?"
"It's not blood that makes you family, Loki," she told him gently. "It's who raised you, who cared for you. It's about the one that takes care of skinned knees and nightmares, who stays up late at night and teaches you how to drive." She let her fingers trail down the back of his neck, lips curling into a soft smile. "Anyone can fuck and leave, anyone can father a child or carry it. What makes someone special is if they stick around."
He let out a soft sigh. "Even if they lie about it?"
Natalie shrugged. "It depends on why they lie, Loki. And really, does it matter in the long run? You can love someone and not what they do." She ran her fingernails down the nape of his neck. "But that's not why you're here, is it?" she purred, a teasing note to her voice.
Loki actually flushed a little, which made him cute and endearing for the moment. Natasha wasn't fooled in the least; he could be utterly ruthless in business and there were articles about the callous way he had dealt with competition to Odin Corporation. She also knew full well how he had destroyed Jotunheim Ice and was conspiring to do a hostile takeover of Asgard Industries.
"Perhaps you could help me forget my troubles, dear Natalie," he murmured, his hands sliding down her ribcage to land at her waist.
She pulled him down to nip at his lower lip. "Oh, I can definitely do that. You have anything?"
"Condoms, you mean? Um... no..."
"Diseases," she corrected, moving to kiss his jaw. "I'm on the pill and I hate those anyway. Doesn't feel good."
The look of relief was almost comic. "Oh. No, no diseases." He looked as though he was struggling to decide whether or not to admit that he had few romantic entanglements. "I've been too busy with work," he said finally.
"Mmm," she murmured, working on the buttons of his shirt as she mouthed his jaw. "And lemme guess, you're a workaholic. So no chance to connect outside the office, don't want to date inside the office..." Her voice trailed off as she kissed her way down his throat. "Good thing I was only a temp, then," she said, looking up at him through her lashes with a saucy grin.
Loki grasped her gave her a filthy grin. "There's nothing only about you," he growled.
Clothes were shed quickly and tossed about as they stumbled toward the bed. The sex was surprisingly gentle. He seemed starved for touch, hungry to feel her bare skin against his, to taste her. Every touch was reverent, his lips dragging across her bare skin. Loki was so eager to taste her, to have her cry out in pleasure and buck beneath him until she came. It startled him when she returned the favor, exploring his body with lips and hands, stroking him to hardness and then riding him. Her movements were fast, taking him in deep, her fingers laced through his, his hands pinned to the bed on either side of his head. His expression was rapt as he looked up at her, as if her self-confidence was intoxicating.
He nearly sobbed when he came, and clutched her close. "Don't leave. It's so..." Loki stopped and shook his head. "There's nothing for me out there. No one."
"Your family..."
"They're not family. Not flesh and blood. I was just someone to hang about in the shadows, to be the darkness to their greatness."
Natalie brushed her fingers against his cheeks. "Are you sure? There wasn't any affection? Any caring or love?"
Loki wrenched himself away from her touch. "Not everyone had the loving household you did."
"No," she said quietly, watching him pace around the room, too agitated to care that he was naked and open to her gaze. "But your choices determine if you can create one of your own."
"With you?" he asked, startled. His hands twitched at his sides, a nervous tell.
Natasha pulled the sheet from the bed and held it to her chest as she approached him. She touched his arm gently, a soft expression on his face. "As flattering as that is, we haven't known each other that long." She smiled to soften her words further, but he winced. Letting go of the sheet, she touched his chest with both hands, gratified when he looked her in the eye rather than at her chest. "Loki. You can make the right choices, build a new family if that's what you want. But is the family you already have really that bad? Why throw away something you might be able to fix?"
"I destroyed it all," he said softly. "My rage..."
"You said things you regret?"
"They needed to be said."
"But maybe not like that?"
Loki sighed. "But not like that. My mo- I hurt her. I know it, I saw it, I couldn't help myself. I wanted to hurt her so badly, for her to feel even a fraction of the hurt I had when I learned that she lied to me."
Natalie cradled his face in her hands. "Then start there. Explain to her what you're telling me. She's your mother. She loves you."
"How can you say that? You don't know her."
"Love is for children, and you're her child. It takes more than blood to form bonds. I don't call my biological mother Mom just because she gave birth to me. But my Mom earned it. She was with me from the beginning, she's the one that knows me."
He seemed so lost for a moment, she pulled him down for a kiss. "You don't have to decide right now. Come back to bed. Sleep. You'll feel better in the morning."
For a moment, Loki seemed almost desperate. "In my nightmares, I stab my brother. I taunt him and I goad him into making stupid mistakes and then I stab him."
"Do you hate him that much?"
"Sometimes I think I do..."
"Does he hate you?"
"No. In spite of everything, he doesn't."
Natalie merely traced the curve of his cheek. "Then you can fix it."
Loki sighed. "You are like a balm, meant to soothe an open wound," he murmured softly, returning the gesture as he scanned her face. "There aren't many who could sneak up on me."
"Sneak up on you?"
"You come to matter to me, Natalie," he murmured softly. "In so little time, I rely on your honesty and truth to make me whole."
Natalie sighed. "Someone else shouldn't make you whole, Loki."
"But if I'm so empty inside..."
She caught his face in her hands, thumbs rubbing at the corners of his mouth. "Loki, if you're waiting for someone to fill you up and give your life meaning, you'll never feel full. I'm not enough. I can't be."
"But you don't hurt this way."
"I've lost people, too," she murmured before she meant to even mention it. "I know what it's like to feel lost," she continued after a while. She might as well continue in his vein, especially since she had his attention. "It's... It's painful," she said, her voice betraying all of the rage and hurt she had suppressed for the past year and a half. That visibly startled Loki, and he stared at her with wide eyes and parted lips as he wrapped his arms around her. "It's not being empty if they're gone, though. The memories are still with you. Good and bad, all of it. Because they're part of you. They influenced you. They helped make you who you are."
"But he betrayed me," Loki replied, voice shaking. "He lied to me."
"And he's not here to justify or explain or make it up to you," Natasha said, stroking his hair gently, a soothing caress. He responded to it even though he clearly didn't understand why. "Your pain is real, Loki. But it's up to you what to do with it. Do you let it consume you? Or do you let go? You were happy once, weren't you?"
"I thought I was. But then I learned the truth," he replied, bitterness creeping into his voice.
"But the truth doesn't invalidate the happy times. It doesn't mean you weren't happy when you were a child. It doesn't mean he didn't love you, didn't do whatever he could for you. Maybe he's from the old school of adoption, where they don't tell the kids anything about their biological families, where they think even knowing you're adopted will make you think you don't belong."
