Bad Blood
"Mornin', JARVIS." Tony greeted as he walked into the elevator.
"Good morning, sir." the AI replied.
"Any sign of the rest of the team?" he asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
"Thor is in the penthouse, he came in through the balcony, but my camera system seems to be malfunctioning."
Tony paused for a moment, furrowed his brow in confusion. "I thought I fixed those, like, last year. When did it start?"
"Right when Thor arrived, sir, he greeted me, and then I stopped functioning up in the penthouse. I have tried rebooting the cameras, but that doesn't seem to work."
Tony immediately felt suspicion rise, his mind going a million miles per hour thinking of all the possibilities. "Are you sure it was Thor?"
"It looked like him, sir."
'Looked like.' There was only one guy he knew that could imitate people down to a T, and that guy was supposed to be dead. "JARVIS, open the top of the elevator."
"Yes, sir."
The top of the elevator opened within seconds, and in flew the arm blaster of his suit, attaching to his arm automatically. The rest of it was in the penthouse and he'd rather not make a scene before he could figure out what the hell was going on. The last thing he needed was this guy to book it when he realized he'd been caught.
"Make sure the elevator ding doesn't do the ding, either." Tony told his AI a few floors before he made it to the penthouse.
The elevator doors opened with no ding (thanks, JARVIS) and he very carefully stepped inside, doing his best not to make any noise. He could hear a voice muttering and as he slowly turned a corner, he saw a figure messing with his hologram tech, looking through old files from two years ago.
"Come on, come on... Curse this Midgardian technology...!"
A cold shot of what Tony refused to call fear began to spread through his chest, but he did his best to shake it off, lifting his arm and making the energy whirr to life, aimed for his head. "Looking for something, Reindeer Games?"
Loki stopped moving as camera footage soundlessly played around him, and he slowly raised his hands before turning around with a small smirk. "Good to see you too, Stark." he greeted casually.
"Thor said you were dead."
"Well, my brother is wrong about many things." Loki chuckled softly. "But contrary to what you may believe, I'm not here to cause any trouble."
Tony snorted, summoning the rest of his suit to stand beside him armed and ready. "Uh-huh, that's like dividing by 0, ya can't do it." Now that he thought about it, it was awfully coincidental that this guy was here now. "You took that scepter, didn't you? Tell me where it is, and maybe you can keep your pretty face."
"Aww, you think I'm pretty." Loki smirked, looking way too amused for Tony's liking before his smile faded and was replaced with a look of confusion. "Wait, the scepter's missing?"
"Why else would you be here??" Tony puffed.
Loki's face dropped and Tony noted that he looked kind of pale before he smacked himself on the forehead. "You lost the scepter??"
That... wasn't the reaction he expected. He was expecting, like, smartass remarks and smug taunting, not frustration.
"Hey, hey, we didn't lose the scepter, it was stolen." Tony corrected him, his voice sounding thoroughly offended.
"And yet you're asking me where it is." Loki scoffed.
"So what, you're upset you couldn't get the scepter first?" Tony guessed. Again, why else would this insane megalomaniac be wandering around his penthouse, using his tech?
But to his surprise, Loki just snorted, looking like he was about to laugh. "Oh please, you can keep that cursed thing far away from me."
What was this guy playing at?? He didn't have the scepter, apparently, and he didn't even seem to want it?
"Then what the hell are you doing in my penthouse?"
"Sightseeing." Loki said in a dry tone, then he pinched the bridge of his nose with a heavy sigh. "Listen, I know we've had our... differences--"
"Understatement of the freaking millennia."
"--but I can help you locate the scepter."
Tony blinked at him once, then twice. Uh... did he just say what he thought he just said? "Excuse me?"
"I don't want that bloody thing loose on the world, it's caused enough damage as it is." Loki replied in a serious tone, folding his arms across his chest. "I was linked to it for a while, so I could probably give you a general idea of where to look."
Tony scoffed at his words. "I've got machines for that."
"And they're doing a marvelous job, aren't they?" Loki replied snarkily. "I help you, and you show me the files you have on Germany. I'm..."
