The only positive thing regarding Anthony’s surgery was that the doctors and specialists he had gathered had agreed to conduct it in the perfectly conserved healing room inside the penthouse of Stark Tower.
Everything else regarding that affair was a headache and half, for Loki.
Because Anthony had to be in Stark Tower, both Loki and Amaya were forced to relocate there too, for as long as it took him to be healed. And while the girl was a delight and not as spoiled as she could be, she was a bit of a stickler for routines. A sudden change in environment would not agree with her or her sleeping schedule.
James and Pepper had agreed to come for the surgery, to support Anthony, but none of them would be able to stay for an extended amount of time, because of their respective jobs. Evelyn could not abandon her job, especially during the school year, and Ben and May were in the same position. And no one wanted to bother Mama Rhodes for this.
Which meant that Loki was more or less supposed to care for his daughter alone for almost ten days.
Sure, Anthony would be physically there; but JARVIS, Doctor Strange and Doctor Wu had emphasised how he should not leave the bed for the first few days and take it very easy for the first few weeks after the surgery, least he compromised his already weak ‘immune system’ and so that they could make sure no complications happened.
Which meant it fell onto Loki to keep up with their child as well as help in every area JARVIS couldn’t when it came to Anthony and his health.
Loki had faced Bilgersnipes, hostile warriors, ice cats, demons, and the Chitauri, and yet he could admit that this terrified him to no end.
Because what if he did something wrong? What if Amaya became angry at him? What if she did something wrong? Did he truly have the right to reprimand her if she did wrong or would that make her hate him forever? Or would Anthony grow cross if he spoiled her too much? And how much was too much?
“You’ll do fine,” said Anthony, as he finished dressing up in his casual clothes. Loki had already teleported most of their bags to the Tower, and was going to wait for him to drive off before he and Amaya made their way there too.
He gave him a smile that did not hide his nerves. “Aren’t I supposed to reassure you, considering the whole... taking metallic objects out of your heart?”
“Oh right,” he grinned at her. “Kiss good luck?”
Loki rolled his eyes at him, but still pressed a small kiss on his lips. “Good luck.”
“Daddy!” called out Amaya, rushing into the room, still dressed, thankfully. She had lately been going through a puzzling phase where she took off her clothes at any possible chance. “I’ve got you a card. Me and Peter made it.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be giving me a card after I’m done fixing my heart?”
“Oh,” said the girl. She looked at her card and then hid it behind her back. “I did not have a card.”
“But I just saw it!”
“No, you didn’t!” She turned to Loki. “Did you see a card, moddy?”
Loki shook his head solemnly. “I saw absolutely nothing.”
“You two are the worst,” huffed the other, but there was a smile on his face. He pressed a kiss on Loki’s cheek and one of Amaya’s. “See you later!”
And then Loki was left with Amaya.
+++
Things went well for about two days.
Anthony’s surgery was a glowing success, according to everyone involved, and he was returned to them - though left on bed rest - on the second day of their stay. Amaya gave him the promised card, which had been signed by Peter, herself, Harley and Ashley (though how they had achieved that when the other two were in Tennessee, Loki had no idea). She behaved well throughout the day, not bothering Anthony as requested and following her normal schedule with Loki at her side.
However, things started to get complicated when night came.
Usually, she fell asleep quite quickly, after a story that Anthony read or Loki narrated through his magic.
However, likely because it was a new place she was not comfortable with yet, it took her a long time to fall asleep.
Consequently, she woke up already cranky, and that only worsened throughout the day.
Loki barely managed to stave off a tantrum in the morning, when Amaya discovered that she was not going to be eating breakfast made for her by Anthony, and by the afternoon the girl did not want to cooperate with anything.
She refused any of the toys and games offered, wouldn’t hear of watching her cartoons and finally burst into tears when Loki barred her from entering Anthony’s room because the man was still asleep and supposed to be resting for a while longer.
Loki felt like crying himself, because Amaya was not listening to either to him or JARVIS, and was demanding to have Anthony back immediately.