"Because I didn't-"
"You were chosen," Natasha interrupted, voice still lulling and gentle, still stroking his hair in the circle of his arms. "It was a made family, not a born one, but that doesn't make it any less real, any less powerful. Family is more than just blood, Loki. Family is whoever you care for, whoever you would do anything for."
Something in him broke, and he tucked his head into the crook of her neck and sobbed. She rocked him, making soothing nonsense noises as if he was a child. This had proceeded with the logic of a dream; in his own mind, he was far too easily shattered and broken, too emotionally volatile and hurt. He wanted to believe it, she realized, but considered himself too unworthy of the love that he craved.
In that regard, the two of them were frighteningly similar.
***
Clint met up with Natasha at the prearranged time. "Well? How is it going?"
"It's worse than we thought," she said shortly.
"What? What are you talking about?"
"That sense of self we were banking on? Isn't there. Externally, he looks like a sociopathic bastard without a conscience. Internally, he's a sociopathic bastard because he thinks no one can love him and it's the only way to get respect."
Rolling his eyes, Clint paced and looked over at Steve. "Well? What do we do?"
"It's worse than we thought," Natasha repeated to the group, brows knit in anger and dismay. "He's an even bigger mess than he looked. This is going to be horrible."
"Can it be done?" Steve asked, looking at her intently.
She bristled at him. "I can salvage this, if that's what you're asking."
"I am. We need to do this."
"You just want to get your name back out there," Clint accused. "You don't give a shit about what the rest of us have to go through."
Steve shook his head. "That's not true..."
"Listen. Thor is out there somewhere, maybe making a muck of what we're trying to in here. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that we haven't seen him yet," Clint said.
"I chalk it up as a good thing," Natasha pointed out. "I'm going to count that as a blessing, as well as the fact that we haven't seen anyone else running through here."
"Anyone else?" Tony asked, frowning. "Pepper and Jane weren't interested in coming down here to see what we're doing."
Sighing, Steve shook his head. "They mean Bucky." At his blank look, Steve sighed again. "I have a shade. Bucky. Our former partner in crime."
"Wait. We didn't really talk about this in detail," Tony said, frowning even more deeply.
"Maybe he really is over his grief?" Natasha suggested. By the tone of her voice, she obviously didn't think that was a viable reason.
All eyes swung toward Steve, who shook off their concern. "Listen. It's going to be okay. I can control it if he does show up. We'll all be fine, and then we can get back out there to work." He gave Clint and Natasha a rakish grin. "It's been like old times so far, you know? I miss that. I really miss that. Don't you?
"If the shade is here," Bruce asked, leaning against a table in the warehouse they were meeting in, "what is he likely to do?"
"Shoot us. Torture us. Kill us," Clint said, looking directly at Steve. "Trust me, all of that hurts like a bitch."
"But then if he shoots you, you wake up. Right now, that's annoying, but you're not the dreamer for this level. Bruce is. So it would just collapse," Tony said, smiling as if he had solved a particularly nasty problem.
"It doesn't work that way," Bruce said with a frown, shaking his head.
"What are you talking about?" Natasha asked, looking at him in concern.
"All this talk about deep sedation... Have none of you worked with that before?"
"A dream within a dream is as technical as it ever got," Clint said.
"And most of the time, we didn't even need to do that," Steve pointed out.
"Deep sedation doesn't work exactly the same way as lighter versions with somnacin," Bruce told them. He took his glasses off and buffed them on the hem of his dark purple button down shirt. Putting them on, he saw that he had everyone's rapt attention. "The dreams are deep, they're clear, but they are also unstable. I've told you that a lot. I thought you understood what that meant," he said, shoulders curling a little in an apologetic manner.
"That means what?" Natasha asked.
"Limbo. It means if you're killed, you don't go up toward consciousness. You go down to limbo and into unconsciousness."
"Are you kidding me?" Clint cried as Natasha shouted "What the fuck?!" Tony was stunned, but Steve... he looked as though he expected that, as if he understood that from the very beginning and hadn't cared one way or another what would happen along the way.
Natasha rushed forward and grabbed him by the front of his jacket. "You never told us about limbo, Steve. That's too high a risk! If it shoots us," Natasha hissed, "we don't wake up. There's no waking up ever again. Is that what you signed us up for? Because no amount of money in the world is worth that."
"We still answer to our employer," Steve murmured. "We're only on the first level. We can rearrange the plan a little, change the motivation, maybe..."
"You don't understand," Natasha growled at him. She shoved him away, and Steve actually staggered back a few steps. "Loki's unstable. There is nothing for me to build on as we go further in."
"So build him something."
Natasha threw up her hands in frustration and rolled her eyes. Tony looked over from where he sat at the sidelines. "Build. You don't mean that literally, do you?"
Clint sighed. "Tony..."
"Because I'm serious. Look around, obviously I know my shit and I can build anything. I can grasp concepts easily, and I can change dreams on the fly if you need me to." Tony got up and gestured around him with wide movements. "He's looking to build something big and grand. A monument to his ego. So we give it to him. And while he's patting himself on the back for that, you go in and make it part of him."
Everyone stopped and stared at him. "What?"
"He's going to be susceptible to this. And we're trying to get him back to the guy he was before everything got shot to hell, right? We've only been in this time frame for a day. We have seven more, and then in the next level we have months, and in the third level we have years." He looked around at the others with an expectant expression, as if he couldn't understand why the others didn't speak the same language he did. "We have time. We can build it, he will come." Tony waggled his eyebrows at Natasha. "Maybe literally."
Both Steve and Clint bristled at the insinuation. "Tony," Steve began in a warning tone, standing up from where he had been slumped in a chair.
He held up his hands in a conciliatory posture; Natasha holding a Glock 26 to his temple may have helped with that. "The point was to build a world he could believe in. Give him a chance to heal, maybe change how he treats his family. What we need to do isn't necessarily different from that original goal is what I'm saying."
Natasha removed the pistol from Tony's temple and it dissolved with a mere thought. "So we need a new plan," she said.
"And we need not to die," Bruce reminded them all, nervously adjusting his glasses. "Remember, we're so deeply sedated in the real world that killing anyone here will send them directly to limbo." All eyes swung toward him. "It's in the literature," he said defensively.
"I don't think we need a new plan," Tony said in all seriousness. "Our next level is Odin Corp, right? The plan was to let him take it over. It still works, guys. Just push the fact that he's running the show, he's the ruler of the known world. Let him build it up bigger. His decisions are golden, everyone else's importance pales in comparison, whatever." He looked around at the anxious faces around him. "But I'll dream it. That leaves you free to play hero down below," he added to Clint, who was starting to protest. "I built it, I know where all the nooks and crannies are, and if need be, I can add more."
