Chapter 27
When Loki finally gets to go home, she expects the Avengers to be mad at her. (She remembers the last time she used her seidr to solve a problem when they didn’t want her to.)
“I’m not going to apologize,” she says the second she steps through the door. Tony had sent a driver to pick her up, not wanting the publicity of an Avenger going to get her, but it also had the unintended side effect that she had the entire time to prepare a speech.
“Nobody’s asking you to,” Tony says. “You did good today. And that was some quick thinking.”
“Thanks.” Loki doesn’t mention that she had that plan worked out since the first day of school, just in case. It’s always good to have fallback plans.
“I have a question, though,” Tony says. “You could have used this as an opportunity to be Loki again. Why didn’t you?”
Loki smiles sadly. “I understand politics, Stark.” If her eyes look watery, that’s nobody’s business but her own. “For New Asgard’s continued stability, Loki has to stay dead.”
“That sucks.”
Loki shrugs. “I’m used to it.”
“Know what?” Tony says, suddenly resolute. “I’m going to make you some armor. Just in case.”
“I don’t need armor if they never get in a hit,” Loki says.
“I’ll make you both boy and girl versions.”
“Fine,” Loki says. She pretends she isn’t smiling. (She fails miserably.)
The Avengers have to hold a press conference — the Elle-is-an-Asgardian-teenager coverup worked remarkably well, but the press still wants to know more.
Tony and Thor, fortunately, had been able to pull enough strings to get Elle’s name on the New Asgardian census along with a backdated Visa into America. But people still have questions.
“Is she going to join the Avengers?” One reporter asks.
“No,” says Steve. “She is just a teenager who did what anyone else would have done, had they her capabilities. She’s expressed no interest in the Avengers and, even if she did, we would not employ a child to fight.”
“Captain!” Another reporter shouts. “What do you think about the politicians who are in favor of keeping track of enhanced people?”
Steve takes a deep breath. “Just because people are different than you doesn’t mean they’re dangerous. Elle saved lives. That is a fact. Yes, America should do more to make sure enhanced kids are happy and healthy growing up, like all kids should be, and optional training should be offered. But when you start talking about keeping track of enhanced peoples, it starts seeming a lot like what I fought against 70 years ago.”
“She’s a menace!” Steve winces -- he knows this reporter. This man works for an alt-right paper that regularly calls for arresting every enhanced person who doesn’t swear fealty to America and join the army.
“Elle is a child,” Steve says. “A powerful, brave, exasperating child. But a child nonetheless. I cannot believe that after Elle saved her classmates and possibly many others, you have the gall to imply that her powers are dangerous. If you ever wonder why some enhanced people turn against you -- this is why. Every time you dehumanize them, belittle them, treat them like they’re monsters, you’re trying to circulate a self-fulfilling prophecy. I will absolutely not allow it at this press conference.” Steve looks through the crowd again. The man who called Elle a menace is shaking with fury. But the rest of the reporters are frantically taking notes. Steve notices one give him a small thumbs up. “Does anyone have any more questions?”
The press conference ends pretty quickly after that.
“That went better than expected,” Steve says, rubbing his temples. “Now we just need to make sure SHIELD doesn’t find out about you.”
All the Avengers — Clint and Natasha included — are in the room.
“What’s SHIELD?” Loki asks.
“The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division,” Natasha says. “Basically, we take care of threats. And you are a threat.”
“That’s understandable,” Loki says. It’s almost uncanny, the way Loki looks so calm about an entire department of government possibly being after her.
(Clint and Natasha have to admit that, even if they don’t like her, they don’t want her to go into SHIELD custody as much as they used to.)
James looks at Captain America’s drawings of his soldiers, of a beautiful woman in victory rolls, and the memories lap at the edge of his mind. Sometimes, he spends all day jotting down fragments in his notebook, the one with a shield on the cover that he got from the museum gift shop. Sometimes he finds himself so lost in a drawing or the rare photograph that he stares at it until the museum closes. Sometimes he cannot even enter the building, his mind going haywire over security and lines of vision and exit placement. (Those days are his least favorite. Recently, they have been happening less and less.)