“Amaya, svass, please listen,” he tried, which made her cries reach a pitch that was probably enough to have any animal in a 5 mile radius crazy. Thank the Norns that Anthony’s room was soundproofed because this would have surely woken him otherwise.
“DADDY! I WANT MY DADDY!”
“... in other news, the chase of Captain America through the streets of Washington continues as new evidence suggests that-”
"I WANT MY DADDY!"
“Alright, that’s enough!” said Loki, voice sharp, and the audio from the television immediately cut off.
Amaya stared at him in slight confusion, though she did not stop her pitiful cries that were only working at stabbing Loki in the heart. But she was not screaming, so Loki quickly took advantage of that.
He went down on one knee in front of her, so that he was at eye level with her. “Okay. Okay. Elskam min, do you remember that book we read the other day, about the princesses and their stallions?”
She shook her head, still sniffling.
“That’s okay, I'll help you remember it. About how both stallions got hurt, after that very long trip, and then at the end of the story only one got better?”
She nodded slowly.
“Do you remember why?”
“B’cause the prinss with the bla'k hair was, uh, nice and to’k guh care of the horsey, so he got bettah. But the prinss with the blonde hair want’d to ride him quickly, so he got more hurt instead,” she said, voice shaking with her sniffles.
“Right, good job on remembering that,” said Loki, untensing when she smiled at the praise. “Right now, daddy is a stallion. Because he was hurt.”
“So we needta take care of him,” agreed Amaya.
“Exactly. And to do that, we need to let him sleep so that he heals faster, and keep our indoor voices so that we don’t wake him. JARVIS and you and me are all the princess with the black hair. But if we act like the princess with the blonde hair and disturb him and throw tantrums because we can’t play with him, then daddy won’t get well quickly.”
She seemed to think about Loki’s words for a few seconds, and he held his breath, hoping against hoping that she would listen. And then breathed out in relief when she nodded.
“Okay. I’m sorry, moddy,” said Amaya, and then looked at Loki with new tears shining in her eyes. “Are you going to leave now because I wasn’t good?”
The stab wound from the Kursed had hurt far less than this. “Oh no, ástvinur, never. Come here,” he said, quickly wrapping his arms around her and holding her tightly. “Nothing you could ever do could make me leave. I’m sorry it took me so long too come back, but now that I am here, I’m never leaving again.”
“Promise?”
“Pinky promise,” he said, referring to the sacred Midgardian oath Anthony had taught her.
“Now come on. Would you like to help me make a soup to help daddy get better?”
Finally, the girl smiled.
“This is why I don’t fucking take holidays,” said Tony, ending the call and pulling off his ear piece, to give himself a few seconds to breathe.
“You should be resting at home,” complained Loki at his side, but she knew by this point that she might as well be talking to the wind.
Not that she was wrong, of course. Tony technically should rest a couple of days more, but Strange had ended up agreeing (after a long argument) that it was not exactly 'necessary', just very very highly recommended that he rested for a week.
“I already told you why I couldn’t,” he said, walking through the doors of the Compound. It was buzzing with people and medical professionals, and Tony felt once more slightly sick at the sight.
When he had undergone the surgery, the worst thing he expected to go through once he woke up was Amaya throwing a tantrum and Loki pulling his hair out in frustration. Maybe May’s terrible cooking because she wanted to help him ‘cheer up’ and that would instead end up giving him some rare form of food poisoning.
He did not expect to see the intelligence world in flames, Captain America missing, SHIELD having fallen, Black Widow telling the US to fuck off, thousands of agents and their family in life threatening positions and all of America’s secrets on the fucking internet.
He was still struggling to understand what the fuck had happened, but right now there was something more important to take care off.
While JARVIS was sentient enough that when the leak had happened he had immediately secured every file on Tony, Loki and Rhodey that he could find, he did not exactly have the sort of foresight to do the same for everyone else.
After all, he knew that Tony fucking despised SHIELD, so he had not thought he would use his resources to try and save the field agents who had gotten burned in the data dump.
