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Chapter Text

SACRED TIMELINE, 2016
AVENGERS COMPOUND

Deviating from halfway through Chapter 17 of Impossible Things Just Happen 

Loki asked, “What is this you’ve made while I was gone?” 

The elaborate quantum machine they had used to speak to Tony and Bruce in his universe was now in the center of the lab. It had been built up and changed, and most prominently featured a large empty archway.

“Well,” Tony said, sounding grateful to be talking about tech and not about Lokis, “I’m hoping it’s going to be a door.”

Loki smiled, excitement and hope building in him. “That’s perfect,” he said. “Because I’m hoping that I have brought a key.” He held out his hand palm up and the Tesseract appeared from thin air.  

Tony jumped a bit in surprise and Pepper stood up, her eyes wide as they looked at the glowing, blue cube.

“You crazy son of a bitch, you really did it.” Tony seemed almost hypnotized by the Tesseract, but shook himself a little and looked at Loki instead. “Nobody got hurt?” he asked. That had been part of their deal, in exchange for keeping Thor in the dark. Not that it had mattered anyway; Thor was much smarter than he usually got credit for.

Loki straightened himself a little and said, “This is a sacred relic of Asgard. I am a prince of Asgard and was gifted this by my brother, Thor, who - in Odin’s absence - is currently the acting King. I have it by right.”

Tony squinted at Loki as if trying to find a lie. He sighed, “You know what. I don’t think any part of you taking that is my problem, and even less so if it succeeds in getting you out of here. So let’s do it.”

Loki’s heart jumped. “Now?” He looked to the machine. “Is it ready?”

“I literally have no idea, but I guess we’re about to find out,” Tony said. He turned to Pepper, “Is there any way I can convince you to leave the room while I do something incredibly dangerous that might rip a hole in time and space?”

“No,” Pepper said, “I don’t think there is.”

“Okay, will you at least stand back?” Tony asked.

Pepper acquiesced and retreated to a far corner of the room, calling as she went, “But do not rip a hole in time and space.”

Once Pepper was at a bit of a distance, Tony walked up to Loki. He took hold of Loki’s upper arms and guided him to stand about fifteen feet in front of the archway.

Loki stared at it, his heart starting to beat faster in his chest, as Tony moved to a control panel set up on a workbench to Loki’s left.

“Okay,” Tony said. “I’m going to turn this thing on. You are going to direct your magic through the Tesseract directly at that little square in the top center of the arch, you see it?”

Loki nodded. He glanced over at Tony who looked like he was nervous, but pretending he wasn’t. Like he casually opened doors to different universes every day and this was very normal.

Their eyes met and Tony asked, “Ready?”

His heart beating still faster, Loki said, “Do it.”

Tony flipped a switch and the machine roared to life as it had done the last time, when he had heard his Tony’s voice. Loki took a deep breath and summoned the magic that lived within him. He held out the Tesseract, the space stone with its unlimited power glowing brightly inside. He focused all of his power to the palm of his hand and with a great thrust of effort sent his magic flowing through the Tesseract.

A bright blue ray of light shot from his hand, landing squarely on the spot at the top of the arch Tony had indicated. Loki kept every bit of energy he possessed focused on the magic. At first nothing happened, but then he saw something shimmering at the top of the archway. 

Then the slight shimmer exploded in a burst of energy and light. Loki's feet slid across the floor as he was suddenly wrenched forward. The shock of the movement and trying to stay upright distracted him enough that it was a moment before he realized that he was no longer pushing his magic through the Tesseract; the Tesseract was pulling it out of him. 

He had completely lost control. He tried to drop the cube, but it stayed pressed to his skin like it was glued to his hand. He couldn't let go, and he couldn’t stop the flow of his magic. He felt his knees going weak as more and more was drawn out of him. 

There was a roaring in his ears as if he was standing in a windstorm. He could just barely hear over it what sounded like an alarm, FRIDAY's voice, Tony shouting. The room was glowing unbearably bright now with beams of light bursting from the top of the archway and reflecting off every surface in every direction. Loki shut his eyes. 

He really had grown soft in the past few years–or worse, he had become hopeful . Even with all odds against them, he had really thought he was going to get home. He had felt it. And now he was going to die instead. 

He thought of Tony– his Tony. They had wasted their tenuous cross-dimensional connection hashing out the science when there was so much more Loki could have said. He wished he had been able to say a better goodbye. And Thor. He hadn't gotten to say goodbye to his Thor at all. Never knowing what had happened to him would probably be even worse than the time Thor had watched him die. All at once, so many things were flashing through his mind–running across the Brooklyn Bridge with Steve as the sun rose, Wanda grabbing his hand in the theater during the end of Cabaret, staying out all night at REBAR with Sam and Tony’s credit card, late night secrets whispered with Natasha.    

What would Thor tell Frigga? 

The room exploded. 

Or that's what it felt like when Loki was thrown backwards without warning. He smacked against the wall with a terrific crack and crashed down to the ground, losing consciousness instantly. 

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When the alarm started blaring through the lab, FRIDAY's volume increased to be heard over it. "We are at critical power capacity.”

"Shut it down!" Tony yelled. "Shut everything down!" He frantically pushed the release button in front of him and pulled the emergency lever that controlled the power in the lab, but nothing happened. 

"FRIDAY! Turn. It. Off!" 

"It cannot be contained,” FRIDAY said. Worry finally seemed to crack through the calm demeanor programmed into her voice. “The power is coming directly from the Tesseract." 

Tony stared in horror at the top of the archway where the blinding light was now splitting and refracting and filling the room with its intense blue glow. He had been joking about an accidental rip in time and space–maybe half joking, if he was honest with himself. Because that was always easier than letting his stupid, brilliant, thorough imagination fully consider the potential consequences. 

It was too late to consider them now. He could see Loki frozen in place, the Tesseract’s glowing beam like a raging river from his palm. 

"Loki, you have to stop!" Tony screamed over the alarm and the noise. It didn’t seem like Loki could hear him or even if he could, that he could do anything about it. 

Desperate, Tony cried, "FRIDAY, cut everything!" 

All of the normal electrical power in the lab went out, but the light at the top of the archway kept growing, filling the whole room with blinding light. Tony turned and ran to Pepper who had backed into the corner of the room, staring, her mouth open in fear. 

Barely slowing down as he reached her, he grabbed her and forced her to the ground. He crouched down over her as the Iron Man suit came flying from across the room to envelope his body in metal. As soon as it was on he braced himself against the wall so that his body shielded Pepper’s.

The sound of an enormous explosion tore through the room and Tony braced himself for an impact. He had expected perhaps the ceiling or the walls would collapse, or that the machinery was about to collide with them, or that they were about to be sucked through a wormhole. Instead, a puff of wind rushed over them, and then it was silent except for Tony and Pepper's frantic breaths. 

The lab was in pitch darkness and even in the suit Tony’s vision swam with white stars as his eyes adjusted from the Tesseract’s consuming light. For several long moments, neither Tony or Pepper moved; they stayed crouched on the ground, clutching each other. 

Finally, Tony spoke, "FRIDAY?" His voice was hoarse, possibly from all the screaming.

"Yes, boss," FRIDAY responded. 

Tony let out a sigh of relief. "Can you get some light on in here?"

A few seconds later, the auxiliary emergency lights around the ceiling were turned on. Tony retracted his mask and ran shaking hands over Pepper's head, neck, chest, and down her arms. "Are you hurt?”

Pepper shook her head, for a moment too terrified to speak. Then she suddenly reached out and grabbed hold of the front of Tony’s suit as panicked words tumbled out. “Oh my god, oh my god! Tony, that was so bad, that could have been– we could have been– did we almost just destroy the universe? Oh my god, what was that–?!”

Tony talked right over her trying to calm her down; he had no answers to these admittedly reasonable questions anyway. He said, “Pepper, I know, I’m sorry, I know– I can see now that it was a mistake– We had a lot of magic and I thought it would be okay– It wasn’t okay,” as she yelled at him.

He looked over his shoulder as Pepper’s continued ranting reassured him that she was all right. Loki was face down on the floor; the concrete wall behind him was cracked where he must have collided with it with extreme force. 

"Shit," Tony breathed. He turned back to Pepper, gently grabbing her shoulders. "Okay, you're okay, we're okay. I have to go check on Loki, okay?" 

Pepper stopped mid “oh my god” and her eyes moved to where Loki lay unmoving. Her eyes widened and she sharply inhaled, her tirade cut short. "Is he dead?" she whispered. 

Tony’s eyebrows creased and he stood up, making his way to Loki. He knelt beside him, frowning. There was a very faint golden glow surrounding Loki (or coming from Loki?) like an aura.

Hesitantly, he reached out his hand which was still encased in the suit. "FRIDAY, what is this?" he asked. He very slowly came into contact with the golden glow without touching Loki.

"Power; like that in the Tesseract," FRIDAY’s voice responded calmly. 

“Well,” Tony sighed, “That can't be good." 

He tentatively touched Loki's shoulder. When the weird glow did not seem to change or affect his suit, he flipped Loki onto his back. He placed a hand on Loki's chest, trying to feel if he was breathing. "FRIDAY, we need vitals. Is there a heartbeat?" he asked.

FRIDAY didn't respond immediately, but at last said, "Yes, boss." 

Tony closed his eyes as a wave of relief washed over him–followed by confusion as he wasn't exactly sure why he was so grateful that Loki wasn't dead. A few days ago Tony had definitely wanted to kill Loki; now that he almost had killed him it was clear those feelings had done a 180 without Tony’s awareness or permission.

"We need medic down here immediately," he said to FRIDAY, snapping back into himself as the traumatic moment cleared from his mind enough to remember what to do next. 

"Loki," he said, quietly shaking him. "Loki, can you hear me? Wake up." 

Loki remained so still that Tony wouldn't have believed he was alive if FRIDAY hadn't said so. Loki’s head was bleeding and the hand that had held the Tesseract looked burnt and raw. 

Tony scanned the floor and found the Tesseract laying a few feet away; the sight made him a little sick. After the fiasco in New York, he had combed through SHIELD’s files on the cube obsessively, each answer he found opening up one hundred more questions. What he knew without question was that it was dangerous, and apparently even Loki couldn’t control it. The idea of getting it gone from this universe had been nearly as appealing as getting rid of Loki himself, and they were both still here. Still dangerous. 

He didn't want the Tesseract just laying there when the medic team arrived. Going over to it, he once more issued his very scientific test of tentatively poking it. After all, Loki was an alien and kind of literally a god and the thing had seriously messed him up. Sighing in relief when nothing happened, Tony gingerly picked it up and locked it into one of the secure chambers in his lab he had designed to hold any number of dangerous items (toxins, explosives, ionizing radiation, etc.). He hoped it would be able to handle this one.

Pepper was approaching now, shaky but pushing through it. Tony hurried over to her and wrapped his arms around her as the door burst open and a team of medical personnel burst in. "Right here," Tony called to them, waving an arm and pointing down at Loki’s still form. 

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When Loki woke up, he didn't know where he was. He was groggy and the room seemed to sway as if he were on a ship–one that traveled on water, not through space. How had he gotten on a ship?

He blinked a few times and realized he was laying in a bed. His right arm was stretched out, his hand wrapped up in thick bandages and several tubes and wires attached to his forearm via a large needle and electrodes respectively. He moved his other hand slightly against the sheets, trying to ground himself in the physical world while part of him felt like he was floating.

He turned his head to the right and saw several other beds like the one he was in, all empty, and a large window at the other end of the room. It was night–or the glass had been darkened to not allow in any light, he couldn't tell. It didn’t help with the disorientation.

Very slowly, he turned his head again to the left. About five feet away in the corner of the room was a chair and in that chair was Tony, asleep. 

Loki closed his eyes and then slowly opened them again.

Not Tony. Wrong Tony. 

It hadn't worked. Loki hadn't made it home. Something had happened and it hadn't worked. 

He shut his eyes, feeling nauseated though he wasn't sure if it was from whatever had happened to him with the Tesseract or from his growing despair. He took a deep shuddering breath and felt tears start to fall, tracing their way down his cheeks.

He heard a light scuffle next to him, but didn't open his eyes. 

"Loki? Are you awake?" 

Wrong Tony’s voice was kind; gentle. Loki didn't respond, the tears streaming faster down his face. Wrong Tony had no reason to speak to him kindly, and Loki should probably be grateful given he was in no position to defend himself if Tony decided now was the time to lay out all the reasons the mishap had been Loki’s fault and possibly kick him out for good. But all he could manage to feel about it was resentment.

After a moment, Loki felt Wrong Tony's hand on his arm, the touch achingly familiar but not quite right. A gesture meant to comfort. Loki allowed it, not moving his arm away, and felt Tony squeeze his fingers lightly. "I'm… I'm glad you're not dead," Wrong Tony said very quietly. "And I'm really sorry." 

The hand withdrew and he heard Tony’s footsteps; the door opening and closing.

Loki lay completely still, his thoughts spinning. Everything felt off, not just the way Wrong Tony was acting. Physically it felt like his skin didn’t fit quite right, like his insides had been pulled out and then shoved back in. The Tesseract had been pulling his magic from him. Or perhaps not just his magic but his very life force. 

He had been weakened before, but not in any way that could compare. The last thing he could remember was an explosion and hitting the wall and then… it was now. Whenever now might be. 

Finally he opened his eyes again and the room was still swaying slightly. He noticed he was propped up on several pillows and tried to take deep breaths. 

It hadn’t worked.

A numbness started to spread through him. He didn’t want to give up. He didn’t want to accept that this world was his new reality. He didn’t want to think of never seeing his family again. But if an infinity stone couldn’t get him home then what could?

He reached for some of that hopefulness that had felt second nature earlier. What would Thor say? Probably that nearly tearing apart the universe and walking away alive was actually really cool and a fantastic tale for exchanging exploits with fellow warriors. Natasha might not say anything, but just touch his arm and give him a look that conveyed all it needed to–that she was with him. And Bruce would probably have a panic attack, demand that they shut it down and never try it again and then he would leave the room to do deep breathing somewhere alone before coming back three hours later with pages of scribbled new ideas. Steve might say something like, we can do anything as long as we do it together. And his Tony, who was less afraid and less hurt than this one, might declare the disaster a “test run” and stay up for 24 hours straight reviewing all the recordings and data because of course he would try again.

The problem was, none of them were here to say or do any of that. He was alone.

There was a knock at the door. He turned to look as it opened and Jane Foster poked her head inside.

This was astonishing enough that it snapped Loki from his stupor. “Jane,” he said, surprised.

“Hi Loki,” she said, opening the door all the way and stepping into the room. “Tony told me you were awake.”

“What are you doing here?” Loki asked, utterly bewildered. He wracked his memories for the last time he had seen his brother’s on-again-off-again girlfriend in his own universe. Maybe more than a year ago, when he and Tony were still new and Thor and Jane had crashed their weekend getaway to Vegas. There had been far too much drinking to recall much of it, but Loki could remember Jane’s laugh as he mercilessly recounted some of the tricks he had played on his brother in their youth, and the way Thor and Jane both seemed to light up in each other’s presence. 

He suspected this Jane had less fond memories of her run-ins with Loki.

“Well, Tony’s fancy doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with you,” Jane explained calmly. “By all human measures you were perfectly fine, but you wouldn’t wake up. Also, you were kind of glowing? Tony put out an SOS that ended up reaching me. I’m not a medical doctor, but I know more about crazy space stuff than most people, so I came.”

Loki blinked. “How long have I been out?”

“Five days,” Jane replied. She came right up to his bed and checked the monitors he was hooked up to, using a metal stylus to write something down on the tablet he noticed in her hands.

Five days. No wonder Wrong Tony had looked so rough, and Loki could only imagine what he looked like right now after nearly getting blown up. He lifted his unbandaged hand and examined it. “I was glowing?” he asked.

Jane nodded and then circled around the bed to the chair Tony had been sleeping in. She dragged it over to Loki’s bedside and sat down, settling the tablet on her lap.

“My current hypothesis is that you absorbed some of the power from the Tesseract; it glows, you were glowing…” she shrugged, but Loki would rather have a best guess from Jane Foster than extensive research from most other Earth scientists, so he listened intently. “I actually have some personal experience with this sort of thing,” she continued. “I think it didn’t happen where you come from, but a few years ago I kind of absorbed the aether into my body. Anytime someone came near me in a threatening way, it attacked them – blasted them back. It’s possible that something similar happened to you when you merged your innate powers with the Tesseract. But I’m not sure if you’ll have the same, like, blasting effect, or what kind of power it may or may not have imbued you with.”

Loki listened to all of this mildly shocked. The aether and the Tesseract were more similar than Jane even realized. He looked at his hand again, slowly turning it over and back again. Could he really have absorbed some of the space stone’s power? What did that mean?

He looked up at Jane who was watching him patiently. “Well… if I have been gifted extra strength or power, perhaps it will make you feel better to know that I’m not evil and wouldn’t intend to use it for ill.”

Jane cocked her head a little. “I wasn’t worried about you being evil.” She hesitated for a moment and then went on, “The Loki in this universe saved my life. And he sacrificed himself and died to save Thor’s life. I don’t think he’s evil so I wouldn’t think that about you either, even before Tony told me everything he knows about you.”

Loki felt a stirring of emotion at her words. The Other Loki had saved her life? “You may be happy to know then,” Loki said, “the Loki in this universe is alive. He faked his death.”

At this her expression which had been very calm cracked a little, her mouth opening a little in surprise. She blinked a few times, looking away and then back to him. “I… I am glad to hear that actually. You saw him? The you that’s here?”

Loki nodded.

Jane exhaled sharply and nodded. “Thank you,” she said sincerely, “for telling me.” She cleared her throat a little and looked down at her tablet. “Now that you’re awake, I think it’s fine for you to get up whenever you feel ready. Like I said, there’s nothing exactly wrong with you, but… there’s a training room in the compound where it might be the safest place to see if there’s anything different about you. Your powers, I mean.”

Loki frowned. The longer he was awake the better he felt. He realized the room had stopped rocking. “Will you?” he asked, holding up his arm where the wires and tubes dangled.

“Oh yes,” she said. She put her tablet down and gently unhooked him from the machine next to the bed, pulling the needle out first and already prepared with a bandage to stick on top of the tiny wound.

“What happened to my hand?” Loki asked, nodding his head toward his right hand that was heavily bandaged.

“Burns,” she said, “Or something like burns, from where you held Tesseract in your palm. We’ve changed the bandage a couple of times and it seems to be getting better, but I’d like to leave it on another day.”

Loki nodded, feeling a little dazed. It was odd talking to Jane, to find someone besides Thor who seemed to actually like the Loki of this universe.  

As Jane took the last sensor off of his skin, he said, “Thank you, Jane. I’m not really sure what made you come, but I’m glad you did.”

Her lips quirked upwards into a smile. “It’s no problem,” she said. “I’ll leave you for a bit. Rest here as long as you want, but feel free to go to your room if you’d rather. I think you know your way around.” She looked at her watch. “It’s about 4 a.m. right now. Maybe we can meet in the training room about noon tomorrow?”

“Yes, all right,” Loki agreed. He’d been unconscious for five days, but suddenly nothing seemed more appealing than getting some sleep in his own bed–that is, the bed he had claimed since arriving in this reality. 

She smiled gently. “Okay, I’ll see you then.”

He nodded and watched as she left the room and shut the door behind her. All the warmth and fondness he was feeling from the unexpected interaction evaporated.

It hadn’t worked.

He held up his left hand yet again and tentatively sent the smallest bit of magic to his fingertips. His hand ignited in a golden glow.

He hadn’t made it home. Something else had happened.

Chapter Text

SACRED TIMELINE, 2016
AVENGERS COMPOUND

They always called it “the training room” but the huge section of the compound was much more than that. There was a rubber running track, a weight room with custom barbells that could hold thousands of pounds and racks that could hold those barbells, a lap pool, a sauna, a locker room that looked more like a spa, and then of course, a huge open space with plenty of room in all directions for running, rolling, and/or flying.   

The walls were sound-proof and structurally built and reinforced to withstand bullets from any gun, blasts from an Iron Man suit, and blows from a god. 

At the front of the room was the control panel – using a combination of holographics, drones, and nanotech, the room could transform into anything (a rocky, desolate planet full of vicious aliens, a city block full of killer robots, etc.). 

In Loki’s universe, with his and Wanda’s magic added to the mix, their training room could replicate any scenario in a way that was indistinguishable from reality. They wouldn’t have that advantage here with the team fractured as it was, but Loki was sure it was still more advanced than anything else of its kind. Tony wouldn’t settle for less, even if there wasn’t much training happening in there lately. 

When Loki walked into the room a couple minutes before noon, he unexpectedly found himself in a vast field blooming with flowers of every color for as far as he could see. The sunlight was dazzlingly bright, the sky incredibly blue, and a bright purple pegasus was flying around an enormous rainbow bursting out of a cloud.

He looked to the control panel and saw Jane looking back at him with a huge grin on her face. “This thing is so cool!” she called to him.

Her joy from the rainbow flower world was so earnest it almost made Loki smile back, but he couldn’t quite manage it. Jane seemed to notice his expression because she cleared her throat a little and swiped her fingers across the screen to clear the settings and return the room to normal. 

Without any effects, it was dull, metallic gray from the floor to the ceiling – a blank and depressing slate. 

Jane came to stand closer to him and looked him up and down. “How are you feeling? Like physically. Any pain in your hand or anywhere else?”

Loki thought about it before responding. He’d been trying to ignore it since he woke that morning, pushing it to the back of his mind, but he did feel odd. Different in some inexplicable way. His magic felt off, but not like it was broken. More like… volatile. Like it might come exploding out of him without any intention of his own. 

He had showered, dressed, made breakfast, and washed the dishes without magic, worried that if he summoned any of his power he wouldn’t be able to control it at all. It made his whole morning routine take twice as long, and even worse it made him feel vulnerable in a way that he wasn’t used to at all.

On his way into the kitchen, Loki had bumped into Tony who was on his way out with half a sandwich hanging out of his mouth. 

 “So what’s wrong with you?” Tony asked, taking a bite out of his sandwich and grabbing the rest before it could hit the floor. It perplexed Loki to this day how Tony always managed to make little gestures like that, which were objectively silly or just sloppy and definitely not always on purpose, look cool. 

“Nothing,” Loki answered breezily. 

He almost said that he had become extremely superpowered from absorbing power from an infinity stone, but thought perhaps that could wait. “Just this, I guess,” he added, holding up his hand which was still bandaged per Jane’s instructions.

Tony just stood chewing his sandwich for a moment, and Loki couldn’t help but remember the softness in Tony’s voice back at his bedside, the warmth of his hand as he told Loki, ‘I’m glad you’re not dead.’ 

Outside the kitchen, Tony casually waved his sandwich and turned away, adding over his shoulder, “Sorry. Let me know how it goes with the doc.” 

“Loki?”

Loki had been lost in thought, needlessly focused on Wrong Tony, and must have taken too long to answer because Jane was looking at him with some concern.

“Sorry,” he said, shaking himself a little. “I’m fine.”

He presented his bandaged hand to her and she unwrapped it carefully. Flipping it over so his palm was up, they both looked down at the odd pattern of thin white scars running along his skin, almost like a burst of lighting with forks tracing out towards his fingers and wrist.

“Well,” Loki said, “that’s interesting.”

“Does it hurt?” Jane asked.

“No,” he answered shortly. It didn’t. He flexed his hand open and closed a few times and nothing seemed to be wrong with it.

Jane nodded, rolling up the bandage in her fingers, and said, “Good.” She returned to the controls, putting down the bandage and picking up a notebook. “So if you’re ready, we can start off with just a few simple things to gauge what we’re dealing with here. If there is a lasting effect from the Tesseract, we don’t know how it might be interacting with your physiology considering that you’re… you know, already magical.” 

It was clear she had been holding back her excitement when they’d met in the medical room, presumably out of respect for Loki’s feelings. Now, her eyes were wide and bright, her grin back in full force. He couldn’t exactly begrudge her that. 

He looked down at his right hand again, at the thin lines along his palm. “What do you want me to do?” he asked quietly. 

“Just something simple,” Jane responded. “An illusion? That’s something easy for you, right?”

Loki’s mouth quirked a little. Illusion magic was not simple at all, but she was right that for him it was easy. 

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in through his nose, holding it for a few seconds before releasing it out through his mouth. He was nervous. He felt off, and he wasn’t prepared to deal with it if things went horribly wrong. 

He thought of Jane’s field of flowers, twisted his hand, and cast the spell. A sunflower traced from glowing green magic appeared a few yards in front of him, as if it was growing out of the floor.

He had less than a second of relief once the illusion’s final appeared just as intended, then he felt something else. A rush of energy to his hand. He raised it quickly away from his body and saw that it was engulfed in gold and blue light, just like when he’d lost control of the Tesseract in Tony’s lab. Now there was no Tesseract and it was just coming from him . And then without any conscious decision to do it, the energy exploded outwards and flew from his hand, right through his sunflower, which was an illusion, and then straight through the wall , which very much was not.

Loki staggered back, the energy receding from his hand as he stared aghast at the hole he’d made in the side of the room. It was lightly smoking around the edges and easily large enough for him to walk through right onto the lawn outside.

Movement caught his eye as Jane stood up from where she had evidently taken cover under the control panel. She stared at the hole, then looked at Loki to offer an astute observation: 

“Whoa,” she said. 

“Are you all right?” Loki demanded sharply. Jane jumped a little and he held up his (no longer glowing) hands. “Sorry,” he said, softening his voice, “Are you all right?” 

She nodded, wiping the brief look of fear from her face to replace it with an unconvincing nonchalance. “Yeah. Oh, yeah, I’m fine. I mean, you could always do that, right?” 

Loki eyed the destruction and shook his head. “Not like that.” 

“Okay, well, that’s good!” Jane said enthusiastically, and Loki shot her an incredulous look. “Our first discovery,” Jane clarified. She was already fiercely scribbling something in her notebook. 

Loki looked back down at his hands. His magic was more powerful than most people knew, perhaps even more powerful than he knew, but this was something else. The great power had moved through him in the same way his own magic did, but it felt completely different. Immense. Boundless.

“Get back further,” Loki said. His voice sounded hollow and far away to his ears. “Back to the door in case something happens.” 

Jane didn’t respond, but he watched her retreat to the door out of the corner of his eye as he walked further into the room, to the very center. He took a deep breath again, focusing his mind carefully like when he was small and in lessons with his mother. 

He could still feel his own magic, but the power of the space stone was pulsing under it ominously. 

As carefully as he could, he reached for that power and then released it. This time he didn’t try to stop it as he felt it grow out of control, instead he let it go. His arms flew wide and his head flung backwards as his whole being was engulfed in cosmic power. 

A small, sensible part of him was terrified. Everything else was pure exhilaration and he struggled to keep his mind clear.

As his feet left the ground, he let out a growling yell, forcing himself to concentrate. What resulted from this push of mental force was not clarity, but acceleration . He rocketed upwards, throwing his arms above his head just in time to crash through the reinforced ceiling like it was tissue paper, and then kept going up and up and up. 

He was flying. Not just flying, hurtling upwards while the compound got smaller and smaller below him. Knowing he had no time to think, just act, he clenched his fists, crying out loud again and urging with everything in him to stop.

And he did stop. He hovered in midair, his body still encased in blue-gold fire. His chest heaved as he gasped for air, looking around with his fists still clenched tight beside him. When he looked down, he could see the compound, a tiny gray block far below, and the blue ribbon of the Hudson, and the thick green of the tree covered hills. Around him, only sky, with some clouds floating at eye level in the distance. 

The wrongness he’d felt since the accident was gone, and in its place was something that felt wholly, impossibly right . He was Loki of Asgard. He was a god. This power would not control him; he would control it. 

Very slowly at first, experimentally, he started to descend. He found that controlling his flight was easy now, instinctive. The same as his brain sending a message to his feet to walk forward. 

The compound grew bigger as he got closer to the ground and eventually he could see Jane standing on the grass waving her arms up at him. He was still too far away to hear her if she was yelling too.

He looked to the sky again. How high could he go? How fast? How far?

He looked back down at Jane. He could see the hole in the roof where he’d blasted through and increased his speed, aiming for that same spot. He furrowed his brow, concentrating, until he easily slipped through, back into the training room. He meant to drop lightly to his feet, but instead hit the ground in a three point landing with such force that the floor cracked around him as the blue-gold glowing around him receded and vanished.

Jane was scrambling back through the hole in the wall and hurrying towards Loki when she suddenly stopped short, looking towards the door. Loki followed her gaze and saw what she was seeing.

Tony, standing there with his arms crossed and staring directly at Loki.

No one spoke, and several beats of awkward silence passed as Loki slowly got to his feet, his eyes locked with Tony’s. 

Jane finally cleared her throat. “Hey!” she said to Tony, greeting him as if he had just walked in at that moment, as if the room was still in one piece. She smiled at him, dodging the debris on the floor to move closer to Loki. “As you can see, we’ve made some progress.” 

She whipped around to shoot Loki a panicked look and whispered, “Are you okay?” Then she turned back to Tony, the reassuring smile back on her face as she said, “Everything is totally under control.”

Tony blinked. Then blinked again. Loki wasn’t sure if Tony was going to lecture them about all the damage or just completely freak out. All that stillness and certainty he had felt up in the sky was gone; with the power suppressed and his feet back on the ground, all he could muster feeling was heartache at the prospect of disappointing Tony, even if it wasn’t his Tony. 

Finally, Tony sighed lightly and said, “Okay, Goose and Maverick, whatever you’re doing - knock it off. Colonel Rhodes is going to be here in like an hour so we’ve got to clean this up.” 

Loki and Jane stared as he turned to go. “And stay on the ground!” Tony yelled back over his shoulder. A small chunk of ceiling crashed to the floor nearby as soon as the door shut behind him.

After another beat, Jane turned to Loki, looking briefly to the hole in the roof and then back at him. Her expression brightened and she said encouragingly, “He took that really well.”

Chapter Text

SACRED TIMELINE, 2016
AVENGERS COMPOUND

Tony paced back and forth in front of the compound waiting for Rhodey to arrive. He was trying to think of a way this could be more of a disaster, but couldn’t come up with anything.

He was furious with himself. 

Somehow, he had gotten completely caught up in Loki’s sob story about being parted from everything and everyone he loved and somehow the urgency to help him get home had just grown and grown until Tony was messing with the Tesseract like it was a fun little prototype out of R&D and not the most powerful force currently in existence on the planet.

He had thought it was going to work. He had believed it was going to work. But now… God, he was so stupid. He could have killed them all. Literally all . He could have created a singularity that sucked in this whole universe. 

That hadn’t happened. Instead, Tony had created a super-villain. Again. How many times could he swear off recklessness and then go right back to putting the whole world in danger? 

And this time was even worse because Iron Man’s hands were tied by the damn government and the World Security Council—he couldn’t do anything without them getting involved, his own actions had made sure of that. So much for putting himself in check. 

He stopped his incessant pacing and looked up as Rhodey approached. The shiny black car with government plates sped up the drive and stopped at the curb right in front of Tony. 

He steeled himself for the conversation. He didn’t think he could hide the fact that Loki was here at the compound, but he could probably convince Rhodey it was safe. An insanely super-powered Loki though..? 

Rhodey was already not going to like this. And with all the regulations enacted by the Accords, there was no way Rhodey wouldn’t report it. They were best friends, brothers, but there were only so many times Rhodey would choose Tony over his duty as a soldier.

“He lives,” Rhodey said as he stepped out of the car. Tony’s eyes automatically darted over his friend’s high tech leg braces, checking for any sign of needed adjustments or repairs. Rhodey was handling them much better now, a good sign he was regaining some strength in his legs. 