"You're not trained for this!" he cried.
"If you get shot-"
"It's my maze. I'm in control, dammit," Tony said, a fierce pride in his tone. "I can do this, I can bend this entire dream to my will and it will happen because this is what I do. I come in here, I build things. I create. That's my job, that's what I do best. You're point, Clint. That's the part you excel at. So you go with them, you protect them from what might be out there, you help them see it through."
"If there's any militarization..."
"I'll make a suit or something. Kind of like a superhero. If your shade can't shoot me down, I won't die and go to limbo, right?"
Steve looked physically ill. "I suppose it works that way, but-"
"Excellent. So that's the new plan. Same as the old plan, but with a twist. Or a wrinkle, since you are being a crotchety old man and don't like it," he snarked at Steve. "Trust me. I've got you. I'll do this, and it will work."
Everyone let out a troubled sighing breath. What other option did they have?
***
Natalie regaled Loki with tales of a made up childhood, some embarrassing in a nonthreatening kind of way. It was an ordinary kind of life, nothing dramatic or terrible. "It really isn't important that I was adopted," she told him when he asked about it. "It's just something else about me, like the fact that my hair is red or my eyes are green. It just is."
That frustratingly zen kind of answer bothered him, even if he didn't want to admit it.
Loki wasn't exactly sure why he was so attached to Natalie. She was beautiful and self-assured, hardworking and easy to get along with. She fit in everywhere she went, while he often felt left out and awkward. What place did he have? He once would have said he was an Odinson and would belong just because of that, but he wasn't truly an Odinson. The man he had called father had lied about him. If he lied about Loki's origins, what else did he lie about? Did the years of "I love you" also amount to lies? The proud comments about Loki's charm and skill and knowledge, were those all lies as well? Was nothing real?
He went about the convention center, and it bored him. Not that expected to be entertained during the event, but it was awful in a way he hadn't expected. Maybe because he was agitated enough to start with. Maybe because he would much rather spend time getting to know Natalie better, and not just because she was fantastic in bed. It felt as though he was experiencing things for the first time when she was around, thinking things from an entirely new perspective.
And then Thor showed up at the BCC, and Loki wanted to smash his face in.
He strode into the building as if he owned it, as if all the people milling about and chatting were peons under his control. His head was held high, shoulders back, steps sure and unerring as he moved through the crowds.
Thor was perfect. He was always perfect. Nothing he did was ever wrong, not like the times when Loki tried to inject a little levity into the Odinson family and his tricks backfired. Or when he thought he could learn magic tricks and nothing worked the way he wanted to. Or when he tried working with a chemistry set and made things explode. He was dangerous, not talented in those ways, and the constant struggle to try to be seen for himself seemed to be useless. His father hadn't really loved him anyway. Every statement of affection had been a lie. Why did it matter if he protected the Odinson holdings or not? They could rot in hell for all he cared.
Okay, maybe not his mother. Frigga loved him, of that Loki had no doubts whatsoever. He had hurt her terribly, and on top of the loss of her husband, his rejection had been unnecessarily and horribly cruel. It had to have felt like being stabbed.
Loki was a horrible son, and he was a terrible brother. So why not go all in? Why not be the villain in their lives? He was halfway there as it was.
And of course he was striding toward Loki in one of the main hallways of the BCC, right where the glass windows overlooked the street. It would be reinforced glass; no wall of glass was ever not reinforced, the movies always got that part wrong. There was no jumping through the window and falling down one story to the pavement below to escape him. Thor was grinning, head held high, looking as though he wanted to enfold him in an embrace.
Where was Natalie again?
Oh, there she was, in one of the rooms that had been set up as a lecture hall. He could imagine her with her clipboard and pages of notes, neat handwriting summing up all that information she wanted to soak in. He thought of screaming her name, calling her in as reinforcements, he couldn't do this alone, he couldn't, but then it was too late and Thor was right there, right in front of him, all smiles and eager cloying affection that had to be false, had to be a front to eventually take down Loki later when his guard was down.
He would never let that happen, never.
"Brother," Thor began, effusive as ever. "Stop this foolishness. Come home. Let us be a family again, together with Mother."
"I asked you to leave me alone," Loki said, proud his voice didn't waver. "Can't you respect my wishes?" he hissed.
The lecture was breaking up. Natalie would be by his side soon. Loki could see the bright red hair out of the corner of his eye, but he was agitated and soon wasn't soon enough.
"Listen-"
Loki cupped a hand to his ear and pulled his lips back in a snarl. "I'm listening. Only, I hear nothing but noise. Nothing of importance." He let his hand fall to his side and he tried to sidestep his bro-Thor, he was sidestepping Thor-but the blond wouldn't accept that. He reached out to grasp Loki's arm and pull him in, the same pleading words, the concern on his face that had to be a lie, had to be, and something inside of Loki's chest snapped.
"I told you to let go of me!" He had a small knife in hand, he didn't even realize he had been carrying one, and stabbed Thor in the side.
Everyone in the hallway was staring at Loki and Thor. His chest seized, and as he jerked his hand away, the knife was left in Thor's side. Loki staggered to the side a step as Thor let go of him in shock, and Loki tried to avoid the gaze of all the onlookers. They must have been horrified. They must think him a monster.
Natalie came to his side then, slipping a cell phone into her pocket. Loki didn't even wonder at that, at the way she looked at Thor as if to question why he was there and if he was all right all at once. "We need to go," she told Loki. "Clint's coming for you," she told Thor as they passed, and Loki didn't even stop to wonder who Clint was.
She knew people. She would take care of things. He was too much in shock to do it himself.
"I can't go back now," Loki murmured as she propelled him down the stairs so they could exit the BCC.
"There's a concert at First Mariners," she said in a low voice. "Come on."
There were more people about in the street now, and Loki was lost. Where was the arena? How did Natalie know about it or the concert? He had thought she only knew the Inner Harbor area of the city. But she led him through the crowds, weaving expertly through them as he shook and felt physically ill. "Oh god, they're staring at us," he moaned.
"Quick. Put your arm around me. Laugh at something I said."
He was too startled to disobey. The laugh, false as it was, eased something in him. "How did you know it would work?" he asked.
There was Natalie's little quirk of a smile. "Do something as if it's real, and the body will follow through eventually. Plus, it distracted you, didn't it?"
"Are we going to try to hide in the concert?"
"If you like. Or we can keep walking. I said the first thing that came to mind."
Someone must have mentioned it in the lecture hall. And he vaguely thought he might have heard about it, some pop singer he really didn't care about. They bypassed First Mariners and kept walking aimlessly through the city, and he didn't feel as hunted. "What was that all about?" she asked him quietly, his hand tightly in hers.