But while Tony had a lot to say about people who signed up for that particular field of Intelligence, at the end of the day, it was the big wigs he had a problem with. The ones who gave the orders. Not the Average Joe who was trying to earn a paycheck to support their family. Not the janitor who just cleaned the floors and had returned home to find his entire family mutilated by someone with a grudge against SHIELD and all of his information on the web.
So here he was, with a Compound full of injured or displaced agents and several traumatized families, while his suits and his prototype Iron Legion were still working on extracting and locating the hidden agents and bring them back safely.
Seriously, what the fuck had Romanoff been thinking? Rogers, he could understand: the man had been living in the 21st Century for like 2 years, he probably did not fully understand the implications of his actions, but she should at least know. Her own kills and assassinations were out for the world to see, and Tony was not even sure she had a valid American citizenship, so what the hell?
“Mr Stark, Mr Stark,” cried out a man, quickly approaching him.
Loki, who had insisted on coming with him once she had learned what he planned to do, quickly got between them, and he stopped a few steps away, though his expression remained terrified. “Please, I mean you no harm I promise. I just want to know, my wife, Lindsay Herson, please, please.”
They could have just called him. It wasn’t as if he’d need to get out of the bed to stop the Helicarrier, he was the engineer who had the patents behind half of its systems!
“JARVIS?” he asked, tapping his earpiece.
“Mrs Herson is currently being transported back with a group of three from her mission in Tehran. She has been shot, but nothing life threatening.”
Tony repeated the words to the man, who fell down to his knees, tears of fear and joy rolling down his cheeks. “Oh thank you, Mr Stark. Thank you, thank you.”
Tony just nodded at him, pulling Loki along with him. A call. All they had needed to do was give him a fucking call.
He scanned the area around him, feeling himself grow more and more tense the longer he looked without finding her.
“Are you looking for someone in particular?” asked him Loki, confused.
It was a little jarring looking at her completely shapeshifted like this. Her hair was shorter than usual and bright red. She was shorter than him, and was wearing brown contact lenses that hid her normally green eyes.
If it wasn’t for the fact that she had kept her voice the same, Tony would seriously start doubting that it was truly Loki following after him. That and her necklace, which matched the one she had given him after his surgery, to protect him from mental attacks.
“Yeah, but- Oh thank god,” he sighed, as he made eye contact with equally relieved brown eyes. “Why the fuck have you not already signed in with JARVIS?” He demanded, as she basically ran and leaped into him arms.
“I’m sorry,” said Sharon Carter, squeezing him tightly a couple of times before letting go. “I was with Commander Hill, we were trying to reassure the other agents, somehow, it's just such a mess.”
“Are you okay?” he asked, quickly inspecting her.
While they were not as close as they had been in childhood, Sharon Carter was still Tony’s cousin. Back when Peggy still had her wits and her and Howard were close, they had spent a lot of time together. He, Sharon and Hank Pym’s daughter, Hope.
Now that he thought about it, that might have been when all three of them were still working for SHIELD.
Then Hank and Howard had their falling out, and Janet Van Dyne died, and then Tony’s parents died, and the trio stopped existing. They did keep in contact, more or less, and they had both called him when he returned from Afghanistan, but they had not seen each other face to face in years.
Still, he hadn’t wanted her dead, and seeing her name among the SHIELD agents online had been a terrifying shock.
“We were in the Triskelion when HYDRA was revealed. I managed to get shot, but Hill here had my back,” she said, motioning to the woman next to her.
Tony’s expression went more blank when he noticed her standing beside his cousin. “Hill.”
“Stark,” she said. She made a complicated face, then she straightened up visibly. “Doctor Stark.”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “Uh. Commander Hill?”
She did not smile. “I’d like to thank you, on behalf of the agents who you saved. Is there anything I can do to help? I am a familiar face, so I might be able to put them at ease.”
Loki tilted her head to the left, signalling that Hill was telling the truth. Tony crossed his arms to his chest anyway. It felt really weird, not having the Reactor there. “Why?”