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Tony said, ‘that’ meaning disappearing from public life for several weeks and ignoring 90% of Rhodey’s texts. He held out a hand to take Rhodey’s and used the other to squeeze his friend’s shoulder. 

Rhodey took his sunglasses off and tucked them into his jacket before grasping Tony’s hand. 

“And he’s apologizing?” Rhodey asked suspiciously.

“You know I’m very busy, I don’t have time for a lot of conversation,” Tony said breezily, “But I’m glad you’re here. You know how much I enjoy this government mandated time together.” 

Rhodey sighed. “Don’t worry, I’ll get Ross to come himself next time. I know how much you’ll both love that.” 

“Great, yeah just let me know, I’ll get the red carpet ready.” Tony stuck his hands in his pockets and turned toward the door. Rhodey fell into step beside him as they made their way to the elevator that would take them up to the residential floors. 

“How long have we been friends?” Tony asked.

Rhodey groaned. “Oh no, what is it?” 

“I’m going to tell you something literally insane and I’m going to ask you to turn off your survelling and just be my friend again, that’s all.” 

“Tony, I am your friend.” Rhodey sounded calm but Tony could see he was getting nervous, probably because sometimes when Tony said stuff like this it was because he was planning to commit some light treason and other times it was because it was the literal end of the world.

“Oh I know,” Tony agreed, “I want to say for thirty years? Something like that. It’s a long time, you build up a lot of trust and loyalty in that amount of time.” 

“It’s that bad?” 

Tony pressed on. “Okay, so you know those science guys that just sit around doing a whole bunch of math trying to explain everything about time and space and the universe?” 

“Yeah, I like them,” Rhodey said, “They’re quiet and don’t blow anything up.”

“So boring,” Tony noted, then continued, “But anyway, a lot of them do their work on this ‘many worlds’ theory, or ‘eternal chaotic inflation,’ or the multiverse—basically the theory that there are other universes. Maybe an infinite number. Every time anything happens, every other thing that could have happened in that moment does happen in an alternate universe.” 

“Okay,” Rhodey said in a tone that indicated he had no idea where Tony was going with this. 

“All of that is highly theoretical,” Tony plowed ahead. “Just those guys who sit in their windowless rooms and don’t interact with people enough, doing a bunch of math to try to prove something like that, like the multiverse, could exist.” 

They had reached the elevator and Tony pressed his hand against the panel to call it down. A blue light washed over them, scanning and approving them before the doors opened and they stepped inside. As the elevator doors closed Tony said, “Anyway, turns out they were right. There are other universes.” 

Rhodey didn’t say anything. 

Tony kind of hated when Rhodey did this. He had set up the multiverse thing, but he wasn’t exactly sure the best tactic to introduce Loki into the conversation and Rhodey wasn’t giving him any hints. Tony let them ride the rest of the way up in silence. 

Rhodey stepped out of the elevator first and made his way into the living room, sitting down heavily in the first chair he came to. Tony followed and dropped onto the couch directly across from him.

“Love how invested you are in this so far,” Tony told him, putting his arm up on the back of the couch and tapping his fingers against it. “Really glad I’m blowing your mind with this information. You know Thor?” 

Rhodey, expression otherwise still infuriatingly neutral, raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?” 

“And you know Thor has a brother? Loki? He led that alien army here and almost got New York nuked and was going to take over the whole planet?” He said this with a tone he might use to say, ‘he gardens on Tuesday afternoons.’

Rhodey let out a frustrated noise and sat forward in his chair. “Tony…” he began. 

“Shit,” Tony said, looking past Rhodey to the entrance of the room. 

For a split second, as Loki walked in and Rhodey started to turn, Tony considered yelling out something like ‘Look over there! It’s Lena Horne!’ to try to prevent what was about to happen, but couldn’t decide to do it fast enough. 

Rhodey saw Loki. 

Loki inclined his head slightly. "Colonel," he greeted. "Nice to see you."

Tony thought Loki was looking remarkably calm and normal considering what he’d witnessed an hour ago, but didn’t have much time to consider that as Rhodey jumped out of the chair and pointed his handgun at Loki’s head. 

“Has anyone ever told you that you have terrible timing?” Tony said, standing up and addressing Loki. “I would even say abysmal.” 

Turning his gaze to Rhodey, he said, “And Rhodey, with the handgun? Really? What exactly do you think that is going to do to him?”

Rhodey didn’t take his eyes off Loki or lower the gun, but said to Tony, “THIS is what you were taking your time to tell me? This wasn’t more urgent?” 

His arms twitched a little, keeping the gun straight out in front of him ready to shoot. He addressed Loki this time. “What is this? You took over the compound? Took over Tony’s mind? And just waited for me to show up?” 

With no expression, and the dryness of his tone outdoing even Tony’s most sarcastic, Loki raised his arms and stretched them out to the side palm up. “Yes, kneel before me. My master plan is complete now that I’ve captured the War Machine.” 

“Do we think that’s helping?” Tony yelled at Loki. He approached Rhodey and slowly raised his hand to place it reassuringly on Rhodey’s shoulder. “Listen…” 

Rhodey moved fast, countering Tony’s move and now pointing the gun straight at Tony’s heart.

“Whoa. Whoa whoa whoa. Let’s take it down a few notches okay? Rhodey?” 

They stared at each other, but both got distracted noticing Loki moving out of the corner of their eyes. Rhodey swung the gun around again back to Loki who stopped. “What are you doing?” 

Loki put his hands up in a surrender pose, like he was doing it as a favor and not because he was actually bothered by the gun. “Just getting a drink.” 

Tony sighed. “Let’s just all calm down. Rhodey, this is Loki. He’s from another universe and in his universe he’s really nice now, and he’s even an Avenger. I get that is insane, but it’s true and I’m sorry I didn’t have time to explain before he just waltzed right into the room. He’s not going to hurt anyone and I would really like you to not hurt anyone either. Especially me.” 

Loki had made it to the bar now and was indeed pouring himself a glass of whiskey. 

"Loki comes in here to hang out, I think because that's what he's used to doing where he comes from. Just hanging out here with the other Avengers. And helping himself to my stuff.” 

Rhodey looked between Loki, who was casually sipping his drink, and Tony, who was giving him his most earnest look. 

Tony wasn’t usually earnest, but surely Rhodey could tell when he was and meant it . 

Finally, Rhodey let out a breath through his nose and slowly lowered his gun. He didn’t holster it, but held it loosely at his side with his finger off the trigger. 

Tony waited. Several moments of silence passed and then Rhodey turned his head to look at Loki. “Well,” he said, “Are you going to pour some for us too or what?” 

_______________________________________________________________

Loki wondered vaguely if he was in some sort of shock. 

He had become a flying, glowing mass of energy, caused some serious structural damage, been casually yelled at by Tony in a way that did not fit the situation at all, and now he was simply sitting in the living room as Tony talked Rhodey off a ledge and Loki twirled his glass idly, the large ice cube in it clinking against the sides as he zoned in and out of the conversation. 

He perhaps should have felt something more staring down the barrel of Rhodey’s gun. It couldn’t have hurt him really, but it was a bleak and violent reminder that he wasn’t welcome in this universe. He and Rhodey weren’t close confidantes, but they were always united in loving Tony. To be on an opposite side should have been jarring. 

But his mind was back in the training room, in the sky, with Tony, and then with Jane. 

Jane was smiling at him with her eyes lit up like it was her birthday and he was a cake full of candles to blow out. Her response to Tony and the way that she was looking at him now reminded him fiercely of Thor. 

In some ways, Jane and his brother were so similar, which was why they had gotten on so well—and also why sometimes they hadn’t. 

Jane’s expression faltered a little and she asked, “Loki? Are you okay?” 

He was looking right at her, but he couldn’t focus, couldn’t bring himself to answer. What had just happened? What was going to happen now? And perhaps most pressing—how could he use this to get home? 

“Okay, well… Why don’t you take a walk?” Jane suggested. “Or lay down? Or something. And I’ll just get this place cleaned up. Tony probably has, like, robot housekeeping just waiting for chunks of ceiling to come crashing down so they have something to do.”

That wasn’t exactly untrue, but Loki still found himself either unable or unwilling to respond. Instead he looked past her to the door where Tony had stood a few moments ago and started towards it. 

Jane called after him, “I’m sure everything is going to be fine!” 

Her voice faded behind him and he wondered if she thought that was true. 

He flexed his fingers as he walked through the halls tracing a path to the elevator that would take him to his room. His stride was brisk and confident and he was acutely aware of the pressure of his feet hitting the ground. 

Tony’s words were running through his mind. Knock it off. Clean this up. Stay on the ground.  

Tony intended to keep what he had seen Loki do a secret from Rhodey, at least for now. Why? Not to protect him, surely. Was he afraid of what Rhodey would do? Or perhaps, afraid of what retaliation from Loki might follow… 

Loki clenched his fists. Of course this Wrong Tony would think the worst of him. What else did he expect? 

Loki made himself calm down enough to hit the elevator button without punching a hole through the wall. As he rode the elevator up, he shut his eyes and desperately wished himself home for the thousandth time. 

Once in his room, he picked up his tablet and quickly scrolled through to connect to the built-in speakers (all the rooms were outfitted with them) and then opened up Pandora to make a selection. He turned the volume up as high as it would go and tossed the tablet onto the bed, Black Sabbath blasting through the room, drowning out everything except the thought of his Tony. 

He pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the ground. He was going to take a shower. He was going to get himself to get together. He was going to go upstairs and greet Rhodey and help Wrong Tony smooth things over. Then… Then what?

“Uh, hello.” 

Loki started slightly, snapping out of his daze as Tony literally snapped his fingers in front of his face. He frowned in annoyance at Tony. 

“Are you with us?” Tony demanded, “I’ve been working hard here to convince Rhodey you’re not here to kill everyone and you look like you’re plotting our demise.” 

“I assure you, I was not.” Loki sighed, trying to take the harshness out of his voice. “Sorry, it’s… been a bit of an odd day. Which is saying something as I’ve been having nothing but odd days for a couple of weeks now.” 

Tony looked like he was about to say something else, but then Rhodey spoke, asking Loki, "So you're working with Dr. Foster?" 

Tony pulled out his phone, either pretending to be uninterested in this part of the conversation or perhaps sincerely uninterested. Loki couldn’t tell, still unsure of what Tony’s reaction to his new superpowers would be when he’d fully processed it. 

Loki definitely hadn’t processed it yet for himself. He was just sitting there casually as if he hadn’t blasted through the roof a few hours ago—as if he didn’t have immense cosmic power coursing through him demanding attention. 

Loki nodded, “Yes, Jane came at Tony’s invitation. She knows the Loki from this universe better than anyone else on this planet so she may have felt a personal obligation, but she’s extremely qualified to help with this. She has expertise in both astrophysics and magic which is probably exactly what we need.” 

Rhodey made a face at the word ‘magic.’ Loki could tell he was getting more concerned about the actual situation now that he seemed to believe that there wasn’t an immediate threat from Loki himself. “What are you going to do if you’re just stuck here forever?”

Loki kept himself from grimacing. Rhodey was always blunt, too impatient to get to the point to respect anyone’s feelings. Loki had always found this quality amusing and only just now realized why it tended to rub people the wrong way. 

He made himself shrug with feigned nonchalance. “I haven’t decided yet. Are you in need of new leadership here? Perhaps I’ll consider a presidential campaign.”

Rhodey let out a loud laugh, before quickly confirming, “Wait, that was a joke right?”

“Of course,” Loki said, sipping his drink. Rhodey started laughing again. It had been a joke, but at this point, was anything really off the table?

Chapter Text

SACRED TIMELINE, 2016
AVENGERS COMPOUND

At last, Loki had been released from the conversation with Rhodey. Apparently he was at the compound to do some kind of regular inspection of the labs, something to do with the Sokovia Accords. 

Loki could somewhat understand why Rhodey (ever the rule-follower despite Tony’s best efforts) would get on board with something like the Accords, but he still didn’t know why Tony had. If the most powerful leaders on the planet approached Loki’s Tony demanding oversight of the Avengers, Tony would start by reading each of them within an inch of their lives, then he would hire 1,000 of the best lawyers on Earth to contest their authority, and then he would finish them off by calling in Steve to give a rousing speech about how heroes must hold themselves accountable to The People, not the powerful. For freedom! Or something like that.

This version of Tony wasn’t just ‘wrong,’ he was… lost.

When Rhodey and Tony left the room with a strong indication from Tony that he should not follow, Loki stood up, walked out to the balcony, and hopped the railing. He let himself fall, the opposite of the flying he had done before, and landed hard on his feet in the grass. He stood still for several moments, feeling the earth beneath him, the sun on his face, the slight breeze that ruffled his hair. 

He still felt dazed. Cosmic power was his to control. He could fly around the world, perhaps across the galaxy. For now, he found himself putting his hands in his pockets and walking towards the covered dock on the river. 

It was cooler in the shade and he sat down on the bench facing the river, the sight and sound of the water comforting. Would he see the Hudson in his own universe again? This one looked much the same as the one there. 

He tried to work out in his head what these new powers could mean for him. Could he use them to rebuild the machine? Was there any chance they could actually get it to work, if they tried again? 

What if the original accident had been a complete chance, some fluke of near impossibility that had sent him here? Something that had only happened once and could never be replicated on purpose?

It had been over a week now since he had heard his Tony’s voice for perhaps the last time. One week wasn’t a very long time, but then, human lives were so short. Loki knew that—-he could feel it as he lived among them. He had slowed down in so many ways, trying to match their pace and savor every moment, as if his moments were limited like theirs. 

How long did humans live? A hundred years? No, less than that. No time at all. And here he was wasting precious minutes, days, weeks away from his Tony, away from the family that had chosen him and let him choose them back. Every heartbeat was a second lost. 

What if it took him a hundred years to get home? They would all be gone… 

He dropped his head into his hands. The grief was there, dark and looming, but it felt far away. Too big to feel. He could not cry, but he pressed his palms hard against his eyes anyway.

A rustling noise attracted his attention suddenly and he looked up. An owl with dark gray feathers and a white crowned head was standing on the edge of the dock, about ten feet away, staring directly at him. 

Loki frowned at it. He was pretty sure owls were nocturnal creatures on Earth just as they were on Asgard, but the sun was still hours away from setting. If owl behavior was another pivotal difference between their two universes, it seemed like a really pointless one. 

And if he was stuck here, was he going to have to relearn all the boring little facts he had come to know about Midgard back home? Did David Attenborough even exist in this universe?

And something else about it was odd. Loki tilted his head slightly, looking into the creature’s startling green eyes. 

The owl tilted its head too. 

“Hi.”

Loki turned sharply to see Jane standing on the dock behind him. He looked back to the owl, but it must have taken off the moment he turned. He could see it flying away across the river. He shook himself a little and turned back to Jane. “It seems to be getting easier and easier to sneak up on me these days.”

She gave him a half smile and said, “Can I sit?”

He nodded and Jane sat down on the bench, leaving some space between them. When she didn’t speak right away, Loki’s mind wandered briefly back to the owl then let it go, turning his gaze back to the comforting river current. 

Loki didn’t mind sitting in silence, but Jane was always fairly awkward unless she was actively engaged in a conversation about science. She shifted a little, bringing her legs up to sit crisscross on the bench, and finally said, “I’m not really great with this sort of thing, but I’m sorry you’re sad.”

True to her word, it was so not comforting at all that it almost made Loki smile. “I imagine you would rather enjoy being lost in an alternate universe.”

“Are you kidding?” she exclaimed. “It would be the coolest thing ever! I mean, from a scientific standpoint. It’s just so interesting. Everyone’s always saying ‘butterfly effect’ but what does actually cause things to happen differently here versus somewhere else? And does every single decision really branch into whole different universes? The number of universes there would be is unimaginable—because it’s not just every single decision here , but every single decision in every single one of those universes too and—”

She suddenly stopped and Loki looked back to her to find her biting her lip. “Sorry. I told you I’m not good at this.”

“It’s all right,” Loki said. It was. He wasn’t sure why she had decided to come looking for him, but he appreciated that she had. 

Jane started twirling a lock of hair between her fingers. “You’re missing someone from home?”

He sighed. “Quite a few someones, yes.”

“Hmm,” she uttered, sounding surprised. “The Loki in this universe doesn’t really do friends.”

“Yes, I’ve discovered that. And I suppose I’m not at all surprised. I would be the same if things had gone just a little differently for me. I prefer my universe’s outcome.”

“Are we friends in your universe? I mean, you and that Jane?”

Loki considered for a moment before saying, “Not exactly… We have had some fun together, but I think you mostly tolerated me for Thor’s sake. I can’t say I ever got the impression you particularly liked me. Despite my best efforts,” he added with the shadow of a grin.

Jane laughed, rubbing at a spot on the bench. “Oh your best efforts, huh?”

“Well I didn’t do anything bad , I was always perfectly nice to you. Except for, you know, that first time we met and I al most killed you—sorry about that.”

She laughed again and they fell into another silence, more comfortable this time. Loki listened to the sound of the river and felt himself relax a little. It was nice to have someone here. It was almost embarrassing to admit it to himself, but he wasn’t used to being alone anymore.

Suddenly he couldn’t help but ask, “Did you really absorb the aether ?” 

Jane let out a small laugh at the unexpected question. “I mean, not on purpose. It kind of sucked though, I didn’t get any cool powers except for the blasting people thing that I couldn’t control. I definitely couldn’t fly. Plus it was kind of killing me."

“How did you survive?”

Jane shrugged one shoulder and answered, “You and Thor tricked Malekith into taking it out of me.”

“Malekith?” Loki repeated in surprise. He realized he had heard part of this story before, the first night he had met the Thor from this universe. Frigga had been killed by the Dark Elves here.

“I told you that you saved me, or the Loki here saved me. We were on… that planet the Dark Elves are from….”

“Svartalfheim,” Loki supplied.

“Bless you,” Jane said and Loki snorted as she continued, “Anyway, Thor and Loki fought them and Loki died saving Thor. Except I guess he actually didn’t.”

“No. He went back to Asgard and disguised himself as Odin, made himself king of Asgard.” Loki paused for a moment, but then decided to continue. “I was surprised. When Thor and I found him he wasn’t preparing to conquer the Nine Realms. He had staged a dramatic play about what happened. I watched the death scene, but I was late so I missed what came before that.”

Jane’s head snapped up to make eye contact with Loki. “You must be joking.”

Loki shook his head, “Not in the slightest.”

She stared at him with her mouth open, before bursting out laughing, and Loki found himself finally, genuinely smiling. “Oh my god,” she gasped. “I want to see that play so badly.”

“I think it’s due for a Broadway transfer,” Loki posed. 

“Maybe it could be a musical?”

“You read my mind.”  

___________

Jane sat outside with Loki for some time, but when she stood up he declined to go back inside with her. He sat on the dock as the sky turned orange and pink, then navy and purple. 

He had become too comfortable in his universe, his grand scheming was rusty. He had seemingly unlimited power, but what good did that do him if it couldn’t get him home? 

He supposed he could use these new powers to raze the entire planet. If he couldn’t have his home, why should anyone else be allowed to have one? It was an empty thought, not a serious one, born of the hollow sadness sitting in the pit of his stomach. He knew this even as it wove its way through his mind, visualizing the destruction he could cause with a wave of his hand. Would it feel good? To destroy, to kill… Maybe. 

It used to feel good a long time ago—-back in the days of yore, in war campaigns throughout the realms, fighting along with Sif, Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg with Thor always right at his side. How many had they slaughtered? It had been glorious. Had he truly lost all taste for war? 

His younger self would have done absolutely anything for the power he could feel buzzing beneath his skin. 

“Heimdall?” he said quietly.

He had spoken the name without thinking, but after it had emerged from his lips he realized that the closest place to home he could get in this universe was Asgard. He stood up, walking to the very edge of the dock. He looked upward at the sky, the first stars starting to appear though there was still a small edge of light from behind the treeline in front of him. 

“Heimdall!” he called out louder this time. He braced himself for the blast of light and pull of the bifrost, but it didn’t come.

Surely Thor and the Other Loki had returned to Asgard with Odin and restored Heimdall to his post by now… Unless something had gone wrong. Or perhaps he was simply forbidden from returning. In general he always assumed his father’s preferred number of Lokis on Asgard was zero ; two would certainly be too many.

He didn’t call out again.

But it occurred to him then, a lesson he had learned in becoming an Avenger: There is a particular thing about superheroes. No matter how many times they are knocked down, they always get back up. No matter how bad the odds may seem, even if they are sure they are going to lose, they always stand up and fight. 

He took a deep breath and started marching purposefully back to the compound. He let the words pound like a mantra through his head. Always get back up. Always stand up and fight. Always get back up. 

Jane wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room, but he did find her in the lab that she had claimed as her own while she was staying at the compound. She was staring at a computer screen and tapping a pencil rapidly on the polycarbonate table, but she looked up when he walked into the room. 

Always get back up. 

He stopped in front of her and she frowned a little as he placed both hands on the table and leaned towards her to pose his question. 

“Do you want to go out and get outrageously drunk?” he asked.

Jane blinked. Then replied, “Absolutely.” 

_____

Several hours later Loki and Jane were in a loud, dimly lit bar in Brooklyn, clinking shot glasses full of top shelf tequila with two drag queens. “To the king and to victory!” Loki shouted. 

“Sure, whatever!” Tulita shouted with matching energy, and the four of them downed their shots. (Loki respected this establishment and so he fought the tipsy urge to smash his glass on the floor and placed it gently on the bar instead.)

The drag show was over now and a DJ was blasting party music. Loki knew most of the queens who performed at this bar in his universe and had easily re-befriended a few of them in this one with many $20 bills, as many drinks as they wanted, and his familiar rapport that made them feel as if they were friends already. It was comforting to know not everyone was totally different here.

He was trying to suss out whether Peach had the same atrocious boyfriend in this universe or not, when he felt a tap on his shoulder. 

“Hey whatcha up to, pal?” Tony asked, pursing his lips and tilting his head to the side. 

“Tony, you’re here!” Jane yelled, pushing past Loki and throwing her arms around Tony’s neck in a hug. 

He patted her back awkwardly. “Yup, here I am.” 

Loki was actually shocked to see him there. He knew that Tony would be able to trace exactly where they went, but he had not at all imagined that this Wrong Tony would show up in person. For what purpose? He could have shut off the credit cards Loki had “borrowed” from the comfort of the compound. 

The drunken joy of yelling for the dolls and laughing with Jane and buying shots for friends and strangers started to fade as he realized that maybe Tony had come here to fight . Well, Loki wasn’t going to let that happen; for one thing, with his new powers he wasn’t sure he could fight Tony without accidentally destroying him (and possibly all of Park Slope), and for another, it would really bring down the mood.

Jane pulled back from the hug, but kept her hands on Tony’s shoulders. Her face was much too close to his face as she shouted over the music, “We’re doing shots! You should have one!” 

“In a minute,” Tony answered and then grabbed Loki by the elbow and started to drag him towards the back of the bar. Peach looked Tony up and down and gave Loki an approving look and an overexaggerated wink as he was pulled away from the group. They stopped in a corner next to the hall leading to the restrooms. Loki noticed another couple tucked away nearby making out furiously and forced himself to focus on the task at hand.

Tony opened his mouth to speak, but Loki beat him to it. His expression turned grave and he gently grabbed Tony’s arms. “I’m so glad you’re here. We’re all in terrible danger and I could use the back-up.” 

Tony’s mouth closed and then opened again, completely thrown off when he hadn’t been able to say whatever he was going to say. “I… what? What are you talking about?” 

Loki looked around, his eyes scanning the crowd nervously before leaning in closer to Tony. “It’s what Thor said about a disturbance in the Nine Realms. It did have to do with my appearance here. Something has been unleashed, something besides me that’s not supposed to be here, that could throw the entire world into chaos unless we get to it first.” He squeezed Tony’s arms a little tighter and locked eyes with him. “Will you help me?” 

Tony stared straight into his eyes with such intensity that it made Loki’s stomach flutter. For several long beats they looked at each other, Tony scanning Loki as if trying to read his very soul. 

Then Tony let out a short laugh, immediately looked mad about it, and pulled his arms out of Loki’s grasp. “You are such a liar!” 

Loki couldn’t help but grin. “Impressive,” he conceded. “I really wasn’t expecting you to show up here, I didn’t have time to prepare anything in advance.” 

“I know that you know I can see everywhere you’ve used my cards. You didn’t think I’d follow you when you stole half my wallet?”

“Well, no,” Loki answered honestly. “I thought you’d either cancel the cards or just sigh heavily and yell at me when we got back.” 

Tony sighed and briefly pinched the bridge of his nose. “How did you get the pin for my debit card anyway?” 

Loki raised an eyebrow. “I don’t need a pin, I just use magic and the cash comes out of the machine.”

“Then why use my card at all?” Tony demanded. 

Loki put a hand to his chest as if greatly wounded by the question. “Tony, that would be stealing.” 

Tony’s lips were pursed again (was he fighting back a smile or was that wishful thinking?), but Loki was saved from further lecturing by Jane rushing over. She was arm in arm with a queen that Loki didn’t know but had seen perform earlier (Total Eclipse of the Heart in a stunning, black sequined gown that she had then ripped away to reveal an iridescent bodysuit that shimmered like opals under the lights. He thought the bubble machine had added a perfect extra touch).

“You guys, you have to meet my friend,” Jane said gleefully. 

The queen was grinning from ear to ear and looking star struck. “I cannot believe this. I am literally at CUNY for astrophysics and then literally Dr. Jane Foster is just here at my show?? She is my idol.” 

“She loves space!” Jane exclaimed happily. 

“I named myself after space,” the queen continued. “Andromeda Galaxy.” She held out her hand daintily for Loki to take and then froze halfway to holding it out to Tony, really looking at him for the first time. “Oh my god. Aren’t you Tony Stark??”

Loki looked at Tony who seemed to be weighing options in his head. After only the slightest hesitation, he took Andromeda’s hand and said, “Yes I am. Drinks on me, let’s go.” 

Andromeda’s mouth dropped open. “This is the best night of my life.” 

“Can’t say the same, but let’s see if we can improve it,” Tony said, offering his arm which Andromeda took eagerly. 

As they started back towards the bar, Andromeda paused to look back over her shoulder at Jane. “And girl, we are going to talk Einstein-Rosen bridges, but I really gotta know how you bagged Thor.” Turning back to Tony, she asked, “Do you know?” 

They couldn’t hear Tony’s response. Jane and Loki’s eyes met and Jane burst out laughing. “Are we in trouble?” she asked through her hands, her shoulders shaking with giggles. 

Loki started laughing too, “I have no idea.” 

He looked down at his hands, flexing them open and closed a few times. The night was young. 

Always get back up. 

Chapter Text

SACRED TIMELINE, 2016
NEW YORK CITY

Loki woke up with a start, his heart racing. His whole body was chilled and… afraid. He tried to hold on to whatever he had been dreaming, but it was fading so quickly. All that remained was a feeling of terror and dread, sitting deep within him.  

He lay completely still, breathing fast. Closing his eyes again, he took some deep breaths before starting to drift off again. He woke up from his almost sleep a few minutes later, the physical feeling of that fear mostly faded. The memory of it remained even though whatever had caused it was lost to him. 

To add to the confusion, he was laying on his side facing the back of a couch with no view of whatever room he was in. He was halfway tangled up in a blanket and someone’s socked foot was in his face. 

Blinking, he lifted his head a little and saw Jane was asleep on the couch with her head at the opposite end, hence the foot. 

He sat all the way up, struggling to unwrap the blanket that was twisted around his torso and Jane’s legs. Finally free, he swung his legs off the couch, his feet hitting soft carpet. He scrubbed his hands over his face a few times. Vaguely he could recall the early morning hour when he, Jane, and Tony had gotten into a car and then an elevator and then this apartment, but he didn’t actually know where they were. 

He stood up and walked to the floor to ceiling windows, squinting in the bright midday sunshine:  Upper east side high rise, very nice view of the park. 

He looked around the room: Classy, timeless elegance, light color palette, and expensive art on the wall clearly chosen for creative reasons rather than impressing anyone. Pepper’s, surely. 

The next room over was a bathroom and he drank from the tap and risked using some magic to look at least a little less like a bedraggled hungover mess. He glanced back into the sitting room he’d woken up in and, seeing that Jane hadn’t moved, ventured further down the hall. 

After a bit of wandering and poking his head into a few bedrooms (and vaguely wondering why he and Jane hadn’t made it far enough into the apartment for a bed) he found the large kitchen that must double as the dining room; Tony was sitting at the head of a table that could easily seat ten. Tony’s elbow was up on the table, his head resting in one hand while the other had a loose hold on a mug of coffee.  

“Morning,” Loki said. 

Tony winced and didn’t look up. “ Why are you yelling?”

“In fact, I am not,” Loki said at the same normal volume. His eyes skimmed the counter tops for more of that coffee. 

He spotted the coffee pot. Helpfully, the upper kitchen cabinets were glass, so he easily found which one held mugs. Pepper of course had matching sets in sage green and ivory—not a single novelty mug in sight. 

Tony made several noises of annoyance as Loki poured his coffee and scavenged around for cream and sugar which Loki ignored before slumping into the seat at Tony’s left. 

Loki didn’t try to engage Tony in conversation, unsure what to say. Loki and his Tony had so many mornings like this, coffee and companionable silence, the joy of a raucous previous night still simmering gently. 

This was not like that. They had actually had fun last night, but Loki felt like he was sitting next to a snake that might lash out at any moment. It made his skin crawl, the way he was always on edge like this, unsure what this Wrong Tony might say or do. So he just sat and drank his coffee, slowly tracing a finger over the pattern in the silk table runner. 

So Loki was surprised when Tony spoke first and even more surprised when he dove right into the most pressing elephant in the room. “So…you’re like super-duper powered now?” Tony asked without lifting his head. “We charged you up with the Tesseract and you are, what? Tesseract Man? I created a super villain? Again? I should probably just be banned from earth at this point.” 

“Tony…” 

Tony finally dropped the hand propping up his head, straightened his shoulders a bit, and met Loki’s eyes with a look of pure exhaustion that went far beyond a late night out and a hangover. “If you were trying to get my guard down last night or lure me to the city for some diabolical reason, you succeeded,” Tony said, his tone quiet and forcibly light, “And drunk me brought you here where Pepper is, which is insane, but unfortunately I’m only realizing that now that sober me is starting his come back tour.” 

Loki tapped his fingers on the table in agitation. “Where is Pepper?” he asked. 

“She had a lunch…thing,” Tony said, waving his hand vaguely. “It’s lunchtime, not morning. Do supervillains do lunch?”

Loki leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “Look, I know we haven’t known each other long and, traditionally, I absolutely cannot be trusted… but you didn’t tell Rhodey about my super-duper powers. So maybe me being a super villain isn’t what you’re concerned about?”

Tony sighed and placed both hands on the table, staring down at them. “I didn’t tell Rhodey because I don’t know what the military would do if they knew about this. I don’t know what anyone would do. There’s no more Avengers, and the Accords are… I just don’t know what they’d do. What they’d ask me to do.” 

Oh. Well that was surprising. Loki didn’t respond right away, feeling guilty for continuing to assume the worst of this Tony when here he was allowing a moment of honesty to pass between them and, astonishingly, Tony was trying to protect him . 

For what purpose? Because it would be messy and annoying or… maybe some part of him was actually starting to care? His thoughts turned again to waking up in the med center with Tony sleeping in the chair next to his bed, squeezing his arm, saying he was glad Loki hadn’t died….

Loki clenched his hands into fists, upset by what he was feeling. Because what he was feeling in that moment was too similar to what he felt about his Tony. This was not his Tony. His Tony was a universe away, worried, guilt-ridden, most likely not sleeping or eating or taking care of himself at all while he worked to bring Loki home. 

