Chapter 4
It was hardly Loki’s first balancing-by-blood, and he docilely allowed himself to be prepared by his representative. Thor plaited Loki’s hair securely, and brought him what appeared to be the battle-livery of a SHIELD officer. Loki laced up the short boots, and pulled on the tough black gloves still pondering what Thor had said to him, and what that might mean for their future. Could it be true that Thor was not ashamed of him? Was it possible that Thor, as he seemed to have meant, had never been ashamed of Loki? Loki’s memories had been so mutilated by exposure to the scepter, and by the Other’s poisonous sorcery, that he truly didn’t know if he was remembering Thor aright, or through a dirtied lens.
When Loki was fully dressed in the SHIELD livery, Thor grabbed the side of his neck, searched his face for something, and then turned and opened the door out into the great stone hall.
Putting on one of his more infuriating battle-faces, Loki strode out into the immense echoing space.
A long, low window near the floor showed that they had an audience. Loki could see Rogers, looking fretful, and Thor’s paramour, the Lady Jane, and two others who he thought were Romanoff and the maiden Darcy.
On the far side of the immense room stood Stark’s huge battle-armor with Barton already ensconced within it. Stark seemed to be making some last minute adjustments to a leg joint.
The suit itself did not alarm Loki. Certainly he had fought and defeated larger opponents many times, and this one he would not have to defeat. Even without his magic, and totally unarmed, he had learned that his Jotun body was nigh indestructible. Norns knew, it had been tested.
He realized that Rogers had entered the battle hall, and was now hurrying to where Loki stood.
“You don’t have to do this,” Rogers said, when he was close enough to speak in a private tone. “Call it off, now.”
Looking into the mortal’s handsome face, Loki realized that he was genuinely worried. It occurred to Loki for the first time that Rogers might be afraid for him. Loki stared into the earnest blue eyes, stupefied for a split second. If Rogers didn’t want to have sex with him, for whatever incomprehensible Midgardian reason, why was he still worrying over Loki’s safety? The soldier’s strange offer of friendship came to Loki’s mind. Was the friendship starting already?
Loki racked his mind. What did friends say in such circumstances? How could he reassure Rogers without dishonoring either himself or Barton, and without giving away his intentions? His best option, he calculated, would be bravado. That always seemed to cheer Thor’s friends, when Thor was about to engage in single combat.
“I am Loki. I don’t have to do anything.” Loki said, “Remember that, Rogers.” Surely that would be enough to reveal to the Captain that he was doing this by choice, and therefore had a purpose and a plan.
Rogers didn’t look cheered. His eyes were piercing, as if he would peel back Loki’s masks, one by one. Loki found the scrutiny simultaneously disquieting and intriguing. What would such a golden, perfect hero as Captain Rogers do once faced with the creature under the masks?
“You don’t want to do this,” Rogers leaned in to whisper.
That just showed how little these Midgardians knew Loki. Their only experience of him had come when he was…not entirely himself. They had no idea that his normal condition was that of mastermind. Did Rogers honestly think that Loki had gotten himself engaged in a balancing-by-blood on accident? Did he and Thor think of Loki as the poor victim of circumstances? Evidently so. Loki wanted to laugh.
“You don’t know what I want,” he told the human, barely refraining from adding a lewd wink to this blatant reference to the night before. “But I can assure you, Captain, that I do.” Poor Rogers; so worried, and for nothing. Loki would let no harm befall Barton, and no serious harm befall himself. To do either would endanger his ultimate goal. He wished for a moment that he could plainly tell Rogers so, but obviously that would never do.
When the hall was cleared of all but the two combatants, Loki took his time eyeing the metal monstrosity before him, cataloguing its weakest and strongest points. The shoulders and haunches were enormously bulky, and could clearly take quite a battering before Barton inside would be in any trouble. The ankles and wrists looked vulnerable, and a number of outer plates appeared to be entirely extraneous to the working of the device, and their removal would add to the show without doing any harm to the wearer.
Feeling that they had stared each other down long enough for dramatic purposes, Loki decided it was time to get Barton into the proper frame of mind.
“For two long years you have thirsted for my blood, mortal,” he called out across the resounding chamber, smiling the smile that never failed to make his enemies bilious, “Come and spill it!”
Right on cue, as if he were still Loki’s puppet, Barton charged.
It was a simple matter to sidestep the advance of such a large opponent. Loki laughed as he spun neatly out of its way, and then laughed even harder as Barton surprised him with a spin of his own, catching Loki with the back of a wildly swung hand.
The force was quite impressive, for such a glancing maneuver, but even more impressive were the speed and fluidity of Stark’s creation. Perhaps the fight could be drawn out longer and made to look more realistic than Loki had at first thought. That would be good, as tending to be more satisfying to Barton.
