Chapter 5
Pure panic jolted through Loki’s body, and he could feel his fruity skyr and smoked fish trying to come back up. He’d known it was a mistake to allow himself to eat, however little. He was not safe here – what had he been thinking? The kindly crone, and the harmless demeanors of Rogers and Banner had lulled him into a false sense of security, almost camaraderie. It had been so long since anyone had deigned to eat at a table with him, that he had almost allowed himself to fall under the obviously absurd impression that these were his companions.
Now the truth of the matter would be made unforgettably clear. For the bundle in Stark’s mechanical arms was unmoving, the face covered…
If Jarvis had not survived the untested, slapdash spell that Loki had cobbled together in one desperate night – Loki had gambled his own life on Jarvis’s, he was now realizing, and that spell had been the most wildly amateurish scrabbling mishmash of his life –
The bundle moved.
Banner and Rogers had popped to their feet the moment Stark’s monstrosity of a suit of armor had landed. Now they rushed toward it, calling out.
“Tony, is it-?”
The bundle underwent some feeble internal struggles, and then a corner of the fabric slid down to reveal the face of the body that Loki had chosen. The eyes blinked, sleepily to be sure, but there seemed to be some intelligence behind the mask of flesh and bone. Loki found that he could not look away. He needed to see some sign that his spell had truly worked, truly taken.
“Hello, Captain Rogers, Doctor Banner,” said the immediately recognizable voice.
“Oh my God, Jarvis! This is so amazing,” Banner was carefully pulling the blankets further down, tucking the excess fabric under Jarvis’s chin.
“How do you feel?” Rogers asked, one large hand gripping Jarvis’s ankle through the blanket, seemingly unconsciously.
Both Avengers wore big, relieved smiles. Loki snuck a sideways glance at Dr. Levitt, whose mouth was hanging open. “Jarvis?” she whispered.
Perhaps it had been a great working after all.
Stark strode with heavy, clanging strides farther into the room so that the glass doors could close behind him. “Alright, you guys, give him some space. He’s having a Freaky Friday, and he’s atrophied, and he’s feeling sleepy-”
Stark caught sight of the stone table, the strange assortment of foods, and Loki.
“Okay. What. The. Fuck. I leave for a couple of hours, and you guys throw a tea party for the psychotic a-hole? Is this the Twilight Zone? What am I looking at? Why isn’t he locked up somewhere deep and dark? You know we’ve got cells here, right? Where is Fury? Where is Clint?” He addressed Loki directly, “If I wasn’t carrying a whole-ass man in my arms, you understand that I’d be punching you into a paste right now?”
“I can think of one very good reason why you should not,” said Loki, holding his chin up as if he weren’t utterly defenseless and de-magicked at the moment. This acting surrendered business was very difficult to keep up, what with Stark being so snotty.
“Oh, and what’s that, you total whackjob?”
“Ask your armload.”
Jarvis looked at Loki while he answered. “Loki is the only one with the power to undo this.”
“All the more reason to keep him locked up in a cell!” Stark burst out.
Everyone stood tensely eyeing each other for several seconds, each mentally calculating odds and angles, in case the situation should devolve into violence.
Suddenly Dr. Levitt spoke up, loud and clear. “Are you hungry, Jarvis?”
“Yes, Dr. Levitt,” Jarvis replied from Tony’s arms, “As it happens, I am. Extraordinarily hungry, I find.”
Stark immediately moved to meet Jarvis’s need. The enormous metal body gently deposited Jarvis onto a stool, while Stark glared at Loki from under the raised faceplate.
“One wrong move, Rudolph” he promised, “I’m just itching to see what my new suit can do.”
Loki sighed and reminded himself that his greatest safety lay in weakness, among these tender-hearted fools. “Your new suit would be wasted on me, Stark. I have neither magic nor bodily strength at the moment. If you wish to make a claim of personal retribution against me, it will most likely be a day or two before I am recovered enough to afford you any kind of satisfaction.”
“Wait, like a duel?” Stark was cracking open his armor from the inside and stepping out. “Is that a thing? That you do?” He sat down on the stool beside Jarvis’s, and began to devour cold pizza with unbecoming haste. Jarvis was being helped by Banner to a long narrow packet labeled “go-gurt.”
“Yes, certainly,” Loki informed him. “If you feel that I have wronged you or a loved one you may challenge me to a balancing-by-blood. A thousand years ago, mortals called it a holmgang, although the rules and procedures are somewhat different on Asgard. I would be obliged to meet you in as equal a combat as we could devise, and we would fight until the challenger was satisfied.”
“Huh,” said Tony around a mouthful of food, “I mean, I’m up for that, but I don’t think Steve would let-”
There was a loud clang as a piece of ceiling dropped onto the floor, and Barton was suddenly crouching on the kitchen worktop.
“I’ll do it!” he announced breathlessly, “I challenge you. A holmgang. Whatever.” He had rather a rabid glint in his eye.