And what was Loki doing? Sitting in Pepper’s ridiculously nice apartment after a night of revelry and feeling some type of way about a man who was not his boyfriend. 

With a sudden jerk, Loki pushed his chair back and stood up which made Tony jump and then wince. 

“Was that necessary?” Tony asked while pointedly rubbing his temples.

Good, Loki thought. He’d annoyed Tony again, so the vulnerable moment could be done with. Exactly how it should be between them.

He walked over to the windows and looked up at the sky which was a perfect blue with fluffy white clouds. A perfect day. He shut his eyes and sighed, briefling imagining the feeling of soaring right up into those clouds and leaving all of this behind, tiny and inconsequential. It was tempting, even if he wasn’t sure he could manage the ‘take off’ without destroying half of Pepper’s pretty penthouse.

More than flying off into oblivion, what Loki wanted more than anything right now was to talk to his Tony.

His eyes snapped open—he had spoken to his Tony. Before the Tesseract, before the machine that could have ripped a hole in the fabric of existence, before the whole foolhardy attempt made him whatever he was now, he had done that with nothing but his own magic. 

He spun on his heel to look at Tony who had both elbows on the table and was massaging his temples. “Tony, the original device, the one that didn’t cause any explosions, when we spoke to my universe—couldn’t we rebuild it?”

Tony didn’t look up or stop his temple massage, but responded, “I did rebuild it.” 

“What?” Loki asked incredulously. Why hadn’t he said anything?

“When you were out for those five days,” Tony explained, “I put out the call that got Jane to come and once she was settled in I drove Pepper back to the city and then you were still unconscious and I was bored.” 

Loki stared at Tony’s profile. He had rebuilt the damn thing already, unasked. It was such a Tony thing to do Loki’s heart ached with sudden fondness. He opened his mouth, closed it again. Finally he said, “Let’s go back. Let’s go now .” 

Before Tony could reply, a loud scream rang out from down the hall. Loki turned and ran back to the sitting room where he’d left Jane asleep, operating on instinct but aware that Tony was on his heels. As they both burst into the room, Loki was relieved to see Jane sitting up on the couch looking completely unharmed. She had a hand clutched to her chest breathing too quickly. 

Relaxing slightly when there was no blood, no intruder, none of the infinite number of bad scenarios he could imagine, Loki hurried over to the couch and crouched down in front of her. He gently touched her cheek, bringing her gaze to meet his. Her eyes were wide and slightly unfocused. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

His voice seemed to bring her back from wherever her mind had been and she shook her head from side to side as if to clear her thoughts. She coughed and her breathing started to slow as she looked first at Loki then over his shoulder to Tony who was hovering behind him. 

To Loki’s relief, she laughed. “Oh my god, I’m sorry.” She scrubbed her hands over her face and shook herself a little again. “I was having such a bad dream, but I don’t even know what it was now.” She looked around the room as Loki had done when he woke up, probably also unclear how they had gotten there the night before. “Is there breakfast?”

“It’s lunchtime,” Tony repeated, still eyeing her warily. Loki got up from his crouched position and sat down on the couch. 

Tony’s phone went off and his expression fell as he looked at whatever was on his screen. “Oh… Oh no, oh this is bad.” 

“What?” Jane asked. 

“Shit. Okay we’ve got a stop to make before we head back upstate.” Tony was quickly typing a response to the message he’d received. He looked up at Loki and Jane and put on a tone that a teacher might use on students who tend to misbehave. “I have to run out and pick something up first. Meet me outside the building in twenty seven minutes—do not break anything, do not go anywhere else, got it?”

“Okay,” Jane said, “but can we stop for bagels? We seriously need bagels.”

“That is true,” Loki agreed. 

“Fine, fine,” Tony said distractedly, looking back at his phone and then heading for the door. “Twenty seven minutes.” 

Twenty eight minutes later, the three of them were in the car Loki had taken from the compound garage to drive himself and Jane to the city the night before. Shortly after that, they had a paper bag full of bagels with cream cheese and several large coffees from a grubby looking cash-only place that had the Tony Stark hilariously waiting in line to use an ancient little ATM since he’d used up all his bills tipping last night’s performers 

He’d grumbled, “I think this thing would combust if I tried to check my account balance,” but glanced at his hungover companions and almost smiled. 

Jane sat in the back seat now, content with an everything bagel and looking out the window, while Loki watched Tony navigate midtown traffic from the passenger seat. Tony was tapping his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel and kept looking at his watch, but still hadn’t said where they were going. 

Loki decided it didn’t much matter and pulled a bagel from the bag for himself. He was impatient to be back upstate, but it was his own fault they were down here in the first place. Tony said they were making a quick stop and then they’d head back to the compound; the rebuilt cross-universal communication device would still be there ready to go after Tony finished whatever important errand had come up.

Tony’s driving was familiar, way too fast and not exactly up to the laws of the road as Loki understood them, so it was only about fifteen more minutes before they were pulling up in front of a school (Loki wasn’t overly familiar with the Midgardian education system, but the etched stone above the large double doors reading ‘Midtown School of Science and Technology’ was a bit of a giveaway).

Tony leaned on the horn and a teenager came bursting through the doors and ran down the steps to the curb where the car was parked. Loki raised an eyebrow and looked at Tony, wondering if he wanted there to be a child in jeans and a t-shirt running towards his car. Bewilderingly, it seemed the answer was yes because Tony rolled down his window. 

The teen skidded to a halt with his hands on the car door and started speaking very quickly, “Mr. Stark, hey! Listen, it’s so cool that you’re here, I’m so happy to see you and everything, but I told you that you didn’t have to come.” 

“And I told you that if you don’t fix the balance it’s going to throw off the fundamental kinetic energy of the output,” Tony said. He leaned back to grab a small black duffel bag off the floor behind Loki’s seat. 

The teen kept talking at a rapid clip. “I know, I know, but it’s fine—it’s the best project here, I know because I’ve seen everyone else’s. And, I mean, everyone else’s are great and all, but this is solid tech.” 

“It’s not,” Tony said dismissively, “Not yet anyway.” He handed the bag out the window to the teen. His eyes widened and his head shot up to look back at Tony when he saw whatever was inside.

“No way. An inversion stabilizer??” he exclaimed.

Tony waved a hand casually. “Can’t find that in a dumpster. Don’t break it. Get it wired in and it’ll fix your balance problem.” 

The teen looked back in the bag again and then back to Tony. “How did you even know it had a balance problem?” he asked. “Just from the picture I sent?” 

Tony was doing the non-expression thing he did whenever he was desperately trying not to look smug. “Just get that installed and send me a photo of my first prize ribbon.” 

The teen grinned, clutching the bag. “I will. You’re a life-saver, Mr. Stark, thank you so much.”

Loki took a bite of his second bagel, keeping his own expression politely disinterested while his mind was racing. Tony wasn’t the sort of person who dropped everything to run errands for someone who wasn’t family, or who became this invested in what sounded like a children’s science competition, and not even one that Pepper had booked him to make an appearance at because it was ‘good for the brand.’

But the biggest giveaway was the look on Tony’s face that settled in for just a moment whenever the teen wasn’t looking— soft , proud. 

Loki couldn’t understand it. As far as he knew, his Tony wasn’t friends with any Midgardian children. Quite suddenly he felt his throat tightening around the bite of bagel he’d just swallowed. Was this Tony’s child ? They’d spent weeks together at this point, and he hadn’t said anything about having a kid. It was hard for Loki to judge human ages, but this one was definitely more than four years old which meant that if he was Tony’s child here, there was a version of him back in his own universe. 

Perhaps because he was choking slightly, the teen seemed to finally notice Loki in the passenger seat.

“Hi,” he said politely, waving. Then he did a double take and frowned, looking back and forth between Tony and Loki a few times. “Wait.” He looked at Tony in confusion. “Isn’t that...?” Looking back at Loki he started, “Aren’t you...?” 

“He’s nobody, don’t worry about him,” Tony said and leaned forward a little in a pointless attempt to block Loki from view. 

Jane poked her head through the gap between the front seats. “Hi, I’m Jane.” 

“Hi,” the teen said. “I’m Peter, it’s nice to meet you.” 

“Okay, nice to meet everybody,” Tony said. “We have to go and you have to go.” 

Tony put the car in drive, but Peter grabbed onto the door and said, “Wait, wait, wait!” Loki could have sworn Tony’s foot was already on the pedal, that he heard the synthetic whirr of the electric engine, but the car didn’t move. He glanced down at Peter’s hands where they gripped the door. Hm. Interesting. 

Peter lowered his voice a little as if trying to have a private word with Tony even though Loki and Jane were literally right there and could hear everything he said. “Does this mean you’re going to respond to my texts all the time? That I can help you out with—”

Tony cut him off. “It just means your project needed major help, now go . Go on, hurry up, I’m going to be very not-angry-just-disappointed if I went to all this trouble for you to miss the judging.”

Peter was clearly not satisfied with that response, but he did turn and go, running back up the stairs and disappearing inside. 

Tony pulled away from the curb quickly, the tires screeching a little. Loki let a few seconds go by before asking, “Okay, so, who was that? What just happened?” 

“I told you we had to make a stop and we did and now we’re going to go do your thing,” Tony said. He made a seamless (illegal) U-turn in the middle of the street to head back the way they came. 

“Do you always go around helping children with their science projects?” Jane asked. 

“Not all children,” Tony said, annoyed. “Just… that one.” 

“Because….” Loki prompted. When Tony didn’t answer he asked in an overly casual tone, “Is Pepper his mum or is the mother, er, not in the picture anymore?” 

Tony’s knuckles turned white where he gripped the steering wheel. “What! No. No no, he’s not—you literally heard him call me Mr. Stark, Loki, he’s not mine.” 

Loki internally was extremely relieved to hear that his Tony didn’t have a secret or unknown child back in his universe and tried not to dwell on the way this Tony had just addressed himi by name with so much sincerity in his voice. 

“He’s… He’s kind of part of the team,” Tony continued. “Or he was, when there was a team. But he’s trying to mostly be a normal kid, I guess, even though he’s very not normal.” 

“Not normal how?” Jane asked. “Like, super smart? Or super powered?” 

“Both,” Tony sighed like the answer pained him a little.

“What kind of power?” Loki asked, his curiosity spiking. He was fascinated by the various ways Midgardians ended up with abilities beyond natural human variation. Super soldier serum, gamma radiation, chemical exposure, infinity stones… Or could this be a Midgardian with some kind of natural mutation granting him inhuman power? 

“He’s… uh. Well, he’s really strong and sticky,” Tony said, as if this were a normal answer. 

“What?” Loki said at the same time Jane said, “Ew.” 

Tony finally caved and let out, “He got bit by a weird spider, okay? He’s got super strength and he can climb walls and stick to the ceiling, stuff like that. And he’s so damn smart he engineered these webs he shoots from his wrists, his own design, when he only had access to stuff he could steal from his high school chemistry lab or find in the trash—”

Apparently realizing he’d just about given it away, Tony concluded, “So yeah, that’s Spider-Man.” 

Loki snorted, but covered it up with a little cough.

Jane said, “Spider-Man… Wasn’t he in Germany? That thing at the airport?” 

“Yes,” Tony said shortly. Loki noticed his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly again.

“On your side?” Loki asked after clearing his throat, trying to keep from sounding skeptical. 

“Yup,” Tony said. Another one word answer.

Loki frowned at that. Why did Tony bring a kid to Germany to fight for a law requiring people like Spider-Man to be registered and monitored by the government? It was completely at odds with all that he’d just witnessed, how genuinely Tony cared about this kid. 

Completely at odds with lying to the government about Loki too. 

Curiouser and curiouser. 

Loki decided not to press it, not when Tony was throwing all his hard edges back up. He wanted to get back to the compound as soon as possible and Tony might do something else to delay them if he got too grumpy. 

Jane seemed to be thinking along the same lines as she changed the subject, “So tell me more about the ‘talk across the multiverse’ machine, that sounds cool.” 

Tony’s grip on the steering wheel finally relaxed. “Yeah sure,” he said tiredly, “but hand me one of those bagels first.”

Chapter Text

SACRED TIMELINE, 2016
AVENGERS COMPOUND

Jane had fallen asleep sitting on her stool, using her crossed arms on the hard metal workbench as a pillow. As she blinked awake, she slowly lifted her head to see Tony sitting on the floor. It looked as if he had disassembled most of the “cross-dimensional phone” machine, its parts laying in various piles. He had four holographic models of it floating around him, most of them blinking red, and a large screen of equations he was scrolling through. 

She sat up the rest of the way, frowning and reaching up to rub her neck which hurt up the left side from sleeping at a weird angle. Spinning around on the stool to survey the room she said, “Where’s Loki?” 

Tony didn’t look away from the screen, but answered, “He went to get some fresh air.” His tone was clipped. She looked at her watch. She wasn’t exactly sure when the combination of hangover exhaustion and escalating emotional despair in the lab had devolved into her workbench nap, but it was getting towards sunrise now. 

She slid off the stool and stepped carefully around Tony’s piles to sit down on the floor beside him. She scanned the equations he was looking at. 

“Are you trying to rework the Planck-Einstein relation?” she asked. 

“Hey, why not?” he answered casually, as if she had asked, ‘Are you ordering tacos for dinner?’

Jane reached up to the screen, moving some of the figures around. “You’re thinking about the variables as continuous, but the equation suggests emergent spacetime.” She scrolled the screen upwards a little more. “And here - spacetime coordinates? This is a linear mapping, but what’s the rapidity when we’re talking about a multiverse?”

Tony leaned back on both hands and sighed. “My theoretical physics is a little rusty.”

Jane smirked a little, moving a few more figures on the screen. “Good, it’s kind of annoying how smart you are. I think you actually downplay it most of the time.”

“I knew I liked you,” Tony murmured. 

Jane shook her head, focusing back on the problem at hand. “The Tesseract can create an Einstein-Rosen bridge, probably to anywhere in this universe, but…”

“But that’s not what we’re trying to do,” Tony finished. He sat up and rubbed both hands over his face, seemingly in exhaustion. “What if it wasn’t science?” he said abruptly. “Maybe… Maybe when we talked to that other me and that other Bruce it was leftover magic of whatever happened to make Loki appear here in the first place.”

“Tony…” Jane began, looking at him skeptically. 

“I know when I say ‘magic’ it seems like I’m joking, but I’m not joking.” Now that Jane was really looking at him she could see the exhaustion in his face. “What if we can’t science our way out of this?” he asked earnestly. 

Jane had gotten used to hearing Thor talk about magic, but she never thought she’d hear anything like that from Tony Stark’s mouth. She and Tony were both out of their depth. With their powers combined they should be able to figure this out; she was an expert in the way the universe worked, Tony was the absolute master of all things tech, and Loki was literally a magical god. And yet, they were stuck. 

She didn’t answer his question, her mind jumping to a different thought that she voiced out loud. “We could probably use someone else on the team…”

Tony met her gaze and then after a moment he let out a laugh. “There’s no way he’d come back here for this.”

Jane definitely agreed; it might be more likely they would all just spontaneously teleport to the other universe than convince Erik Selvig to do anything that would help Loki. But still… “I could try at least,” she pressed. “I mean, this is kind of the most fascinating thing to ever happen. It might be enough to get him to… overlook the whole Loki thing.” 

Tony shrugged and sighed, “I guess it’s possible. You and I are sitting here overlooking the Loki thing right now.” 

“He’s not so bad,” Jane said. “We’ve both seen worse.” Loki himself had protected her from much worse. 

Tony made a disgruntled ‘hmph’ sound and let himself fall backwards to lay flat on the ground.

It was quiet for a few minutes as Jane further scanned Tony’s work, scrolling through the pages of holographic notes. She looked around at the models of the machine. “Tea leaf paradox,” she muttered.

She hadn’t been sure if Tony was still awake, but he immediately responded, “There’s a secondary flow we’re not seeing?” Before she could answer, he said, “Fuck, it is magic, isn’t it? We’re stuck.”

Jane tapped her fingers against her knee and turned around to face Tony. “But Loki is magic.  When you guys made the first call to the other universe, you used Loki’s magic to power the machine—you were only using it as a form of energy. What happens if we consider magic as its own emergent property of spacetime, separate from energy and matter?” 

Still laying flat on the floor, Tony said, “Infinite infinities, probably. I mean this is full Level IV multiverse stuff we’re talking about here.”

Jane tapped her fingers even faster on her knee. “Or maybe we’re thinking too big. Maybe it’s more of a twin-worlds thing rather than a full quantum many-worlds thing.”

Tony seemed to ponder that for a moment and then said, “With or without time-reversal? Doesn’t matter, seems even less likely.” He partially sat up then, resting on his elbows. “I did forget how nice it is to have someone around who speaks English.”

Jane smiled at him. “When we figure this out we’ll publish it as The Foster-Stark Paradox.”

Tony finally hoisted himself to his feet and stretched his back. “We can do the obligatory arguing over name order later. I think I could probably go for some fresh air too.”

------------

“Not exactly stealth mode,” Tony said. He set his thrusters low to hover beside Loki who appeared to hang in the air effortlessly high above the compound.  

Loki smirked a little, looking down at the trail of light streaming past his feet. “Is there something I should be hiding from?” 

“Probably,” Tony said. “There always seems to be something.” 

“Hmm,” Loki agreed. 

The sky was starting to lighten, the stars fading. It was too dark to make out the landscape in detail, just the darkness of the trees and hills, the river snaking below them, and the lights from the compound. Loki was shining more brightly than anything else. Tony took a minute, his face hidden behind the Iron Man mask, to really look at Loki. 

Loki wasn’t just glowing, not the way he had looked from the ground. The energy surrounding him didn’t behave anything like the way light should. It rippled over him like waves, in golds and oranges and blues. It was beautiful actually, enough to distract him from the impossible energy readings FRIDAY dutifully rattled off without prompting. He’d never seen anything quite like it. 

“You know, your hair is kind of doing this rippling mermaid thing in your magic glow,” Tony said matter-of-factly. 

Loki laughed. Tony felt strangely relieved, felt a smile quirking his lips even though Loki wouldn’t be able to see it.

His feelings about Loki, this Loki, were constantly bouncing between fear, anger, annoyance, and the nagging determination to help him that he couldn’t shake. It was perplexing and extremely irritating. And yet, he couldn’t deny that Loki’s unexpected arrival had jolted him out of a stupor. Like he hadn’t been fully awake since Siberia, not really.

But he didn’t need to overthink it. Trying to send Loki home was a gratifyingly complex project, so of course it had reinvigorated him. And since that was a good thing , there was no need to examine why he felt so grateful to hear Loki laugh. 

“Feeling any better?” he asked in a casual tone. Things hadn’t gone well in the lab. They had thought they were returning to the compound to talk to another universe and instead they had hit a wall. In fact, Loki had literally hit the wall. 

Loki shrugged. “I ‘took a lap,’ as you suggested. Just once around the planet.” 

Tony laughed, but Loki didn’t. “Wait, are you serious?” 

Loki nodded. “Turns out I’m extremely fast.” 

Sighing a little under his breath and trying not to let Loki’s increasingly insane list of powers set off his anxiety, Tony merely responded, “Well that sounds refreshing.” 

Loki didn’t say anything so Tony continued, “Jane’s taken over in the lab for now. Why don’t you get out of brooding mode and get some sleep?” 

“Not really in the mood for sleeping,” he responded. He sounded exhausted. 

Tony knew he wasn’t going to get any sleep either, not while his mind was still spinning with a million guesses about the nature of the multiverse and why he couldn’t get the machine to work and why Loki, of all people, had managed to make him feel like he could do something that mattered again. 

So he said to Loki, “All right, then let’s go watch some TV.” 

Loki turned to look at him and raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?” 

“Yeah,” Tony said. “I’ve been doing a ton of stuff for you, maybe I want to have some boring hang-out time like the kind from your universe.” He hoped his voice wasn’t too embarrassingly earnest. 

Loki still looked suspicious, but waved his hand and said, “Well, in that case lead the way.” 

-----------

Watching TV with Tony felt a little awkward at first, too normal of any activity. But while both of them had said they hadn’t felt like sleeping, the exhaustion got to them quickly. Tony appeared to be dozing within twenty minutes and Loki let himself close his eyes for just a moment.

---------

In the dream Loki is imprisoned in a cell on Asgard. It’s dark except for the torches flickering in the hall. He walks to the forcefield keeping him inside and presses a hand against it. He pushes, both with his physical strength and also his magic. The wall doesn’t move and no magic comes to him. He holds up his hand in front of his face, trying to summon anything—an illusion, even a spark—but there is nothing. 

“You must be very pleased with yourself.” 

His head snaps up to see Natasha standing outside of his cell, dressed for combat, her arms crossed. It’s just like their first meeting on a SHIELD helicarrier years ago.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “Why am I here?” 

“Don’t act like we are going to keep playing games, that’s done,” she says coldly. 

“It’s not a game,” Loki insists, panic starting to rise in his chest. “I don’t know how I got here. Where is Thor?” 

Natasha shakes her head at him like she’s disgusted. “I know you watched him die. Trying to save Tony. Trying to stop what you unleashed .” 

Cold panic grips the rest of his body, making him tremble. “What?” he asks, hardly able to speak.

“I know you’ve executed many betrayals in your long life, but I wonder, were we your favorite one? Were you laughing at how stupid we were? Did you think it was funny that we loved you?” Natasha demands.

Unlike their first meeting, he thinks she’s being honest—in all the subtle ways that he knows to look for now, he can tell this isn’t an act.

“No, Nat, I didn’t,” he says, pressing both hands against the wall of the cell. “I wouldn’t.” 

She shakes her head again. “Pathetic. You won’t even feel bad about it, will you? How could scum like you possibly feel anything.” 

“Natasha, please,” he begs, desperate for her to understand. He doesn’t know what’s happening. He loves her. He couldn’t have killed Thor. Killed Tony—they can’t be dead because of him . 

Suddenly Natasha is choking. Her hands fly to her throat as she gasps for air, like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room beyond the forcefield. 

“Nat?” Loki cries. “Natasha!” He watches in horror as blood begins to seep from her eyes, filling the sockets and then dripping down her cheeks like macabre tears as she falls to her knees. 

He bangs his fists frantically against the forcefield, punching and kicking at it with all of his strength, desperate to reach her, to save her. It doesn’t budge, he stays trapped and she goes limp, falling sideways to collapse on the ground. She lays completely still, blood still pouring from her eyes, into her hair, and puddling on the stone floor. 

------------

In the same universe, on the other side of the world, Natasha sat straight up. Her hands flew to her face, feeling her cheeks, her eyes, before pulling back so she could squint at them in the darkness. But there was no blood, her fingers were dry. 

“Are you all right?” Steve’s voice, low and reassuring, came from the floor beside her. He'd claimed a spot to sleep there after chivalrously offering her the couch in the cramped quarters of their latest safe house.

She felt her face one more time. Her heart was beating too fast.

“Yeah,” she responded quietly. “Just a weird dream.” 

Chapter Text

SACRED TIMELINE, 2016
AVENGERS COMPOUND

The next week passed relatively peacefully. Their odd trio had now settled into something like a regular routine. Loki and Jane spent a lot of the day in the training room testing his powers; which was still dangerous, but definitely less so than the first day when neither of them had any idea what they were dealing with. 

Loki could summon his power at will, accumulate the energy in his hands to burn anything flammable and melt straight through steel. One evening in the kitchen, struck by a sudden idea, Jane grabbed Loki’s hand and put it against a pot full of water. Loki had laughed, but then concentrated on summoning only the smallest bit of energy to his hand and had the water boiling in less than a minute. 

Ready for it this time, they practiced what Jane started calling photon blasts—Loki summoning the energy to his hands and then projecting it outward, which had previously put a hole in the wall of the compound, but now was used to practice taking out targets. 

One day, Jane called in Tony to join them in his suit. She placed him and Loki about 15 feet apart from each other and then stood back, far back. “Okay Tony, go ahead and blast Loki.” 

Tony’s face plate was up so Loki could see the smirk that appeared. “I think this is when I’m supposed to protest right?” He put his hands together in a prayer pose and said in a high pitched voice, “Oh no, I couldn’t! I won’t do it!” 

Loki made himself keep a straight face. “I know how difficult this is. But you must, for science.” 

“Okay, you convinced me,” Tony said immediately. His face plate snapped shut, he raised his hand, and shot a blast of energy straight at Loki’s chest. 

Loki had braced himself, but when the blast hit him he didn’t feel the impact he expected. It was like he had been hit with a water balloon that burst and the water spread over him. But instead of water it was energy, absorbed by his body and combining effortlessly with the cosmic energy inside of him. 

He could feel it and let it manifest, the glow coursing through him and gathering in his hands. He knew instinctively if he shot the energy back at Tony it might destroy him entirely. So he put his palms face down and propelled himself upward towards the ceiling, stopping just short of hitting his head. 

Tony’s face plate raised and he looked up at Loki. For the first time, he didn’t seem angry or worried about Loki’s powers. Jane came running up to stand beside Tony, waving up at Loki. “That was so cool!” she called up to him. 

Loki let himself drop to the ground. Jane’s face was ecstatic. “I was hoping that would happen, it seemed likely you’d be able to absorb energy! Although I’m not sure if it actually did anything to strengthen your power. I mean the energy you produce on your own doesn’t seem to have a measurable bound anyway.” 

“Should we try one more time just to make sure?” Tony asked, raising his hand toward Loki again.

Loki smirked, raising his hands palm up and gesturing for Tony to bring it . 

Tony cocked his head to the side and then lowered his arm. “Nah, I think you’ve had enough. Come on, let’s have lunch.” 

---------------

Jane and Tony also spent a good deal of time in the lab, which Loki was avoiding. He didn’t want to be back in there with the machine that didn’t work, where he’d had an emotional meltdown. He was doing his best to get control of his powers—to keep control of himself . Falling apart wasn’t going to get him home. 

So he kept telling himself that, since he would be home soon, he should perhaps try to enjoy this time with Other Jane and Wrong Tony. Perhaps he would miss them when he left. 

When Jane and Tony called it for the night in the lab, the three of them would retire to the living room with junk food and watch TV—what Tony called “Loki Universe Time.” Loki found that, like his boyfriend, this Tony also liked to talk through every show they watched. Loki’s favorite was the two nights they had spent watching the first season of Stranger Things that had come out just a few weeks ago. Back in his universe this had been highly anticipated by everyone as the new big thing so Loki felt a little guilty watching it without them. He hoped that they were watching it without him as well and could talk about it when he got back. 

They enjoyed exclaiming over the excuse for technology, so primitive even though the 1980’s weren’t all that long ago. Loki laughed at cultural references to the confusion of both Tony and Jane and had to explain to them how Bucky loved Lord of the Rings. He found immense pleasure in using his magic at opportune times to flicker the lights to make Jane and Tony jump. He perhaps did go a little too far when he cast a full demogorgon illusion in the doorway. Tony fully threw a bowl of popcorn into the air and Jane actually punched him once she stopped yelling. 

----------

One day started off in their new normal, with Loki and Jane in the training room for a few hours. Afterward they headed to the living room, discussing the redemption arc of Steve Harrington, and realized that Tony wasn’t alone. Sitting on the couch with him was Vision. 

Stopping short just inside the room, Loki said, “Vision. When did you get here?”

Tony jumped in before Vision could respond, “Oh, he just got back from wherever it is that he goes now. I don’t own him and even though he has made certain promises about keeping the world safe, sometimes he’s just gone and no one knows where he is.”

Vision’s expressions were always fairly neutral, but Loki could read the exasperation on his face anyway. Vision didn’t respond to any of Tony’s rant and instead stood to approach Loki and extended his hand to shake. “It’s nice to meet you, Loki.” 

“Is it?” Tony asked from his grumpy seat.

Vision again ignored him and extended a hand to Jane. “Dr. Foster,” he greeted, shaking her hand. “If I may, I’d like to see what you’ve been working on. Perhaps I may be of assistance?”

Jane’s face lit up. “Uh yeah, that would be awesome. Come to the lab, we just got so many new readings.”

Loki watched them make their way out of the room before sitting in a chair across from Tony. He hadn’t seen Tony in this mood for a while now and hadn’t missed it, though at least it wasn’t currently directed at him. 

“You don’t know where Vision goes when he leaves the compound?” Loki asked.

Sighing, Tony shook his head. “Nope. He turns his tracker off and disappears for days at a time. I think Florida is nice this time of year, he looked a little sunburned.”

Loki looked at him, trying to discern whether Tony really didn’t know or just didn’t want to say. He would have thought it was obvious. 

Tony got up and started making himself a drink at the bar while Loki leaned back in his chair, thinking. If Vision knew where Wanda was… it seemed possible Natasha would be there too. Perhaps the whole ‘anti-Accords’ team besides Clint and whoever Scott Lang was; Loki had read online that those two made a deal and were under house arrest. 

Maybe he could find Wanda and Natasha, Sam, Bucky, and Steve. And then… And then what? He sighed. He missed his family, but it wasn’t them out there. They were strangers, he reminded himself, strangers who would be much more likely to kill him than greet him even if he could find them.

But he had to admit, he was worried about them. Not just his own family, but the ones who existed here. He still couldn’t shake that dream he’d had; at night when he closed his eyes, he could still see Natasha’s limp body, feel the desperation and panic that had choked him... He wanted to see with his own eyes that she was all right, that they all were. 

----------

That night, Jane didn’t join them for Loki Universe Time, presumably still messing around in the lab with Vision. Tony was sitting at the bar with an almost empty glass. Loki went behind it and placed his hands on the bar and said in a faked New York accent, “What’ll you have?” 

Tony drained the last of his drink and said, “Surprise me.” 

Loki thought about it for a second and then started making a concoction he had come up with a couple years ago, one of Natasha’s favorites. Though this Tony didn’t have any edible flowers on hand so it wouldn’t quite have the proper flair. 

Tony watched with a hand under his chin, looking disinterested. 

“Want to watch something?” Loki asked as he poured the fuschia contents of a shaker into two martini glasses. 

“Not really,” Tony said. 

Loki placed one of the glasses in front of Tony and picked up the other. Tony picked up his and started to move it to his lips when Loki cleared his throat. He held up his glass pointedly and Tony only sighed a little as he clinked their glasses together. 

After his first sip, Tony held the glass up to examine the contents. “This is actually delicious. The color is crazy though.” 

Loki sipped his drink, watching Tony tap his fingers on the bar. 

“Okay, how about this,” Tony said abruptly. “We’ll play a game.” 

“What kind of game?” Loki asked. 

“Questions. One of us asks and if the other answers then they get to ask one.”

Ah , Loki thought, that kind of game. He acted like he was considering this and then asked, “How do you know I won’t lie?”

“I’m going to just trust you,” Tony said, meeting his gaze. 

Loki raised an eyebrow and couldn’t help smiling a little. “Really?” 

“Don’t get used to it,” Tony said, taking another sip of his drink. Then to Loki’s surprise he gestured toward him, “You go first.” 

Surprised, Loki clarified, “I can ask anything?” 

Tony nodded over the rim of his glass. Loki hadn’t been expecting to be the one to ask the first question so searched his mind for what he really wanted to know. 

“Did you find out where Natasha is?” 

Tony looked regretful. “No,” he answered. “I had a couple of leads, but she’s very good at what she does as I’m sure you know. She lays convincing false trails, moves around a lot, has connections with the kinds of people that I don’t.” 

Loki wondered if he should say something about the dreams he’d been having, the feeling in his gut that it was becoming more urgent that they find out where she was. 

“You were right,” Tony continued, unprompted. “I do feel bad about what happened. Even with Steve… well, it’s more complicated with Steve, but he sent me a message afterward and…” Tony trailed off, sighing and draining the rest of his glass. Loki realized Tony must have been several drinks in already before he walked into the room; he had asked a yes or no question, but Tony kept going. “Anyway, they’re alive and I do really believe they’re fine. Honestly they could use a vacation, maybe they’re all on a beach drinking out of a coconut right now.” 