For the first time, Tony watched Loki hesitate. His face twisted slightly, as if arguing with himself about whether or not to say more. And after a moment, he continued, his voice surprisingly low.
"I'm looking for someone."
His hand flexed warily. "Who?"
Again, hesitation. And then the trickster took a deep breath.
"Her name is Sigyn. She's from Asgard, thought to be dead for centuries, but I believe I saw her in Germany that day. I just want to find her and bring her home, nothing else."
Tony was quiet for a long moment, pondering, trying to find any trace of a lie on this guy's face. "...Scepter first."
"Very well." Loki turned right back around and removed the video holograms, replacing them with a hologram of the earth. He muttered something in a language Tony didn't really understand before he started moving his hand over the European and Asian parts of the map, like a weird metal-detector type of thing.
"Why come here of all places, anyway?" Tony asked, genuinely curious about why his once enemy had decided to come here. "If you're not here for the scepter?"
"As far as I know, your technology is the most advanced this planet has to offer." Loki replied, eyes trained on the hologram. "And besides, I had a feeling you wouldn't immediately blast me."
"Why's that?" Tony raised an eyebrow.
Loki glanced back at him and smiled slightly. It wasn't a smirk, just... a normal, almost sad smile. "You know what it's like to be manipulated into doing things you didn't even realize you were doing."
Tony was almost certain all the blood had drained out of his face, suddenly wondering where the hell Loki got that information.
"I see it in your eyes." Loki told him, and Tony wondered if the bastard could somehow read his damn mind. "You still hold a lot of guilt for whatever you did in your past, even though you didn't fully realize what it was you were doing wrong. And I think you see it in me, too."
Tony opened his mouth to retort or laugh in his face, but... nothing came out, and Loki went right back to work, eventually pointing out a location.
"It should be around here."
Tony looked to the map. "JARVIS, zoom in on that."
JARVIS did as he was asked, zooming in on the country known as Sokovia.
"There does appear to be faint energy readings that match that of the Mind Stone." JARVIS informed him.
Tony stared at that spot in the map for a moment, before glancing at the Asgardian, who was watching him expectantly. With a grunt, he finally powered down his blasters and sent the suit away. "JARVIS, pull up everything we have on Germany." Then he pointed a stern finger at Loki. "30 minutes, then you're gone."
"I was never here." Loki replied with a surprisingly bright face before he immediately started looking through the files.
Tony would probably regret this, but he just went to grab a drink from the bar, keeping an eye on Loki the entire time. And all the while, he reflected on what the hell was happening. This guy, who tried to take over the world and almost killed Coulson, was helping him find the scepter. For his own reasons, obviously, but... still. This was not the guy he fought just two years prior, this was... someone completely different.
And... his words, about being manipulated, nagged at him. What was he talking about? He literally waltzed in here with a sick smile on his face ready to turn him against the rest of his team. And yet... Tony couldn't completely convince himself that it was so cut and dry. There was such a drastic difference between the past Loki and the current Loki that there had to be something more to this. He was missing a piece of the puzzle, and he made a mental note that he would have to look back on the footage of the alien attack later...
Tony was brought out of his thoughts when he noticed that Loki had stopped looking through the files and was staring at a picture. He curiously looked back up to see the face of a young woman with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a bunch of freckles all over her face. She was cute, he admitted, but never would he have imagined that anyone could make Loki look so... hypnotized, he supposed was the word. He was gawking for a solid minute, just staring at the woman's face and taking it all in.
When he finally seemed to snap out of it, he used Tony's tech to track down her information. When her info popped up, Tony took a quick glance at it, memorizing it quite easily. Jolene Brook, age 24, lived very close by actually.
Loki looked over it as well before he closed the holograms and hurried off to the balcony.
"Don't make me regret this." Tony called after him.
Loki paused for a moment and looked back at him, before giving him a light smile. "Thank you, Stark. And be careful with that Stone."
Then, he turned into a freaking falcon and flew away. And Tony poured himself another drink. He really hoped he hadn’t made a mistake gambling on that girl’s life.
What a day.