Loki stood up, lifted his chin, narrowed his eyes, and said in a deliberately disdainful tone, “I accept.”
There was some confusion after that. Captain Rogers made his objections known loudly and repeatedly, Banner expressed similar objections more quietly but just as persistently, Stark seemed unhealthily excited and kept offering different locations for the holmgang. The wise-woman had her fingers steepled under her chin and was watching all of them shrewdly. Barton insisted upon his rights, and even called upon Loki to back him up, which Loki did. Jarvis hunched his shoulders, closed his eyes, and focused on his “go-gurt.”
Stark eventually noticed this. “Hey!” he waved his arms, “Alright, everybody pipe down! You’re upsetting Jarv.”
Everybody, surprisingly, did fall quiet, and they all turned to look at Jarvis.
“You okay, J-Baby?” Stark asked, putting a gentle hand on Jarvis’s blanket-clad back. Jarvis turned his face towards Stark and said in an undertone, “I’m sorry – Tony - I seem to be having another physiological reaction. My muscles are tensing, and my respiration is shallow.”
“Yeah, and it’s no wonder,” said Stark, scowling around at everyone present, while rubbing Jarvis’s back soothingly, “Come on, J, we don’t have to eat with these hooligans. No respect for someone’s first day in a human body! Do you guys act like this around newborn babies?”
Loki thought these admonishments were rather rich, coming from someone who had been shouting just as loudly as everyone else. Banner and Stark helped Jarvis to his feet, and he wavered there, leaning heavily on their shoulders.
“I’ll just hop back in the God-Killer-” Stark was saying, when his eyes caught and stuck on Jarvis. “Whoa, Jarv… Look at you…You seemed so puny when I was in the suit, but you’ve gotta be, what, six four? six five?”
“My medical chart said that I am six three, sir – Tony.”
Jarvis was looking down at Stark and Banner, a mildly surprised expression on his face, as if he had not realized until this moment just how tall that was. Loki was amused to see Stark looking upwards like a mountaineer gazing upon a peak he couldn’t wait to scale.
With a person as promiscuous as Stark, it had been difficult to determine what features might be most pleasing to him, but Loki had certainly made an effort in that direction when choosing Jarvis’s new body. Tall, freckly persons with square shoulders and long legs, Loki had noticed, seemed to make it through Stark’s many defenses faster than other types. Unless he were very much mistaken (and he almost never was, about such things) Stark would have seduced and debauched Jarvis before the poor creature had even learned to walk unaided.
“So tall…” Stark was whispering, like a besotted mooncalf.
Loki rolled his eyes and looked away from the embarrassing spectacle – only to find that the crone was looking directly at him.
“Very interesting,” she said, and winked. “I think you and I will have a lot to gossip about at our first session.”
Having sat in on a number of Dr. Levitt’s ‘sessions’ with various Avengers, Loki had gathered that they were intended to be spiritually therapeutic. The idea that he would be expected to have sessions with her was new and alarming. Thor’s had provided him with some of his best laughs of the past two years, but he was nervously certain that reclining on the Doctor’s wine-colored couch himself would be much less funny.
After Jarvis had tottered from the room, held up on either side by Stark and Banner, Barton had stormed out, flinging glares of pure malevolence back at Loki. Leaving Loki with just Rogers and the Levitt.
“This is the best job I’ve ever had,” said the wise-woman, tossing blueberries into her mouth. “Steve, why don’t you stash Loki somewhere safe, while I clean up this mess I made.” She began to tuck things back into the refrigerator, seemingly in no hurry and without a care in the world.
“No, no, we should help you, Dr. Levitt,” Rogers predictably said, moving to do just that. Loki clutched the water pitcher with one hand, and the greenish frozen cream with the other. His desire to eat had vanished as soon as Stark had appeared, but if he were to be put into a cell now, he would definitely want the water, and he might conceivably feel like taking a few more licks of the cold, sweet confection later.
The crone flapped Rogers away, saying “You’re a sweetie, Steve, but I have a hunch that you might want to make plans for Loki before Fury sweeps in and makes them for you, no?”
“Hm,” Rogers turned to look at Loki, “You know, I might at that. Yeah, maybe we’d better, Loki. You can bring the ice cream with you. And the pitcher if you want, but I have one in my quarters already.”
Loki’s eyebrows lifted, “You’re taking me to your quarters?”
“Well, sure. I thought you might want a shower, and some fresh clothes.”
Loki was almost positive that a small noise escaped the Levitt, for all she seemed to be intently focused on placing boxes and cartons back into the fridge.
“A shower…does sound pleasant,” Loki said. He had rather hoped that he would have the chance to physically recover a bit more, or at least grow back enough of his magic to cast a pleasing glamour over his body, but if the National Hero wanted him as he was – well, the man had eyes, and he could scarcely claim to be surprised at what he was getting. At least Loki would smell pleasing enough, after a shower.
He allowed Rogers to guide him from the room with a palm rested lightly on his lower back.