Chapter 6
They all approached Loki cautiously, except for Steve who walked right over and stood beside him, facing the rest of them.
“So, I guess that’s why magic isn’t usually allowed,” Tony said as he neared the table. “I mean, Thor didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Havana.”
“That’s right, Stark,” Loki said viciously, glaring at him, “I cheated. What did you expect from a homicidal ‘whackjob’?”
“Whoa,” Tony felt as if characters from two different genres of movies were meeting. He had just come from Space Jam, and Loki was scowling and sweating like someone from Throne of Blood. “Did I say you cheated? We told you – no holds barred. You did your best and you fucking won. What’re you snarling about?” He tried to inject a little levity into the scenario, “Think you can turn Odin into a nice one-eyed bunny, when the time comes?”
“You talk nonsense, you ignorant ant,” Loki growled, his shoulders pulled up nearly to his ears.
Steve put his hand on Loki’s lower back again, but otherwise didn’t move or speak.
Loki dropped his gaze back to the tabletop.
And suddenly, Tony got it. It was defensiveness, pure and simple.
Now, that was a language Tony spoke.
Of course, Tony’s own defense mechanisms tended more towards obnoxiousness, over-sharing, jibber-jabber, non-consensual nicknaming, humor, eighties slang, flirting – that kind of thing. He never really went in for scariness, sinisterness, or deep creepiness, personally. But now that he saw it, he couldn’t unsee it. Loki had a different collection of masks, but they were hiding the same thing that anybody’s hid: fear.
Loki – Prince Homicidal Whackjob himself, magical space-freak, demigod of unwanted wormholes and intergalactic shitshows - was scared of them. And not because he couldn’t kill them all where they stood. But because he wanted them to like him.
Tony laughed out loud (probably a mistake), and remembered how he had once compared Loki to an angry goth kid.
“That’s right, what did you expect from a pathetic mortal?” he said, winking in the way that usually disarmed reporters, and seating himself across from Loki. He reached for the nearest bottle of plum wine, and poured a cup for Loki and then one for himself. The whole sibling smackdown in the basement had taken so little time that the bottle was still chilled. “But I love to learn, and you seem like the guy to learn from.”
Tony picked up his little porcelain cup and held it out towards Loki, until Loki seemed to get the idea and tentatively lifted his own. Tony clinked them together cheerfully, and tossed the drink back.
“So – first question – what the hell did you do with all the extra mass?”
Loki didn’t answer right away. He was looking strangely between Tony and the little cup in his own hand.
The rest of the original dinner crowd edged back to the table and found seats, Jane with bunny-Thor on her lap.
“You poured me a drink once before, Anthony Stark,” Loki said warily, “Do you remember?”
“Yep,” Tony nodded, “That was a memorable day.”
“Has anyone explained to you what that meant?”
“Yep,” said Tony, nodding again, “Fury gave me about forty-five minutes straight of high-volume telling-off, because that drink was why you were able to poltergeist around my Tower for over a year. But, come on, how was I supposed to know that? So you get why we all need some remedial Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons?”
“And now, knowing what it means, you offer me a drink again?” Loki asked, looking keenly into Tony’s face.
Everybody was sitting down, but nobody had resumed eating; all attention was on this oddly tense conversation.
Tony shrugged, “Does it make any difference? You already live here.”
“Of course it makes a difference, you foo-” Loki cut himself off with a visible effort.
“With the first act of hospitality, you created the bond. With each subsequent act, you strengthen it. Surely even Midgardians know that much.”
Tony did some quick internal calculations. Did he want to strengthen “the bond”?
Loki did already live here. He had, in fact, been living here for more than half as long as any of the Avengers. He had been coming and going, freely and invisibly, ever since the Battle of New York, apparently. So far, he hadn’t killed, or even hurt anyone. In fact, just today he had used magic to protect them all.
A weird blip occurred in Tony’s thought process, which he recognized as the blank spot where potentially important data was missing.
What? What am I missing? he asked his own speeding brain, Slow down, what’s missing?
The answer came to him immediately, in the form of more questions. Was that the first time? Was that the only time? He’s come to all of our battles – and we always win…
Just off the top of his head, Tony could think of several occasions of almost freakish good luck which had spared himself or another Avenger from an injury, or potentially worse. The shattered building that had somehow fallen all around Nat, the bullet that had miraculously been stopped by Clint’s flimsy wrist-com, the giant squid creature that had inexplicably dropped Steve as if he were red-hot… And Loki there, every time, watching us…
Watching over us?
Tony would need to re-analyze all of the video footage, but he already had a growing suspicion of what he would find.