Loki tilted his head, considering that. “Perhaps. Although Steve and Natasha especially aren’t much for rest and relaxation unless coerced into it. I’m sure Sam will try his best. That is… if they’re all together.” He decided he wouldn’t mention the dreams, the grimness of them didn’t match the conversation.

Tony let out a somewhat rueful laugh. “Sorry, it shouldn’t be funny, but the Winter Soldier on a beach ? Imagine the way the sun would glare off of that arm.”

“Yeah, he does have to cover it,” Loki informed him.

“Oh my god,” Tony said, pushing his fingers through his hair. “Your life is literally ridiculous. An absolute parody of this universe. I think I’m used to the idea and then you say something like that.” 

“Sorry,” Loki said. He reached under the bar for two rocks glasses and turned around to select a whiskey from Tony’s ample collection. He hadn’t been expecting serious conversation when he’d made the silly purple drinks. 

“The multiverse theory has been in vogue for years now,” Tony continued as Loki chose a bottle and poured out a double into each of their glasses, “but it’s one thing for boring physicists to write a thousand boring pages about it and a different thing to be drinking with the actual proof of it.” 

Loki leaned forward with his elbows on the bar, his glass between his palms. “Your turn to ask,” he told Tony.  

Tony took a sip of whiskey and placed the glass back down before asking, “Why did you attack New York?” 

Loki assumed Tony’s first question would reveal why he had suggested this game in the first place, but hadn’t known exactly what to expect. However, he had agreed to play by the rules. After a beat he said slowly, “I was… instructed to.” 

Tony frowned. 

Loki elaborated a little. “I kind of fell in with a bad crowd. Literally fell, actually.”

Tony looked genuinely surprised by his answer. “And you let them convince you that conquering Earth was a good idea?” 

Loki shrugged and looked away, tracing his finger around the edge of his glass, around and around. “They were very convincing. In a break your mind, body, and soul type of way.”

He had been looking down at his glass, glancing up only when Tony didn’t respond to find he looked crestfallen. Loki sighed softly and met his gaze, a heavy sadness sitting between them. Knowing his own Tony so well, Loki thought this one might be thinking of his own experience with torture and trying to imagine what it would have been like on an alien overlord type scale. 

Loki was grateful to be certain that Tony could not possibly imagine it. 

Finally Tony said, “Who was it?” 

Loki straightened up and took a long sip from his drink. “They are called the Black Order. Their leader is Thanos.”

Tony rubbed a hand over his face. “Thanos,” he repeated. “And what were his intentions exactly?” 

Shaking his head a little, Loki answered, “I was really more of a prisoner than an accomplice. I was not privy to all of his plans. I was told to retrieve the Tesseract by any means necessary and then claim the planet.”

Loki hesitated, but then decided to press on. The threat of Thanos was real in this universe like it was in his own. “But… I do know what he is known for. He is called the Mad Titan. He has been moving through galaxies from planet to planet. He conquers them and then… he slaughters half the population.” 

Tony stared. His mouth opened and closed a few times. Then he said simply, “Why?” 

“I don’t know,” Loki said. He tried not to think about it too much himself, frustrated that he had been too broken to discover more while he was with the Order. “Perhaps the answer is in his name – he’s mad.” 

Tony huffed out a breath. “He kills half the planet and then what? Just leaves?”

Loki shrugged one shoulder, “So they say.” 

Tony put a hand over his mouth, looking lost in thought. Loki knew he was doing some mental calculations of how close Earth had come to suffering this fate. He could also see Tony’s expression change as he realized what it meant that Thanos had failed the first time. 

“I don’t suppose you think the terrifying threat of Earth’s mightiest heroes is going to deter him indefinitely?” Tony asked. 

Loki pursed his lips. Tony looked scared and determined and angry and sad and everything in between. Loki shook his head. “No, I don’t.” 

Tony didn’t say anything. Then he threw back the rest of his drink, cleared his throat a little, and said, “Well. Shit.” 

Loki didn’t have any words of comfort. He had these same worries in his own universe. He knew the threat was there, but it had seemed distant. Tony’s distress made it seem more real. 

His own universe… he had expected to be there if Thanos returned. What if the time came while he was stuck here ? Would they be able to face the Mad Titan without him? Thor would die before he’d let anything happen to Midgard. But what if it wasn’t enough?  

Loki took a breath and mentally shook himself. The alcohol, the fear in Tony’s eyes, his own fear of being trapped in this universe, it was all bringing up things he wanted to forget. But Thanos was no more a threat today than he was yesterday. For a being such as Thanos who had been alive for so long, it could be a thousand years before he decided to circle back on Earth again. There was no reason to think the threat was imminent. 

So, Loki grabbed the bottle to refill their glasses. “You’re terrible at this game,” he told Tony. “You said in the rules ‘a question for a question’ and yet you just asked me seven.” 

“Well you kept answering,” Tony pointed out. 

Loki picked up his glass and drained it before refilling it again. “You’ll have to make it up to me.” He hopped up onto the bar, swinging his legs over so his feet rested on the stool next to the one Tony was sitting on. “Tell me something I don’t know.” 

Tony smirked at him a little and then copied him, climbing up on the bar very smoothly for someone who was drunk. Tony sat cross legged on the bar facing Loki and picked up his drink, rolling the glass between his palms. He considered for quite awhile and Loki drained his own glass and refilled it again before Tony answered. 

“I have the shield,” he said quietly.

Loki tilted his head curiously. “What?”

“Steve’s shield,” Tony said. “He left it behind. In Siberia when we… when I thought he was going to kill me. I told him he didn’t deserve it, that my father made it, that it was mine. He dropped it and he left me there. I thought I might die there, alone except for that shield. The reminder that my father had cared so much more about Steve than he ever had about me. It was so many things at once. I’d been trying to heal the trauma around my parents’ murder and then it turns out Steve knew what had happened to them, but lied to me about it. I was losing Pepper. It was all too much. I was desperate and so angry and I just… I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill them both and in the end they almost killed me and then they left. So… the shield is here.”

“Tony…” Loki breathed. He wasn’t sure what had made Tony reveal all of this, it was so uncharacteristically open and vulnerable. He had known that Tony was hurting from what happened, could read him well enough to know that, but hearing the admission so plainly was devastating.

Loki turned himself to fully face Tony, copying him so that they were both sitting cross legged on top of the bar. He clenched his fists a few times, trying to ground himself in this reality; his heart was aching as if it were his own Tony hurting like this. 

Before he could gather his thoughts into something to say, Tony cleared his throat. “Sorry, that was a lot. I haven’t said any of that to anyone before. It’s almost like it was easier to say to you than to someone I actually know.” He looked up from his glass to meet Loki’s gaze. “So, thanks for listening, I guess.” 

“Of course,” Loki said. Before he could help it, he reached out his hand and squeezed Tony’s knee. 

Tony took a deep breath and Loki pulled away as Tony picked up the bottle and poured more whiskey in their glasses. 

“Okay, well here’s a question,” Tony said, his voice returning to a much more familiar, snarky tone, “Can you tell me about something nice and cheerful from your universe to get rid of this ‘the whole planet is doomed and we’re really sad’ vibe we have going on?” 

Loki narrowed his eyes and thought for a moment and his mind quickly jumped to that first Christmas at Avengers Tower in 2014. 

“Well…” he began, “In December of 2014, Vision called an emergency meeting. We all hurried to gather together and he announced the emergency: Christmas was coming.” 

Tony listened raptly as Loki told him about decorating with Wanda, Thor and Vision showing up with an enormous tree that had to be shrunk down to fit inside, Thor’s obsession with holiday Hallmark movies, the Christmas Eve party. 

The only part he left out was that Christmas in 2014 was also when he and his Tony first got together, even though the memories were so intertwined his heart was bursting with it.

“Christmas morning came and…” Loki trailed off mid-sentence to laugh at the memory.

“What?” Tony demanded, pushing at Loki’s knee to get him to keep going. He had moved closer as they made short work of the whiskey and Loki spun the story, their knees almost touching.

“I put a spell in the doorway so every time someone walked through they ended up in this same pair of Christmas pajamas,” Loki got out. 

Tony’s jaw dropped. “Okay you really dropped the ball here. How did you not have a physical photo of this on your person at all times in case you needed to show it to someone in an alternate universe someday?” 

Loki was still laughing, remembering. “They were hideous - horizontal red and green stripes and then this giant deer on the front of the shirt with a red nose that lit up. I saw them in a photo on the internet.” 

Tony’s hands were on either side of his face, his expression delighted. “I’m trying to picture this and it’s the best.” 

“Actually… I could show you,” Loki held up his fingers for effect, a tiny glow of green magic dancing in his palm. 

Tony quickly held up both hands in front of him. “No. No no no, stop it, stop even thinking about it.” 

Loki’s smirk grew wider.

“Loki, no,” Tony said, pointing a finger at him. 

Loki waved his hand and in a quick wash of green shimmer, both he and Tony sat there wearing the pajamas, exactly as he had described. Cotton pants and matching shirt with thick horizontal green and red stripes. And there on both of their chests was the deer - his antlers decked in glittery garland and his nose glowing bright red from a tiny lightbulb.

Tony looked down at himself, then at Loki, then back at himself, and burst out laughing. He reached forward to grab Loki’s shoulder as he dropped his head to his chest, dissolving in merriment. Loki was laughing too, so much that his eyes started tearing. 

Tony was gasping to stop and looked up, his chest heaving. Their eyes locked and Loki grinned, his head and heart feeling so much lighter. Tony was smiling too. 

Loki was about to say something, but whatever it was he forgot it as Tony’s expression changed and then Tony wasn’t looking into his eyes anymore, Tony was looking at his lips and Tony was so close. When had they gotten so close to each other? And now Tony’s eyes were flickering between his eyes and his lips and he was so beautiful and he was so close and Tony’s hand was still on his shoulder and suddenly gripping it tighter and then Tony was leaning forward and he was so close and Loki’s heart was beating so hard against his chest and Tony was so close and then—

Tony pulled back abruptly, releasing Loki, flinging himself back, swinging his legs off the bar, and jumping down onto the floor all in one barely coordinated motion. 

Loki sat where he was, frozen in place. Tony’s back was to him now, his hands on his head. 

“Oh my god. Oh my god.” 

Loki didn’t move, didn’t speak. He didn’t know what to do. 

Tony spun around and looked at him and Loki couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Because this wasn’t his Tony! This Tony’s expression was… angry? Shocked? Disgusted? Or something else?

Exhaling out sharply, Tony shook his head and said quietly, “Sorry… I’m sorry.” Then he turned on his heel and rushed out of the room. 

Loki sat on the bar in the hideous Christmas pajamas, staring at the spot Tony had just been standing before he literally ran away. His heart was still pounding in his chest. 

What had just happened? Had Tony really been about to kiss him? And even worse… had he really wanted him to?

He put his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands. This was all wrong. Wrong Tony. Wrong universe. Wrong Loki.

Chapter Text

Jane yawned as she made her way down the hall to what had become “her room” since she first arrived at the compound almost three weeks ago; she’d had her pick since most guest spaces were empty. She probably shouldn’t have stayed up so late with Vision but was only compelled to call it quits when she remembered he wasn’t going to get tired (although she had learned he had a sleep mode he could deploy if he wanted). 

Opening the door to her room, she flipped on the lights, toed her shoes off, turned towards her bed and almost screamed.

She let out a gasp instead and clapped a hand over her chest as her brain caught up to her reaction. “Loki, you scared me to death. What are you doing?” 

Loki was laying perpendicular on her bed, his hands clasped together on his stomach and his feet hanging over the edge. He hadn’t moved when she’d turned on the lights or when she’d jumped. 

He sighed deeply, staring straight up at the ceiling, and said, “I am passing away from humiliation and despair and I guess I couldn’t face doing so alone.” 

Jane frowned. Then she flopped down next to him, propping herself up on her elbow. “Well, I was looking forward to seeing you so I could tell you about all this cool stuff I found out from Vision, but I guess that can wait until tomorrow.” 

Loki closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said morosely. “If I live that long.” 

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Jane asked. 

“I do not,” Loki said. 

“Okay.” Jane patted his shoulder sympathetically and went to get ready for bed, pulling on her pajamas and brushing her teeth in the attached bathroom. When she returned, Loki had moved over, still on top of the covers but now laying on the bed in the correct direction and facing away from her with his arms crossed. 

Jane looked at him for a moment, wondering if she should be saying something else, but she couldn’t think what so she decided to just leave him be. Even in one of his “moods,” as Thor might have called it, his presence wasn’t unwelcome. She turned off the lights, got into bed, and was asleep in minutes. 

-----------

Loki wasn’t sure if he slept at all as he watched the sun come up through the windows and get higher in the sky while Jane snored quietly next to him. 

Was all this a punishment for straying from his natural path? He had given up on glorious purpose , given up on domination and fear and destruction. He had chosen something so different from any of those things, perhaps it had been meant to blow up in his face from the start.

When he had met himself on Asgard, the Other Loki urged him to not forget what he deserved… but maybe this was exactly what he deserved. Separated and lost from everyone he loved, destined to completely mess up any new relationships he might try to make. He had most certainly lost this world’s Tony and, surely, it was only a matter of time before Jane got tired of him too. They weren’t even friends, the only reason she was here was because he had managed to become a scientific anomaly that caught her interest.

He shut his eyes tightly, the old thoughts back again. The loneliness, the self-loathing, the dread—demons he’d fought so hard to rid himself of–-haunted him so often since he’d landed in this strange dimension. Perhaps they were never gone at all, just buried. Waiting. He had foolishly started finding moments to enjoy this world, to connect, which made the disappointment so much more cutting, more like falling suddenly through empty air. 

It felt like letting go of Gungnir as he hung off the edge of the shattered bifrost. He was exhausted with saving himself. 

Jane eventually stirred; he was facing away from her, but felt the bed moving as she stretched and changed positions. 

“Are you awake?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered tersely. 

He felt her moving, changing positions again and then settling back down. After a moment she said, “You know, you are so different than I expected you to be.” 

Here it comes , he thought, steeling himself for another rejection. Out loud he asked, “What did you expect?” 

“I guess I thought you’d be… less normal,” Jane said through a small yawn. “High and mighty, like everyone should be falling over themselves to serve you.” She paused and then continued. “I don’t know, it’s like… I could never imagine the Loki in this universe caring what Jane Foster or Tony Stark thought about him. It would be like me worrying if a crab liked me or not.”  

“A crab?” Loki asked, a smile tugging at his lips despite himself. 

“I don’t know, like a lesser creature , it’s the first thing I thought of,” Jane said. 

Loki rolled over onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. They both lay there for a minute as her words started to hit him. The Loki in this universe was born to be a king, same as him. He had felt so sure when he was telling Other Loki that his own chosen path of love was the right one… 

When Loki didn’t respond Jane continued, “I meant it as a compliment actually. What’s the point of anything if you don’t feel it?” 

Loki didn’t have an answer for that. He didn’t have any answers in this confusing world; one moment he felt high and mighty like Jane had said, coursing with formidable new power, and the next he felt small and lost because a boy didn’t want to kiss him. He was spiraling, constantly,  and every anchor he had was out of reach. 

Then he felt Jane take his hand and squeeze it gently. Well. Maybe not every anchor. 

----------------

Loki was feeling rather better after an intense workout session with no magic and no cosmic powers—just blades and heavy things and running until he almost couldn’t anymore. 

It reminded him of working out with Steve, except he was blasting AC/DC and Led Zeppelin at a volume that could probably deafen a human. Loki didn’t even particularly like the music, but it effectively drowned out everything except the feeling of his Tony. 

He finally shut the music off and sat down on the bench near the door of the training room, catching his breath. What did it actually matter if he and Wrong Tony had almost kissed? What would it have mattered even if they had kissed? Honestly, even though it would be extremely embarrassing to explain, his Tony would probably be smug and unsurprised to learn that he was irresistible in any universe. 

Loki rolled his eyes fondly—and immediately was hit with a wave of grief like a gut punch. He so desperately hoped he could tell his Tony about this some day. Then he could turn red and Tony could preen and watch Loki roll his eyes. Then maybe Tony would play at being jealous, demand Loki show him exactly how he felt… 

“Hi.” 

Loki looked up sharply to see Wrong Tony leaning on the doorframe, his hands up a little in a surrender gesture. 

He knew they’d have to see each other at some point today, but definitely had not expected Tony to seek him out. His heart rate was still elevated from the workout and this wasn’t helping. 

Despite feeling a little sick, Loki was determined not to let Tony get the upper hand in… whatever this conversation was about to be. He leaned back on his hands, tossing his hair a little as he shifted his position. “Morning,” he said casually. 

Tony’s jaw clenched a little and he stepped further into the room. “Must be nice to have that Asgardian alcohol tolerance.”

“It is,” Loki agreed. “It’s been well developed over millennia of drinking far too much.” 

Tony surveyed the training room which Loki had programmed to look much like one of the outdoor training spaces at the palace on Asgard, a very packed earth and polished stone aesthetic that was in opposition with the compound’s glass and steel. 

Loki sat still, trying to seem as unbothered by Tony’s presence as possible even as a heavy silence stretched between them. He wanted Tony to speak first, it was only fair since Tony was the one who had come to find him. I could do this all day , he thought wryly.

One (or perhaps both) of them were rescued by Jane’s sudden appearance. She came into the room with a bright greeting, “Loki, there you are!”  After a glance between him and Tony she continued, “….kind of a weird vibe going on in here… I just came to see if you wanted to come to my lab? I really want to show you this stuff Vision pulled up, it’s wild. Tony, you should come too.” 

Loki watched Tony’s demeanor shift, forcing disinterest as he said, “I’m going to have to skip story time, sorry. I’ve got some calls to make, important business and such. Maybe you can give me the Spark Notes later.” 

He sped out of the room and Loki raised an eyebrow. Tony hadn’t actually said anything to him and now had basically run away. He didn’t know what to make of it at all, but, on the positive side, bewilderment at Tony’s behavior had replaced most of the embarrassment he had been feeling. Nonsensically he thought to himself, I won this round.

Jane watched Tony rush away with a confused look on her face, but turned her attention back to Loki as he stood up and joined her. As they made their way to the elevator, Jane inquired, “Are you still dying? What’s happening?” 

“Nothing,” Loki said calmly, letting his magic wash over him to clean himself up and change his clothes from his sweaty training gear. 

“You are such a liar,” Jane said, rolling her eyes. 

“Obviously.” 

---------------

Loki sat on a stool, his elbow on the table in front of him, and his chin in his hand, doing his best to arrange his expression to convey rapt attention as Vision went on and on, with Jane occasionally cutting in. Even though Jane had heard all of this already she was clearly just as fascinated with the recent history of the Tesseract this second time around. 

Loki’s mind was much more on Tony(s), not on Howard Stark pulling the Tesseract out of the ocean or Project Pegasus. But apparently in this universe when SHIELD had fallen, Natasha had released all of its files to the public and in doing so revealed everything HYDRA had been up to. Well, that and literally everything else. It was such an insanely huge amount of information that it would take lifetimes for one person to read everything and even more to sort through what information was valuable or interesting. 

Unless you were Vision, then it took moments. 

Loki was admiring the bold move on Natasha’s part as Vision went on about Wendy Lawson and the U.S. Air Force and whatever else, until Vision said something that actually warranted focus. 

“Wait,” Loki said, interrupting Vision who was now in the middle of talking about the Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility, “ Someone else absorbed power from the Tesseract? You’re saying this has happened before?” 

“Precisely,” Vision said at the same time Jane exclaimed, “ Exactly this has happened before!” 

“There are no further reports on the incident past 1995 where we have a very short paragraph from Agent Phil Coulson stating that there was contact with Carol Danvers who went off-planet following said contact with no other details,” Vision explained. “Whatever happened was apparently so secret that it couldn’t even be written in the most confidential of SHIELD files.”

“But we have the files from what happened to her in 1989,” Jane smiled and said, “There’s someone else like you.”

Loki looked at her, the corner of his mouth creeping upwards. Despite this new revelation that someone else had the power of the Space Stone, despite the fact that he had literally met a different version of himself, he couldn’t help but think, there is no one else like me. 

------------------

Let’s talk , was what the text said. Earlier, Loki had wanted to wait and hear what Tony would say to him, but now he was quite determined to be the one to lead the conversation. He felt much clearer now, some combination of the physical exertion, Jane’s care, or Vision’s revelations snapping him back to a better version of himself. 

He didn’t exactly like what he was going to do, but he knew it was the right thing. He may have come to this universe by accident, but now that he was here he could be purposeful with what he did. And he hadn’t come to disrupt anyone’s life, especially not someone he loved so much. 

Because even though this Tony wasn’t his, he couldn’t help but want what was best for him. And here… that wasn’t him. 

Tony stood on the dock looking out at the river as Loki approached him. He could understand why Tony had wanted to meet here instead of their usual spot at the bar, probably best not to  talk back at the scene of the almost kissing. Tony’s hands were in his pockets, the way they so often were because he thought it made him look casual and care-free when his anxiety was rising. 

Tony turned around as Loki stepped onto the creaky wood and one hand came out of his pocket to rub at the back of his neck. Before Loki could say anything, he sighed, “I figure I’ll skip the preamble and just say this… Last night was really on me. I couldn’t sleep, I felt terrible, and  I know I must have made you feel bad too so… I’m sorry.” 

It felt like the ground Loki was standing on had become the ceiling, but he kept his expression neutral. He cocked his head to the side a little and asked, “Did you just… apologize to me?”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Okay, you don’t need to make it a whole thing.” 

And Loki couldn’t help but smile; he was impressed.

Tony took a deep inhale and started, “Anyway, I asked you to talk because–”

“Wait,” Loki said, holding up his hand to stop Tony, “Let me.” 

Tony held out his hand to concede Loki should continue and then crossed his arms to listen.

“Last night may have been surprising to you, but not to me. The Tony of my universe and I were like that from the moment we started spending any amount of time together. There was… an emotional connection that we tried to disregard or explain away or ignore.”

Tony looked on the verge of saying something sarcastic, which Loki knew was a natural defense so he stopped it before Tony could interject. “No, listen. Both of us have had a large number of casual lovers, but the two of us… We aren’t casual together. We aren’t capable of it. I didn’t come here to disrupt your universe and I most certainly didn’t come here to steal the future you are supposed to have. I want you to be happy. In my universe, you are happy with me, and maybe you could be in this one too someday, I don’t know. But… I can’t stop trying to go home. And Pepper is not one to be a second choice. You should go to her. The longer you wait, the higher the chance we will be caught up in something that we won’t be able to take back.”

Several beats passed when Loki finished this monologue. Then Tony laughed. Shaking his head he said, “You really think highly of yourself, don’t you? You’re just so irresistible that I’d throw away everything for you?” 

Loki tried to keep the frustration out of his voice as he asked, “Tony, you don’t have the Avengers, you don’t have Pepper. What were you doing before I showed up here? You’ve already lost everything. If you have a chance to take it back, I will not ruin it for you. I’m trying to make sure you don’t ruin it for yourself either.” 

There was no trace of laughter or sarcasm on Tony’s face now but Loki didn’t make any attempt to apologize or backtrack his words. He met Tony’s glare with a steady gaze until Tony looked away and abruptly started to stride back towards the compound without saying a word. He’d gotten about twenty steps away when Loki called out to him. 

“Peonies!” 

Tony stopped and turned on his heel. “What?” he demanded. 

“Peonies,” Loki repeated. “Pepper likes peonies more than roses.”

Tony looked furious. Loki put his hands into his pockets and watched as Tony stormed away.

Chapter Text

Pepper picked up her stylus. Her CFO and three other finance managers had left her office ten minutes ago and now she was going to sign off on the finalized budgets for five new departments that had been in the works for over a year. The stylus had just barely touched the screen when the phone rang. 

She pursed her lips a little, put down the stylus and pressed the button on her desk phone to answer. “Yes?” 

“Sorry to bother you,” said the voice of Darin, her assistant. “I have Mr. Stark on the line for you.” 

Pepper blinked, her stomach fluttering a little. “Put him through,” she said, leaning forward to put her elbows on the desk, her finger tips tapping together lightly. 

A small tone indicated the transfer and she asked immediately, “What are you doing calling my office line?” 

“I thought you’d feel bad if your gentleman secretary had to figure out a way to get rid of me so you’d take my call,” Tony’s voice answered. 

“I never said I wasn’t taking your calls,” she said. It was true that their communication had been a little sparse since he’d returned upstate, but she’d never said she wouldn’t answer if he called. She honestly wasn’t sure what was going on between them at this point. The whole Loki thing had turned everything upside down and had her questioning how certain she was about living her life without Tony. There were some serious upsides to her single status, and yet… “And he’s an executive assistant.” 

“And I think that’s very progressive, this is why you’re in charge.” 

She bit down on a snarky response. She could tell that something was wrong, even over the phone; it was in the undercurrent of his banter. He was calling about something serious. 

“What’s going on?” she asked, taking her voice down to a more gentle tone. She couldn’t help it, she still worried when he sounded like this. 

She heard him sigh and even though the call had no video she could see him pinching the bridge of his nose and rubbing his eyes. He really was about to be serious. 

“It’s Loki. You know about the whole talking to the other universe being a total bust and Dr. Foster and I have kind of hit a dead end, or a speed bump at least.” 

“Well if multiversal travel were easy everyone would do it,” she pointed out. 

“Yeah, you’re right. Of course, you’re pretty much always right. It's just… kind of put a new perspective on things. Like there's at least one other universe for sure, and I just can't believe there are only two . I mean, we're probably talking infinite multiverse. And at first, thinking about that is unimaginably overwhelming because half the time I am sick just thinking about protecting this one planet, let alone the universe, let alone an infinite number of them.  But then I think about the dozens, hundreds of times you’ve said, why is that on you, Tony? Why does it fall on you alone? I am Iron Man, but… I'm just one smart guy who fell into this. And yeah, I'm the best and I'm great and all that, but I guess at a certain point I have to accept that even my arrogance has a limit. You know I could never get myself to stop before, but... I really thought I had lost you for good this time and now it seems like I have another chance. Again.”

Pepper felt herself holding her breath. Was Tony actually saying what she thought he was saying? 

She didn’t interrupt, and he went on in a rush, genuinely nervous in the way he only was when he was being genuine, “And maybe I’m crazy to think that. There's only so many another chance s you can screw up before you stop getting them. If there really is another one, I don't want to screw this one up. I don't want to be one guy trying to protect an infinite multiverse. I want to be with you. You’re the most important thing. You’re my universe, Pep.”

Pepper leaned back heavily in her chair, feeling lightheaded. She tried to keep herself sensible. He’d made promises to her before. He may have actually broken more promises than he’d made, which shouldn’t even be possible. It would be, not just naive, but absolutely ridiculous to believe this time could be different, that he could be any different. And yet… her heart was pounding in a way that had her wondering if she actually wanted him to be any different after all. 

Maybe she just wanted him. 

“Please don’t tell me you hung up on me,” Tony’s voice said. 

She shook herself, realizing she hadn’t said anything to Tony’s rather extraordinary monologue. She made herself take a deep steadying breath before responding. “How about this,” she posed, speaking slowly and calmly. “Come back to the city and we can discuss this further.” 

After a beat, Tony asked, “Really?” 

“Really,” she affirmed. “There’s going to be a lot of yelling. I mean a lot of yelling. But then afterwards, probably dinner.”

She heard Tony let out a breath that sounded like relief. “Okay. But don’t let Mr. Executive Assistant book one of those deconstructed places where the meal is mostly microgreens, I don’t think those are in anymore. Microgreens are out.” 

“I’ll be sure to tell him that,” she assured him, only rolling her eyes slightly. 

“Good, yes. I’ll… I’ll see you later then. For the yelling, but also the dinner.” 

She had so many things she wanted to say, but all that came out was, “See you later.” Then she hung up the phone and sat completely still, stunned. 

She wasn’t at all surprised about Tony wanting to try again, but she was extremely surprised by how much it felt like she wanted it also. 

Pepper didn’t really believe in fate. She couldn’t imagine that she and Tony were destined to be together in some divine, cosmic way. But something about a rift in an infinite multiverse being what brought them back together was almost too much. 

Tony had a lot of work to do on himself and if he finally accepted the responsibility of it, well… Maybe Loki would be invited to the wedding. 

----------------------

Her hair flies around her face wildly in the wind and vaguely she notices it’s long and red, not short and blonde like it should be. But there’s no time to worry about it. Dark clouds roil above her, thunder in the distance. She stands on top of the House of the Blackheads. The ledge of the building’s facade is narrow and she presses her back up against the wall, hands searching to try to get a grip on the sculpted visage of King Arthur behind her. 

To avoid looking down, she tilts her head straight up. Beyond the decorative weather vane, the black clouds swirl above her and forked lightning darts between them. The largest boom of thunder yet, makes her tighten her precarious grip on the carved stone. 

To her left is Steve. Unlike her, he doesn’t hug the wall, but stands with his toes hanging over the edge of the ledge, at least ten feet away. 

“What are you doing?” she yells to him, over the wind and thunder. He turns his head to look at her. His expression is empty, like he isn’t really there at all. It terrifies her. 

She starts to inch sideways towards him, but he turns away, looking straight down. Before she can reach him, before she can say anything else, he takes a step forward and plummets.

“No!” she screams at the same time as someone else. 

She whips her head around to the right. Loki is on the ledge, gripping the wrist of the statue beside him. Anger floods her. Somehow deep inside her, she senses that what Steve just did is Loki’s fault. 

“How could you?” she cries, rage making her voice crack. 

Loki looks devastated. “Natasha, please,” he calls out to her. 

An enormous boom of thunder sounds, so loud it seems to shake the building itself. She’s losing her footing, she can feel herself slipping and then falling, the wind rushing past her, Loki screaming her name, and then… 

Then her eyes opened. Natasha was laying in a twin size bed, Wanda breathing softly and steadily beside her. 

She pressed her palms against her eyes. Her body was trembling and she willed herself to calm down, taking a few deep breaths. The dreams were getting worse. Carefully, so she wouldn’t disturb Wanda, she sat up and swung her legs over the bed. She stood up and went to the window, looking out at the calm, clear night. There weren’t even any clouds, not a trace of the terrible storm in her dream. 

A slight movement caught her eye and she turned her gaze to a tree across the narrow street, partially lit by a street light. There was a large owl sitting on a branch with enormous green eyes that glowed in the darkness, seemingly staring directly at her. She frowned a little, watching it. It didn’t move, just stared. 

She stared back for a few more seconds, but then made herself turn away. 

She got back into bed and shut her eyes, trying to force from her mind the images of creepy owls and the ground rushing at her.

----------------

The nightmares were becoming more frequent. 

Loki had no recollection of being afraid of dreams. Often his life had felt much worse while awake than anything his subconscious thought up. He did have memories of being very small and a nearly as small Thor running into his room at night, crying and afraid because a dream had frightened him so much he couldn’t fall back asleep alone. He remembered how frightened Thor had been and how he had tried to comfort his brother despite not really understanding what the fuss was about. They were just dreams.

Now, however, at nearly a thousand years old he was getting an inkling of what that tiny Thor might have been feeling. A parade of death was haunting him and it was like he had no magic or couldn’t move or couldn’t do anything to prevent it. 

Natasha was always there, a single constant amidst the shifting carousel of other victims. Did that mean something? Did any of it?

There had been several seers on Asgard who had all claimed to be able to read meanings in dreams. Loki had always thought it a bit dubious, but surely dreaming about all of this death couldn’t mean anything good. 

