Cruel Vengeance

Avengers Tower

November 2011

“–belongs to the Sinaloa cartel,” Stark said.

He paused. Loki nodded to the scientist as he stepped out of the elevator on Darcy’s heels. She made a beeline for the seat they’d saved for her between Barnes and Natasha around the circular table. Loki found an empty chair a few seats to her right, with Bruce on his left and two spaces between himself and Maria Hill, who he suspected was not ready to fully accept his presence at these meetings.

“What kept you?” Stark said.

Loki wondered what Darcy would tell them.

“Jane,” she said easily. “She’s studying Loki’s teleporting. Got very excited.”

Liar, Loki thought with amusement. So she did not intend to mention how he’d challenged her outside the lab, in an area deliberately free of cameras. He’d learned what he wanted and then some: Darcy Lewis was not afraid of him beyond a wariness that was prudent given the circumstances he’d put her in. Loki found himself more relieved than he had expected about this revelation. And then there was her comment about “abusive dickweeds.” That required further contemplation, but not at this moment.

“Catch me up?” Darcy asked.

Clint sat forward, a few seats over on Maria’s other side. “Tony’s old drug buddies’ve been hearing rumors about a new product the Sinaloa cartel’s going to be running up here in the next few months. Sam talked to his contacts and got the location of the Sinaloa cartel’s known haunts in Latin America from the government.”

“Nice,” Darcy said appreciatively. “Do we know where they’re keeping this stuff?”

Stark swiveled a screen toward her. “Here. And now everyone’s caught up.”

“This is the warehouse the Sinaloa have been using to process and store their product, in preparation for sales. They’re trying to time the release with the New Year; people apparently like new things at the party and addicts on the streets are more desperate for fixes in the winter to escape their misery.” Rogers’ face tightened with unhappiness as he spoke.

“Clever,” Darcy muttered.

Half the team looked affronted.

She raised her hands. “I’m not saying I like it, but it’s a wicked clever way of running sales.”

Loki hid his smile.

“So basically that means we have to hit fast and hard,” Stark said. “We’re going now.”

Darcy’s eyebrows almost reached her hairline.

“Suit up,” Steve said. “We can work out an assault plan on the plane. We can’t risk them moving even a small shipment of product out of that warehouse.”

Amidst the shuffle of chairs being pushed back and small conversations springing to life, Loki spoke up. “I’d like to accompany you.”

Everyone paused.

Rogers examined him with a stony expression. “You’ve no love for us, Loki. I don’t like going into battle with a soldier who might shoot me in the back, or vanish at any time.”

“There was no stipulation in our bargain that I cannot leave,” Loki said. “I could walk out of this tower right now and lose my safe asylum without violating any oath I made.”

Rogers looked as though he had tasted something sour.

“How is this helping your case exactly?” Stark asked.

Loki glanced around the table. Clint, Bruce, and Wilson were still surprised; Barnes and Natasha’s faces were inscrutable; Darcy looked almost happy. And Hill, interestingly, seemed to be considering it. “You lose nothing by bringing me along because I have no need to escape should I wish to leave your company.”

“He has a point,” Clint said.

“Why would you want to come?” Rogers asked.

Loki knew it was his opinion, ultimately, that would decide for the Avengers. “In all honesty, I am growing bored here. I appreciate the reprieve you have granted in accepting my bargain, but this tower can only entertain someone so long. Furthermore, it seems that Hydra has been colluding with Thanos, and if Thanos wants it to happen then I will do everything in my power to ensure that it does not.”

Rogers thought about it.

“Darcy?” Clint asked. “You’ve spent the most time with him.”

Darcy took a moment to assemble her thoughts. Norns, let her speak in my favor.

“Let him come,” she said. “He’ll only start causing us problems if we let him get too bored. But with some limitations.”

“I agree.”

That shocked the group. Including Loki. Because Maria Hill had spoken.

She was staring coolly at Loki.

“I hope you are not planning to shoot me in the midst of this firefight,” he said pleasantly.

“No.” Hill crossed her arms. Clint subtly shifted in a way that let Loki know he’d back Hill in this, though he and Loki had grown somewhat companionable in the last month. “I plan on finding out if I can trust you.”

“Brave of you,” he said.

“I’m still not sure.” Rogers stood up. “Loki, I’d like to think I can trust you, but I won’t bet on it.”

Darcy shared a loaded glance with Stark. Loki instantly went on edge.

“You’re too much of a wild card,” Rogers continued, “and we wouldn’t be able to tell where you are or what you’re doing.”