"He wouldn't let me go. I panicked." He could feel the anxiety rising again, but she squeezed his hand tightly. "I didn't even know I had a knife."
"You must have felt so threatened," Natalie murmured, pulling him toward the side of the sidewalk, near a parking garage. What street were they even on? She pulled him down for a gentle kiss, which stilled his anxiety. "Hey. Hey. I've got you. I've got you."
The repetition was soothing, and Loki nodded. "Now what do we do?"
She appeared to be thinking quickly. "We'll get you somewhere safe, see what's going on with Thor. He's not going to press charges, you know. He's probably worried sick about you, the way you've been hiding from him."
"Why can't he understand that I want nothing to do with him?"
"He's your brother. And kinda clingy, it looks like."
Loki laughed, startled. "You think?"
"But he loves you, for better or for worse. He'd forgive you this if you let him. I know he will."
"How can you be so certain?" Loki asked, cupping her face in his hands, his touch gentle.
"Because he loves you. And that's what people do when they love you. They forgive you anything, they will bend over backward to help you if they can. They won't ask you why you need it, they'll just do it. Thor would do that for you if you let him." She covered his hands with hers, expression gentle. "When you're ready for him to."
"I'm a monster."
"No, Loki. You're lost. You're lonely and alone."
"I have you, don't I?" Loki nearly cringed at his plaintive tone. "What am I, Natalie? That I would do this, that my first instinct is to hurt others?"
"You're human, Loki," she murmured, sounding almost sad. "You're hurt, and you're lost, and you're lonely, and you don't know what to do. Sometimes hurt people lash out. Sometimes they curl in on themselves."
Natalie's expression suddenly became one of fear, even if it lasted for only a moment. Someone behind him, but she yanked on his hand as he turned to look. Not police, there were no uniforms there. Only a tall man, muscled, black flak jacket and military grade pants on, weapons strapped to his body and a machine gun in place.
"What the hell?"
"Run. Just run," she said, pulling him along.
"Thor wouldn't-"
"Not Thor," she said brusquely. "C'mon. We've got to find a hiding spot."
Wordlessly, he let her drag him away as they were being stalked.
***
***
To Chapter Five - Past The Black Where The Sirens Sing
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: *deep breath* Steve/Bucky, Steve/Natasha, Steve/Bucky/Natasha, Clint/Natasha, Loki/Natasha, Tony/Pepper, Maria/Natasha, Jane/Thor.
Disclaimer: Not mine! Not even by a little bit.
Spoilers/Warnings: MCU AU. Based off of this AU gifset on Tumblr. Come on, a mashup of Inception and the MCU. *drools* Did you really think I could stay away from this? No, I didn't think so either. :D Title and chapter titles from Linkin Park's "Castle of Glass."
Summary: Thor of Odin Corp. hires Steve Rogers' elite dream sharing team to perform inception on his brother, Loki, and a shade of their ex-resident thief Bucky (who was killed when the team's last job went horribly wrong) tries his best to sabotage it.
Or: Steve extracts, Tony builds, Clint runs point, Natasha's a master of impersonation, Bruce concocts, Thor's a tourist, and things happen.
Prior chapters:
One - Through The Secrets That I Have Seen
Two - Wash The Poison From Off My Skin
Three - Warm Me Up In A Nova's Glow
Act Two - Descent
Four - Drop Me Down To The Dream Below
The Baltimore Convention Center was a large white building full of sprawling hallways, open areas within the central space, glass walls facing downtown Baltimore, skywalks to nearby hotels and terraces with some greenery and waterfall features. Its rooms and ballrooms spanned twenty-eight acres in all, so attendees to any convention there spanning its entire space easily racked up miles on a pedometer. Blisters were all too common.
This was meant to be a nondescript business practice convention, where new angles to circumvent US tax law or build up connections were commonplace. Loki arrived in the middle of registration to pick up his materials, and Natasha was in the line ahead of him. That way, after turning around to leave, she could see him, sigh dramatically and catch his attention.
Which was exactly what happened.
Loki actually smirked at Natasha, stepping closer as the line was processed. "I don't suppose I should ask what you're doing here?" he said smoothly.
"Really? Seriously, are you stalking me?"
He laughed, which was actually a very nice laugh when he wasn't trying to be a menacing asshole in the boardroom. "No. I'm here on behalf of Odin Corp. You?"
Natasha sighed, slipping a little further into the Natalie Rushman persona. "I'm not here with a company right now. I'm looking into establishing a network on my own."
Getting his name tag and bag of registration papers, Loki frowned and moved to the side with Natalie. "Oh? I thought you enjoyed your work."
"I do. It's been wonderful, seeing the entire world and what it has to offer."
"But...?" Loki prompted when she fell silent.
Starting to walk off, Natalie shrugged. "Maybe I want to see what else is out there. Have a backup in case it doesn't work out."
"Your recommendations are impeccable. I can't imagine it not working out for you."
She gave him a smile. "Well, that's very nice of you to say."
"It's not nice," he replied evenly, taking in her polite smile and studied nervous-but-hiding-it-not-too-successfully stance. "It's utter truth. I imagine that perhaps something happened with that locum tenens company? Someone too forward with their attention?"
"Someone like you, perhaps?" Natalie replied, a bit archly.
Loki laughed again. "Oh, but I never crossed any lines or broke boundaries, now did I?"
"No, you didn't," Natalie admitted. "And I wouldn't let you if you tried."
Once outside in the Baltimore summer heat, Loki started walking along the sidewalk. He stopped when he saw Natalie getting ready to move in a different direction. "Where are you staying?" he asked, curious.
"Days Inn. You?"
"Harbor Court." Loki frowned at her. "You really deserve better than that. If it's not too forward, I could ask them to set aside a room for you." When Natalie opened her mouth to object, Loki held up a hand. "I would cover the cost difference, of course. But that isn't always a good place to stay. It's flooded a few times."
Hook, line, sinker.
"I didn't know that. I don't know Baltimore well. I've walked around the Inner Harbor a few times since I got here, but that's about it."
He gave her his most charming smile. "Why don't we have dinner, then? I can show you where I like to visit."
Natalie pretended to think it over. "I suppose we can do that."
Loki accompanied her to the Days Inn, where he paid for her room as she got her belongings. It wasn't a surprise that he could obtain a suite at the Harbor Court and put that on his credit card as well. Natalie gave him a suspicious look. "Why are you being so generous?"
His charming laughter was back. "Perhaps I like giving gifts."
"They called you a lot of names behind your back, but generous wasn't one of them," Natalie pointed out, waiting for his explanation.