“It was in the news, that you were undergoing surgery,” she started. “You don’t like SHIELD, you have never made a secret of this. And SHIELD never liked you, either. In fact, several times SHIELD has tried to infiltrate you and your company, trying to recruite you or intimidate you into joining forces with us.
“And yet, when our own commanders and leaders deserted us and left us for dead, you saved us. You had no reason to do so, and you were still recovering, and still you put everything aside to protect us.” She squared her shoulders. “We owe you our lives, and for that, you have our loyalty.”
“Iron Man is for the people, and SHIELD agents and their innocent families are still people,” he informed her, feeling slightly off kilter. But he was starting to feel like she was pledging her alliance to him, somehow. “And even if Fury is dead, I am sure SHIELD will eventually return once more.”
Agencies like that did not die because someone tried to kill them.
She seemed to think about it for a second, then came to a decision. “Fury is not actually dead. He’s still alive.”
Uh. That was interesting.
“And I cannot speak for everyone in here, but spies don’t trust twice. SHIELD might return, but I doubt the majority of us would return to them. I know I won’t.”
Tony blinked. “Are you trying to ask me to found an intelligence organisation of my own?”
“I’m asking you to considering hiring those of us who are qualified. We might be known as spies but the majority of us, it’s not the only skill we have. It’s just the skill that SHIELD brought us in for - some of us less willingly than others - but not the only thing we can do.”
And then SHIELD acted surprised that HYDRA had made a nest among them when Hill basically just admitted that some of the agents hadn't had a choice in working for them.
“And you expect me to trust you?” he asked, more harshly than he intended. Sure, Loki claimed that she was telling the truth so far, and she had volunteered information on Fury that she didn’t have to, but one could never be too cautios.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I am willing to do the work. To earn your trust. Because you have already earned mine, as well as my respect. And it might not mean much to you, but I know that many other agents would stand behind me.”
More and more like a pledge of alliance.
Tony considered her for a few seconds more.
Truth be told, while he did not want to fund a new SHIELD, he knew the worth of a person’s loyalty. Despite how much he despised SHIELD, they did have some competent people among them.
And between JARVIS, Loki and Pepper vetting, he could be 99.9% sure that he was not about to hire a psycho who would end up betraying him and destroying him in an operation paperclip 2.0.
“I make no promises of a job,” he told her, after a few more seconds of silent deliberation. “I’ll have to talk to Pepper, and then you will have to talk to Pepper and convince her. And Happy. But for now, here,” he said, taking one of the extra ear pieces from his pocket. “JARVIS is on there, and he will tell you the arrival of each new family or new agent. While you’re waiting for them, can you prepare a statement of what has transpired between Fury being declared dead and this complete shitshow?”
Hill nodded, letting out a slight sigh of relief. “Of course. Handwritten or dictated?”
Oh. Tony liked competence, she was already winning in his book. “Dictate it to JARVIS, that way we have a complete unfiltered account. Sherry, can you get whoever was in the Triskelion with you to do the same?”
“Don't call me that, but you got it,” said his cousin, before the two of them quickly walked away, ready for their new roles.
Loki watched them walk away and then gave Tony a slight smile. “You’re a good man, Anthony.”
“And you freak me out speaking normally while you look like that.”
Loki rolled her eyes at him, but did not offer more compliments. “Come on, Dr Stark. You are allowed to spend 30 more minutes on your feet before your mandated one hour break. I called Dr Wu.”
“Wait what? But Stephie said-”
“The fact that you are so comfortable with your doctor made me seek out a second opinion,” she informed him, glaring slightly. “And second, Doctor Wu is an actual cardiologist. He knows more than Strange will ever.”
“It’s cute how you’re still jealous of him.”
“Not jealous. I simply find him arrogant and pretentious. Also, annoying.”
“I want to say something about how many people we know that fit that description but I also don’t want you to break up with me so I’ll keep quiet.”
“Good decision.”