Why, you sneaky son of a - very nice lady, actually, Tony thought, his eyes widening and mouth falling open in stunned amazement, as things clicked into place. Of course, if he really thinks we’re the only ones who stand a chance against this Thanos guy, then we’re valuable to him…
He quickly pulled himself together, and gave a big, press-conference grin. “Loki,” he said aloud, pouring himself another drink, and tapping it once more against the little cup that Loki was still holding in mid-air, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“Hey!” said Steve, “I understood that reference!”
*****
They ended up having plenty of time for movie night after all. Steve had chosen to subject them all to something from 1931, black and white, slow to start, probably without a single explosion or car chase. Steve always chose movies from the Paleolithic, so no surprise there, but this was the first time he had chosen to show them one that he himself had never seen before.
“Greta Garbo,” he kept repeating, “You must have heard of Greta Garbo.”
“Sure, wasn’t she in some Looney Tunes episodes? Or was it Animaniacs?” Tony asked, just to be annoying.
Steve looked gratifyingly annoyed, “She was a real person, Tony!”
“Barrymore?” Jane asked, her eyes on the interminable opening credits, “Like Drew?”
Some quick googling by Darcy revealed that, yes, Lionel was Drew’s grand-uncle.
“I kind of see it,” said Clint, squinting and turning his head on one side.
The others were soon getting into it, and the movie even got a couple of cynical huffs of laughter from Nat, with lines like “What people you Russians are. What charming savages,” and “A spy in love is a tool that has outlived its usefulness,” but Tony was much more interested in quizzing Loki, in a very discreet whisper.
“No, but really, where did you put the extra mass? Thor weighs, like, 220 pounds and that bunny’s gotta be…fourteen, sixteen? At most? You can’t have just compressed him, that would kill him, and besides, Jane wouldn’t be able to pick him up. Come on, where’d it go? You can tell me-”
“Tony! Shaddup.” Clint threw a handful of cheesy popcorn at him.
“God, these costumes,” Darcy said, trying to take a picture of the screen. “Metallic high-heel boot-leggings? Where do you even get something like that? Loki, you could totally pull that off, that would look great with horns.”
“Pocket dimension, right? It’s gotta be a pocket dimension,” Tony pursued what really mattered. “Do you make a new one each time, or do you use the same one for everything? Is there, like, a blob of two hundred and six pounds of Thor’s muscle and bone floating around in one of them now? Or does it look like him, just with a rabbit-shaped hole in it?” He gasped as a thought occurred to him, “Do you keep a reserve of flesh somewhere, in case you want to turn someone into something bigger?”
“Tony, be quiet please,” This time it was Jane, still petting the big rabbit on her lap, now with a towel laid down for accidents.
“When he turns back into a dude, are all these little bunny-poops going to turn into full-sized Thor-poops?” Tony wondered aloud, concerned for his upholstery. “Cuz those are no joke, he broke two of my toilets before I got him a special one-”
“Tony! For crying out loud,” said Cap.
Tony glanced at the screen, “What? We already know what happens, she gets killed by firing squad. You told us that, which, by the way, has anyone explained spoilers to you? Big faux pas, here in the twenty-first century.”
“Stark,” Loki purred, turning to give him full-bore eye contact, and geez, how does he do that? Tony felt like a chirpy little bird being stared down by a cobra. He went quiet. “Would you like to visit one of my ‘pocket dimensions’, as you so quaintly call them?”
“I dunno, would I?” Tony asked, trying not to physically cower. “Do they have air?”
“Only so much as you bring with you in your lungs….” replied Loki, and there was that smooth, horrifying creepiness that Loki did better than anyone Tony had ever met before. “And that will be lost with your first scream.”
“Jesus,” Tony turned back to the movie, and hunched his shoulders, “What a creep you are.” And if his voice was so quiet as to be inaudible, it wasn’t because he was intimidated or anything, it was just that the movie was starting to get interesting.
*****
Finally, finally, the firing squad did its job, Ramon Navarro cried, and the credits rolled.
Then it turned out that Tony was not the only one with questions for a space-magician.
Loki had already promised that Thor would change back into Thor, but now Jane was getting adamant about the specifics.
“He’ll be himself again in the morning. I’ve locked him into this form for twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours? Why?” Bruce asked, “I’m sure he’s learned his lesson.”
“If Thor can learn a lesson in only twelve hours, then he has greatly changed since our youth,” said Loki dryly, “But in fact the time limit is due to the rules of a proving. A proving ends when one of the combatants admits defeat, or when twelve hours have passed, whichever comes first. As Thor would never admit defeat, I’ve simply removed his ability to speak or make a nuisance of himself until the proving is officially over.”
Clint looked impressed, “You guys fight for twelve hours straight? Just for fun?”
“He was turned at 7:04pm,” Jarvis said helpfully to Jane.
“Okay, but this pocket dimension, what else have you got in there?” Tony wanted to know. “Where is it? How do you make one? Could I make one?”