"Should we discuss it over dinner?" he asked.
Rolling her eyes, Natalie shook her head in a bemused manner. "Ever mysterious. Fine, fine, we can talk about it then. Seven?"
"I'll come up at six thirty," he suggested. "If we walk to the Inner Harbor, we'll get there at seven. It can get pretty busy there."
Most of the restaurants in that area were casual, though a few were a little more upscale. She nodded and was pleasantly surprised by the courtly way he grasped her hand and kissed the back of it. "Oh. That's new."
He grinned, lips still pressed against her skin. "I do try to be full of tricks."
"I can see that," Natalie replied with a smile. "Dinner ought to be interesting, then."
It was. Loki was a gentleman, courtly in an old fashioned romance novel sort of way, telling stories about business in a way that made him look like a misunderstood hero rather than the amoral villain most would paint him as. Natalie made a few pithy comments here and there in the middle of his stories, enough to keep him laughing and engaged. She didn't really talk much about her own past or family, following his lead.
It wasn't the place for it, anyway. The place for the family discussion was in her suite, where she had spent the afternoon settling in and putting up personal touches. After all, Natalie Rushman was planning on staying in Baltimore for a while to set up contacts and a network of people she could approach for freelance work. She wouldn't be living out of her suitcase for the interim, but would want a home base.
Loki was inordinately pleased with himself when she let him into the suite after dinner. "I might have been hoping for an invite," he admitted with a smile.
Natalie laughed. "I might have wondered if this is appropriate. But I don't work for you, so it should be okay. I made the suite look homey," she said, sweeping her arms around to indicate the room and its contents. "Want a drink? There's only the minibar for options. I hadn't gone to one of the local stores to pick up anything, but I can if you have a particular preference."
"You don't have to go through that trouble tonight," he replied, taking a look around to see that she had put photos on the desk and dresser, as well as several knickknacks and even a small aloe plant near the window.
"Well, maybe for future reference," she said with a sly grin.
He chuckled as he stepped closer to the dresser to inspect the framed photos. Loki looked up from the photos as Natalie poured drinks. "They look nothing like you."
"Hm?" she looked up nonchalantly, and saw the frown on his face. "Oh, yeah. Those are my parents, though."
"But..."
"I'm adopted."
His mouth snapped shut at her easygoing tone, and his brows furrowed as he turned back to look at the photos. He put that photo down, then stepped closer to her. "May I?" he murmured, gesturing to pick one up off of the table.
"Sure. Go right ahead. I think there's one of my sister Karin in there somewhere."
"Sister," he echoed faintly, not looking at her.
"Also adopted."
Natalie's parents were stocky, short and had olive skin. Her mother bordered on obese, actually. Natalie was short as well, but slender and very fair, with curly red hair and green eyes. The girl that had to be Karin was tall with black straight hair and brown eyes. The four of them on the photo looked happy together, and even the candid shots revealed joy in each others' presence.
She handed him the drink, startling him badly. "You don't have to feel weird about it. I can tell by your face. I get that look a lot," she added. "I was adopted at birth." She gave him a sweet smile. "I know the whole story, if that makes you feel better."
"Wait, what?"
"I know some people hide that they adopted kids, some tell kids when they're older, some tell right away. I always knew. Hard not to in this case, I guess. But you don't have to feel badly about that," she said, giving his arm a gentle squeeze when Loki remained staring at the photo with a frown.
"Why not?" he demanded, then knocked back the entire drink. "They weren't your real parents."
"Of course they were," Natalie corrected. "Mom just didn't give birth to me. She was there since the day I was born, she's the one that took care of me. I was chosen. That's important, you know. I wasn't some accident to my parents, they chose me. I was special that way."
Loki's gaze sharpened. "Were you an accident to your birth parents?"
"Yup." She sipped her own glass. "Birth mother was sixteen, still in high school and scared shitless about being a mother since her loser boyfriend skipped out as soon as she got pregnant. She wasn't a bad person, just... You know, clueless."
"You met her?" he asked, surprised.
"Yeah. I was sixteen and curious. Didn't want Mom with me, that would've been too awkward. She was nice enough, I guess. But it was sad. She didn't really do much with her life." Natalie sipped at her glass, then put it down. She plucked the photo from his hands and put it down on the desk, sliding between it and Loki. "But that's not important, is it?" she asked in a sultry tone, sliding her arms around his neck.
"How could you not care about your family if they share your blood?"
"It's not blood that makes you family, Loki," she told him gently. "It's who raised you, who cared for you. It's about the one that takes care of skinned knees and nightmares, who stays up late at night and teaches you how to drive." She let her fingers trail down the back of his neck, lips curling into a soft smile. "Anyone can fuck and leave, anyone can father a child or carry it. What makes someone special is if they stick around."
He let out a soft sigh. "Even if they lie about it?"
Natalie shrugged. "It depends on why they lie, Loki. And really, does it matter in the long run? You can love someone and not what they do." She ran her fingernails down the nape of his neck. "But that's not why you're here, is it?" she purred, a teasing note to her voice.
Loki actually flushed a little, which made him cute and endearing for the moment. Natasha wasn't fooled in the least; he could be utterly ruthless in business and there were articles about the callous way he had dealt with competition to Odin Corporation. She also knew full well how he had destroyed Jotunheim Ice and was conspiring to do a hostile takeover of Asgard Industries.
"Perhaps you could help me forget my troubles, dear Natalie," he murmured, his hands sliding down her ribcage to land at her waist.
She pulled him down to nip at his lower lip. "Oh, I can definitely do that. You have anything?"
"Condoms, you mean? Um... no..."
"Diseases," she corrected, moving to kiss his jaw. "I'm on the pill and I hate those anyway. Doesn't feel good."
The look of relief was almost comic. "Oh. No, no diseases." He looked as though he was struggling to decide whether or not to admit that he had few romantic entanglements. "I've been too busy with work," he said finally.
"Mmm," she murmured, working on the buttons of his shirt as she mouthed his jaw. "And lemme guess, you're a workaholic. So no chance to connect outside the office, don't want to date inside the office..." Her voice trailed off as she kissed her way down his throat. "Good thing I was only a temp, then," she said, looking up at him through her lashes with a saucy grin.
Loki grasped her gave her a filthy grin. "There's nothing only about you," he growled.
Clothes were shed quickly and tossed about as they stumbled toward the bed. The sex was surprisingly gentle. He seemed starved for touch, hungry to feel her bare skin against his, to taste her. Every touch was reverent, his lips dragging across her bare skin. Loki was so eager to taste her, to have her cry out in pleasure and buck beneath him until she came. It startled him when she returned the favor, exploring his body with lips and hands, stroking him to hardness and then riding him. Her movements were fast, taking him in deep, her fingers laced through his, his hands pinned to the bed on either side of his head. His expression was rapt as he looked up at her, as if her self-confidence was intoxicating.