So now he was sitting in Jane’s lab searching the internet, typing in a description of everything he could remember about the building from his dream until he finally found it after much frustrated googling. House of the Blackheads in Riga, Latvia. Skimming through the information, he read it had originally been something of a party venue for merchants and shipowners. He paused briefly on a sentence claiming it was the site of the first decorated Christmas tree, five hundred years ago. 

He located Riga on a map. There was really no reason to think that was where he would find Natasha and the rest of the estranged Avengers, but he had never seen that building before his dream and it was so specific . 

It was suspicious and yet he felt himself craving some reckless action. He probably would have gone even without his newly acquired abilities, but now that he was more powerful than ever he suspected he could handle a threat if it arose. A fight would be welcome and seeing many of the people who kept perishing in his dreams alive and well would be even more so. 

A few days after his arrival, Tony had told him that Loki didn’t care about the Natasha in this world, it was the “alternate clone” back in his universe that he cared about. But Loki couldn’t unlink them, the same as he had immediately cared about the Thor of this universe. The way he truly cared about Wrong Tony, as much as he’d tried not to and as much as Wrong Tony had tried to prevent it. He did care what happened here and, if he could help, then he would. Whether they liked it or not. 

He was roused from his thoughts by Jane’s phone vibrating loudly on the table across the room where she had been doing a combination of very complicated equations and swirly flower doodles on a holoscreen. Jane gasped a little when she looked at the phone and answered it quickly. 

“Hey! There you are, I thought you were ignoring me.” 

Pretending he wasn’t listening, Loki looked back at the map on the screen in front of him, tapping his fingers lightly on the table. There was a lot of water—the Baltic Sea, a large river running through the city, lakes…

“That’s so great,” Jane said. “But listen, what if I had something better? —- No, I really meant it, that this would be the most exciting discovery of all time —- Well, I’m not not trying to break the universe apart. —- Okay you know how we’ve covered traveling through the universe relative to time and distance? What do you think about traveling through the multiverse?”

Loki glanced up at Jane who was grinning. Her smile fell a little. “Hello? Erik? Are you there?” 

Ah. Her colleague, Dr. Selvig. Not Loki’s biggest fan. 

“What? No I’m not, I’m completely serious. —- No, that’s the thing, it’s not impossible.  —- Because I have evidence. —- What is it?” she seemed to repeat his question. She looked over at Loki who had given up on pretending not to listen. He shook his head at her to indicate she shouldn’t say it, but he could see her deciding to do it anyway. 

Looking thrilled that she was about to drop such a bombshell, she said into the phone, “I’m at the Avengers Compound right now with someone who traveled here from another universe.  We’re trying to get him home and the truth is we’re a bit stuck, but if you were here… Erik, I am not joking! When have I ever pulled a prank on you? —- That was Darcy! —- That was also Darcy! Listen, I’m sending over some of my notes, just look at them please? —- Yes, you’re the best. You won’t regret it, this is legendary. —- Yes, I’m serious!” Jane let out a frustrated sigh. “Just check your email in a minute, I’m hitting send. Then call me back! —- Yes. —- Okay, bye.” 

“He won’t come when he finds out it’s me you have here,” Loki said, idly tapping on a spot on the map that marked a zoo and raising an eyebrow at the photo that popped up of a tiger with its tongue sticking out.

“I have to get him to stop laughing at me before we can even get that far. I guess it does sound kind of ridiculous.” Jane sighed and dropped her elbows onto the table, plopping her chin into her hands. 

After a beat, Loki said, “It would probably help if I wasn’t here.”

Jane frowned at him. “Why wouldn’t you be here?”

Shrugging, he answered, “I could leave.”

This seemed to further confuse Jane. “Where would you go?” she demanded. 

“On the run with Captain America? Could be a fun change of pace.”

Jane sighed and stood up straight. “Loki, be serious.” 

“I am, I’m a very serious person.” Loki arranged his face into a serious looking expression. 

Jane blinked at him a few times. “Is this about how you and Tony have been ignoring each other for the past few days?”

Immediately defensive, Loki insisted, “We’re not ignoring each other.”

They were definitely ignoring each other. 

“Then why hasn’t he been coming to Loki Universe time?” Jane asked accusingly. 

Loki shrugged. “He really doesn’t like Pride and Prejudice.”

Jane rolled her eyes. “He’s jealous that Lizzie has better comebacks than he does.”

Loki thought that was probably true, but also that he should really talk to Tony. 

---------------------------

“You know Pepper’s allergic to strawberries right?” 

“Actually, I did know that. I do know some things about Pepper, you know.” 

Raising an eyebrow skeptically, Loki said, “Just trying to help.” 

Loki had found Tony sitting in an armchair in the living room looking strangely vulnerable with no screens and no drink, just sitting there looking like he was lost in thought. Loki had seated himself on the couch without saying anything, but after a minute or two he finally broke the silence. 

Tony was fidgeting as he looked up at Loki for the first time since he’d come into the room. “I'm leaving,” Tony said, “and it's weird because even though you told me to leave, I didn’t want to tell you. Like I found a kitten in a puddle outside and took it in and now I'm just abandoning it.”

Loki had told him to leave and he had meant it, but his stomach still turned a little to hear the words. “Surely you don’t see me that way,” he admonished. “Unless Midgardian kittens have the power to take out your planet on a whim in this universe.” 

“Hey, cats are dangerous,” Tony said. “They have knives in their feet.” 

Loki conceded this point and let Tony continue. 

“I'm not going to give up on this. We’ve got Dr. Foster on the scene, and obviously you can stay here. I mean… for now,” Tony sighed. “You were right. I’m not your Tony and you’re not my Loki. No Loki is my Loki, I don’t have a Loki. Your Tony should have his.”

Loki laughed slightly. “Imagine living in a world where any of that made sense.” 

“None of this makes sense,” Tony said. 

After a beat, Loki ventured, “I may not stay here. I think it will help Jane convince Dr. Selvig to work with her on this. And… well, there’s a whole universe I could be exploring.”

Being here in the compound with Tony, his problem had seemed contained and manageable. Even going to Asgard, he had been on a mission and full of hope about getting home. Now he felt he was being set adrift. With Tony leaving, he had no choice now but to acknowledge there was a whole world out there and that he was going to have to be a part of it. At least for now. But possibly forever. 

He didn’t tell Tony he expected to start his exploration of the universe in Latvia. 

Tony made a face as if he was trying to repress the instinctive urge to freak out about Loki let loose on the universe. Then he stood up.

 “I’m going now,” he said decisively. A moment went by and he let out an impatient noise. “All right, don’t just sit there.” 

The hug was brief, though Tony squeezed him tightly before he quickly let go and backed up a step, putting his hands in his pockets. “Just… don’t be too crazy with the powers and the,” he gestured to all of Loki, “this. Not everyone is as kindhearted and generous as I am.”

“I’ll be careful.” The corner of Loki’s mouth tilted upward, despite the dropping feeling in his stomach.

“If you’re getting up to anything, I don’t want to hear it from Rhodey. Or from you either really, I don’t want to know. But maybe text me once in a while and let me know you’re alive.” 

Loki agreed, “I’ll text you before I walk back into my universe through the door Jane and Dr. Selvig build for me.” 

Tony tilted his head. “Oh, you think I’m going to be distracted and they’ll crack it before me? We’ll see about that.” 

They both looked at each other for a moment and Loki could feel whatever it was between them humming softly. They weren’t capable of being casual, whatever front they put on. 

“Later,” Tony said, holding up two fingers in a peace sign and then turning to walk out of the room. 

Loki watched him go, heard the elevator doors open and then close again. He had to remind himself that this wasn’t an ending. He had set himself a task for this universe and then he would get back to his own. 

Don’t give up. Tony is waiting for you. Thor is missing you. Natasha is hoping you’re all right. Don’t give up. If not for yourself, for them. Don’t give up. You’re in love and you are loved. 

He murmured to the empty room, “Always get back up.”

Chapter Text

Now that Loki had said goodbye to Jane, the only thing left to do was to go.  

He knew he was going to miss her, but was surprised how genuinely sad she seemed. She had been a friend to him from the moment she arrived at the compound, simply because she chose to, and even now he was leaving her with the all-important and possibly impossible task of opening a door to another universe to get him home. 

He didn’t know how he would ever repay her for any of it, but when he said as much she had smirked and said, “Bring me a souvenir when you get back.” 

He had nothing to pack, just one important item and the phone Tony had given him stowed in his magic bag. His saved contact list was short: Tony, Jane, Rhodey (for catastrophic emergency only), and a few of his drag friends from the bar. He wished Thor had a phone, though it wouldn’t work from Asgard. 

He also needed no transportation; now that he could cross the galaxy in minutes, flying to Latvia from the Hudson Valley would take no time at all. It was late afternoon in New York, which meant it would be night when he reached his destination. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the way his feet felt on the earth, listening to the sound of birds and the flow of the river. There was a hint in the air that the last lingering warmth of summer was over.

Taking one last look at the compound, he launched himself straight up into the sky. He didn’t stop to navigate in an easterly direction, just kept flying up and up to where the air was thin and then up higher to where he was punching through the atmosphere until he had broken free and everything was still and silent, the Earth thousands and thousands of feet below. 

It’s very hard to kill an Asgardian and so, in another life (in another universe) when he had let go of his father’s spear and drifted away in the void, he had survived it. Open space, with its lack of air and extreme temperatures, couldn’t kill someone like him in moments the way it would the majority of living beings in the universe, but it had certainly tried. And he would have died eventually , the process was just slower and much more agonizing. The vacuum of space had crushed him from all sides, been colder than any winter on Jotunheim could be, robbed his body of its functions and his mind of any thoughts but the pain of it. 

Now as he floated calmly above Midgard, he felt none of that. Wrapped in the power of the space stone, his body felt much the same as it had a moment ago on the banks of the Hudson. He could tell that there wasn’t oxygen to breathe, that the unobstructed rays from Earth’s sun should be boiling his blood, but… he felt perfectly fine. 

The first time he had tested his powers this way he had nearly panicked and returned to the ground, but had pushed through to discover this feeling. Silence. The world at his feet.  

It was odd to ground himself when there was no ground to stand on, but that’s what it felt like. A reset. A reminder. He and Jane had yet to find a limit to his power beyond maintaining the safety of others and making sure they didn’t destroy the compound. Here in space, he was limitless. It would serve him to remember that when he returned to the ground and faced the wrong-universe version of his friends, who weren’t likely to appreciate the visit. 

A brief temptation came over him to head to Asgard instead. Or perhaps, just to choose a direction and shoot off as fast as he could—maybe if he reached the edge of this universe, he’d end up back in his own. 

But there was so much blood in his nightmares. Always blood and always Natasha. 

He didn’t take a last look at the stars before hurtling back down to earth. 

--------------

It took much less effort than he had expected to find the “rogue” Avengers. He could understand why Tony hadn’t been able to, and why any of the idiotic government agencies hunting them hadn’t; his friends were careful and they covered their tracks extremely well. But with the power of the Space Stone enhancing his own magic, he found traces of them quickly—technology that only they would have and vestiges of magic that could only be Wanda’s. 

He found their quinjet first, which was hidden outside the city and invisible to both the eye and any sort of tech that would be looking for it. There was some danger that someone could simply walk right into it, but if they hadn’t had that problem yet he wasn’t going to worry about it. The space was grassy and empty; the map on his phone called the area a “nature preserve.” He considered waiting for one of them to show up, but he was far too eager to get eyes on his friends, so he picked up the trail and kept tracking. 

The apartment building was plain and nondescript, muted beige and brown in the moonlight with nothing at all to make it stand out. Across the street there were houses with a little more interest, but in a similar color palette. It was unassuming and kind of shabby, an easy place to blend in and avoid attention. 

Loki knew the whereabouts of several of the safehouses that both Natasha and Clint kept all over the world, but he knew there were even more that he didn’t know about. Perhaps this was one of them. 

He made himself invisible and flew up to the second floor, even though he felt ridiculous peeking at them through the window like some kind of fairy from a children’s story. Natasha and Wanda were both asleep in a narrow bed that just fit into the room with very little extra space. Flying to the next window, he could see a tiny kitchen, and when he pressed his face to the glass he could just make out the connecting room beyond and the shapes of Steve and Sam asleep on a flimsy looking pull out couch. His eyes scanned the rest of the room, but he didn’t see Bucky anywhere. Had they split up for some reason? Had he been captured? 

Loki didn’t know, but based on how soundly the others were sleeping it didn’t seem to be a pressing emergency.He sank back to the ground and sat on the curb beneath a tree, still invisible. It was such a relief to see Natasha safe, to see the four of them peaceful and breathing and alive. He knew his dreams couldn’t have been real, but the fear they caused was real enough.

It was nearly dawn and Phase One of his plan was already complete. Next, he would spy. He knew Steve and he knew there was no way this team was just sitting around relaxing during their time in exile. They had to be up to something and they had to do whatever it was completely under the radar. 

He leaned back against the tree, tilting his head back to see the sky through the branches. The sun would be coming up soon. He didn’t feel much like sleeping. 

-------------------------

When morning came, the street turned from quiet to busy. Still invisible, Loki watched people go in and out of the apartment building leaving for work, walking to school, taking their dogs out, returning with coffees and brown bags in their hands. Natasha was the first of the team to leave the building in sunglasses and the collar of her trench-coat pulled up. Her hair glowed nearly white in the sunlight and his stomach flipped at the sight of her. 

She held the door open for a woman with a baby in a stroller behind her and then strode down the street confidently like she had no reason to hide. He wanted to go after her, be recognized and known by her as he had ached for Wrong Tony to be the right one. But he took a deep breath and forced himself to focus on the spying mission. He watched her until she rounded a corner and then turned his attention back to the door to watch for the others. 

In training, Natasha had told him the hardest part of spycraft was not getting bored; it was hard to stay alert and focused when nothing was happening. Especially for him, his mind wanted to race ahead to scheme and formulate plans, not just wait around for something to happen. Being invisible and doing nothing, even when scheme-related, were not his favorite things.

It took nearly an hour for the rest of them to emerge, and Loki imagined Natasha complimenting him for having patience instead of using magic to stir things up and force something to happen. He studied them closely as they came out of the door. Steve was first and looked nearly the same as the Steve of his universe—similar beard, maybe slightly longer hair. Definitely different clothes than Steve would normally wear (presumably, Natasha was helping them with the wardrobe in their travels to make sure they’d blend in as much as possible and not look like Americans on vacation). 

Wanda followed him out the door and, like Natasha her hair was much different than Loki was used to, a bright strawberry ginger color that suited her nicely. Sam hadn’t made any drastic changes to his appearance, his beard neatly trimmed as always and his hair short underneath a tweed cap. All three of them were dressed neatly in unassuming neutral colors of black, cream, and brown with not a baseball hat in sight. 

They headed off together and, like Natasha, they didn’t look around, acting very much at ease as they strolled down the street. Loki followed them at a distance around the corner and then stopped. There was still no sign of Bucky. If their apartment was empty now, this was his chance for more spying. While everyone else would keep any important information electronically, Steve was prone to notetaking with a pad and pencil. If he could find it, there might at least be a hint of what they were up to. 

Having come up with a stupid idea that he absolutely could not resist, he found himself ducking into a gated area where the trash was collected and casting his magic so that he was an exact image of the Steve he had seen walk out the door a few minutes ago. Loki justified that he didn’t want anyone to see doors opening by themselves, or for anyone to bump into an invisible person in the hallways of the building, either of which could raise suspicion. 

But truly, it was just way more fun than being invisible. And Loki had glamored himself into Steve more than once before. Most of the time on missions for very serious and practical purposes, like distracting a foe or getting critical information, but he had on occasion been convinced to use his powers for a stand-up routine that killed with the other Avengers every time. 

When he tried it as a trick, usually everyone could tell pretty quickly, but he had really gotten Tony once. He bit down on the grin coming to his face as he remembered pretending to be Steve for nearly 10 minutes before he had grabbed Tony by the waist aggressively and pulled him close. Tony had gone bright red and stuttered before Loki let a wave of magic was over him, revealing himself, at which point Tony went so limp with relief that Loki had to hold him up. When Loki asked how it had taken Tony so long to notice, he’d just rolled his eyes and said, “You think I pay attention to Steve?”

As Steve, or this Steve who wore all black, tight pants, and very stylish sunglasses (kudos to Nat for getting him to forgo the pleated khakis), Loki walked into the apartment building and made his way to the second floor, finding their apartment easily based on the position of their windows. He unlocked the door with magic and stepped inside, finding it just as small and drab as it had appeared from outside. In just a few steps he had crossed through the living space, the bed folded back up into a couch, and into the kitchenette. There was a small table with four mismatched chairs that looked like they may have been pulled from the garbage area outside.

He picked up a small notepad that was sitting open on the table, biting back another grin at this new evidence that his friends weren’t so different in this universe. Most of the papers had been ripped out, but Steve’s handwriting was on the top page. Unfortunately, it didn’t say something like Here’s exactly what we are currently up to in precise detail. There were coordinates and then a list of numbers, but no indication what they stood for. 

Flipping through the rest of the pages left in the notepad, a folded piece of paper fell out. Loki opened it and flattened it out on the table, finding a roughly drawn schematic of a building. There was a basic layout and then spots marked with different markers that must be color coded in some way familiar to Steve, but not to Loki. 

As he studied it, he heard a key in the lock and in that moment he could easily have made himself invisible—but something stopped him. It was reckless, not to mention foolish, but missed his friends. What if right now, disguised as Steve, was his best chance to speak to them? It was in the split second between the knob turning and the door opening that Loki remembered it could be the real Steve walking in. 

Before he could reverse his ridiculous decision to stay visible, Natasha had opened the door the rest of the way. 

“Hey,” she said casually, shutting the door behind her and walking over to the kitchen. Loki watched as she removed her sunglasses and dropped a tote bag onto one of the chairs, which wobbled a little. “You guys finish shopping already?” she asked. She crouched down and started looking through the bag as if something had gotten lost in the bottom. 

It took Loki a moment to realize he needed to answer her. Seeing Natasha so close, hearing her speak to him… Gods, he had missed her. Did miss her. He clenched Steve’s hands into fists, digging the nails into his palms. Not his Natasha. Focus.  

“Wanda forgot her phone, I told her I’d come back for it,” he said, mimicking Steve’s easy authority. He patted his back pocket as if the phone were there, and then, just in case, magicked one so it really was. 

Natasha stopped digging through the bag to look up at Steve and smirk, an inside joke that Loki wasn’t privy to. He widened his eyes and shrugged a little (Steve didn’t really smirk in his experience). 

The expression he made seemed to satisfy her and she stood up, abandoning the bag to open a cabinet. She pulled out a glass and filled it with water from the sink. “Don’t be too long, we’re still expecting Nakia’s call at two and then we won’t have much time after that.” 

“We’ll be back in plenty of time,” he said. He knew now was when he should head out the door, ostensibly back to Wanda to give her her phone and continue whatever shopping they were doing. He willed his feet to move, but he lingered a second too long. 

Natasha put her glass down on the counter, her eyes narrowing a little. “Are you okay?”

He felt his stomach flip. He wasn’t sure what she had seen on his face and hoped it wasn’t too out of the ordinary. “Oh yeah,” he said, trying to play it off as casually as possible. “You know me, I’m good.”

She raised an eyebrow a little at that and closed the small space between them. As she reached up to put her arms around his neck, Loki let out a soft sigh and embraced her, his arms circling her waist and his face burying into her shoulder. She smelled like his Natasha and felt like his Natasha. It felt so good to hug her, he was relieved when she didn’t let go right away.

Finally she did, and he reluctantly released her. As their eyes met, Loki suddenly found himself confused by the way she was staring at him. She hadn’t stepped back at all, still standing extremely close to him, and she was looking up at him in a way that was hard for him to read, not actually being Steve. Was there something going on between the two of them in this universe that he wasn’t aware of? The Natasha in his world was completely and comfortably sex-averse, but that didn’t mean that this Natasha was, or that there wasn’t some kind of romantic attachment here. 

As the moment dragged on, Loki started to panic a little. Was he meant to kiss her? Was she going to kiss him?? It was lucky he didn’t make any rash decisions, because a second later Natasha rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him. Loki laughed with relief, hoping she would just see Steve laughing at a silly moment between them and not a failed spy wearing her friend’s face.

Time to quit while he was ahead. He forced himself to go to the door and open it. “See you later,” she said casually and he smiled at her over his shoulder. She was leaning against the counter with the glass of water in her hand and he wanted to stay. “Later,” he said, and closed the door behind him. 

-----------------------------------

There was a ladder against the wall leading up to a metal catwalk. Loki cast spells for stability and silence and scaled it quickly. Then he crouched down to peer through the railing and scanned the room—just as the four Avengers were doing below. It had been simple enough to follow them after they regrouped back at the apartment.

The huge warehouse they had led him to was empty, but there were two lit hallways, voices and noise echoing through them, one on each end of the storage area. The Avengers huddled together and then Loki watched Sam and Wanda peel off toward the hall nearest to them while Steve and Natasha headed to the other.

Loki narrowed his eyes, observing them closely, then kept himself still as a small explosion sounded and the hallway where Sam and Wanda had gone started spilling smoke into the room. His gaze darted back to Steve and Natasha, who had clearly been expecting the blast. Natasha pointed her gun straight up in the air and fired twice, quickly followed by Steve shouting, “Give it up, you’re surrounded!” The All-Speak allowed Loki to understand him perfectly, though he didn’t know what language Steve was shouting in. Whatever it was, it was understood well enough by the group who came barreling down the hall a moment later.

Steve and Natasha had pressed themselves against either side of the doorway so that the group of men barrelled straight past them, not even knowing the two were there until Natasha was throwing another flash bomb, sending them spinning. There were six of them, fine odds. Loki would just stay hidden and watch the show.

The flash bomb had disoriented their opponents and Natasha had a clear shot to take down two of them before Steve reached a third and kicked him so hard he went flying straight into a fourth, both of them smacking up against the concrete wall. The two men still standing had very large guns and Loki watched as Steve barreled straight at one of them, grabbing the end of the gun, jerking it out of his hands, and hitting the butt of the gun against the guy’s temple. Meanwhile, Natasha had dodged an erratic spray of bullets from the second gunmen and gone sliding past him to jab her widow bites against his neck, bright blue electricity sparking as he went down.

With their focus on their fight and the smoke from their bomb still dissipating, it was clear that neither Natasha or Steve saw what Loki was seeing from above, which was at least ten more men creeping out of the other hall, all carrying automatic weapons. Watching the bad guys sneak up on his friends, he was caught off guard by a jolt of anger, suddenly consumed by a howling gulf of rage that was always alive in him, even if, these days, it usually stayed buried.He wasn’t like Bruce, he didn’t need anger to be powerful, and giving into it was more likely than not to lead to stupid mistakes, and there was no time to think . 

There were, however, two forces within him greater than the anger—his love for his friends, and his power (now supercharged). Plus, he had brought a gift from the compound. 

He dropped his invisibility and whistled—two specific notes, loud and clear. Natasha’s head whipped in his direction immediately and as soon as she was looking at him, he threw Captain America’s shield. He knew her well enough that no matter how shocking she found his appearance, she wouldn’t let herself be distracted longer than a second or two. She caught the shield cleanly out of the air and hooked it onto her arm as she ran to Steve. 

She grabbed Steve by the back of his neck and forced him down into a crouch beside her, holding the shield in front of them both just as a spray of bullets erupted from the other side of the room.

Loki called the cosmic energy to his fists and in quick succession sent six photon blasts flying into the group of men, holding back just enough so he wouldn’t destroy the whole building. Their adversaries were sent flying in all different directions and, in some cases, in several pieces, ending the fight in seconds. The silence that fell was eerie after the cacophony of bullets hitting concrete and glass and vibranium.

Loki called back his invisibility and stayed where he was, watching as Steve poked his head above the shield. He stood up and held out his hand to help Natasha, and for a moment they just stared at the carnage in front of them.

Natasha looked down at the shield she held, then up at Steve. She held it out to him and he took it from her, running his hands over it slowly and shaking his head.

“Where the hell did this come from?” he asked her, his voice quiet.

Natasha looked up to where Loki stood, though she could no longer see him there. He could tell she didn’t know what to say, didn’t trust what she had seen because it was too ridiculous, too impossible.

Steve followed her gaze. “Someone saved us. Someone… brought this here. Did you see who it was?”

“I…” Natasha began, but stopped and shook her head. “I don’t know. I thought I did, but… I couldn’t have.”

Steve put his hand on Natasha’s shoulder looking concerned, but then he put his hand to his ear and a moment later responded, “We’re clear on this side. Make the call, we’re on our way.”

Looking baffled by the familiar motion, Steve hooked his arm through the straps of the shield. “Come on, let’s get this done and we can talk disappearing guardian angels later.”

Natasha looked up one more time to where Loki stood before jogging after Steve.

  —--------------

Natasha leaned back against a tree with her arms crossed. She was the first one back at the rendezvous point and had called into the team that she’d arrived. Wanda and Sam relayed they’d be there in five and then the three of them would wait for Steve, who always stayed on scene until the authorities arrived to make sure a legit rescue was in progress. Nakia had warned them about dirty cops showing up and they had been burned once before, having to take out a whole new set of armed criminals when they’d thought the mission was over.

Her senses were on high alert, her ears straining for any out of place noise, her eyes darting around for any unexpected movement. She had always trusted her senses. They’d been honed to perfection from childhood to memorize every inch of a room the moment she walked in, to scan a person from head to toe and read their body language, and to keep her eyes wide open for anything trying to surprise her.

But now she found herself doubting everything. What she had seen was impossible, and yet, the fact remained that someone had thrown her the shield. The shield that could have only been with Tony. It would have been impossible enough to imagine him tracking them down in order to gift the shield back to Steve, but this….

She sighed quietly. She did know what she saw, but when Steve had asked her, she instinctively said she wasn’t sure. How could Loki have been in that warehouse? How could Loki have known to whistle to her like that? That was a secret between her and Yelena, one she had only ever shared with Clint.

Her insides jolted then, remembering Loki’s sinister voice taunting her from inside his cell on the helicarrier years ago, his own arrogance the bait in her simple trap. “Agent Barton told me everything.” Could Loki have pulled it from Clint’s mind back in 2012? ‘’

That could potentially explain the whistling, but answered absolutely none of the other million questions. Why was he there? Why would he help them? Why did he have the shield? Why would he help them?

And then, of course, there was the matter of how often Loki had been on her mind lately. The others had noticed the nightmares she’d been having. She was certainly not the only one who had bad dreams, but they’d become so frequent, so vivid, so real . And Loki was in all of them. 

Before the dreams, she hadn’t really thought much about Loki in years. The last time Thor had been back on planet, he’d told them that Loki had died. And they’d seen nothing of him since then, so she’d been inclined to believe it, or at least not worry about him being an imminent threat. But then suddenly there he was in her dreams, night after night, usually watching her die. Which was… the exact opposite of what happened in the warehouse. 

Natasha spotted Sam and Wanda coming up to the tree line and straightened up to greet them. They both looked grim, the scene they’d left was not pretty – almost a hundred people had been held captive in very tight quarters for what looked like weeks, primarily immigrants and refugees who had been promised visas and good jobs. Wanda sat down on the ground, resting her elbows on her knees and taking deep breaths. Sam clapped Natasha gently on the shoulder. “All good?” he asked quietly.

Her instinct was to give an affirmation, but with the possibility that Loki was nearby and watching them right now, all was definitely not good. So she shrugged a little and just said, “Wait till Steve gets here.”

Sam cocked his head to the side, taking in her expression. “Okay,” he said. He positioned himself at her back facing the other way so that they had a 360 watch. They remained quiet, and a few minutes later, Steve’s voice sounded in their earpieces. “Heading your way.”

“Copy,” Sam responded to let him know they were well and waiting.

Natasha crouched down next to Wanda and put a hand on her knee. “You okay?” she asked.

Wanda took one more deep breath in and out and then said, “Yeah.” They both stood up and looked out to see Steve coming up the hill to meet them.

It was dark, but the moon was bright and reflecting off the shield Steve was carrying.

“Whoa,” Sam said. “Did they just have a spare one of those laying around in that warehouse?”

Steve unhooked his arm from the shield and leaned it against the tree where the four of them could all see it. He stared at it for a moment and then looked at Natasha. “Nat?”

He wanted her to really answer the question this time. In the distance there were sirens and people yelling – the rescue actively underway. Flood lights were turned on to illuminate the scene, so bright that it reached them where they stood, though the beam was broken up by the thick trees.

She looked at the three of them helplessly and sighed. “We all knew we didn’t have full intel before we went in there. Steve and I got stuck in a heavier fight than we expected. Someone threw the shield to me, saved us. And my training is telling me to lie and say I didn’t see who it was, but I’m not going to do that. I did see who it was, it’s just that who it was doesn’t make any sense.”

She paused and they all let her take a beat. Then Steve put his hand on her arm and said again softly, “Nat.”

She met his gaze and shaking her head slightly, she admitted, “It was Loki.”

She could tell from Steve’s face that it was the very last person he was expecting her to name. She could imagine he hoped she would say Tony , that Tony had come to find them, had stepped in to save them at just the right moment. But she hadn’t. She’d seen Loki very clearly.

Steve stared at her, his hand still on her arm while Sam blurted out, “Wait, like, Thor’s brother, Loki? Alien invasion of New York Loki? Evil god Loki?”

“That’s the one,” Natasha said neutrally, still looking at Steve.

Steve squeezed her arm and said, “Let’s get moving.”

Sam looked like he was going to protest, but Natasha shook her head. 

On the surface, Steve’s words might seem like a dismissal, but she knew he was thinking the same thing she was: that if Loki was really here, it would be extremely easy for him to sneak up on them. The faster they got to the quinjet and as far away as possible, the better. 

It was the right move, she thought as she brought up the rear of their group hiking towards the spot where the quinjet was concealed. There was no question that Loki was a dangerous threat to either fight or flee from. But why would he help them?

Chapter Text

Natasha stepped onto the bridge, her hands in the pockets of her coat and a hood pulled up against the early autumn chill. The sun was just starting to rise, so the bridge was not yet packed with tourists the way it would be in a couple of hours. 

Strolling the Charles Bridge at this time of day was an indulgence. She didn't do it every day whenever they were in Prague, as any regular daily routine invited notice, but after what had happened last night she craved something calm, something normal. She hadn’t slept since the mission, not even when Steve had smoothly taken the controls of the quinjet and told her to “get some rest” while Wanda and Sam were already passed out in the back. 

It’s not like sleep was particularly restful lately anyway, but god, she could use some coffee.

At this early hour, it was mostly buskers setting up for the morning, overenthusiastic joggers, and the occasional young people still out and drunk from the night before. She saw a man setting up an easel and stools and paints; a contortionist stretching on a yoga mat. She paused briefly across from three teenagers, one dressed like a ballerina having makeup applied by a girl with shockingly blue hair while a boy tuned a violin. They had an enormous trunk with them and she wondered what was inside. 

She continued unhurriedly towards the middle of the bridge before pausing. She took down her hood to let the chill breeze play across her face and put her elbows on the stone ledge, leaning to look down at the river. The few rays of sun that had broken the horizon danced on the water and the red roofs of the buildings glowed orange. 

When she noticed him approaching, she continued to lean casually, like she was still gazing at the river instead of looking him over out of the corner of her eye. His black hair was longer than she remembered from New York, the front strands braided and tied in the back. He wore a long expensive-looking black coat, black boots, and leather fingerless gloves. And he held a to-go coffee in each hand.

Loki stopped right next to her and looked out at the water as Natasha was doing before saying,"I like your hair." 

Natasha stood up straight and turned to face him. Her mouth twisted a little as she looked into strikingly blue eyes, and she studied him for a moment longer, trying to detect a motivation or intention. He seemed quite at ease, so she copied his attitude.