Loki looked at Steve, for some reason, before answering. “It is a simple ingluvium, a spell of intermediate complexity, forming a blister in the wall of a branch, or in this case, the trunk. I have a number of them pre-created so that I can use them quickly. In the one containing most of Thor, there is nothing else.” He shrugged, “I have no idea how you would go about creating one without magic.”
“How many do you have? What’s in the other ones? How do you find them again? What happens if you lose one?” This was fantastic. At last Tony was getting some actual answers about magic, instead of Thor’s endless I-don’t-knows. It turned out to be not nearly so infuriating once it was possible to know something about it.
Loki was still looking a bit wary, probably shy about giving away professional secrets, which, hey, Tony could understand better than anybody. But Tony could also understand the urge to talk about what you were an expert in, even to an uncomprehending audience, so he thought he’d be able to pump Loki pretty thoroughly, sooner or later.
“I have created thousands of them, but some do get forgotten, or lost, or eaten by the larval nithhoggar.”
Jane’s head snapped up. “Is Thor going to get eaten?!”
“Not to worry, Doctor Foster,” Loki hastened to assure her, “The well-traveled branches are never troubled by such creatures; they can eat only the dead and decaying ones.”
Jane didn’t look much relieved, but Tony was too excited by the news of interdimensional life-forms to feel much worry for Thor’s blubber at the moment.
“What are nithhoggles? If they eat pocket dimensions, what do they shit out? Can you bring one here?” Questions were occurring to him faster than he could get them out of his mouth, “Is Thor’s flab still alive? Does it look like a Brundle-fly? Is it breathing? But, wait, you said there’s no air…”
“His ingluvium is not connected to time, he will come to no harm,” Loki said, looking a bit overwhelmed.
“What, like it’s outside of time? Then I couldn’t have screamed, huh? You were just trying to scare me. Do you have any other living things in them? Have you ever put yourself in one?”
“Never into a timeless one; I wouldn’t be able to get myself out.”
“Oh, yeah, duh,” said Tony, “I should have thought of that. So what do you usually use them for? Is one of them a liquor cabinet?”
Loki reached one hand out, whispered a word or two while swirling his fingers in a fancy way, and pulled a scaly canteen out of thin air. “Here,” he said, handing it to Tony, “My gift to you. You will never taste its like.”
Tony took it, carefully, and wiggled the cork free. An amazing smell, like pear-flavored jelly beans and cinnamon schnapps, and six or seven other things, exuded from the open neck. Everyone in the room, including the rabbit, fell silent and sniffed the air greedily.
*****
A little while later, everyone was delicately sipping ‘the mead of Alfheim’ from tiny sake glasses, and starting to feel pretty giggly. Except for Jane, who had taken her temporary bunny and gone to bed, and Steve whose metabolism was overpowering even elf-booze.
Tony was still asking questions, only slightly slowed down by hiccups and mental derailments.
“I bet it’s all doable by technology. I mean, there’s the universe, right? And then there’s – hic! – ways of, like, of, like…you know.”
“Manipulating…” said Jarvis’s face from where it was shmushed into Tony’s stomach.
“Hic!” Tony agreed, “Majjic and techno’ogy are just two different sets of tools, way I see it, so we juss gotta figure out where they overlap and go from there. You ever put – hic! – a machine in a ‘gluvium? ‘Zit keep working? Affer you take it out, I mean?”
Loki was leaned up against Steve on the couch, his eyes closed, maybe getting a bit annoyed, but still answering a question now and then. “‘Course, why wouldn’t it?” he murmured, “All sorts of machines in my ‘gluvia. Things you’ve never dreamed upon, mortal, nor ever could. Wonders which would turn your insect brain inside-out. Put your coffee-maker in there last winter…” he waved a hand lazily, “Still works.”
“Thawuss you?” Tony was momentarily outraged, “Cruel, Loki, rilly a douchey move-”
He was interrupted by Leona tapping the canteen in his hand with her shot glass, so he poured her a bit more and forgot what he had been mad about.
Loki was blurrily listing machines, his diction still impressively crisp, “Banner’s old laptop, though I never could get the net-flicks to work in my cold-closet, several automobiles and projectile weapons whose owners are now seagulls, a room full of mainframes from Taiwan for Jarvis, that horrible little thing that played your very loud music-”
“My earbud-slash-minispeaker prototype!?” Tony exclaimed, “That was going to revolutionize-”
He stopped.
Loki had sat up suddenly, an expression of pale fear on his face.
“Run,” he whispered, vehemently.
Everyone was now getting to their feet, sobered by the unknown emergency. Nat vanished behind something, Clint disappeared as well, Leona was waking up Darcy and pulling her to her feet, while Selvig shook Bruce awake.
“RUN” said Loki loudly, and then they all heard it.
A humming that felt like it was shaking their teeth out of their skulls, then a high-pitched whistle-whine, then something like a stampede overhead, and there stood Odin, his eye glowing blue.