Rolling onto his feet again, Loki met the next assault, gripping the massive metal wrists of the huge hands that fell crushingly onto his shoulders. Barton was trying to squash him down by main force, a dubious proposition. Loki took the opportunity to feel at the wrist-joints, checking the seams for any opening that could provide a fingerhold. To distract Barton from his searching fingers, he grinned up into the faceplate and cried out patronizing encouragement, “That’s it! Avenge yourself, Avenger!”
A noise like a growl came from the slit in the faceplate, and Loki found himself flying through the air, and then impacting a stone wall quite forcefully. He fell to the ground, and was back in a fighting stance, almost before he had landed. This was really turning out to be quite invigorating.
Since the last vestiges of his spirit-walker’s torpor had worn off in the warmth of Rogers chambers the night before, Loki found that a bit of exercise was just what his body was craving. Muscles that had hardly moved in years were now stretching and flexing, pumping blood through every forgotten artery and capillary. His stamina would obviously be quite low, in his malnourished state, but it should still be enough to give Barton what he needed.
This time, when Barton charged, Loki met him by sliding in low and lifting the armor off its feet with one shoulder. The huge metal contraption crashed down quite spectacularly onto its face, but Barton was hardly down for a second before springing back at Loki.
Loki sprang higher, nearly grazing the suit’s back as it flew by underneath him. A few more such dodges should get Barton’s blood properly up.
Ah, yes, the mortal was clearly enraged, roaring behind his faceplate, and barreling back towards Loki. A solid punch took Loki in the left clavicle, and he let himself be borne down under the armor. Time to see what it could really do.
Loki endured a minute or two of actually quite impressive pummeling, before deciding that too much of that would only bore Barton. He reached up to snag the edge of a wristplate with the tips of his fingers, deepening his grip as the metal bent under the double pressure of Loki pulling down while Barton pulled up. In an effort to free his limb, Barton made the mistake of raising the abdomen of the suit away from Loki enough that Loki was able to get his feet into the space between them, and push. The suit spun through the air, landing heavily on its back.
In truth, the pounding had left Loki a bit dizzy, but he played it up for the audience, who had begun to make some noise behind their thick window. It was important that they come away fully as satisfied as Barton, so Loki had no intention of skimping on the theatrics.
Heaving himself laboriously back upright, Loki took his time so that he could appear to still be recovering when Barton came in for his next blow. A huge metal hand whistled towards Loki’s head, and rather than dodging or absorbing the impact, Loki latched on and applied torque at the crucial moment, to precisely the point that he had weakened earlier. Somewhat to his surprise, the whole hand came away in his grip. A Midgardian expletive, in Stark’s voice, burst from the viewing chamber.
Loki flung aside the hand, and saw Barton hesitating twenty paces away, where the momentum of his lunge had carried him. If the mortal called a halt to confer with Stark, and had the hand restored, that would set a precedent that could drag out this balancing for days. Loki intended to slowly, and with great showmanship, pull the suit to pieces, and it would ruin the drama of it if they had to pause each time and let Stark put it back together.
Loki beckoned to Barton with both hands, and turned the human’s mind from such considerations with a condescending, “Come, my hawk, come and take your satisfaction!”
With a muffled roar, Barton did.
Loki soon lost track of the blows and counterblows of the fight. He had never had much interest in such things, unlike Thor, who could recite every move of battles that he had fought centuries ago. Loki had always looked beyond any individual fight, planning several steps ahead. What to do if he started losing, what to do if he lost, what to do in the case of victory, how each possible outcome could be turned to best advantage. In the present circumstances, such calculations were simplified in that he already knew what the outcome of the fight would be.
He had decided while he was still riding the bus to Avengers Tower that he would need to win at least the grudging acceptance of Barton, and by extension Romanoff, if he was to have any chance of the Avengers believing him about Thanos. In order to undo the bitterness and shame he had created in Barton, Loki would have to let the mortal obtain an unquestionable, and yet hard-won, victory over him. A simple enough objective. He might also have to offer some sort of verbal apology afterwards, and that he was perfectly willing to do.
The strange truth was that Loki actually felt rather fond of Barton. He was the first mortal warrior that Loki had ever known so…thoroughly. While he was Loki’s (or the scepter’s) slave, Barton’s whole mind had been opened for Loki to peruse. At the time, Loki had hardly been in any condition to fully appreciate what he found there, although he had recognized and gladly made use of Barton’s innate loyalty, integrity, and resourcefulness. But since he had begun to come back to himself, Loki had realized that the person he had so carelessly used had actually been someone worth knowing.
Loki had seen many things in Barton’s mind, and because they were not his own memories, they were untouched by whatever foul sorcery was making a hash of Loki’s brain. He had seen Barton as a child, consistently and bravely protecting a younger boy, putting himself between the smaller child and a raging human man. He had seen Barton turning down certain missions, at the prompting of his own conscience, despite the fact that such choices could damage his standing within SHIELD. And he had seen Barton’s totally unaccountable mercy to Romanoff, when she had been a deadly enemy. Barton was shrewd, canny, worldly – the very furthest thing from naïve. And yet somehow he had remained open-hearted enough to convert a ruthless assassin into a beloved sister.
