Chapter 4
The debriefing was a shambles. Tony had refused point blank to come to it, and was back in his workshop, searching the world’s circuits for JARVIS. Thor was fighting back tears, with only intermittent success. Natasha, Bruce, and Steve himself had nothing useful to say, and Fury was biting everyone’s heads off and questioning every moment of their conduct.
“It’s that damn scepter,” said Clint, “I’d bet my life on it. That’s exactly how Loki was when he had it. Not just the obsession with people bowing to him, but the whole, the whole vibe. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Yes, thank you Agent Barton,” Fury snapped, “I think we’ve all gathered that the stick is bad juju. That, in fact, is the reason why we sent it to Asgard in the first place,” he turned on Thor, “where we were assured that it would be kept safe.”
Thor sniffled and wiped his nose with a handful of his cape, and began to moan obscurely in Shakespearean again. “If the All-Father is fallen, the Tree must fall. The Root must wither, is withering even now. I feel it. Oh, my stars! Oh, my mother! What has become of you? And what will become of us, your children?”
Fury rolled his eye, and rounded on Bruce. “Banner! I noticed a conspicuous absence in the ranks! The Hulk didn’t feel like joining us today?”
“Director,” Bruce gave a tight smile, “do you remember how many times you’ve told me not to let him out without orders from Steve?”
“Sixteen,” said Natasha unexpectedly.
Now it was Steve’s turn in the hot seat.
“So why didn’t you order it?” Fury demanded of him.
Steve squared his shoulders and met Fury’s glare head-on. “I judged that it wouldn’t improve the situation.”
“Oh, you judged that it wouldn’t improve the situation. Three thousand American citizens forced to their knees in front of an invading foreign dictator, but you didn’t think a little show of force would improve the situation. I see. Your master plan was to let yourself and your teammates get slapped around, in full view of everyone, and then call it a day. I like it, it’s very original.” Fury’s sarcasm was as heavy as his glower.
Steve was hardly the one to wilt under either, though. “I wanted to see what Loki would do,” he said, keeping his tone reasonable. “He had Odin effectively distracted from the civilians, and I thought he might have a plan.”
Fury’s eye boggled, the clearest show of surprise that Steve had ever seen from him. “You thought Loki might have a plan?”
“Oh my brother, do you yet live?” Thor wailed randomly.
“Are we counting on Loki, now, to do the job of the Avengers? Did it occur to you that Loki’s plan might be to steal back the scepter from Odin?” Fury asked, very loudly, spitting mad.
Steve paused, just to inject a little calmness back into the conversation.
“Yes, exactly,” he finally replied.
Every eye in the room turned to him.
“I judged that none of us could take the scepter from Odin by force, but I thought there was a fair-to-middling chance that Loki might be able to do it by trickery. Loki having the scepter would be preferable, because I considered it probable that the Hulk, or possibly Thor, could take it from him by force. That was my strategy, in the moment.”
The whole table stared at him, and Natasha said, “Huh.”
Fury shook himself, and went on the offensive again. “But apparently Loki didn’t have a plan, and the scepter is still with Odin, and Odin got away. So much for your strategy, eh, Rogers?”
Steve looked around the table thoughtfully. “Did it seem to anyone else that Loki didn’t want the scepter?” No one answered. Steve shrugged, “I’ll have to watch the footage later. Anyway, I’m counting today as a win, because there were zero casualties.”
“Except JARVIS,” said Bruce somberly.
“That reminds me, someone’s going to have to talk to Tony, sooner rather than later, and find out exactly what JARVIS did that made Loki kill him,” said Fury. “Romanoff, you’re on that.”
Natasha nodded.
“Hey, hang on,” Steve held up a staying hand, “We don’t know for sure that it was Loki.”
Clint snorted.
“No, we don’t,” Steve turned towards him. “We have no evidence. Alright, I grant you, the timing is suspicious, but how about this for timing: JARVIS vanishes, and then Odin shows up? Or, heck, it could just as easily have been Doom, or even that four-flusher, Hammer.”
“Oh, come on, Cap,” Clint said derisively, “We all know about your little villain-crush on Loki, but I didn’t think it had actually made you stupid.”
Steve couldn’t do anything about the furious blush that swept over his face, but he could keep his eyes firmly on Clint’s as he answered, “That is a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, Barton-”
Clint leapt to his feet, causing his ergonomic office chair to roll wildly away. “Just in case you’ve forgotten, Captain, your precious Loki made me into a puppet, a murderer, and a traitor! Now he’s killed Tony’s best friend, or son, or nanny, or whatever the hell JARVIS was, and you and Thor want to sit here and tell me to my face that he’s what – misunderstood? No, fuck that guy, and fuck you if you can’t tell the difference between an evil piece of shit and someone who’s just made a few mistakes-”
“ALRIGHT” roared Fury, “That’s enough! I’m sick of alla y’all. Get out of my sight before I fire the whole bunch of you and start this team from scratch.” He stood shaking his head and muttering blasphemies as they trickled from the room.