“Good thing I’ve been working on a way to track his magic. I can put a scanner in the jet that’ll pick up on everything he does, within its range.” Stark slapped a wrist cuff down on the table. “And if Loki puts this on we’ll know if he does anything more than change his eye color.”

Loki stared at the cuff. The pieces came together in an instant: this must have been why Darcy wanted to stay behind and speak with Jane, at least in part. He’d suspected something.

His first reaction was betrayal. He’d come to trust Darcy in some small indefinable way. And she turned around and threw this in his face with no warning. Loki controlled that reaction away. He’d have done the same in her position, and at least they were warning him; they could’ve just put the scanner in the jet and spied on him without his consent.

“We won’t force the cuff upon you,” Stark said to Loki evenly. “You’re right. You’re not a prisoner here. But if you want to come with us, I’m sure you see why we might ask some concessions of you.”

“I can,” Loki said slowly. He touched the cuff with his power, curious, but as far as he could determine there was nothing malicious about it. Its purpose seemed exactly what Stark had described: the detection of seidr.

Hill picked up the cuff and examined it in the conventional way. “He can take it off at any time?”

“If he’s within ten feet of the jet,” Stark replied. “It won’t be coming off during the fight, Maria, but Loki, you won’t be locked in. And it won’t limit you in any way.”

Loki cocked his head and studied Stark, wondering why the man was being so careful to not irritate him. Then he noticed Darcy, lurking in the background as she often did, looking pleased, and he knew she’d orchestrated this. Likely stepped in with Stark on Loki’s behalf even before this meeting, when they were developing the technology. Which was, admittedly, ingenious.

That, more than anything else, convinced him to hold out his hand to Hill. “I accept.”

Rogers frowned. Loki could practically see him stewing over the conversation and trying to find a reason to distrust him. He could understand Rogers’ hesitation, in truth; soldiers such as he were accustomed to fighting with those they trusted entirely. Stark and Hill were lone wolves, more likely to agree to this, but Rogers was used to leading a pack.

“You take my orders,” Rogers said finally. “Actually, you follow all of our orders. You come along, you’re the bottom of the ranks. We reserve the right to knock you out if we think you’re going off the rails.”

I would not be so simple to disable. “These are your terms?”

“Take it or leave it.” Rogers’ face was uncompromising.

“I accept,” Loki repeated, and buckled the cuff around his left wrist. It was smooth and heavy against his skin, nearly his own body temperature, reminding him that though he maintained an illusion approximating the body heat of Midgardians and Asgardians, he actually had a noticeably lower core temperature.

As a child, he’d thought it merely a product of his physique. Now that he knew it was due to his Jotun heritage, Loki did everything in his power to disguise every hint of other-ness. Best to avoid suspicion entirely.

“Suit up,” Rogers repeated. “Clint, can you find something for Loki?”

Hill, Barnes, and Natasha left the table almost immediately, though Natasha shot an assessing glance over her shoulder at Loki. He gave her a bland smile and she smirked at him before leaving the room. Rogers heaved a sigh and glanced around once more. “Don’t make me regret this,” he muttered in Loki’s general direction, and followed them.

“Do you need weapons? Armor? We can find you custom gear if you want to make a habit of this but for now you’re stuck with the generic stuff we have on hand,” Clint said.

“That will suffice.” Loki looked curiously around the armory. He’d never been in here before; the artificial intelligence that ran the Tower had judiciously kept him out of certain areas of even the top floors. He did not begrudge the Avengers their caution, though it was irritating to walk away from doors he could easily have bypassed had he not been actively avoiding their ire and suspicion.

“Catch.” Loki reflexively snagged the black bundle out of the air and raised his eyebrows; it was heavy.

“Midgardian men wear this in battle?”

“Too much for you, Twiggy?” Clint said with a challenging grin.

Loki glared. “I will not be assigned a foolish soldier’s moniker, as I understand is your custom,” he snapped. “It weighs less than half a set of Asgardian battle armor.”

“Twiggy,” Clint stage-whispered.

Loki paused halfway into settling the vest around his shoulders as he’d seen Barnes do. With a twist of his wrist and a few whispered words, Clint’s feet left the ground and he yelped, suspended in midair.

“You were saying?” Loki said with a benevolent smile, fastening the vest. It fit him well; Clint had performed his task with precision.

Clint flailed and spun in the air. “Okay, okay, you’ve made your point, put me down already, man!”