He nearly sobbed when he came, and clutched her close. "Don't leave. It's so..." Loki stopped and shook his head. "There's nothing for me out there. No one."
"Your family..."
"They're not family. Not flesh and blood. I was just someone to hang about in the shadows, to be the darkness to their greatness."
Natalie brushed her fingers against his cheeks. "Are you sure? There wasn't any affection? Any caring or love?"
Loki wrenched himself away from her touch. "Not everyone had the loving household you did."
"No," she said quietly, watching him pace around the room, too agitated to care that he was naked and open to her gaze. "But your choices determine if you can create one of your own."
"With you?" he asked, startled. His hands twitched at his sides, a nervous tell.
Natasha pulled the sheet from the bed and held it to her chest as she approached him. She touched his arm gently, a soft expression on his face. "As flattering as that is, we haven't known each other that long." She smiled to soften her words further, but he winced. Letting go of the sheet, she touched his chest with both hands, gratified when he looked her in the eye rather than at her chest. "Loki. You can make the right choices, build a new family if that's what you want. But is the family you already have really that bad? Why throw away something you might be able to fix?"
"I destroyed it all," he said softly. "My rage..."
"You said things you regret?"
"They needed to be said."
"But maybe not like that?"
Loki sighed. "But not like that. My mo- I hurt her. I know it, I saw it, I couldn't help myself. I wanted to hurt her so badly, for her to feel even a fraction of the hurt I had when I learned that she lied to me."
Natalie cradled his face in her hands. "Then start there. Explain to her what you're telling me. She's your mother. She loves you."
"How can you say that? You don't know her."
"Love is for children, and you're her child. It takes more than blood to form bonds. I don't call my biological mother Mom just because she gave birth to me. But my Mom earned it. She was with me from the beginning, she's the one that knows me."
He seemed so lost for a moment, she pulled him down for a kiss. "You don't have to decide right now. Come back to bed. Sleep. You'll feel better in the morning."
For a moment, Loki seemed almost desperate. "In my nightmares, I stab my brother. I taunt him and I goad him into making stupid mistakes and then I stab him."
"Do you hate him that much?"
"Sometimes I think I do..."
"Does he hate you?"
"No. In spite of everything, he doesn't."
Natalie merely traced the curve of his cheek. "Then you can fix it."
Loki sighed. "You are like a balm, meant to soothe an open wound," he murmured softly, returning the gesture as he scanned her face. "There aren't many who could sneak up on me."
"Sneak up on you?"
"You come to matter to me, Natalie," he murmured softly. "In so little time, I rely on your honesty and truth to make me whole."
Natalie sighed. "Someone else shouldn't make you whole, Loki."
"But if I'm so empty inside..."
She caught his face in her hands, thumbs rubbing at the corners of his mouth. "Loki, if you're waiting for someone to fill you up and give your life meaning, you'll never feel full. I'm not enough. I can't be."
"But you don't hurt this way."
"I've lost people, too," she murmured before she meant to even mention it. "I know what it's like to feel lost," she continued after a while. She might as well continue in his vein, especially since she had his attention. "It's... It's painful," she said, her voice betraying all of the rage and hurt she had suppressed for the past year and a half. That visibly startled Loki, and he stared at her with wide eyes and parted lips as he wrapped his arms around her. "It's not being empty if they're gone, though. The memories are still with you. Good and bad, all of it. Because they're part of you. They influenced you. They helped make you who you are."
"But he betrayed me," Loki replied, voice shaking. "He lied to me."
"And he's not here to justify or explain or make it up to you," Natasha said, stroking his hair gently, a soothing caress. He responded to it even though he clearly didn't understand why. "Your pain is real, Loki. But it's up to you what to do with it. Do you let it consume you? Or do you let go? You were happy once, weren't you?"
"I thought I was. But then I learned the truth," he replied, bitterness creeping into his voice.
"But the truth doesn't invalidate the happy times. It doesn't mean you weren't happy when you were a child. It doesn't mean he didn't love you, didn't do whatever he could for you. Maybe he's from the old school of adoption, where they don't tell the kids anything about their biological families, where they think even knowing you're adopted will make you think you don't belong."
"Because I didn't-"
"You were chosen," Natasha interrupted, voice still lulling and gentle, still stroking his hair in the circle of his arms. "It was a made family, not a born one, but that doesn't make it any less real, any less powerful. Family is more than just blood, Loki. Family is whoever you care for, whoever you would do anything for."
Something in him broke, and he tucked his head into the crook of her neck and sobbed. She rocked him, making soothing nonsense noises as if he was a child. This had proceeded with the logic of a dream; in his own mind, he was far too easily shattered and broken, too emotionally volatile and hurt. He wanted to believe it, she realized, but considered himself too unworthy of the love that he craved.
In that regard, the two of them were frighteningly similar.
***
Clint met up with Natasha at the prearranged time. "Well? How is it going?"
"It's worse than we thought," she said shortly.
"What? What are you talking about?"
"That sense of self we were banking on? Isn't there. Externally, he looks like a sociopathic bastard without a conscience. Internally, he's a sociopathic bastard because he thinks no one can love him and it's the only way to get respect."
Rolling his eyes, Clint paced and looked over at Steve. "Well? What do we do?"
"It's worse than we thought," Natasha repeated to the group, brows knit in anger and dismay. "He's an even bigger mess than he looked. This is going to be horrible."
"Can it be done?" Steve asked, looking at her intently.
She bristled at him. "I can salvage this, if that's what you're asking."
"I am. We need to do this."
"You just want to get your name back out there," Clint accused. "You don't give a shit about what the rest of us have to go through."
Steve shook his head. "That's not true..."
"Listen. Thor is out there somewhere, maybe making a muck of what we're trying to in here. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that we haven't seen him yet," Clint said.
"I chalk it up as a good thing," Natasha pointed out. "I'm going to count that as a blessing, as well as the fact that we haven't seen anyone else running through here."
"Anyone else?" Tony asked, frowning. "Pepper and Jane weren't interested in coming down here to see what we're doing."
Sighing, Steve shook his head. "They mean Bucky." At his blank look, Steve sighed again. "I have a shade. Bucky. Our former partner in crime."
"Wait. We didn't really talk about this in detail," Tony said, frowning even more deeply.
"Maybe he really is over his grief?" Natasha suggested. By the tone of her voice, she obviously didn't think that was a viable reason.