"Thanks,” she said finally, “it’s new.” She was following his lead, playing at casual, but a tiny part of her meant it. Her hair had been platinum blonde and cut to her chin for a few months now, but she was only just starting to stop being surprised every time she saw her reflection. When she dreamed, it was still red.

“It looks good.” Loki took a sip from one of the coffee cups and then handed it to her. Natasha knew that he had done this to honor an unspoken rule, not for any practical reason — surely there were dozens of things that could be in that cup that would kill her and not harm someone like Loki in the slightest. 

It was hardly the first time Natasha had found herself drinking with an enemy; the risk was a familiar calculation that she had, so far, always deduced correctly. Feeling reckless, she settled back against the short wall and took a sip.  She turned her head sharply to Loki as she lowered the cup from her lips. . 

Loki had his hip leaning against the wall, drinking his own coffee as he met Natasha's gaze, raising his eyebrows in question. 

The coffee in Natasha's cup was hot like it had been poured moments ago, faintly flavored with hazelnut and the exact amount of cream and sugar she preferred on the occasions when she had the option. 

Loki's forehead creased a little. "Is it not right?" he asked.

Natasha looked back out towards the river. "It's exactly right," she said, taking another sip. She caught Loki smiling slightly out of the corner of her eye. 

They stood in silence for a moment. Years ago, from the other side of Hulk-proof glass, Natasha had tricked Loki into giving up his plans. It was a game she thought they had both enjoyed—or, Loki had seemed to enjoy it until she outplayed him, anyway. Back then, his evil intent had been written all over his smug face, but now he looked so… different. Like it wasn’t a game at all.  

"You can just ask me. No need for tricks this time," Loki said softly, as if reading her mind. 

"You couldn't blast people apart like that the last time I saw you, right?" she posed instead of the more obvious question. 

"It’s a bit of a new development,” he answered, “but you and I have actually never met before."

Natasha shrugged. "I mean, I guess there wasn't really any formal introduction involved — " 

"No, I mean this is the first time you and I have ever spoken." Loki's face looked serious and… wistful?

She couldn't work out what he meant nor understand the expression on his face, but hid her frustration as smoothly as always. "Is this a riddle?" 

A phone vibrated in Loki's pocket and Natasha watched as he casually pulled it out, read a message, and quickly typed a response before slipping it back into his coat. He did it naturally, like he was well used to having a phone. Like it was completely normal for this archaic god to stand around drinking coffee and texting people instead of, say, commanding an alien army to destroy the planet.  

"Thor told us you were dead," she said, since it didn't seem as if Loki was going to answer her.

"Yes, I've heard," Loki said. "It turns out that wasn't true, he's alive. Or, at least, he was the last time I saw him." 

Natasha sighed. Was he being confusing on purpose, thinking it would throw her off? "Loki, I know you think — " 

"But that's what I mean," he cut her off, earnestly. "You don't know me. You're thinking of someone else. I meant for us to, hopefully, get off on the right foot. And I know I interfered with your mission in Riga, but only because your lives were in danger. I had to do something." 

Natasha's mind was spinning, trying to unweave the words to make them into sense. "How long have you been following us?" she asked.

Loki sighed. "I wouldn't have done the whole espionage thing if I thought I could just approach you without being shot on sight. But, not long at all, I only left the compound a little over a day ago." 

She frowned at him. "The Avengers Compound?" 

Loki nodded.

"We haven't had any intel about the compound being attacked," she insisted. 

"It hasn't been attacked,” Loki said with a slight frown, “I was living there." 

Her frustration peaking, Natasha gave up on trying to act like they were having a casual conversation. She was good at this, at saying the right things and asking the right questions in the right way to get people to talk, but she couldn’t work with nonsense. "Okay, I concede, you got me,” she huffed after taking another long sip of her coffee, which was still annoyingly delicious. “I have no idea what your aim is or what you're trying to do so why don't you just tell me." 

"In another universe you and I are best friends," Loki said quietly. He placed his coffee cup down on the ledge. "That's where I'm from , a different world entirely. I have people working on a way to send me home — Tony, Jane Foster, even Erik Selvig starting in a few days, which may be the most unbelievable part of the story. As you can see from my standing here, we have so far been unsuccessful and… I thought I'd come see what you were up to." 

Natasha stared. Loki shrugged. "You did ask me to just tell you." 

Natasha thought about all the impossible things she’d seen. Alien invasions and killer robots. Hundred year old super soldiers who looked her age and gods from other planets. But he simply couldn’t be serious. 

When she had seen Loki in that warehouse back in Riga, she had been shocked, doubting her own senses. When he came towards her on the bridge a few minutes ago she had been on high alert, but curious. Now… she was just baffled. Why on earth would he tell such an outlandish story? What did he want?  

Before she could clear her thoughts enough to respond, her own phone vibrated. She pulled it from her pocket and answered it without taking her eyes off Loki, “Yeah.”

"What's your twenty?" 

Steve's voice sounded incongruous in her ear. She forced herself to sound calm. "I just went for a walk," she said, feeling disconnected from the conversation as she continued to look into Loki's eyes. "I'm on my way back." 

"Okay, good,” Steve said, “We've got a pretty weird update. I wasn't sure how serious this was going to get, so I chanced it and reached out to Rhodey." 

"You talked to Rhodey?" Natasha asked, surprised. 

"He had… well, he certainly had a story, I don't really know what to think," Steve said. She could tell from the way Loki’s eyes had widened that he could hear Steve’s side of the conversation, and he already knew what Rhodey had told him. 

"He didn't happen to say that there's a Loki from another universe running around, did he?" she asked.

Loki laughed, and there was silence on the other end of the phone for a long moment before Steve asked carefully, “Nat, where are you?” 

“Hold on,” she said into the phone and then pressed a button to mute herself. To Loki she said, "You know how I like my coffee." 

"Yes,” Loki agreed.  

"You're really best friends with me in your universe?" 

Loki nodded. "Things went a bit differently there than they have here," he explained, like that covered it.

Natasha looked at him and he looked evenly back. Then Natasha said, “Tell me something you know about me. Something Clint doesn’t know.”

Loki cocked his head to the side a little and said, “You’re worried that I know about your coffee order, and about Yelena, from when I was controlling Clint’s mind.”

Natasha just looked at him and waited, her fingertips tapping lightly against the cell phone where she held it against her shoulder.

Loki considered for a moment and then Natasha watched his face fall. Sighing softly, he said quietly, “The mission in Cuba… The cat.”

He might as well have slapped her, though he did look genuinely regretful to bring it up. Natasha swallowed the onset of burning shame; she’d done this to herself, had basically demanded that Loki prove himself by naming something so disgraceful she’d never even told Clint about it.

It’s not like it was the worst thing she’d ever done according to, say, international law, or any other rubric for human ethics. But Loki had known so quickly and surely that it would cut deep as if he, of all people, had earned access to her darkest corners. Was there really a world where she trusted Loki that much?

“I told you about that?” she breathed, reeling.

“Not you, but the Natasha in my universe did, yes,” Loki confirmed, solemn. 

Maybe there was such a world. Maybe she was just feeling reckless.

She unmuted the phone and brought it back to her ear. "Are you still there?" 

"Yeah," Steve said, sounding upset. 

"Well… hold your fire. We're coming over." 

—------------------------------

“Can I ask you a question?” Loki asked as they walked towards the flat. Unlike in Riga, Loki had been to this particular safehouse in Prague before. However, he knew Natasha wouldn’t like that he knew where it was already, so he hesitated at corners, waiting to follow her lead.

“At this point, I don’t see why not,” she said. “Is there anything you don’t already know about me?”

“Have you had any strange dreams lately?”

Natasha stopped walking so abruptly that Loki had taken three steps more before backtracking to where she stood frozen on the cobblestones. Her eyes were wide.

“You’re in all of them,” she said quietly. Then without warning she threw herself at Loki, taking out his legs and using her body weight to trip him up and slam him to the ground.

His back hit the pavement hard, but having no desire to hurt Natasha just to prevent the wind being knocked out of him or his coat getting dirty, he stayed down as she landed roughly on his chest and pressed the widow’s bite that had been concealed by her coat sleeve against his throat.

“What have you been doing to me?” she demanded, her eyes blazing.

Loki had seen Natasha do this to bad guys before, but had never been on the receiving end of it himself. He was stronger than her in every way, and yet she had no fear and attacked with every confidence that she would win. His own rage was hot, explosive. Hers was cold, calculated. Hers was much scarier. 

“Every time I go to sleep, I see you. Watching me die, watching my friends die, watching us all die. It feels like—” she stopped abruptly, perhaps cutting off a rare slip where she had shared more than she wanted.

He kept himself still as her fist pressed against his windpipe. “The same thing that’s been happening to you has been happening to me,” he explained, trying to soothe her even with his mind spinning about what this could possibly mean. “I dream of death — and I can never stop it. And you are there every time, furious with me, making it even worse that they all died because I couldn’t summon the strength or the magic to save them, no matter how desperately I wanted to.”

Her eyes narrowed as he spoke, and while she made no move to let him up, she stopped crushing his throat quite so hard. “We’re having the same nightmares?” she asked.

“It seems so, yes. I thought it was just me, just my own guilt, or homesickness or… That’s how I found you in Latvia, I dreamt that Steve fell from — ”

“The House of the Blackheads,” she finished.

“I didn’t know if there would be any truth to the dream, but the building was so specific and I’d never seen it before, not even a picture. So when it turned out the building was real…”

“You came to see if I’d be there. Why?” she demanded. 

He hesitated, but decided on the truth. “I kept seeing you die,” he told her earnestly, “And I needed to make sure you were all right. But if we’re really having the same dreams… there must be something really wrong. Something big.”

“You came here to save me?” she asked derisively.

He shrugged his shoulders, impeded just a little by her weight pinning down his arms, but still he made no move to push her off. Natasha was certainly not the type that needed saving and they both knew it. “To help,” he clarified, “and… I just wanted to see for myself that you were alive.”

She glared at him. Then, with a sigh that seemed to release the rest of her cold fury, she swung herself off of him and stood up in a fluid maneuver before delicately brushing off her coat. 

Loki got up slowly and waited for her to say something first. He watched as she pressed her palms together and took a deep breath as if trying to steady herself. “This is so ridiculous,” she said, probably to herself. 

Loki answered anyway. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you like that. I think being stuck in the wrong universe has kind of thrown off my ability to gauge how ridiculous anything is anymore.” 

“Because everything about you was so sensible before this,” she said without looking at him. But she started walking again, so he took that as his cue to fall into step beside her. If she were his Natasha, he might have thought of something teasing to retort. Instead, he let his thoughts spiral.

He’d been worried that his dreams were a portent, that they were pointing him to Natasha, and maybe she and the others were in danger. He never would have guessed that she was suffering through the same experience. Natasha was many things, but she was a Midgardian, and not even an “enhanced” one. H e was the one from another world, the one with magic, with cosmic power he still didn’t understand. This had to be his fault, somehow.

Something was very wrong here, and he needed to figure it out before anyone got hurt.

—------------------

A few minutes later, they turned down a narrow alley where there were several doors leading into small, mismatched apartments; a few of them were on the second floor and there were questionably maintained wooden stairs leading up to the entrances. 

Natasha hadn’t said anything else and neither had Loki, though she could feel that his demeanor had shifted. He seemed worried, and that was making her nervous. For whatever reason, her instincts told her he was telling the truth, that he wasn’t causing her messed up dreams as part of some cruel psychological attack or worse. But if he wasn’t the cause, then something else had to be—something that had put a target on both of them.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs that lead to the safehouse, Natasha stopped and said, “Maybe hang back for a second.”

To her relief, Loki stayed at the bottom of the stairs with no argument, just a small smile and shrug as if to say, I trust you . She hurried up the rickety steps, knocked twice in quick succession, then twice slowly, and opened the door.

She had barely stepped inside when Steve grabbed her arm, pulling her the rest of the way in. Poking his head out the door, he spotted Loki standing at the bottom of the stairs, who raised his hand and waved.

Retreating back inside, he said to Natasha, “Are you nuts?”

“He already knew where we were,” she pointed out. “What did Rhodey say to you?”

Steve sighed and finally released her arm. She rotated her shoulder a little in annoyance and he had the decency to look sorry. Wanda was chewing a fingernail, watching them carefully while Sam moved around them to look out the door himself.

“How’re you doing?” he called down to Loki.

“Not too bad at the moment,” Natasha heard Loki call back.

“Sam, please,” Steve snapped and Sam leaned against the doorframe, keeping Loki in his peripheral. “Rhodey said… well, he said the exact same thing that you said to me.”

“A Loki from another universe,” Wanda repeated.

Natasha shrugged. “I mean, I don’t know, we’ve seen a portal carry an army of aliens across the universe. Why not a portal to a different one entirely?”

“That kind of exceeds the usual crazy meter,” Sam pointed out, “even for us.”

“It does,” Natasha conceded, “but imagine how he feels.”

Steve looked like he was about to start yelling. “Imagine how Loki feels?”

“Well, yeah,” Natasha said, unsure why she was feeling defensive. “Imagine if you got dropped into an alternate universe and tried to get your friends to help you and they wanted to kill you instead.”

“Sounds like last spring,” Sam commented, and Natasha caught Wanda biting her lip.

“Nat,” Steve said, exasperated. “This is Loki we’re talking about.”

“Rhodey seems to think it’s true,” Wanda said.

“He said that Tony thinks it’s true,” Sam corrected her.     

“And Pepper,” Wanda added.

“ Pepper’s vouching for Loki?” Natasha asked, surprised.  

Steve was still frowning, and Natasha wondered if the potentially evil god on their doorstep was the only thing troubling him. Contacting Rhodey couldn’t have been easy, let alone hearing about former friends palling around with a former enemy.

“And someone else,” Natasha added, remembering. “Loki said he’s been at the compound with Jane Foster.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “Thor’s girlfriend? Or ex-girlfriend?”

Natasha nodded and watched Steve exchange a look with Sam. She pressed, “Jane is an astrophysicist. She’s a genius. But not only that, she has way more experience with the Loki from this universe than any of us. I don’t see her, of all people, falling for one of his tricks.”

Steve didn’t respond directly, just said to Sam, “What’s he doing?”

Sam turned to glance down at Loki again before reporting, “Waiting patiently, looks like.”

Steve sighed. “Fine.” He sounded resigned.

“Really?” Sam said, looking surprised.

“Not fine as in, he’s joining the team,” Steve clarified. “Fine as in, if he has something to say he can come up here and say it.” 

Sam shrugged. “If you say so.” Then he called out the door to Loki, “Okay, the boss says if you come in peace then come on up.”

Steve crossed his arms. Wanda moved to stand beside him without being asked —the kind of unspoken coordination that wasn’t unusual after several months of life-or-death missions with just the four of them. There was no question Wanda was their best bet if Loki decided to try anything.  

A moment later Loki appeared in the doorway, looking a little uncertain about walking all the way into the room. Natasha tapped her fingers together in agitation. She was the one who had brought Loki here, but now, seeing him actually at the door of what had been a safe house was making her wonder if she was, indeed, nuts. 

“If this is like a vampire thing, I already invited you in,” Sam said. He took a step back to allow Loki a little more space to enter the apartment. 

“Hi, Sam,” Loki said, the corner of his mouth twitching upward like the comment was a shared joke and not an insult. It nonsensically made Natasha want to smile too. “Wanda, Steve,” he greeted the others with a nod.

“Loki,” Steve said back to him, then with very nearly no trace of sarcasm, “from another universe.”

“That’s me,” Loki acknowledged, holding empty hands out in front of him. 

Steve kept his arms crossed and his expression blank. “Tell us what you’re doing here and keep it brief,” he said in his captain voice.

Natasha wondered if Loki had a speech planned. She suspected there was good reason that he had sought her out and spoken to her privately first. The idea of an alternate universe was a lot to deal with already, but knowing that there was another version of her who had told Loki her deepest secrets was another level of unsettling. And what did he know about the rest of them?

Loki said, “For some time now I have suspected that my appearance in this universe may have caused… a disruption. Thor sensed it, and he wasn’t the only one. Nat and I have been having the exact same dreams.” 

Everyone’s gaze went to Natasha immediately, but she was mostly distracted by how comfortably he had called her Nat . 

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Wanda asked, looking concerned but not angry.

Natasha shrugged a shoulder and shook her head. “They were bad dreams. We’re all stressed and overtired, I didn’t think they meant anything.” 

“Nor did I, at first,” Loki said. “But they have been getting more frequent, and they seem more real , and now… I’m beginning to suspect that whatever energy or power brought me here may have released something else, something not meant to be in this world.”

“What’s your deal?” Sam asked abruptly. “You’re coming to us with some cryptic threat and, what? Want us to help you? Because you’re the best of friends with whatever weird clones of us live where you come from?”

The bridge of Loki’s noise creased as he frowned. “They’re not weird clones,” he said, sounding almost hurt, “they’re just… you. If things had happened differently.” 

Now Wanda was frowning too. “Different possibilities… are you talking about a multiverse?” she asked. 

Loki shrugged, “I think we landed on ‘multi.’ It seems much stranger that there would be only two very similar universes.” 

Wanda’s hand went to her face, partially covering her mouth. “You’ve talked to Vision about this.”

It wasn’t a question, but Loki confirmed with a nod. Wanda continued, “He’s been talking about the multiverse, but he didn’t tell me about you. So he either didn’t think you were a danger to me or didn’t think you were a danger at all.”

Natasha heard the meaning of those words loud and clear and she knew Steve and Sam did too. Vision, though bound by his signing of the Accords, would never keep something like that from Wanda if he had thought Loki might be a threat. Another name on the increasingly long list of unlikely people who somehow trusted him. 

She watched Sam and Steve exchange a look, but before either of them could say anything, Loki asked, “I’m sorry, can I just ask if James is all right? I’ve noticed he’s not with you.”

The tension in the room had been decreasing, but very abruptly dialed up again. Natasha straightened from where she’d been leaning against the counter, but Sam moved faster and was next to Steve in an instant with his hand on Steve’s arm. 

“He’s fine, thanks,” Sam said, indicating that anything further on the subject was not welcome.  

Natasha knew what Steve must be feeling, so she examined Loki instead. He didn’t seem to understand the fraught reaction, but he backed off and redirected the conversation easily. “You wanted to keep our meeting brief. I have something I want to look into, but I’d like to meet again tomorrow.” 

“Is that a threat?” Steve asked, his voice a little tight. 

“It’s a proposal,” Loki said. “I just want to ensure your safety. You only know a different version of me and I only know different versions of you, so I understand how odd it sounds, but I care about that very much.” 

He looked to Natasha and held her gaze for a moment; it was strange to look into those eyes and see such an intense level of what she could only call affection. She wondered what he could read in her own expression. She wasn’t even sure what she was feeling. 

“I’ve rented a room,” Loki continued, pulling a slip of paper out of thin air and offering it to Steve. “Here’s the address. I won’t bother you here again barring an emergency, so I hope you will come.” 

Steve reached out and took the paper from Loki. When he didn’t say anything, Sam gestured toward the door, “Well, thanks for stopping by.” A proper Southern get the hell out.

Loki nodded to them. “Thanks for the time.” He seemed like he wanted to say something else to Natasha, but he decided against it and turned his back on them to walk out of the open door. Sam firmly shut it behind him.

As soon as Loki was gone, the atmosphere of the room relaxed as if they had all been holding their breath until that moment. At first, they could only share astonished looks with each other. Steve didn’t appear angry anymore, but there was uncertainty in his expression as he gazed down at the paper Loki had handed him. 

“I didn’t ask him about the shield,” Steve said quietly. 

Sam took the address from him and said, “I guess you can go ask him tomorrow.” 

Natasha sank down into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. She rested her chin on her hands, ignoring the other three quietly making plans behind her. According to the old clock above the stove, it wasn’t even 8am yet.

Loki had brought them Cap’s shield. He helped them in Riga, possibly saved their lives. He brought her coffee and knew something no one else did and spoke to them all so kindly. He said he was from another universe and wasn’t the Loki they knew at all. 

If things had happened differently , he’d said. She wondered how many universes existed where things had gone differently for her. How many where Clint had saved her and how many where she had died. How many where she lived to be an even worse villain. 

Whatever the others decided, even if Steve didn’t want her to, she would go see Loki tomorrow. Something bad might be coming and if it was, it seemed to be coming for both of them. 

—-----------------------------------

Natasha stood still. All around her was darkness, as if she stood in a blank void where the world used to be. She turned her head, but no matter which direction she looked, everything was black. When she looked down, she couldn’t see her own feet, and when she lifted her hands up to look at them, she couldn’t see them. Did she have hands? She wanted to scream, wanted to run, but she couldn’t move, and the darkness was everywhere and crushing her—

—and then she sat straight up, gasping for air.

It was dark, but a normal dark with moonlight and street lamps glowing through the window. She was in the apartment in Prague, on the saggy couch in the living room. She quickly looked down at her hands, flexing her fingers to assure herself they were there. She didn’t remember falling asleep on the couch. This place had two bedrooms and three beds, plenty for them to not have to bunk in the living room, and all four of them had taken advantage of that to catch up on rest earlier in the day. It was much later now. Maybe she’d gotten up in the middle of the night and didn’t remember? 

That’s when she saw them: Sam, Steve, and Wanda. They were spread across the floor, laying down in various postures and unmoving. Her stomach turned and she jumped off the couch, rushing to Wanda who was curled into a ball on her side.

“Wanda!” Natasha cried out. She grasped Wanda’s shoulder and rolled her onto her back, but she didn’t stir at all. Natasha’s fingers flew to Wanda’s throat and she was sick with relief to feel a pulse. Yes, Wanda’s heart was beating, and her chest rose and fell gently. 

“Wanda, wake up,” Natasha urged, shaking her gently at first but then more roughly. “Wanda!” she called. Wanda showed no response, not even in her sleep (if it was sleep) and Natasha tried to swallow her panic. 

She crossed the room to where Steve lay on his back and put her hand on his chest, confirming that, just like Wanda, he was alive. “Steve, please wake up, please,” she said, shaking him hard. “Steve!” she cried. She hesitated for just a moment and then slapped him in the face as hard as she could. 

He didn’t move. He lay there as if in the most peaceful and undisturbed sleep. She crawled a few feet away to find Sam exactly the same. She looked between the three unconscious bodies of her friends, helplessly. What was wrong with them? Why wouldn’t they wake up?

She didn’t know what to do, her mind speeding through all kinds of horrible possibilities like poison or sound cannons or neurotoxic gas or… a sleeping spell. Something that left her friends unable to wake up but apparently unharmed. Could this be magic? Out loud she said, “Loki?”

----------------------------------

Steve was kneeling next to the big vintage tube radio which he continued to try to fix no matter how many times Natasha reminded him that it had never worked. He liked the project; it was complex enough to egg on his competitiveness, but with zero stakes. And this morning, especially, it was a quiet distraction from his thoughts which felt both too fast and frustratingly slow since Loki left yesterday. 

Yawning widely, Sam came into the kitchen and beelined for the coffee pot on the counter. 

“Good morning,” Wanda said idly from her seat at the table. Her attention was focused on a deck of cards that she had floating and swirling around in the air. 

Sam crouched down behind him and watched him work for a minute before making a little “hm” noise and going to sit down with his coffee mug. Steve threw him a cheeky smile, unphased, and continued stripping the end of a wire so he could reattach it in a different spot. 

A few minutes passed in comfortable quiet with some of his attention on the wires in his hands, but a lot more of it on what they were going to do about the Loki problem. It had been a few years since he’d had to tactically worry about any gods (plural) or what havoc they might unleash on unsuspecting human populations; humans managed to unleash plenty of havoc on their own anyway. And what bothered him the most was that it actually didn’t feel like much of a problem at all. Loki had done nothing but help and offer more help, which was so much more concerning than an open threat. 

Natasha had told the team more about the dreams she’d been having (which sounded terrifying, and it wasn’t like sweet dreams were easy to come by for any of them in the first place) and they’d all spent the better part of yesterday contemplating the multiverse which Steve would much rather not think about at all. They had enough problems in this universe without having to worry about the next one over. 

“Ow,” he said, snatching his hand back from a tiny electric shock that zapped his fingers. At least it was a sign of life in the old thing. Natasha would be so pissed when he told her that.

He stood up shaking out his hand and found Sam smiling at his misfortune, which wasn’t surprising. Sam went to pour himself another cup of coffee, glancing at the clock above the stove.

“I know we don’t have an exact appointment time with our new friend,” he said, “but we should probably make a decision about it soon and Nat’s still asleep.” 

Steve frowned. “She’s asleep?” It was almost ten in the morning and he couldn’t ever remember Natasha sleeping in this late. 

Sam just shrugged, so Steve went down the hall and poked his head into the bedroom Nat had taken last night. The room was bright with sunlight coming in from the window and Natasha looked peacefully asleep on her side, facing away from the door. 

“Natasha,” Steve said quietly from the door. 

He was surprised when she didn’t wake up. She had been trained to wake at the slightest noise or movement, had counted on it for survival for most of her life and still slept that way as far as he knew. 

He walked into the room and sat down on the side of the bed. “Hey,” he said gently, putting his hand on her shoulder, “you okay?”

Natasha didn’t move, still completely asleep, her breaths slow and even. Steve frowned. 

“Nat,” he said, louder, shaking her. A prickling fear came over him, slowly at first and then all at once. Something was very wrong. 

“Guys,” he said quietly, then cleared his throat and said again with more volume, “Guys! Get in here!”

Sam and Wanda hurried into the room. “What’s going on?” Wanda asked, staring wide eyed at Natasha. 

He looked at them helplessly. “I can’t wake her up. She won’t wake up.” 

Sam approached and gently rolled Natasha over onto her back. Wanda climbed up onto the bed next to Steve and placed a hand on Natasha’s forehead. A warm, red glow lit up her hand as Wanda summoned her magic, before she suddenly cried out and drew her hand back as if she had been burned. 

“What happened?” Steve demanded. 

“I… I can’t feel her,” Wanda said, her voice shaking slightly. “It’s like something is blocking my magic. But not just blocking, something forced me out.” 

The three of them looked at each other. Steve could feel anger creeping in now beside the fear. He met Sam’s eye and could see that Sam knew what he was thinking. 

“Sam, stay with her,” Steve said, getting up off the bed and pulling Wanda up with him. “We’re going after Loki.” 

Chapter Text

As soon as the door was closed, Loki leaned heavily against it and shut his eyes. He had taken a room in an upscale penzion; kitchen and common areas on the main floor, but private rooms with their own bathrooms and small kitchenettes. 

He barely remembered walking back from Natasha’s safehouse. He had played it cool, spoken calmly and evenly—exactly as he’d planned to. Natasha had only attacked him once and the others not at all. It had gone much better than he thought it would. 

But now, shut into his room, he let himself feel it. He had grown accustomed to Wrong Tony and Other Jane, he hadn’t realized how much. They weren’t his, but they trusted him. Back at the safehouse, staring into such familiar eyes of strangers who didn’t know him, didn’t trust him, perhaps hated him… It hadn’t hit him like this in quite some time, and the rush of guilt that came with that realization washed over him. He didn’t want to grow accustomed to this universe. He wanted to go home and be with his real family. Right?

He pressed his palms into his eyes. He was getting distracted again. In the beginning he had tried so hard to stay grounded in his own universe, but now he was welcoming distraction—he’d flown halfway around the world to escape from the fact that he was still stuck here and couldn’t get back. 

What was his Tony doing right now? Driving himself mad trying to invent his own method of breaking down walls between universes, probably. Loki inhaled sharply. It hurt to think about Tony hurting, an ache deep within him. He thought of all the times he had seen Tony hurting, Tony trying to isolate himself with Loki always drawn to follow, to take some of it. Loki could handle pain, but he didn’t know how much more Tony could take. 

Stop. He pulled his hands away from his face and clenched his fists. Tony wasn’t weak. He would probably resent the idea that without Loki he’d simply fall apart and never recover. Loki’s mouth twitched into a smile. Tony would survive out of spite before he let himself wallow over a mischievous god for the rest of his life. Loki could always wallow enough for the both of them. 

----------------------------------

Loki woke up disoriented and realized two things at the exact same time: he hadn’t been having a dream, and a pair of hands was grabbing him roughly and pulling him out of the bed. A lamp clicked on as Loki was pushed backward and slammed against a wall, his head cracking against it. He blinked frantically, his mind reeling to catch up to what was happening. He had been dead asleep moments ago, now he was up against a wall and Steve’s face was inches from his own. 

Loki had only seen Steve look anywhere near this angry once before. 

“What did you do to her?” Steve demanded, his voice pitched low and threatening.

Loki glanced quickly beyond Steve to see Wanda who must have turned on the light. Her gaze was fixed on him and her hands were softly glowing red. It was morning, judging by the gray light seeping in through the curtains. Yesterday he had given them this address and asked them to come, but this wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind. 

He grew much more awake as Steve’s words sunk in. Since Wanda was standing in the room with them, the “her” Steve referred to must be Natasha. 

He couldn’t even attempt something clever, he simply asked, “What happened?”

Steve looked like he wanted to put Loki all the way through the wall. 

“You’ve had your fun, okay?” he said. “You got us, but we’re not doing this. You are going to undo whatever you did and then you are going to leave this city and preferably this planet.” 

“I don’t have the pleasure of understanding you,” Loki said, keeping his voice even in the hopes of calming Steve down a little. “I haven’t seen Nat since yesterday, the same time I saw all of you.” 

Steve didn’t loosen his grip even a little so Loki looked past him to Wanda. “Tell me what happened,” he urged. 

Wanda hesitated for just a moment and then said, “She’s unconscious, asleep and won’t wake up. Like she’s under some sort of spell.” 

Loki narrowed his eyes. “Well then I guess that narrowed your list of suspects down to you and me, and I seemed more likely.”

“You think?” Steve asked, shaking him a little. 

“Just fix her and we won’t hurt you,” Wanda said.

Loki tried to envision a fight between the three of theml. Wanda and Steve were very unaware of his recent power acquisition , and he almost smiled at the thought of Steve getting ass kicked… though he suspected Wanda could still provide a challenge in an all out fight. Luckily for both of them, their interests aligned exactly with his own. 

“Fine,” he said, slumping a little in Steve’s grip. It would be much quicker to let them think they had achieved this victory than waste time trying to convince them that he’d never hurt Natasha. “Take me to her.”

—----------------------------

The moment Loki’s name left Natasha’s lips, the world went dark, a black-out of everything. She was back in the abyss and could see nothing at all. She held herself still, the only sounds her heart and her breath. The absolute darkness felt hostile, but how could she fight a void? Her hands balled into fists and she slowly counted upwards from one to keep her thoughts from spinning off into the fear that threatened to creep in from the loss of her senses.  

She had reached twenty-seven when a soft noise came from behind her. It sounded like someone laughing. She spun around, her feet positioning automatically to spring as soon as she could pinpoint where in the endless black the sound was coming from. 

From the darkness, a figure emerged. Natasha blinked, tensed yet motionless as the monster approached her. Her mind couldn’t help but jump to that word, monster . Everything about him was pointy, his teeth, his ears, his nails, even his attire. His skin was a mottled grey that put her in mind of several days-old corpses. Black strands of lank hair hung in his face, but she could see his eyes clearly as they seemed to glow a sinister green. 

She had seen monsters before. This one wasn’t as ugly as the Chitauri, nor did he create that bright spark of revulsion that Dreykov inspired. This monster was different. He was a cold dread poured over her head and slipping down her back.

She held her stance, determined to stay in control of the situation for as long as she could. Though without any demonic magic of her own, she didn’t know how long that could possibly be.

“What did you do to them?” she demanded, evenly and without a hint of the panic she’d had in her voice before when she’d tried to wake her friends. 

