Chapter 11
When Tony woke him up the next morning, frantically shaking him to consciousness, Loki didn’t expect his emergency to be that he needed breakfast.
Loki rolled her eyes as she set the box of donuts on the counter of a bake shop and paid for them.
To be completely honest with herself, she was surprised that Tony even trusted her with his food.
She supposed it was a good excuse for her to be in her feminine form again. So there was that.
“Excuse me, Are you Skylor Walker?”
The voice came from behind her. Loki picked up the box, and turned to see who had spoken to her, a teenage boy with wide dark brown eyes and a backpack slung over his shoulder. In his hands, a half-eaten muffin, though it was apparently forgotten for the moment.
“That depends, do you want something?”
“Oh my gosh, it is you,” the boy gushed, “Sorry, I just, you’ve helped me so much. You inspired me to come out to my aunt.”
The boy pointed to a pin on his backpack, a flag with blue, white, and pink stripes.
She had no idea what it meant, but she felt like she should probably go along with it.
She’d been an inspiration to him? How?
“Oh,” Loki said, unsure exactly how to react, “T-that’s great.”
“Thanks,” the teen beamed, shifted his muffin to his other hand, and held out his hand to shake, “I’m Peter, by the way. Parker.”
“Nice to meet you,” Loki replied politely, and glanced apologetically at her watch, “Sorry I’ve gotta go. They’re waiting for me back at the tower, but I’ll see you around?”
“Yeah,” Peter smiled and waved, albeit reluctantly, “See you later.”
When Loki got back to the tower, she sighed, setting the box on the table, already back in her male form.
Too lost in thought, she didn’t hear Tony talking to her at first.
“Hey!” he waved an arm in front of her face.
“Oh! Sorry.”
“These aren’t donuts,” Tony repeated.
“I don’t understand,” Loki opened the box to look at what (apparently) weren’t donuts, “You said they were pastries with icing?”
“The good ones have icing, anyway,” Tony shook his head, muttering, “But these are cinnamon rolls.”
“What’s the difference?”
Tony took a bite out of one of the cinnamon rolls, and showed the inside to Loki. There were swirls of what Loki guessed was cinnamon between the pale dough.
“See that?” Tony explained, “Donuts don’t have cinnamon. They’re plain.”
Loki shrugged as she picked up one of the pastries, “Sorry.”
Tony glared at her as she tasted it.
“No you’re not.”
“Not really,” Loki admitted with a careless shrug, “I quite like these.”
“Anyways,” Tony cleared his throat, putting down one of the donuts, “So, the Mind Stone.”
Fear clenched in Loki’s chest.
“We found out that the Maximoff twins received their powers from it,” Tony explained, “Wanda hasn’t been super open about how she came into contact with the Mind Stone, so we’re inviting her to live in the tower.”
“Sir,” Jarvis broke in, “Ms. Maximoff has arrived, along with Captain Rogers and Dr. Banner.”
“Send ‘em in,” Tony said.
“What?” Loki protested.
“The goal is to make it so that she can feel comfortable enough to talk about her experiences,” Tony continued, “It could help us secure the infinity stones.”
“You don’t have time for that,” Loki stated plainly, “Whoever sent the assassin to kill them won’t quit now. They already killed Pietro.”
“Exactly why she needs to stay in the tower, where we can keep her safe.”
Loki scowled, but decided arguing with Stark would be like telling the sun to stop shining.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully enough; Steve and Banner introduced Wanda to the rest of the Avengers. Aside from attending supper with them, she kept mostly to herself, spending the majority of the night in her room.
When night fell, Loki retreated to her own room and got out his laptop, switching back to her more comfortable form.
First, she typed “pink, blue, and white flags” into the search bar. She clicked on a picture that looked most like the button Peter had shown her, and found out it meant trans.
She looked up the definition.
adjective:trans
denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex.
Curious, she looked up “The Raven,” and found herself scrolling through pages and pages of content, all centered around the press conference where Tony had referred to The Raven as he, she, and they.
Overnight, The Raven had become a gender-fluid icon.
When she looked up the definition, Loki almost wanted to laugh.
Almost.
adjective:genderfluid
denoting or relating to a person who does not identify themselves as having a fixed gender.
It explained so much; gender-fluidity suited her perfectly, and it gave her some level of comfort that she wasn’t alone.
But none of the other Avengers had mentioned anything about it. As far as they knew, Loki used her female form purely to avoid suspicion.
Were they just unaware of it? If they were aware of it, had they taken it as purely one of Tony’s jokes?
Since that first fight with Tyr as The Raven, Loki snuck out a few times to fight petty crime, on the nights that she felt more feminine.
She told herself that if the Avengers were to catch her, she would be able to talk her way out of it. She was supposed to be assisting the Avengers as an ally, after all.
Loki definitely hadn’t told them about her night missions as Skylor Walker, or why she did them, and she didn’t want to anytime soon.
Honestly, she kind of wondered why they hadn’t confronted her about it yet; they had to have seen something on the news about the Raven’s night missions. They probably didn’t care, so long as she wasn’t causing the trouble, but solving it.
She shut down the computer, and laid awake in bed, a mixture of relief, happiness, fear, shame, and new-found pride bubbling in her chest.