Chapter 23
“We’re not using your plan,” Tony says.
“Why not?” Loki snaps. “It’s a good plan.”
“Yes, it is.” Tony acquiesces. “But if you go home today, I’m certain that the rest of the team will get me out by the end of the week.”
“But why wait that long?” Loki asks, clearly annoyed. “If you stay behind, then they can use you as a hostage, even if you don’t make them any weapons. It would make so much more sense for us to stick to my plan.”
“No,” Tony says. “And that’s final.”
Tony slams on the door, over and over. “Help!” he yells. “The kid’s sick.”
Loki lies on the ground, limbs splayed out. The door slides open slowly, a heavily-armed man staring in.
“Get him out of here!” Tony pleads. “He’s just a kid.”
The man nods. “Fine. We were handing him off today anyway.”
Loki is taken from the room, Tony’s hysterics lasting the whole time.
Then, when the room goes quiet again, Loki smiles. The illusion over Stark will fade once he’s in contact with one of the Avengers. When that happens, Loki is out of here. He’ll leave illusions, of course, for the cameras. Enough that they’ll never know what actually happened.
Loki sets his illusions. Then he leaves.
The walk through Yggdrasil’s branches takes longer than Loki would have hoped. He has certainly slacked on learning his way around Midgard. He notes that for future reference.
When he gets to the Tower, the Avengers look less than pleased to see him.
Tony, who did not appreciate being knocked out and illusioned, is especially mad. Loki has barely been in the Tower for a minute when Tony stomps in.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” he yells. Loki half-flinches, before reeling himself in.
“I was thinking that there was no point in us being held prisoner when I could get us both out! I was trying to help!”
“Brother!” Thor booms from the doorway, Steve beside him. He hugs Loki, who begrudgingly allows the hug. “I was worried.”
Loki snorts, not quite meeting Thor’s eyes. “When have I found a situation I can’t get myself out of?”
Thor smiles, and it’s easy to see how the two of them used to fight side by side. “I always worry that one day you will.”
“I agree,” Tony says. “I explicitly told Loki not to do that. And he did it anyway.”
Thor looks troubled. “It is true. By using your illusions, you prevented my friends from freeing Stark honorably!”
Tony shakes his head. “That’s not it. Loki’s powers aren’t the issue and, in other circumstances, his help would be greatly appreciated. But we were worried sick, Loki. You were so upset about leaving me behind that you made me leave you. That wasn’t cool.”
“I can handle myself!” Loki snaps. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t treat me like a child!”
“You are a child.” Steve pipes in. “A very smart and very powerful child, but a child nonetheless.”
Loki opens his mouth to argue when Tony cuts back in.
“I need you to follow instructions, kid! Sometimes the things we do are dangerous, and we need to know that you’re not going to get in the way.” Loki’s going pale at Tony’s words, though Tony doesn’t notice. “What if something happens and you get us all killed because you think you’re smarter than us?”
Loki bites back his instinctive retort. (Which happens to be “I am smarter than you.”) Instead, looking at Tony’s red face and Steve’s disappointed look, he shrugs. “I don’t understand why you’re angry with me.”
Steve sighs. “We’re not angry, Loki. We were very worried about you. And now that we know you’re safe, we are upset about what happened. You are a very capable person, Loki, but you’re not an adult. We are the adults. It is our responsibility to keep you safe, not the other way around. You need to have some trust in us.”
Loki snorts. “Easy for you to say.”
Tony and Steve both wince. Over the past couple months, it had been easy to pretend that they never put Loki in cuffs that made him sick. Easy to pretend that he wasn’t the same person who tried to take over New York, albeit a younger version.
“You’re right,” Steve says. “We all need to learn how to trust each other more. Loki, we’re glad you’re back.”
Loki nods begrudgingly. He knows when to cut his losses.
The three file away, Thor leaving Loki with a slightly painful pat on the shoulder.
The elevator opens and Clint steps through, looking at Loki in the middle of the room.
He raises an eyebrow. “I thought we’d finally gotten rid of you.”
“I’m afraid not,” Loki says. After the accidentally-shooting-Loki thing and the subsequent saving-everyone-from-the-winter-soldier thing, Clint and Loki had had some sort of truce. Not a kind truce, but at least a peaceful one.
“What a shame,” Clint says.
Tony pops his head back in from the kitchen before Loki or Clint can throw any more barbs. “I made some lunch,” Tony says. “I assumed you’d be hungry.”
Loki smiles, shoulder relaxing. (He hadn’t even realized how tense he had gotten until he relaxed a little.) “Thanks.”
“Also,” Tony says. “You’re so grounded.”
The few memories James has are fragments of decades of murders and small girls learning ballet and so much screaming. DC is not James’s first choice of where to be. Politics are everything here — if anyone knows about The Asset, it would be someone in DC. But the museum is here, the one about maybe-Steve. Worst case scenario, James tells himself, he can observe what normal Americans do nowadays.
James is very rarely lucky. But the Air and Space museum is free, meaning James can make his money last a little longer. That’s as close to luck as James is likely to get.