The being laughed again, softly. Annoyingly. When he spoke, she could feel his pointy teeth grating against each other, as if he were scraping those fingernails of his down a chalkboard. “They’re perfectly fine. I think you’ll find you’re the one who’s in trouble.”

A sudden, blazing light blinded her after so many minutes of utter darkness. She threw her arms up over her face, her eyes burning as she shielded them from the abrupt illumination. Squeezing them shut tight and then opening them again, she forced herself to slowly peek through her arms. 

They were stage lights. Still squinting, her eyes gradually adjusted enough to lower her arms so she could take in the unbelievable scene in front of her. No longer in the void, she was standing in the exact center of an enormous stage with a perfectly black, shiny marley floor. The theatre had five tiers of balconies, everything gilded with gold or covered in velvet. A huge chandelier glittered above the seats. 

Every light was pointed directly at her. 

A wave of nausea washed over her. When she looked down, she found she was dressed all in white, a long-sleeved leotard adorned with hundreds of glittering stones on the bodice and a full gauzy skirt that brushed against her calves, pointe shoes on her feet. The lights dimmed a little, and then she could see the people in the seats. The bodies in the seats. How many seats did this theatre have? Thousands? It was full and they were all dead. Not just dead, but dismembered, burned, strangled, blown to pieces. Gore, limbs, blood. 

Natasha was frozen in horror; whatever hopes she’d had of remaining in control of herself were long gone. She had seen deaths just like these many times. But this wasn’t a job, the sheer scale of carnage stretching up to the high ceilings, the way they were grotesquely lined up as her attentive audience… this was a nightmare. A nightmare designed precisely for her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t process anything except the fear gripping her tighter and tighter. 

She hadn’t imagined her terror could be any greater until a wave of blood began to seep from the very edge of the stage towards her. She couldn’t think. She stepped backwards until she felt the scrim at her back, penning her in. She tried to run offstage into the wings, but there were piles of bodies there too. She couldn’t think. Everything was panic and fear and nothing else. Flitting back across the stage like a bird in a cage, blood was seeping from all sides now, surrounding her until she was forced back to center stage in a three foot wide perfect circle. A spotlight flipped on, casting her shadow across the rippling red.

The monster’s voice echoed from everywhere at once. “Now dance.”

Dance? The word reverberated in Natasha’s head, bringing her back to herself just slightly. She wasn’t a dancer. Or was she? Everything was a blur and nothing was real except the bodies and the blood.

No, she wasn’t. The ballet hadn’t been real. Or had it? 

This wasn’t real. But she could smell the blood, could feel the rough tulle of her skirt under her fingers. She wasn’t a dancer. 

Her throat was closing, she couldn’t breathe, but the voice came again, louder this time. 

“Dance!” 

-------------------------

It was far too easy, but Steve couldn’t think of any alternatives. Loki was doing exactly as they demanded, but that could only be because what they demanded aligned with Loki’s plan. Loki didn’t do things that didn’t serve his own purpose.

And what was his plan? Why only attack Natasha? Why allow himself to be so easily captured and brought back to the safehouse? Would he actually follow through and help her? None of Loki’s actions since he found them in Riga had made any sense. 

Steve didn’t think there was anything that could scare him anymore, but finding Natasha like that… 

He couldn’t fail anyone else. 

Loki just allowed himself to be pulled through the streets with Steve gripping his upper arm which felt about as safe as holding onto a ticking bomb. He was worried about the civilians around them, they could be hurt or worse, but Loki kept his eyes straight ahead and walked without any sudden movements. Wanda followed close behind them; Steve knew she wouldn’t hesitate if the need arose. 

Every muscle in his body felt wound and tense. It was a sunny morning and their group was too conspicuous. He tried to avoid the main streets bustling with tourists and stick to narrow alleys, but he also wanted to get back to the safehouse and out of sight as quickly as possible. Another spike of frustration hit him—there was no way to make this situation any better. So he just kept walking, his grip re-tightening on Loki’s arm every so often. 

Finally, they reached their destination and Steve felt that only some kind of divine miracle had prevented any incident on the way. Sam was suited up and waiting for them at the top of the steps. He stood with his arms crossed in the open doorway as Steve finally let go of Loki’s arms and gave him a little shove to climb the stairs first since they were too narrow to walk up side by side. 

When Loki reached the top step, a moment passed where Sam looked him up and down, but he stepped aside and let Loki enter the room. 

“That was fast,” Sam muttered to Steve as he followed Loki inside. 

Steve gave him a look and knew that Sam was thinking the same thing he was. It can’t be this easy.

Steve saw that Sam had moved Natasha onto the couch in the living room. It was a good move, the living area was larger than the tiny bedroom and just felt less… vulnerable. 

Loki had gone immediately to Natasha and was crouched down beside her, which Steve didn’t like,  but yet again, Loki seemed to be doing exactly what Steve had asked so there was no actual reason to stop him. 

Wanda moved nearer to Loki to look at Natasha also, her hands still glowing slightly red, tiny waves of magic moving between her fingers. Steve could feel Sam next to him, could hear the question that he didn’t need to ask out loud: Are we going to have a problem?

Steve knew Wanda and Sam were waiting for either a signal from him or a wrong move from Loki. Part of him wanted to give the signal now, take Loki out while they still had the chance, before he could do something worse. Instead, he took a breath and talked himself down. You’re the one who brought him here.

Well, this time he had. Natasha had been the one who brought him here first. 

After only a minute that felt much longer, Loki slowly stood up and turned to face them. Steve felt the hardness of his expression fall a little at the sight of Loki’s. 

“I didn’t want to waste time arguing earlier, but I didn’t do this. And I’m going after her.” 

Loki met Steve’s eyes and, in that moment, the whole world seemed to tilt as Steve saw his own anger, frustration, guilt, fear, and so many things more complicated than that reflected right back at him. Steve believed Loki, before any logical part of his brain had time to catch up and stop him.

Natasha , of all people, had wanted to trust Loki. Steve could easily count the number of people Natasha fully trusted on one hand. It had taken almost getting blown up twice for her to trust him. Yet, she’d brought Loki here yesterday.  Maybe she’d seen what he was seeing now. He couldn’t understand it exactly, but there wasn’t time, so he pushed down the tumultuous confusion and decided that Natasha mattered more than whatever he thought he knew about Loki’s character. Looking at Loki now, it did look like a completely different person from the man who had attacked New York. A stranger. Who wanted to save Natasha. 

“How?” 

Sam’s head spun to look at him as he spoke the question. Probably because Steve hadn’t said ‘What?’ or ‘We’re going to kill you if she’s not awake by the time I count to three.’ He’d said ‘How?’ as if they were all a team and he just wanted to clarify their instructions. 

If Loki was as surprised as Sam, he hid it much better. “Well, I could ask for a pillow and some of that tired bear tea, but for the sake of time you’d better just hit me over the head hard enough.”

Chapter Text

Loki crashed into the nightmare as if he’d fallen through the ceiling and only just managed to stay on his feet, throwing out his arms for balance. He had barely even started to take in his surroundings when a voice echoed from all around:

“ Wait. I think we have a guest. ” 

The scene before Loki was grotesque. He was standing in the darkened wings alongside a large stage, and in the center of the stage was Natasha. Natasha, dressed all in white like a ballerina. And… He looked down at his feet. A quarter inch of blood crept over his shoes, coating the stage except for a clear circle right where Natasha stood. Her head was bowed, her hands clutching either side of her face, and Loki could feel her terror. 

Loki ran to her, blood splashing with every foot fall. When he reached her, her eyes were squeezed shut and she was whispering to herself in Russian, too low for him to make out what she was saying. 

She cried out when he touched her arm, and he grabbed her wrists to keep her from hitting him. “Nat,” he said, gently but firmly. “It’s all right, it’s me.” 

She looked up and met his eyes. Hers were glassy, unfocused, and so full of fear. Her body was trembling from head to toe and her breathing erratic. 

He didn’t even know Natasha could be this afraid.

“Loki,” she gasped. She wrenched her wrists free from his grip and grabbed his hands. 

He squinted through the bright stage lights, looking around for their assailant. He’d heard a voice, so there must be someone here to go with it. And then:

“ This is a delight. Here we all are, together. ” 

From the darkness of the auditorium, the body that belonged to the voice emerged. 

Loki sucked in a breath involuntarily before spitting out, “ You .” As soon as he laid eyes on the being before him, all of the pieces that he had been puzzling fell together–the horrible dreams, the draw to find this world’s Natasha and protect her…. Loki had considered many alarming possibilities, didn’t know which one to expect, but he felt certain he had disrupted something cosmic and existential. Not this . 

The being grinned widely, showing off every sharp point of his teeth. “You know me,” he said, looking pleased. 

Loki felt Natasha gripping his hands tighter. He swallowed down the irritation that was rising in him. This is who had been tormenting them? 

“Didn’t my uncle trap you in some sort of orb or cube a few thousand years ago?” Loki drawled. 

The demon’s expression turned sour. “I am Nightmare, I cannot be contained.” After a slight hesitation he added, “Forever.” 

Loki raised an eyebrow. “Uh-huh.” 

He’d heard the story before; most Asgardian children had been frightened off to bed with tales of the Nightmare Realm at some point. There was a particularly disturbing illustration of Nightmare himself in a book Loki had taunted Thor with many times. But Asgard was full of thousands of such stories—and this one wasn’t particularly exciting enough to warrant much repetition. Still, Loki was annoyed with himself for not recognizing it sooner.

He needed more information, so Nightmare needed to keep talking. Although he didn’t particularly care, Loki demanded, “Why are you doing this?” 

Nightmare sighed dramatically, floating in the air cross-legged as he answered, “Unfortunately, your particular brand of magic made it difficult for me to force you here. I had to get you to come of your own volition.”

“So you baited a trap for me.” Loki’s irritation was turning into full anger quickly. 

“Creating a nightmare world for any of your friends would not cause me any difficulty whatsoever, you are a traumatized bunch,” Nightmare said as he grinned obscenely at them again. “But this one could not have been any simpler, her whole life has been a nightmare. And I thought, perhaps it might annoy you the most if I chose her. You see yourself in her—the violence… the atrocities… the pushing against your nature to try to be better, but always feeling you are on the brink of failing .”

Natasha was still trembling beside him and seemed unable to speak. Loki gently pulled his hands out of her grasp and moved to stand in front of her, blocking her from Nightmare’s view. It felt unnatural; Natasha didn’t cower behind anyone. What had the demon done to her? Now Loki’s anger was becoming a fury, and he took a deep breath to tamp it down.

“Fine,” Loki said calmly. “Your trap has successfully sprung. You have me here as you wanted. Let her go.”

Nightmare made a theatrical show of tapping his chin to think. “But what fun would that be? I could just keep both of you.”

“You want something from me,” Loki snapped impatiently. “It’ll be much easier for you if I agree to cooperate, which I won’t while she’s here.”

Nightmare rolled his eyes. “So pragmatic. I thought you’d be a bit more fun than this, trickster.” 

“Loki…”

He heard Natasha’s voice behind him, shaky as she said his name. Loki ignored her and demanded of Nightmare, “Do you want to make a deal with me or not?” 

Nightmare’s eyes narrowed for a moment, but then he shrugged and waved a hand, casually, as if dismissing Natasha from a meeting rather than releasing her from this horror world he’d trapped her in. 

Loki inhaled sharply, his fists clenching and unclenching, but he arranged his expression into calm reassurance as he turned his back on Nightmare to look down at Natasha. 

She met his eyes and was shaking her head slightly. “Loki, I’m…”

“Just go,” he cut her off, the words coming out a bit harsher than he intended. “There’s no way for you to fight him in this realm. If he were to face you in physical form I have no doubt he’d be laid out in minutes, but that’s exactly why he’s brought us here instead.” 

“I am not so easy to defeat in your world either,” Nightmare admonished from where he still floated slightly above the stage, listening to their conversation. 

Loki rolled his eyes, but kept his attention on her. “Please, Nat. I’ll be fine. Or I won’t, and then Steve can stop worrying about me betraying you all and doing something horrible. Either way, it’s a win for your team.” 

Natasha breathed out roughly through her nose, not quite glaring at him but something similar to that. The more he spoke, the more she seemed to come back to herself. If it were his Natasha looking at him like that, he’d guess she didn’t want to leave him in a Nightmare Realm, even if there was nothing she could do to help, just so he wouldn’t be alone. But he couldn’t project that onto this Natasha. Maybe she would feel a vague regret if he died saving her, but certainly she wouldn’t argue against it. 

Loki pleaded to her silently for a moment and watched as she set her jaw, her gaze becoming clearer from the daze of terror he’d found her in. “How do I get out?” she murmured. 

“Master the fear,” Loki said, his voice steady. “Look at him. This is a dream, he is an idiot, and you are Natasha Romanoff. You don’t have to be afraid of him.” 

Natasha’s gaze went past Loki to Nightmare, then she looked down at herself. Her long white tulle skirt was splattered with blood from Loki running to her. He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders, leaning down so his face was inches from her. “This is nothing. You are the most feared assassin on Midgard. Let it go. Go!” 

As he shouted this last word, he shook her by the shoulders and watched her eyes come back into full focus. She looked at him for a moment, then past him to Nightmare. Then, in a move Loki would have associated more closely with the Black Panther, Natasha sprung towards the demon. 

Without hesitation, Loki reached out to grab her by the waist, but his arms closed around thin air as she vanished. 

---------------------------------

Four knocks rang out, two fast followed by two slow, before the door opened and Wanda walked in with a brown paper bag in her hand. Steve nodded to her from the sitting area where he’d positioned the one armchair where he could keep his eyes on Natasha on the couch and Loki on the floor at the same time. He had been sitting almost completely still, leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs and his hands clasped tightly together, for a long time. Meanwhile, Sam alternated between sitting at the small kitchen table, pacing around, and glaring suspiciously at Loki’s unmoving form.

About an hour ago, Wanda had abruptly said, “You two need to eat, I’ll be back.” She’d grabbed her bag and walked out before Steve could think of any reason she shouldn’t leave. She was probably right—Loki and Natasha had been unconscious for hours and the sun was starting to set, but food was the last thing on Steve’s mind. And he couldn’t blame her for wanting an excuse to get some air. The atmosphere in the apartment was, as Sam had put it, ‘creepy.’

Now, he tore his eyes away from the unnervingly still bodies to watch Wanda put the bag on the counter and Sam stand up to help her unpack whatever she’d brought back. He watched as Sam pulled out five takeaway containers, and Steve felt his stomach flip. He knew Wanda was being intentionally optimistic about Natasha and Loki waking up in time for dinner. Somehow, in the course of a day, they’d gone from expecting the volatile Norse god to attack to setting him a plate at the table. 

Steve was proven wrong every time he thought he couldn’t be surprised anymore. He should probably just stop thinking that.

Sam shot him a worried glance, but he didn’t comment as he put two of the containers in the fridge. Steve sighed and turned his gaze back to the sleepers. Both of them looked completely peaceful, even Loki who had not fallen asleep but was forced into it by a solid knock to the back of his head. Steve hadn’t even enjoyed it. 

He settled back into his watching, hearing cutlery being pulled from a drawer and glasses being taken out of a cabinet. 

Then with no warning at all, Natasha’s eyes flew open and she sat straight up with a howl of rage. Steve was out of the chair and beside her in an instant. Relief coursed through his body, sweeter than adrenaline, but his heart was pounding as he grabbed at one of Natasha’s flailing hands and placed his other hand on her shoulder. She took a loud, gasping gulp of air, like she’d been underwater too long and was finally able to breathe again. 

“Nat,” Steve called to her. “Nat, look at me.” He put his hands on her face and gently turned her head. It took a minute for her eyes to focus on him and her breath slowed a little. He could feel Sam and Wanda behind him, ready but not crowding.

“Steve,” she gasped.

“Yes, you’re okay, I’m right here,” he said, trying not to show how terrified he had been. If he seemed calm, perhaps she could calm down too.

She jerked suddenly, shaking him off of her, so he sat back on his heels, holding up his hands in apology. She shook her head and closed her eyes, hugging her arms around herself. “Sorry,” she said. “Just… don’t touch me right now.” 

He placed his palms flat against his thighs to keep himself from reaching out for her again and watched her take several deep breaths, in and out. No one spoke, and Steve’s heart was still pounding. He wanted to spring into some sort of action, but he made himself be still and wait for Natasha to collect herself. After a couple of minutes, she opened her eyes and Steve looked into them to silently ask the question, What happened?

She didn’t answer, her gaze drifted over his shoulder and her eyes widened. “Loki,” she gasped.

Steve moved out of the way as she swung her legs off the couch and flew right past Sam and Wanda to drop to her knees beside Loki’s unconscious body.

“He asked me to knock him out,” Steve said, standing up. “He said… that he was going after you.”

“He did,” Natasha said quietly, staring down at Loki as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “He traded himself for me. I was bait.”

The world was turned upside down and sideways at this point, but Steve still had a hard time accepting what Natasha was telling him. Natasha meant so much to Loki in the other dimension he came from that she could be used like that? And Loki had sacrificed himself to save her? 

“So he was telling the truth,” Steve concluded quietly, crouching down beside Natasha to peer down at Loki’s face. He looked peaceful and undisturbed, despite whatever he was facing wherever he was. 

“Bait for who?” Wanda asked. “For what?”

Natasha exhaled sharply, still looking down at Loki. “A monster,” she breathed.

Steve could see Natasha biting the inside of her lip hard, something she did when she was afraid she might cry. He didn’t reach out for her again, but he said softly, “It’s Loki. I’d bet he still has some tricks up his sleeve.”

------------------------------------------------

Loki let his empty arms fall to his side and spun around to turn his full attention back to Nightmare.

“I knew you’d come for her,” the demon taunted. “But sacrifice yourself, even die for her? You are soft, aren’t you?”

“Dying for someone can be quite hard,” Loki said simply. 

Nightmare appeared to consider this. “Perhaps. Especially for someone already dead.” 

Nightmare waved his hand and they stood in the living room in Avengers Tower as it was on that first Christmas Eve almost three years ago—covered in red ribbons and green garlands and golden lights. A fire roared and twelve stockings with embroidered names hung from the mantle. The star at the top of the massive Christmas tree just brushed the ceiling. 

“I have to admit I’m impressed,” Nightmare taunted, circling around Loki as he took in the decor. “I could tell how lonely you were, all that rage and sadness built up over centuries, but I supposed that you would imagine yourself as a conqueror, smiting everyone who’d wronged you. Instead, you dreamed up this ?” 

Loki held himself still, watching as Nightmare looked around at the room then ripped a poinsettia off its stem and brought it to his nose. 

“This is a memory, not a dream,” Loki said. 

“Is that what you think?” Nightmare laughed and crumpled the flower in his fist. “You don’t remember? The mind plays tricks in its final moments. And who has a trickier mind than you?” 

The Christmas scene faded and now they were outside on the landing pad of the tower, but at a very different time. The sky was full of Chitauri and smoke. Far beneath them, the streets were burning, people were running and screaming. 

Loki had forgotten how loud it had been. 

Then Nightmare was gone and Loki stood looking out at the destruction across the city in his full armored regalia, just as he had that day. In his hands, the scepter with the Mind Stone glowing blue at the end. A cold dread was forming at the back of his neck and slowly creeping down his back. A moment later, his name rang out, “Loki!” 

He snapped his head around to see Thor landing on the balcony just below him. Gesturing with Mjolnir, Thor demanded, “Turn off the Tesseract or I’ll destroy it.” 

Loki froze. He didn’t remember exactly what he’d said in response, but he knew that the next thing he’d done was attack his brother. He didn’t do that now, but Thor clearly took his silence as refusal and said, “So be it.” Swinging his hammer, Thor lifted from the ground and came flying right at Loki. 

Loki dodged out of the way just in time, countering Thor’s move and jumping back down to the balcony. He had barely regained his feet when Thor came flying at him again and this time they both went sprawling to the ground. Loki was moving automatically now, blocking Thor’s blows all while his mind yelled, Stop, stop, stop.

Thor knocked the scepter from Loki’s hands. It went skidding across the balcony and Thor punched him again and again. This isn’t real, Loki thought as he felt the godly strength of each blow as they landed and hurt. The blows stopped as Thor grabbed him by the front of his armor. 

“Look at this!” Thor yelled. “Look around you!” 

And Loki did look. The wormhole opening into deep space was right above them, spilling more Chitauri out by the hundreds. 

“Do you think this madness ends with your rule?” 

This was the moment, Loki realized as Thor shook him and forced him to meet his eyes. In them, Loki could see so clearly what he had such a hard time recognizing that day: Sadness. Love. 

This time, Loki did remember what he’d said back and he repeated it now, the words echoing in his ears, “It’s too late.” He felt the same tears forming in his eyes as he continued, the despair coming back to him in force. “It’s too late to stop it.” 

“No,” Thor said and when Loki looked back at him again, he saw the hope that glowed through his brother, crackling and contagious. Thor’s greatest strength. “We can. Together.”

This was the moment. The exact moment when his universe and the one he was lost in had split in two. In the wrong universe, the Other Loki had been unreachable, too far gone, too far lost in his own mind. In his universe, Loki had grabbed onto his brother’s hope like a lifeline and hadn’t let go. 

White hot pain distracted him from the confusing swirl of illusion, present, and memory, and he looked down to find the sharp point of his own scepter sticking out of his chest. Staggering, he felt Thor’s hands clasp roughly on his arms, catching him as he dropped to his knees. He cried out as the blade was ripped out of his back. He could feel the warm gush of blood rushing from his body as Thor laid him down. Looking up, he could see Thor’s devastated face and Natasha standing above them, the scepter in her hands dripping red. 

He tried to focus on Thor. The pain had been so sharp and now it was throbbing through his whole body, every beat of his heart pushing life from him and out onto the concrete he lay on. Thor grabbed his hands. “Loki, brother, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice shaking and tears spilling down his cheeks. Loki’s vision started to darken around the edges, until it was closing in— 

Suddenly Nightmare was hovering right over his face, blocking his view of Thor. “Do you remember now?” he asked, tauntingly. “It was all too good to be true, wasn’t it? Your heroic redemption, joining the Avengers… Your twisted mind dreamt of a divine escape.”

He leaned closer still and grinned, revealing every one of his pointed, grey teeth as he taunted, “Did you really think that you could be a hero? Did you really think they could ever love someone like you?”

Thor and Natasha faded away, along with the rest of the scene, and Loki was left lying on the empty stage from Natasha’s nightmare, with Nightmare himself looming over him. He pressed his hand to his chest and then lifted it to find it stained red with blood. 

Nightmare’s words did ring true, didn’t they? It was far more likely that, in the state he’d been in during the Battle of New York, the Avengers had defeated Loki in the end. Or perhaps he’d never even gotten that far—maybe he’d died in Thanos’s cell. Or maybe he’d perished even sooner, falling from the Bifrost. Could this be what Hel was like for someone like him? Tortured, taunted with joy, and then ambushed with the terrible truth? A loop that would just continue for eternity? After all, what had he done to deserve to feast in the halls of Valhalla? Surely something like this was a much more fitting fate. 

Or at least, that’s what he might have thought. 

Loki stretched his blood-stained hand upward as if reaching for Nightmare beseechingly. Nightmare’s eyes widened in glee, anticipating pleas for mercy. Instead, Loki said softly “My turn,” and snapped his fingers. 

They were back in the living room in Avengers Tower as it was on that first Christmas Eve almost three years ago—covered in red ribbons and green garlands and golden lights. A fire roared and twelve stockings with embroidered names hung from the mantle. The star at the top of the massive Christmas tree just brushed the ceiling. 

But they weren’t alone, they stood in the midst of a party, a crowd of guests laughing and talking loudly to be heard over Christmas carols. The grand piano they’d brought in was being played merrily accompanied by a string quartet. 

“How… How are you doing this?” Nightmare screamed, looking around in horror.  

“You’ve mistaken me on several counts,” Loki said, grabbing a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. “Most unfortunate for you.” 

“How?!” Nightmare demanded again. 

Loki shrugged casually, “I don’t spend nearly so much time wondering if I’m worthy these days. Friends do wonders for self-esteem. I wonder, have you ever had one? Perhaps you’d like to see what it’s like.”

Nightmare looked ready to explode with rage, when suddenly he was grabbed in an enormous bear hug from behind by Thor.

“Nightmare, old friend, you made it!” Thor cried gleefully, lifting Nightmare off the ground a few inches and shaking him a bit in delight. 

He dropped him back to the ground and released him, but before Nightmare could do anything he was being clapped on the back by Clint. “Hey, nobody said this guy was coming! Here, you need a hat!” From behind his back, Clint pulled a Santa hat and jammed it onto Nightmare’s head, pulling it down over his eyes. 

Nightmare was sputtering in shock when Wanda came running up to him and blew a party blower right into his face. “Merry Christmas, Nightmare!” she cried happily. “Look, I made you a stocking.” 

She pointed behind them at the fireplace and Nightmare turned in disbelief to the row of stockings on the mantle. There, right in the middle, was a green stocking with Nightmare carefully embroidered in silver, glittering thread. 

“You haven’t been naughty have you?” Thor asked, laughing and grabbing Nightmare in half a hug, his arm around the demon’s shoulders. “You know Santa doesn’t come if you’re naughty.”

“Excuse me! Everyone listen up, the party host is speaking!” 

Tony had climbed on top of the very expensive grand piano and was raising a glass in the air. “I just wanted to thank you all for being here, but especially our most special guest, everybody’s favorite guy right after me—let’s all raise our glasses to Nightmare!” 

“To Nightmare!” the hundred party guests echoed. 

“This is the best Christmas ever!” Wanda declared, beaming at Nightmare, who finally snapped. 

“Stop!” he screamed and the room froze. Every party guest stood still, even the fire was stopped, the flame immobilized. 

Loki took a sip of the champagne he was still holding. 

Nightmare’s shoulders heaved in fury as he spat at Loki, “You’ll regret this. I’ll take her again. I’ll take them all, forever. They’ll never escape the terrors I prepare for them.” 

Loki finished his champagne and walked calmly towards the fireplace where he placed the empty glass on the mantle. He turned towards the enormous tree as if to admire it. “How do you expect to do that?” he asked. 

“What?” Nightmare growled. 

Loki plucked a large, shiny golden ball from the tree and held it out, dangling by its hook. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I took a short trip to Asgard. And I helped myself to a few things from the vault.” 

“Don’t you…” Nightmare began, winding up as if about to throw himself at Loki. 

Instead, the demon was caught up in an explosive burst of light. He screamed in agony as he was engulfed in waves of magic, rippling greens and ambers and blues that encased his body. Loki thought he was being a little over dramatic, the magic wasn’t actually hurting him.

“You’ll regret this, Loki!” Nightmare yelled, his voice sounding muffled now. “I’ll get you, I’ll get all of you, I am…” 

But whatever annoying thing he was about to say was lost as the magic swept up the demon and returned to the golden orb in Loki’s hand. 

Loki held it up to eye level. The bauble gleamed in the many twinkle lights decorating the facsimile of his home that he missed so deeply. He looked around the party one more time and sighed softly. “Merry Christmas, Nightmare.”

Chapter Text

When Loki’s eyes flew open, everything was foggy and he felt frozen, like his mind and his body hadn’t quite connected back together yet. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision, then concentrated on trying to just wiggle his fingers. After a few seconds, he felt them start to move and was about to try sitting up when he heard a shout and was quite suddenly surrounded. 

Natasha knelt down beside him, looking relieved. 

She put one hand behind his shoulder and the other on his upper arm. Surprisingly, Steve crouched down and did the same on the other side, and together they helped him sit up. His legs didn’t feel quite attached to his body yet, so he waved them off and made no attempt to stand. Instead he planted his hands on the floor and took a deep breath, grounding himself.

“We didn’t know if you were going to wake up,” Natasha said, the undertone of worry in her voice making her sound like his Natasha. 

“And we really weren’t sure what we were going to do with you if you didn’t,” Sam added. Wanda elbowed him, which he protested with, “What?” 

Loki’s lips twitched. “It’s fine. It would be extremely inconvenient to have a comatose god on your hands.”

“How did you escape?” Natasha demanded. “What did he want?” 

Loki considered for a moment. “Nightmare feeds on fear, despair, agony. I suspect he might also feed on monologuing; he may have escaped his former prison and trapped me in his realm just so he’d have someone to talk at.”

Natasha snorted, to Loki’s relief. Her fear in the Nightmare Realm had been so consuming, he was glad she was capable of laughing at that imbecile now that they were back in the world. 

Loki continued, “There are stories. Harnessing power and magic like mine could have enabled him to create the Fear Crown —an annoying plan with a stupid name—but the real conquest, well… Demons go after love. It’s the only thing that can kill them. Besides me.” 

With a wave of his hand and a flash of green, Loki held the golden orb in his hand. No longer a Christmas bauble, in its true form it was translucent and an angry, grey sludge could be seen roiling inside. 

Everyone leaned in a little closer to look at it. 

“Whoa,” Sam observed. “What are you going to do with that?”

“Keep it for now,” Loki answered. “Eventually it can be stored in the vault on Asgard.” The orb vanished from his palm, back into his magic bag where it would remain. He smiled a little, thinking of returning the orb there with its captive, telling Other Thor about meeting the demon of their childhood stories. Hopefully he could tell his Thor about it as well. 

For a few moments, everyone was still, Natasha and Steve on the floor beside him and Sam and Wanda hovering over them. Loki wasn’t sure what to say or what to do now. Leave, probably. His mission had been accomplished, and no matter how much he wished he was with his family, these people were strangers. Strangers who didn’t like him. He had saved Natasha, but since he was the reason she’d been taken in the first place, it didn’t feel like a point in his favor.

Steve moved first and stood up. This seemed to break the tension enough for Wanda to blurt out, “I brought dinner for everybody.” She looked at Loki and said, “If you want to eat.” 

Loki was stunned. ‘Everybody’ included him ?  He was starving after the past few days of misadventures, and he wasn’t above saying yes to the offer even if it was only given out of politeness. He glanced at Steve, checking his expression for disapproval but didn’t find any. He didn’t even seem surprised. “Yes, I would like that,” Loki said, letting his gratefulness show sincerely.

Natasha stood up and offered Loki her hand; he took it and let her help him up. A little dazed, but feeling much more settled back into his physical body, he followed her to the table and they both sat down. Wanda magicked the armchair from the sitting area over to the kitchen table so there were five seats crowded around it and then she, Steve, and Sam set the table with glasses, silverware, napkins, and five takeout containers full of goulash. 

Five , Loki thought, looking around at them as Wanda settled herself cross legged in the armchair and Sam took a seat while Steve put down a pitcher of iced tea in the middle of the table. They weren’t just sharing their food, they’d gotten a portion specifically for him. 

He clenched his jaw, annoyed at his sudden urge to cry over his goulash. But they were giving him a chance! It was so sharply similar to how things had been for him with the Avengers four years ago. It felt like splitting in half. Thinking of his real family who he’d been torn from; and sitting here now with the same people, back at the beginning, hoping that they would trust him—and hoping he could deserve it. 

He didn’t allow much of this to show outwardly, but Natasha must have noticed something because she asked him gently, “What did you see? After I left, what did he show you?” 

She, thankfully, assumed he might be upset by whatever visions Nightmare had shown him, rather than guessing that he was overly emotional about a container of food.

He cleared his throat a little and picked up his fork, trying to act much more casual than he felt. “The Battle of New York,” he answered. “Or a part of it. I didn’t see you,” Loki said, nodding his head towards Steve, “but you were there,” he told Natasha. “You killed me.”

Natasha frowned. “No I didn’t,” she said, so defensively it made Loki smile.

“I know,” Loki shrugged. “It was interesting though. The vision he brought me to was the moment that my universe and this one diverged.”

“How do you know that?” Steve asked, looking surprised. 