Well, Steve thought, as he strode quickly away from the meeting, tempers are bound to run high under these kinds of circumstances. The debriefing had been embarrassingly unprofessional on every front, but he could think of two nice things to say about it: it had been short, and it was over.
And thank goodness, because Steve had a lot to think about.
He let himself into his suite and shut and locked the door behind him. Cautiously he called out, “Loki?”
There was no response, but he hadn’t really expected any. He moved slowly through each of the rooms, listening carefully and ‘feeling’ around him with a sense that has no name.
The truth was that the glimpse of Loki that he’d had this morning in his bedroom hadn’t been his first. Sure, there were the incidents everyone knew about; Loki somehow bamboozling every security feature of the Tower so that he could sit in the hot tub, or do a load of laundry, or make friends in the mailroom. But Steve had…well, seen wasn’t really the right word….he had sensed, imagined, dreamed of Loki all over the Tower, at many different times over the past year. He hadn’t said anything because he didn’t know what to say. He definitely wasn’t seeing Loki with his eyes. It was more as if he was just catching himself thinking about Loki, in a certain way. Thinking about Loki being right here, right now.
With me.
The very unpalatable and inappropriate truth was that Clint wasn’t entirely wrong. Steve spent a great deal of time thinking about Loki, and some of those thoughts had simply felt more immediate, or more real, or something. How could he report that? He could just picture that conversation; ‘Hey guys, I daydream about Loki all the time, but sometimes while I’m daydreaming about him, I kinda feel like he’s in the room with me.’ Ugh, Clint would never talk to him again.
The momentary glimpse this morning had been different only by a matter of degree. And he still didn’t know what to think of it, and he still didn’t want to tell anyone.
Having assured himself that no imaginary or ghostly Loki was in the suite, Steve sat down on the floor next to his big windows, pulled over the nearest sketchbook, and started to draw Loki’s face from memory, as he had seen it that morning; intense, scared, exhausted – beautiful.
With his hands busy, Steve was free to think through this absolutely FUBAR day. First, the loss of JARVIS, then the collapse of Tony, then the bizarrely vivid sight of Loki, then the attack by Odin, then Odin and Loki disappearing almost simultaneously, then Thor’s confusion and grief, then Clint calling Steve out in front of everyone for his partiality to Loki. Steve’s emotions were in turmoil, but he was their leader and he knew his team was counting on him to at least appear calm and confident.
After the sketch was completed to his liking, Steve sighed and pushed himself to his feet. He had calmed himself enough that he felt ready to go and be a sturdy shoulder for Thor to cry on. He knew that Bruce was already providing more or less the same service for Tony, so that left Steve on Thor-duty.
Rather than search the whole Tower, Steve picked up the flat little telephone off the coffee table and touched the screen on the correct sequence of images to place a call through to Thor.
The telephone rang a number of times before Thor finally answered.
“Friend Steven!”
There was a loud rushing sound, nearly drowning out Thor’s yelled greeting.
“Thor?” Steve yelled back. “Where are you?”
“I do not know, my friend! There are plowed fields beneath me, as far as the eye can see!”
Steve caught on. “Are you flying?”
“Yes! I go to visit Jane! The crone suggested it, most firmly!”
Steve knew that Thor was referring to the Avengers’ SHIELD-assigned shrink.
“I don’t think you should call Dr. Levitt a crone, Thor. She might get offended.”
“Nay, friend, she likes it! She has assured me!”
That did actually sound like Dr. Levitt. “Oh okay, as long as she said so. Listen, Thor, I’m sorry if I wasn’t there when you needed someone to talk to. I know I ran out of that meeting pretty quick, but I just needed to get my own head together before I tried to support anyone else.”
“That is most understandable, and most admirable, Captain! Exactly as the wise-woman recommends! She also reminded me to thank you for your fairness towards my brother!”
Well, it was nice to know that it was coming off as simple fairness to Thor, whatever Clint might think. “Yeah, of course. Everyone deserves a fair hearing. Hey, you know, it looked to me like he actually appreciated you trying to protect him today. I mean, from where I was standing.”
Thor sounded a little choked up when he spoke, “Would that I had always been as prompt to his defense. Would that I had never given him cause to doubt me. We might be standing side by side today, as brothers ought, and not on far sides of an unbridgeable chasm.”
Steve had to ask. “Do you believe he’s the one who killed JARVIS?”
There was a long pause before Thor said, “I know not what to think. The brother of my youth would never have killed anyone who had not shown him malice. But Loki’s ways have changed so, that I cannot even guess at his actions. He was ever devious and serpentine in his thinking, and now his deeds are those of a man I know not.”
Steve didn’t know what to say to that.
Thor spoke again, thoughtfully. “But my mother used to tell me that Loki cannot be understood with the head – only with the heart. And I know that my heart still loves my brother.”
“Hm. She sounds like a good mom,” Steve said, thinking of his own mother. “Hey, have a good trip, and tell Jane and Darcy and Erik hello from me, okay?”
“That I shall, shieldbrother! Fare thee well!”