All eyes swung toward Steve, who shook off their concern. "Listen. It's going to be okay. I can control it if he does show up. We'll all be fine, and then we can get back out there to work." He gave Clint and Natasha a rakish grin. "It's been like old times so far, you know? I miss that. I really miss that. Don't you?
"If the shade is here," Bruce asked, leaning against a table in the warehouse they were meeting in, "what is he likely to do?"
"Shoot us. Torture us. Kill us," Clint said, looking directly at Steve. "Trust me, all of that hurts like a bitch."
"But then if he shoots you, you wake up. Right now, that's annoying, but you're not the dreamer for this level. Bruce is. So it would just collapse," Tony said, smiling as if he had solved a particularly nasty problem.
"It doesn't work that way," Bruce said with a frown, shaking his head.
"What are you talking about?" Natasha asked, looking at him in concern.
"All this talk about deep sedation... Have none of you worked with that before?"
"A dream within a dream is as technical as it ever got," Clint said.
"And most of the time, we didn't even need to do that," Steve pointed out.
"Deep sedation doesn't work exactly the same way as lighter versions with somnacin," Bruce told them. He took his glasses off and buffed them on the hem of his dark purple button down shirt. Putting them on, he saw that he had everyone's rapt attention. "The dreams are deep, they're clear, but they are also unstable. I've told you that a lot. I thought you understood what that meant," he said, shoulders curling a little in an apologetic manner.
"That means what?" Natasha asked.
"Limbo. It means if you're killed, you don't go up toward consciousness. You go down to limbo and into unconsciousness."
"Are you kidding me?" Clint cried as Natasha shouted "What the fuck?!" Tony was stunned, but Steve... he looked as though he expected that, as if he understood that from the very beginning and hadn't cared one way or another what would happen along the way.
Natasha rushed forward and grabbed him by the front of his jacket. "You never told us about limbo, Steve. That's too high a risk! If it shoots us," Natasha hissed, "we don't wake up. There's no waking up ever again. Is that what you signed us up for? Because no amount of money in the world is worth that."
"We still answer to our employer," Steve murmured. "We're only on the first level. We can rearrange the plan a little, change the motivation, maybe..."
"You don't understand," Natasha growled at him. She shoved him away, and Steve actually staggered back a few steps. "Loki's unstable. There is nothing for me to build on as we go further in."
"So build him something."
Natasha threw up her hands in frustration and rolled her eyes. Tony looked over from where he sat at the sidelines. "Build. You don't mean that literally, do you?"
Clint sighed. "Tony..."
"Because I'm serious. Look around, obviously I know my shit and I can build anything. I can grasp concepts easily, and I can change dreams on the fly if you need me to." Tony got up and gestured around him with wide movements. "He's looking to build something big and grand. A monument to his ego. So we give it to him. And while he's patting himself on the back for that, you go in and make it part of him."
Everyone stopped and stared at him. "What?"
"He's going to be susceptible to this. And we're trying to get him back to the guy he was before everything got shot to hell, right? We've only been in this time frame for a day. We have seven more, and then in the next level we have months, and in the third level we have years." He looked around at the others with an expectant expression, as if he couldn't understand why the others didn't speak the same language he did. "We have time. We can build it, he will come." Tony waggled his eyebrows at Natasha. "Maybe literally."
Both Steve and Clint bristled at the insinuation. "Tony," Steve began in a warning tone, standing up from where he had been slumped in a chair.
He held up his hands in a conciliatory posture; Natasha holding a Glock 26 to his temple may have helped with that. "The point was to build a world he could believe in. Give him a chance to heal, maybe change how he treats his family. What we need to do isn't necessarily different from that original goal is what I'm saying."
Natasha removed the pistol from Tony's temple and it dissolved with a mere thought. "So we need a new plan," she said.
"And we need not to die," Bruce reminded them all, nervously adjusting his glasses. "Remember, we're so deeply sedated in the real world that killing anyone here will send them directly to limbo." All eyes swung toward him. "It's in the literature," he said defensively.
"I don't think we need a new plan," Tony said in all seriousness. "Our next level is Odin Corp, right? The plan was to let him take it over. It still works, guys. Just push the fact that he's running the show, he's the ruler of the known world. Let him build it up bigger. His decisions are golden, everyone else's importance pales in comparison, whatever." He looked around at the anxious faces around him. "But I'll dream it. That leaves you free to play hero down below," he added to Clint, who was starting to protest. "I built it, I know where all the nooks and crannies are, and if need be, I can add more."
"You're not trained for this!" he cried.
"If you get shot-"
"It's my maze. I'm in control, dammit," Tony said, a fierce pride in his tone. "I can do this, I can bend this entire dream to my will and it will happen because this is what I do. I come in here, I build things. I create. That's my job, that's what I do best. You're point, Clint. That's the part you excel at. So you go with them, you protect them from what might be out there, you help them see it through."
"If there's any militarization..."
"I'll make a suit or something. Kind of like a superhero. If your shade can't shoot me down, I won't die and go to limbo, right?"
Steve looked physically ill. "I suppose it works that way, but-"
"Excellent. So that's the new plan. Same as the old plan, but with a twist. Or a wrinkle, since you are being a crotchety old man and don't like it," he snarked at Steve. "Trust me. I've got you. I'll do this, and it will work."
Everyone let out a troubled sighing breath. What other option did they have?
***
Natalie regaled Loki with tales of a made up childhood, some embarrassing in a nonthreatening kind of way. It was an ordinary kind of life, nothing dramatic or terrible. "It really isn't important that I was adopted," she told him when he asked about it. "It's just something else about me, like the fact that my hair is red or my eyes are green. It just is."
That frustratingly zen kind of answer bothered him, even if he didn't want to admit it.
Loki wasn't exactly sure why he was so attached to Natalie. She was beautiful and self-assured, hardworking and easy to get along with. She fit in everywhere she went, while he often felt left out and awkward. What place did he have? He once would have said he was an Odinson and would belong just because of that, but he wasn't truly an Odinson. The man he had called father had lied about him. If he lied about Loki's origins, what else did he lie about? Did the years of "I love you" also amount to lies? The proud comments about Loki's charm and skill and knowledge, were those all lies as well? Was nothing real?
He went about the convention center, and it bored him. Not that expected to be entertained during the event, but it was awful in a way he hadn't expected. Maybe because he was agitated enough to start with. Maybe because he would much rather spend time getting to know Natalie better, and not just because she was fantastic in bed. It felt as though he was experiencing things for the first time when she was around, thinking things from an entirely new perspective.
And then Thor showed up at the BCC, and Loki wanted to smash his face in.