The thought was oddly moving to Loki. It was like Odin’s adoption of a Frost Giant - except sincere. Who that had not known both of them intimately would believe that a nameless little mortal archer could be a better man than the All-Mighty Odin, King of the Nine Realms?
As Loki reflected on the bizarreness and irony woven into the tapestry of souls by the Norns, his body was taking quite a beating. Nothing beyond what he had anticipated, yet, but he thought it worthwhile to ask, wiping blood from his mouth, “Are you satisfied?” He ripped away a shin-guard from the huge suit as he asked it.
Barton growled and backhanded Loki ferociously.
A quarter of an hour later, Loki ventured to ask again, while a huge, edged knee ground into his stomach and a metal hand wrenched his right arm in its socket.
“Are you satisfied?”
“Not by a long shot,” came the gritted reply.
Loki resigned himself to more such treatment. He did truly want Barton to be satisfied, as that was necessary to the next several steps of his plan. He would not permit the mortal to kill him, but they were nowhere near that possibility yet, so Loki was content to allow significantly more damage to be done to himself.
Some time later, his whole torso in agony, with a mouth that he could barely force to form words, Loki asked again.
“Are you satisfied?”
Barton was gasping with exhaustion. Loki guessed that it was probably uncomfortable to breathe so hard inside Stark’s suit, if such contraptions were anything like suits of armor that Loki had worn in the past. After a bit of panting, Barton mustered enough breath to wheeze, “I’ll be satisfied when you scream.” He followed the words with a kick that knocked Loki across the room.
When Barton was upon him once more, pummeling more slowly but almost as strongly as before, Loki managed to grin up at him and grind out, “So sorry to disappoint, but I don’t think I can…”
Indeed, he was pretty sure that at least two of his ribs were broken, and even speaking was a torment. The bones were attempting to knit back together, but Loki’s malnourished condition and the beating he was currently receiving were combining to make that impossible. Sooner or later – probably sooner – the broken tip of one would certainly pierce a lung. Loki only hoped that that wouldn’t be the thing that would revive a memory of Sanctuary, and cause him to lose control of himself. Although, to do so would not be disastrous at this point. Tears and shaking would be in keeping with his state of injury-upon-injury now, and ceasing to fight back might conceivably make Barton stop.
But Loki didn’t want Barton to stop until he was fully, completely satisfied. Until he had had his fill of revenge and didn’t want for more. Loki could hold out until that time.
It took longer than Loki could have wished. His left lung was well and truly punctured (shredded, more like), his right arm was a useless weight of pain, his abdomen felt pulverized, his legs refused to obey orders, and Loki’s poor head was better not spoken of, by the time Barton stopped on his own.
Loki found himself flat on his back with no idea of how long he had been there. He stared blearily up at the distant ceiling, and wondered what had changed. It slowly came to him that the blows had stopped. It was not much of a relief.
The huge eclipsing shadow of the armor retreated, and a few rattling breaths later, Barton’s sweaty and exhausted face appeared in Loki’s line of sight.
Loki tried to smile at him, glad to see his bare face. It was a good face, when it wasn’t blanked to nothingness or full of hate.
“Ary’sassfye?” he managed to gurgle, through bubbling blood.
Barton’s face twisted in an expression that had Loki mystified for a moment. Admittedly, his brain was working at about one quarter speed.
“Were you mind-controlled too?” Barton asked, very quietly, between heaving breaths, as if he didn’t want to hear the answer.
Loki hadn’t anticipated Barton asking him that question now. He wasn’t sure of the most strategic way to answer, and he wasn’t in any condition to figure it out, so he answered a different question.
“M’srry.” Would that be good enough? He tried again, driving his bruised face and mashed mouth to form the words, “I… am sorry. Barton.”
A number of other faces were suddenly in his peripheral vision, and surprisingly gentle hands were straightening his limbs and cutting away his thick black livery.
Barton was tugged away, and Loki, glad with the sense of a job well done, a plan well executed, let his eyes close.
Barton had used up the worst of his anger, and words could probably accomplish the rest, if a silver tongue meant anything. Loki had perfected the art of convincing apologies centuries ago, and wouldn’t begrudge Barton one of his best performances, if required.
A hand slid into Loki’s own. Even with his eyes closed and his magic missing, Loki recognized it, and gripped it tight. Evidently the offered friendship was already in effect. Loki anticipated some minor difficulty in getting Rogers to reconcile with Barton, after this, but certainly nothing that he couldn’t smooth over in a very few days.
His body was jostled then, and the excruciating pain caused him to lose consciousness (one of the great blessings of a physical body suffering non-magical injuries).