Loki abruptly cut off the spell.

Even caught off guard, Clint managed to flip and land on his feet. He squinted at Loki. “Sure I can’t call you Gravity Man?”

“Only marginally better,” Loki said, but he couldn’t quite hide his amusement. The man really was irrepressible.

Clint clapped him on the shoulder. There was wariness in his gaze, but camaraderie as well. He was not so comfortable as Darcy, but that would come in time; the one-time SHIELD agent had shown no hesitation at occupying a space filled with deadly weaponry, Loki, and no backup. “Let’s go, the others’ll be waiting.”

Loki considered the armory as he and Clint made the short trip up to the hangar. It seemed personalized to this small team; knives, firearms, grenades, and other, stranger contraptions lined the walls in customized racks with faint backlight. Well-organized shelves of ammunition occupied the space beneath the bench that ran around three sides of the room. The back third was taken up with tact clothing, including a collection of vests similar to Loki’s, all outfitted to hold a variety of weapons. There were also spare pairs of the trousers Clint had given him: black, durable, and padded at the knees, they were nonetheless fitted and light enough to provide a full range of motion. Small cargo-style pockets on the thighs allowed for more storage, and concealed knife and gun holsters sat just inside the tops of the boots. Loki was newly aware of the array of deadly weaponry that Clint, Barnes, Hill, and Natasha carried into any given fight.

He’d chosen two long knives, double-edged and wickedly sharp, that were at present strapped to his ribs. More blades waited in the vest and in his boots, and a small one was concealed in the waist of his trousers. The belt itself doubled as a whip; Clint had shown him how to quickly change the shape of its buckle into a handle. The shirt that went beneath the vest had been slightly short in the arms before Loki used seidr to make it fit properly. It, too, was black and fitted, made of a wicking fabric. He had only two firearms, a small one called a ‘pistol’ in a holster on his thigh and a larger one Clint had called an AR-15 on his back. Loki wasn’t particularly familiar with these Midgardian weapons, though he appreciated their efficient brutality and was confident he could pick it up fairly quickly.

Besides, his main weapon was seidr. He didn’t need to rely on the humans’ killing tools if he did not want to.

When he and Clint stepped onto the jet, Loki paused. Bruce Banner sat with Stark off to the side.

Clint, too, seemed surprised. “I thought you didn’t like combat,” he said.

Barnes and Natasha were sitting on a bench across from Bruce. They both examined Loki while Bruce replied, “Someone had to stay in the air and watch the scanners for magic, and I thought you’d want to join the action, Clint.”

Clint grinned. “Thanks, man. You’re not gonna go green on us, are you? Might make things unnecessarily complicated.”

“If he has to,” Rogers said from the cockpit. He swiveled the seat and climbed out. “She’s prepped for takeoff, Clint, and JARVIS is synched in via satellite. We’re good to go.”

“Copy that.” Clint headed for the copilot’s seat. Rogers clapped him on the shoulder as they passed one another–it seemed to be a masculine greeting or form of affection, particularly among soldierly types, on Midgard–and Natasha seemed busy adjusting her thermosuit and the weapons buckled across her torso or to the belt slung around her hips.

Loki settled onto the bench across from Natasha and Barnes, leaving several feet between himself and Bruce so he did not intrude on the scientist’s personal space. He took a moment to glance around the jet, having never been in one of the Avengers’ custom transports.

It was shaped rather like the cross that was attached to the religion of Christianity–Loki had been reading several books Darcy recommended him on this realm’s religions, of which there were dozens. (He’d been very amused by the depiction of himself, Thor, and Odin in Norse mythology.) The long base of the cross was a tapering space in the back of the jet, lined with compartments and benches; this was where Loki sat with Bruce, Stark, Natasha, and Barnes, who was still giving Loki unreadable looks from across the open space. Each of the cross’ sides was a small private space on one side of the jet, set slightly behind the front cockpit area. Loki could hear Hill moving around the one on his side of the jet, and Rogers was in the other, examining something on a screen on the wall and speaking quietly to the artificial intelligence system with Wilson by his side.

Loki slowly sat back in his seat. He realized… he was looking forward to this battle. It would most likely be simple, as he would be fighting Midgardians beside a group of the best warriors this realm had to offer, but beyond that, he knew that their fighting styles were so diverse that none of them would mock him for his own. So unlike Thor and Sif and the “Warriors Three”. Loki scoffed internally at the nickname, as he always did.

Then Barnes stood up and casually hurled a knife at Loki’s head.