He strode into the building as if he owned it, as if all the people milling about and chatting were peons under his control. His head was held high, shoulders back, steps sure and unerring as he moved through the crowds.
Thor was perfect. He was always perfect. Nothing he did was ever wrong, not like the times when Loki tried to inject a little levity into the Odinson family and his tricks backfired. Or when he thought he could learn magic tricks and nothing worked the way he wanted to. Or when he tried working with a chemistry set and made things explode. He was dangerous, not talented in those ways, and the constant struggle to try to be seen for himself seemed to be useless. His father hadn't really loved him anyway. Every statement of affection had been a lie. Why did it matter if he protected the Odinson holdings or not? They could rot in hell for all he cared.
Okay, maybe not his mother. Frigga loved him, of that Loki had no doubts whatsoever. He had hurt her terribly, and on top of the loss of her husband, his rejection had been unnecessarily and horribly cruel. It had to have felt like being stabbed.
Loki was a horrible son, and he was a terrible brother. So why not go all in? Why not be the villain in their lives? He was halfway there as it was.
And of course he was striding toward Loki in one of the main hallways of the BCC, right where the glass windows overlooked the street. It would be reinforced glass; no wall of glass was ever not reinforced, the movies always got that part wrong. There was no jumping through the window and falling down one story to the pavement below to escape him. Thor was grinning, head held high, looking as though he wanted to enfold him in an embrace.
Where was Natalie again?
Oh, there she was, in one of the rooms that had been set up as a lecture hall. He could imagine her with her clipboard and pages of notes, neat handwriting summing up all that information she wanted to soak in. He thought of screaming her name, calling her in as reinforcements, he couldn't do this alone, he couldn't, but then it was too late and Thor was right there, right in front of him, all smiles and eager cloying affection that had to be false, had to be a front to eventually take down Loki later when his guard was down.
He would never let that happen, never.
"Brother," Thor began, effusive as ever. "Stop this foolishness. Come home. Let us be a family again, together with Mother."
"I asked you to leave me alone," Loki said, proud his voice didn't waver. "Can't you respect my wishes?" he hissed.
The lecture was breaking up. Natalie would be by his side soon. Loki could see the bright red hair out of the corner of his eye, but he was agitated and soon wasn't soon enough.
"Listen-"
Loki cupped a hand to his ear and pulled his lips back in a snarl. "I'm listening. Only, I hear nothing but noise. Nothing of importance." He let his hand fall to his side and he tried to sidestep his bro-Thor, he was sidestepping Thor-but the blond wouldn't accept that. He reached out to grasp Loki's arm and pull him in, the same pleading words, the concern on his face that had to be a lie, had to be, and something inside of Loki's chest snapped.
"I told you to let go of me!" He had a small knife in hand, he didn't even realize he had been carrying one, and stabbed Thor in the side.
Everyone in the hallway was staring at Loki and Thor. His chest seized, and as he jerked his hand away, the knife was left in Thor's side. Loki staggered to the side a step as Thor let go of him in shock, and Loki tried to avoid the gaze of all the onlookers. They must have been horrified. They must think him a monster.
Natalie came to his side then, slipping a cell phone into her pocket. Loki didn't even wonder at that, at the way she looked at Thor as if to question why he was there and if he was all right all at once. "We need to go," she told Loki. "Clint's coming for you," she told Thor as they passed, and Loki didn't even stop to wonder who Clint was.
She knew people. She would take care of things. He was too much in shock to do it himself.
"I can't go back now," Loki murmured as she propelled him down the stairs so they could exit the BCC.
"There's a concert at First Mariners," she said in a low voice. "Come on."
There were more people about in the street now, and Loki was lost. Where was the arena? How did Natalie know about it or the concert? He had thought she only knew the Inner Harbor area of the city. But she led him through the crowds, weaving expertly through them as he shook and felt physically ill. "Oh god, they're staring at us," he moaned.
"Quick. Put your arm around me. Laugh at something I said."
He was too startled to disobey. The laugh, false as it was, eased something in him. "How did you know it would work?" he asked.
There was Natalie's little quirk of a smile. "Do something as if it's real, and the body will follow through eventually. Plus, it distracted you, didn't it?"
"Are we going to try to hide in the concert?"
"If you like. Or we can keep walking. I said the first thing that came to mind."
Someone must have mentioned it in the lecture hall. And he vaguely thought he might have heard about it, some pop singer he really didn't care about. They bypassed First Mariners and kept walking aimlessly through the city, and he didn't feel as hunted. "What was that all about?" she asked him quietly, his hand tightly in hers.
"He wouldn't let me go. I panicked." He could feel the anxiety rising again, but she squeezed his hand tightly. "I didn't even know I had a knife."
"You must have felt so threatened," Natalie murmured, pulling him toward the side of the sidewalk, near a parking garage. What street were they even on? She pulled him down for a gentle kiss, which stilled his anxiety. "Hey. Hey. I've got you. I've got you."
The repetition was soothing, and Loki nodded. "Now what do we do?"
She appeared to be thinking quickly. "We'll get you somewhere safe, see what's going on with Thor. He's not going to press charges, you know. He's probably worried sick about you, the way you've been hiding from him."
"Why can't he understand that I want nothing to do with him?"
"He's your brother. And kinda clingy, it looks like."
Loki laughed, startled. "You think?"
"But he loves you, for better or for worse. He'd forgive you this if you let him. I know he will."
"How can you be so certain?" Loki asked, cupping her face in his hands, his touch gentle.
"Because he loves you. And that's what people do when they love you. They forgive you anything, they will bend over backward to help you if they can. They won't ask you why you need it, they'll just do it. Thor would do that for you if you let him." She covered his hands with hers, expression gentle. "When you're ready for him to."
"I'm a monster."
"No, Loki. You're lost. You're lonely and alone."
"I have you, don't I?" Loki nearly cringed at his plaintive tone. "What am I, Natalie? That I would do this, that my first instinct is to hurt others?"
"You're human, Loki," she murmured, sounding almost sad. "You're hurt, and you're lost, and you're lonely, and you don't know what to do. Sometimes hurt people lash out. Sometimes they curl in on themselves."
Natalie's expression suddenly became one of fear, even if it lasted for only a moment. Someone behind him, but she yanked on his hand as he turned to look. Not police, there were no uniforms there. Only a tall man, muscled, black flak jacket and military grade pants on, weapons strapped to his body and a machine gun in place.
"What the hell?"
"Run. Just run," she said, pulling him along.
"Thor wouldn't-"
"Not Thor," she said brusquely. "C'mon. We've got to find a hiding spot."
Wordlessly, he let her drag him away as they were being stalked.
***
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To Chapter Five - Past The Black Where The Sirens Sing