“From Tony and Thor in this world,” Loki said simply, before realizing he had barely explained anything about the multiverse situation to them yet. “Everything that I know from them indicates that my life and the life of the Loki from this universe were exactly the same until a specific moment that happened that day in New York. I was with Thor at the top of the tower and in my universe, he saved me. And in this universe… well, the Other Loki stabbed Thor and then was smashed by the Hulk and returned to Asgard in chains. Or so I’ve heard.” 

“And we do believe this right?” Sam asked out of the corner of his mouth, leaning towards Steve. “Just double checking.” 

Steve shook his head a little and looked almost like he might laugh.

“So that was only, what? Four years ago?” Wanda asked, fascinated. “And everything came out different because of a moment. I want to hear more.” 

Before he could even begin to explain further, Loki’s phone vibrated in his pocket—Jane was video calling him. Time felt distorted after being in the Nightmare Realm and he couldn’t remember how long it had been since he’d last texted her. “Sorry, I’m going to take this if you don’t mind,” Loki said. He stood up from the table and walked the few steps to the sitting area. It didn’t afford him any privacy, but it felt less rude than being on the phone at the dinner table. Plus, he knew that letting his… new friends … overhear the conversation could earn him some trust points.

He sat down on the couch and accepted the call, but before Jane’s face even appeared on the screen, the audio connected and he could hear yelling in the background. A lot of yelling. 

“Hey!” Jane exclaimed over the noise. “I’m so glad you answered. Just wanted to, um, give you an update. Don’t throw that!” 

That last part was directed somewhere to her left, and Loki watched a few metal objects fly past her, clattering loudly as they hit the floor. 

Loki blinked. “What is going on?” 

“Um, well I might have finally told Erik that you’re the one who we’ve been…” She cut off the sentence, again looking to her left past the screen, “I would have told you right away if I didn’t know for a fact you were going to act like this! You’re being such a baby.” 

Jane rolled her eyes, bringing her attention back to Loki. “Sorry. It’s not like he’s the only one with PTSD around here. Anyway, everything’s totally fine, but, uh… maybe you can stay on your vacation a while longer? He’ll come around.” 

“I will not come around!” Loki heard Erik yell from somewhere in the lab. 

Jane moved her face a little closer to the phone and assured, “He’ll come around. Anyway, are you okay?” 

Loki thought about the day he’d had, but as a few more objects went flying across the room behind Jane, he figured he’d fill her in later. “Yes, I’m fine. Why don’t you call me later?” 

“Erik, put that down, seriously that’s so expensive. Yes, I will. Don’t worry, everything’s fine, this is going to be great! Bye!” 

Jane ended the call and Loki sat staring at the home screen of his phone for a few beats, then looked up sheepishly at the Avengers across the room. All four were staring at him. Wanda had her fork halfway to her mouth, forgotten. 

After a few beats of silence, Steve cleared his throat loudly and leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed. “All right, we’re ready.” 

Loki raised an eyebrow, scanning their faces before settling his gaze on Steve. “For?” he asked.

Sam cut in and answered, “The whole story. Go.” 

Loki nodded his head in acknowledgement. He stood up and crossed the room, resuming his seat at the table with them. For a moment he considered jokingly beginning with, ‘My father was born a prince in the cold wastes of Jotunheim…’ and then for another beat wondered how far back in the story he should actually begin. He settled on, “It started with an explosion.” 

--------------

Sometime later, the takeout containers had been picked clean and Loki had recounted the accident and what came after—convincing Wrong Tony to help him instead of kill him, piecing together the way their universes had divided, Thor’s arrival, the cross-universal phone connection that had allowed him to briefly speak to his Tony and Bruce. He even included the planning and execution of stealing the Tesseract from Asgard (which ended up being more of a gift than a theft) while Tony created something that could hopefully harness the Tesseract’s power to send him home. 

There Loki skipped over how their attempt’s total failure had apparently imbued him with unlimited cosmic power. Natasha and Steve had seen a bit of it in the warehouse, and he’d admitted to Natasha that what she’d seen was new, but he didn’t want to derail the story by dropping in a minor detail like that. He would find a time at the end to break that to everyone more gently. 

So he forged on to the arrival of his brother’s on-again-off-again girlfriend, the brilliant astrophysicist Dr. Jane Foster (whom the others knew of but never met) and the dozens of late nights and failed simulations. Then he recounted, though not in great detail, the dreams that started to haunt him and, unknowingly, also Natasha. Which finally led up to what they already knew. 

For the most part, the four Avengers listened and, while they showed their surprise, they didn’t interrupt much at all. 

The first question Steve asked as the story reached the present was, “Where did you get the shield?” 

For the sake of everyone’s feelings, Loki thought he ought to tread carefully here. “Tony told me it was at the compound and that he’d repaired it. From knowing the version of you in my universe, I assumed correctly that you weren’t just hiding out somewhere and relaxing. I thought you might need it.”

Loki could feel everyone watching Steve carefully for his reaction. They all knew it meant something that Tony had repaired the shield. He wouldn’t have done that out of nostalgia for his father or for the preservation of history. He would have done it for Steve. 

Steve pushed his chair back and stood up. “Nat, can I talk to you outside for a second?” 

Natasha blinked, but didn’t question, just said, “Sure.”

The two of them went out the door, closing it behind them. 

Wanda had her chin in one hand while she tapped the fingers of the other, her rings making clicking sounds against the table. “So,” she said to Loki. “You are in love with Tony Stark?”

------------

Sam’s jaw dropped. “Whoa! What?” he exclaimed. He waited, expecting Loki to either get mad and deny it or laugh it off as a joke. Instead, Sam watched in disbelief as Loki shook his head a little and let out a breathy laugh. 

“Spill,” Wanda said, ignoring Sam’s outburst and smiling softly at Loki. 

Sam stared at the alien across the table. Maybe Asgard, being a mystical land that you traveled to via rainbow bridge , didn’t worry too much about who was straight and who was gay. And Loki—just looking at him, let alone hearing about all his… theatrical antics, Sam wasn’t particularly surprised. But Tony… ? Tony Stark was gay? The most famous womanizer in the world? And it wasn’t just the Tony from Loki’s universe, not if it was true that everything in the two worlds was exactly the same until four years ago. 

How ridiculous had his life become that he was shocked by this revelation about Tony, but finding out that multiple universes existed felt like just another day at the office? Like, traveling between dimensions, right right, sure, normal, but wait somebody’s gay ? Maybe he should have expected this sort of thing  when he decided to ride shotgun with Captain America.

His mind was spinning as Loki leaned back in his seat and spoke. Quietly, openly, Loki said, “In my universe, I love all of you very much, but yes, I am in love with Tony Stark. I kissed him for the first time four days before Christmas Eve two years ago, and I kissed him nearly every day after that until I was ripped from that world. The fire within him matches mine. I remind him that he can be whole and he reminds me that I can be human. We have the best sex and drink too much and save the world together. He is everything to me. I haven’t seen him in thirty-seven days and I may never see him again. So,” he cleared his throat, “That’s been quite terrible.”

Sam realized his mouth was hanging open. He shook himself a little and said simply, “Damn.” Then added, “Steve and Nat sure picked the wrong time to leave the room.” 

This revelation was wilder than finding out that Loki was an Avenger back in his world, and more personal. Because Sam was gay—but hardly anyone knew that. His sister did, of course. He could never hide anything from her, and he wouldn’t want to anyway. But this was different. This was… work, wasn’t it? And throughout a decorated military career, he had learned how to keep his personal life private. 

He thought Steve knew. The way he’d looked at Sam, holding up a photograph and asking, is this Riley? Something like an understanding had passed between them in that moment. They never talked about it, even though Sam was tempted sometimes. He just let it sit quietly between them, each recognizing something shared in the other but not voicing it out loud. They’d grown up in different time periods, but neither of them had had a ton of opportunities to be out.

And yet, this Loki came from a universe where he and Tony Stark were just, like, making out all over Avengers Compound all the time? In front of everyone? He had to admit to himself that it stung a little. 

Wanda reached across the table and put her hand over Loki’s just as the front door opened. Sam watched Steve and Natasha clock Wanda holding Loki’s hand and probably the expression on his own face too.

“What happened in here?” Natasha asked, her eyes darting around at the three of them. 

Before anyone could say anything too crazy, Sam jumped in and said, “Just learning some more interesting facts about our new friend here. Very interesting.”

He saw Wanda squeeze Loki’s hand once before pulling gently away.

Steve exhaled out of his nose and crossed his arms, turning his full attention to Loki. “So. You’ve saved our lives twice, been on this planet for weeks without causing any death or destruction, have extensive mission experience, and can’t go back to the compound because Dr. Selvig isn’t quite on board with the whole helping-you thing. Yet.” 

Loki nodded. “Yes, that is all correct.” 

Steve acknowledged this with a nod and then continued, “Then, so long as Sam and Wanda both agree, you can stay with us. For a while. A probationary period only. We’ll expect you to give your best to our team on missions and… to not stab any of us in the back.” 

“Very fair expectations,” Loki said, his expression neutral. 

“More power would be useful,” Wanda pointed out. 

Sam wondered if he should be annoyed that Steve and Natasha had excluded him from their conversation about this, but he wasn’t. They were the only ones on the team who had personally faced off against Loki before, they had the most history and the most reason not to trust him. 

Besides, rolling with the punches was kind of Sam’s specialty. (Lately, they had more often than not been literal punches, so maybe he was just grateful for some metaphorical ones.) 

“If you two had to fight all those aliens and are okay with it, then I have no reason not to be,” Sam said. And he meant it. Despite this day being full of absolutely unbelievable revelations about multiverses and nightmare beings and Tony Stark’s sexuality, his dedication to Steve and their mission to do good in the world remained unchanged. That was simple enough.

Steve met his eye, silently asking him to confirm his answer. Sam nodded once, knowing Steve could not possibly guess the reason he might look a little shaken. He almost laughed then, imagining Steve’s reaction. He hoped he could be the one to tell him, though he’d settle for a clear view of Steve’s face. 

Steve’s gaze moved to Loki who stared back at him evenly. 

“Okay then,” Steve said. “We should move tomorrow. We were too exposed earlier, someone could have spotted us. We don’t rendezvous with Nakia until next week, but I’d rather wait somewhere else for now.” 

Sam wasn’t sorry to hear that. First of all, Prague was fine, but Czech was a ridiculous language. He’d much prefer if they could go somewhere where they spoke a romance language, or Arabic, something he knew or could at least fumble his way through. Plus it was too populated to fly—staying at this safe house meant he was effectively grounded to hold their cover.  

Loki slapped his hand on the table and declared, “Well, if we’re leaving tomorrow we should go out tonight.” 

For the second time in ten minutes, Sam felt his eyebrows reaching for the ceiling. 

“ Go out ?” Natasha repeated as if she had never heard a more insane suggestion. 

Despite the stares he was being met with, Loki pushed forward. “Yes,” Loki said. “I’ve only been out once since I came to this universe, not counting a very quick stop for bagels, and surely we could all use the distraction. You know, something fun to forget about being on the run from the government for a bit.” 

“You went out once? Tony took you for a night out?” Natasha asked in disbelief. 

Sam couldn’t stop himself from snorting. If the Tony Stark in this universe was going out with Loki … that would really be the final straw of insane discoveries. 

“Of course not,” Loki said and Sam inwardly sighed in relief. A small piece of this world still made sense. “Jane and I stole a car and his credit cards and ran for it.” 

At that, Sam instinctively turned his head to find Steve looking as if he was regretting every choice he’d ever made in his life that had led him to this moment. Sam had agreed that adding Loki to the team would be an asset for their missions, but could it be that Loki was also funny ? 

“What?” Loki demanded into the silence. “You didn’t do that while you were living at the compound? Not even once?” He looked to Sam and Wanda, then back to Natasha and Steve. “Gods, do you really not know how to have fun? I mean, I know we’ve got the weight of the world on our shoulders more often than not, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a night off.” 

Sam pursed his lips. After what happened that spring, everything was so life-and-death , everybody’s emotions running high with betrayal and yearning and survival , all of them laser focused on one job and then the next… It could be that Loki was actually very funny, which was something that had been really lacking in their lives as of late. As he knew too well after years in the service and working for the VA, sometimes being able to laugh was the thing that kept you alive.

Steve, still looking like he couldn’t believe what was happening, asked “Are you lecturing us on saving the world?” 

“No, I’m lecturing you on being boring,” Loki assured him. Then he stood up. “Stay here, I’ll be back.” 

With that, he left. It was very dramatic. As the door shut behind him, Sam asked his team (but also himself), “Is he actually for real?” 

Chapter Text

Freshly showered and dressed with her hair wrapped in a towel, Natasha stepped out of the bathroom and across the narrow hallway to the room she’d fallen asleep in last night—before the kidnapping of her consciousness and waking up on the couch with Loki laying on the floor and Steve hovering over her. 

Now, she found Steve laying across the bed as if he’d been sitting on it and then fallen back, pillowing his head under one arm. Natasha eyed him as she stepped around the narrow space between the bed and the wall to get to a laundry bag in the corner. As she stuffed her dirty clothes inside she said, “We already had this conversation.”  

“I know,” Steve said, but in a way that made it sound like a question. 

“We did,” Natasha affirmed, straightening up and trying not to let herself be taken over with misgivings again. “I know it’s not your style, but it was mine for a long time. We’ll feel better keeping him close than sending him off who-knows-where to do who-knows-what.”

“Right now, he has gone who-knows-where. And then we’re… going out?” Steve sat up and ran a hand through his hair, which was getting much longer than he usually let it. It suited him, as did the beard (she and Sam told him that frequently to prevent him from shaving it off).

Natasha went over and sat down beside him, their legs just touching. “It’s because we don’t know how to have fun,” she said, paraphrasing Loki’s words. 

For a few beats they both sat in silence. Natasha did feel a pang of guilt, knowing it was her fault that they were in this position in the first place. She had been targeted and brought this alternate universe Loki crashing into their already disrupted lives. 

Before tracking him down in her newly acquired quinjet a few months ago, the last time she’d seen Steve was when she was firing her Widow’s Bites at T’Challa so that he and Bucky could escape. So much had happened since then that had disrupted her sense of self, the memory felt like it belonged to a different person.

Confronting and coming to peace with Yelena, Melina, even Alexei had changed her. Softened her, maybe, but not in a way that made her feel weak. Even though Alexei had personally handed her and her sister over to Dreykov, somehow, in the end, she’d forgiven him. Had wanted to forgive him. If she could do that when it was so personal, something that had been hurting for over twenty years… What was it to forgive Loki? 

Especially if he was telling the truth and wasn’t even the same Loki they’d fought in New York four years ago. He’d saved her life twice, and while he wasn’t in much danger the first time judging from the way he so easily took out the men in that warehouse, surely it had been a personal risk to face Nightmare on her behalf. He could have just left her there, but he didn’t. 

Because he cared about her. Not just the Natasha in his universe, it felt like he cared about her. Similar, yet separate from his ‘best friend’ back home. And maybe after getting her first family back, she was craving more. 

“We shouldn’t go,” Steve said, startling her out of her thoughts.

Natasha paused for a moment and then decided to just tell the truth. “I want to go.” 

She sighed and stood up when Steve looked at her, pulling the towel off of her half-dried hair and tossing it on to the bed. “Loki was right, I would like to just let go for a night. Especially after what happened to me today. After everything…” She turned away from him to grab a brush off of the bedside table. Dragging it through her hair, she said, “I’d like to have fun.” 

With her back to him, she continued brushing her hair and heard him sigh softly. After a moment he said quietly, “ Bucky was fun.” He cleared his throat a little and continued, “He always tried to include me, keep my spirits up because I was always sick. And later, when all I could think about was joining the army.” 

Natasha turned around, dropped the brush on the bed, and put her hand on Steve’s shoulders. “Then let’s go. You can practice having fun so you’re ready to remind him how when he gets back.” 

Looking like his face might crumple, Steve leaned forward into Natasha, his head against her stomach and she wrapped her arms around his head. “Come on,” she said lightly, “it’ll be fun.” 

-----------------------------

“You do remember the part where we’re wanted by 117 countries and the World Security Council for terrorism, right?” Steve asked, his hands in the pockets of his peacoat. “We shouldn’t be out causing a scene.” 

“Are you planning to cause a scene?” Natasha asked pointedly, one corner of her mouth curling. 

The five of them stopped outside of a building that was attached to all the others on the street and looked no different than the ones on either side except for a slash of orange spray paint across the door. The latch had a slightly rusty padlock attached to it, unlocked and hanging loose.

“Trust me, no one in this place is reporting anyone to any kind of authorities for any reason,” Loki said before he confidently grabbed hold of the door handle and swung it open wide. Beyond the door was a short staircase leading down to a hallway lit with harsh, fluorescent lights.

“He’s already saying ‘trust me’ and assuming we’ll follow,” Sam muttered to Natasha. 

“Well,” she murmured back as they walked down the stairs, “We are following him.” 

The hallway with the harsh lighting had a high ceiling with several exposed pipes running along it making hissing and clanging noises. A pulse seemed to vibrate around their feet. Near the end of the hall was a large, bald man whose head was covered in tattoos that snaked down his neck. He was leaning against the wall and had a small knife in his hand that he was throwing up into the air and catching at a steady pace. 

As they approached, Loki winked at the man cheerfully and said, “I’m back,” in a slightly sing- song voice. 

The bouncer looked them over, his eyes lingering on Steve suspiciously. Natasha’s eyes darted over the boys’ outfits. They perhaps looked too clean cut, but she’d been styling them to make sure they didn’t stand out or look too American - no athletic wear, no khakis. After another beat, half of his mouth quirked upward in a smile directed at Loki and he gestured with his head in a universal, ‘Go on in.’

Natasha realized then that she’d been half-hoping they might just be denied entry and forced to turn back. Despite what she’d said to Steve, and despite that she’d meant it, there was a level of surreality of actually doing it that was putting her off-kilter. 

Feeling a bit like she was still in a dream world, she followed behind Loki towards the heavy-looking wooden door at the end of the hall with Sam and Wanda right behind her and Steve bringing up the rear. 

The noise hit them like a wave as soon as Loki opened the door, as did the darkness. Natasha clocked about a dozen globe lights which were spinning in all directions and pulsing through a rainbow of colors. And there must have been black lights hanging somewhere over their heads, doing nothing to increase visibility but making their eyes and teeth and the white stripes in the plaid of Wanda’s coat glow purple. 

Despite having entered through what felt like a basement, they had stepped onto the upper level of the space, an industrial mezzanine that wrapped around the main dance floor. Looking below, over the wrought iron railing, there was a sea of bodies pulsating with the pounding bass of Frenchcore techno. 

“Yeah, I don’t think anyone in here is looking for us,” Wanda yelled above the noise.

Natasha had been in clubs like this before, but always for work. On a normal night, she would be pretending to be someone else, catching people off-guard while they were loose and high, quietly disposing of people under the cover of all that noise and darkness. Nothing that brought feelings of anything close to pleasure when she thought back on them. 

“I’ll hold your coats,” Loki said, leaning in close so they could hear him. He twirled a finger and Natasha felt her coat melt away as she watched the same thing happen to Sam, Steve, Wanda, and Loki’s. She bit her lip, her eyes darting to Sam and Steve’s faces because, while Loki had simply removed their coats, he had changed his own outfit entirely. He now sported a black, mesh shirt and leather pants, a thick gold chain around his throat, his eyes streaked in gold and black, and rings on each of his fingers. The only thing he didn’t change were his finger nails, which stayed the same black they’d been painted since she first saw him, apparently suitable for day-to-evening.

Sam put his tongue in his cheek and said, “Nice,” while Steve looked ready to run out the door. Natasha bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh and hooked her arm through Steve’s as Loki started towards the bar a little further in, easily creating a path for the rest of them to follow (though it was unclear if he was using magic or if it was just because he looked like that ). 

Loki held up five fingers to the bartender and a minute later there were five double-shot glasses full of a clear liquid in front of them. Loki laid a 2000 koruna note on the bar and picked up one of the glasses.  

“Where did you get that money?” Steve asked. 

Loki raised an eyebrow. “Do you really want to know the answer to that?” 

Steve hesitated for a moment and then said, “No I do not,” and picked up his own shot glass with the others following suit. 

“ Na zdraví ,” Natasha offered, and they clinked their glasses together before shooting them back. 

Sam, Wanda, and Steve winced, with Sam taking a few extra seconds to exaggerate, sputtering and sticking his tongue out until Wanda snorted. She started patting him on the back and called to the bartender for some water (in Sokovian, though the words were nearly identical in Czech–Natasha wasn’t sure if she even noticed).

Meanwhile, Natasha remained stoic, like she’d forgotten she could show a reaction if she wanted to. The unfamiliar liquor did burn all the way down and left an odd herbal aftertaste. With her extensive tolerance training, it usually took her a few drinks to feel any effects at all, but she already felt warmer, and lighter. It was good .  

Sam, still coughing a little but obviously enjoying himself, nudged Steve and asked, “Suffering the burn and can’t even get drunk, why do you do that?” 

“Camaradiere,” Steve and Loki answered at the same time, in exactly the same tone: resolute.

Natasha’s eyes widened as she looked between them. Wanda put a hand over her mouth, barely covering a smile. 

“Okay,” Steve said, pointing a finger at Loki, “I’m drawing a line here: don’t do that.” 

Loki just grinned back at him. “Why do you think I ordered you one?” 

Sam laughed out loud, announcing to Loki, “I knew you were funny!” before shouting, “Hey barkeep, další kolo!” and acquiring five more of the burny drinks. Loki seemed happy enough to dole out more of his suspiciously-acquired cash.

“Impressive,” Wanda complimented as she graciously accepted her glass from Sam.

“I Googled it on the way here,” he admitted. “Weirdly, I didn’t think to brush up on my club lingo before spontaneously fleeing to Prague!”

Steve shook his head and asked Loki, “Does the Steve Rogers you know enjoy this?” He gestured around with the drink Sam forced into his hand.

Loki’s mouth quirked. “Not really, no.” 

Sam laughed again and, this time, Natasha stopped resisting and laughed too. Steve caught her eye, noticing, and his expression softened. 

“ Haló , my friends!” A tall man in (very) short shorts and a baggy, cropped tee approached their group, greeting them in the way of the drunk–that is, as if they already knew each other. 

Before anyone could respond, he turned directly on Steve, eyeing him up and down. “You look like Captain America, but sexier from the beard.” 

“This guy?” Sam scoffed, stepping up to Steve’s side where the stranger was severely invading Steve’s personal space, “He wishes.” 

Natasha felt a little bad she hadn’t run interference first. She knew Steve wasn’t casual with stuff like this. But she didn’t move, a small, devlish part of her wanting to watch the blatant flirtation play out.

“See, he doesn’t appreciate you,” the short-shorts man wheedled, holding out his hand to Steve. He was, impressively, an inch or two taller. “Come dance with me, kapitan .” 

Steve looked gobsmacked and his eyes darted to find Natasha’s, which only made her feel guiltier. Steve always had a plan. Or if he didn’t have one in advance, his mind moved miles per second and his enhanced body anticipated it; she’d seen it in action during stealth missions and high speed chases and giant alien battles. But, at this moment, he looked frozen in uncertainty. 

Suddenly, Wanda moved, pushing Sam aside and getting right in the stranger’s face. “Sorry, but my boyfriend is going to be dancing with me ,” she said, following the man’s lead in speaking English but over-exaggerating her accent. 

The man held up his hands in defeat and took a step back, “My bad, nadherna divka .” 

Wanda looked up at Steve and smiled, batting her eyelashes at him. “Let’s go, darling.” 

Steve let himself be led away by the hand, apparently trusting Wanda where his own instincts had failed him. Natasha watched them head for the stairs. She wondered if there was a part of him that could enjoy this. Perhaps he could feel something like she was feeling, a relief that maybe they could take off their load for one night and it wouldn’t cause a catastrophe. 

After watching him until he disappeared, she turned around in time to see Sam slamming back another shot of whatever clear liquor was being poured. “All right, I’m going down there. You guys coming?” 

“Yes,” Loki answered for both of them and with his eyes glinting mischievously, he held out his hand to Natasha. 

As Steve had done a moment before with a stranger, she hesitated. Did Loki still count as a stranger? Or worse? Could she really just let go of it all for one night the way she wanted to?

She took Loki’s hand and felt him squeeze it lightly as he turned and led her toward the stairs, just a few moments behind Sam. 

When they plunged into the sea of bodies, finding a space and completely losing Sam immediately, Natasha realized she had no idea what she was doing. Again, she thought about other clubs like this one where she’d danced easily because she had been playing a part. Did she know how to dance as herself? 

Loki had started to move to the music in a way that looked effortless. She tried to imagine the alternate universe Natasha dancing with him. How would she act? What would she say?

She shivered. The unreality of it all weighing down on her as she realized she was indeed about to let herself go and start dancing with Loki. A very different sort of dancing than what Nightmare had tried to force her to do… Her captivity in the realm, the details of it, were starting to blur as if it really had been just a bad dream. The emotion though, the horror she’d felt, seemed less likely to be forgotten. 

There was one thing she could recall the demon had said - that he had chosen her because Loki could see himself in her. That both of them had violence in their nature and it was a constant fight to be better. That either of them could fail at any moment… 

She knew she was spiraling and that it was the memory of the fear in the nightmare realm that was getting to her. She studied Loki, who didn’t appear to feel guilt about dancing and enjoying himself. If they were the same and he could do it… 

“Are you all right?” Loki asked, leaning down to put his mouth close to her ear. 

“Sure,” she answered and let herself move. It was crowded and there were people all around, brushing up against her and all moving to the same pulsing beat; it actually was easy enough to pick up on their energy to use as her own. 

She looked up at Loki, who threw his head back, closing his eyes as the music changed and became more fast paced. 

When he looked back at her, he noticed her staring. He smiled. “What are you looking for?” he asked. “Treachery?”

“Yes,” she answered, matter of factly, though that wasn’t exactly it.

“And?” he inquired. 

She squinted at him. “Maybe you’ve been practicing.”

He smiled again. “Or maybe we’re just dancing?”

She shook her head, the temptation to laugh back again. She thought perhaps what was bothering her was that all of this felt easy. As she moved and the energy of the club seeped into her, the fear spiral was fading. This wasn’t a nightmare. 

Then a sudden hand on her shoulder had her turning her head sharply to the side, half ready to lay out whoever it was, but the rainbow lights passed over them to reveal Steve’s face and she unwound again. 

Steve stooped down to put his lips to her ear. “Are you okay?” Wanda was holding his other hand and looked dazzled by everything, happier than Natasha had ever seen her.

They both turned their heads so her lips could brush his ear instead as she said back, “That’s what I was going to ask you.” 

He pulled back a little so they could look at each other and she couldn’t help but smile at the look on his face. She shook her head a little from side to side, knowing he felt exactly how crazy all of this was. 

Sam appeared out of nowhere, five more shot glasses balanced tightly between his fingers. They all took one, but after she’d finished hers, she saw Steve hand his still full glass to Loki. 

“Thor used to carry this stuff with him…” Steve started. 

Before he could finish the sentence, Loki flexed his fingers and a glass bottle the size of his palm appeared. He tossed it. Steve caught it neatly out of the air and, with a squeeze to Natasha’s shoulder, vanished back into the crowd with Wanda, Sam catching hold of her other hand in time to be pulled off with them. Natasha’s mouth was open in surprise, a wave of happiness washing over her. Even if she didn’t deserve a night with no load to carry, Steve definitely did. 

Loki was smiling too. “Asgardian liquor,” he explained. “I’ve seen him quite nearly drunk for a full ten minutes and at least a little tipsy for almost an hour before the metabolism caught up to it. Don’t drink any.” 

“I’m good,” Natasha laughed and was surprised to find she mostly meant it. 

“You must be, you’re smiling.” 

“Am not,” she said, immediately wiping her face blank. 

“Come now, surely we don’t need to lie to each other anymore.” Loki was looking at her like he knew her. And he did, really, which was the disturbing thing. She didn’t let people know her. Even now, as close as she had let Steve get, she hadn’t said a word to him about Yelena or Melina or Alexei. She still kept a distance between them. Clint was the only one who knew about her first family. Until now when, impossibly, so did Loki. 

And yet somehow—the way he looked at her, the way he treated her—it wasn’t as terrifying as she imagined it should be. She didn’t particularly like how it was making her feel though. It was comforting. Yes, she wanted to let loose for a night, but she couldn’t let herself get comfortable.

She deflected, putting the focus back onto Loki. “I never would have imagined that you could be like this.” 

“Like what?” he asked. 

 She shrugged a shoulder. “Fun. Nice. Not killing everyone.” 

They danced, moving around the floor with the ebb and flow of the crowd and the beat of the music. They took more shots of the harsh, herbal booze, either conjured or stolen out of thin air by Loki instead of purchased at the bar. The DJ was raised up on the far end of the room, a young looking goth girl with blunt bangs and large headphones who everyone seemed to worship. 

Steve and Wanda found their way back to them again and did their best to stay close as the crowd grew rowdier and the music faster. Steve kept making Wanda laugh by picking her up by the waist and lifting her high into the air, definitely something reminiscent of swing dancing (something he never would have been able to do before the super soldier serum). 

Sam moved past them regularly with an array of strangers turned club friends. Whenever the crowd pushed him back to them he’d abandon whoever he was dancing with to grab hold of Natasha and spin her around a few times, moving with them for a few minutes before disappearing off with a different person than he’d been with before. 

She understood better now what Loki had meant about having fun. She was a wanted criminal and the Avengers had fallen apart and she didn’t know when she’d see most of her families again, but she felt… free. 

—-----------------------------------

Loki felt euphoric. Perhaps he shouldn’t and perhaps the crash down from the high of dancing with this universe’s Natasha and Sam and Steve and Wanda, in this club with this music, would be the most agonizing fall yet. But, in this moment, it seemed worth it. He could never have imagined this when he left the compound. He was overwhelmed with the shock of things going so right after so much going intensely wrong. 

A girl who was clearly having an immensely good time, but struggling slightly to stay standing in her very high platform boots, approached them. “You’re so beautiful,” she said, grabbing hold of Loki’s arm to steady herself, but looking at Natasha. “Can I draw on your face?” 

The girl’s face was streaked with neon blue that glowed in the black light, so the context of the question was mostly clear. 

Loki watched Natasha stick her tongue in her cheek and then she said, “Why not?” 

The girl laughed in delight and gently cupped Natasha’s chin while she used a marker with a glowing tip to draw a glowing blue heart on each of her cheeks. 

Then she turned on Loki. “Bend down,” she instructed, not asking for his permission the way she’d asked Natasha’s. He bent his knees obediently and felt her scribbling zig zags down each of his cheeks. 

The girl abruptly kissed him on the mouth when she was done, spun around and kissed Natasha on the mouth, and then danced away into the crowd. 

Natasha stared after her, blinking and then looked to Loki in disbelief. Loki couldn’t help out laughing as she demanded, “This is what you do for fun all the time?” 

“Yes,” Loki confirmed. 

“Well… it is fun,” Natasha admitted. Then she laughed. “You have lightning bolts on your cheeks.” 

“Do I?” Loki said. An amusing choice on the girl’s part, though she couldn’t have known.

“Yup,” Natasha said. “But I’m not sure blue is your color.” 

Loki smiled. “Oh I assure you, it is.” He grabbed both of her hands and pulled her closer to him. She held onto him now, his hands, his arms, his waist, as they danced and didn’t worry about anything else. 

--------------------------

Later, Loki had talked his way into a cushioned booth upstairs and the five of them sat comfortably together. Loki had his arm around the back of the seat where Natasha was sitting beside him. Steve was sitting almost across from them on the curved seat and Loki saw him staring at his hand dangling a few inches above Natasha’s shoulder. The night had gone beautifully, but perhaps Steve still didn’t want him quite that close. 

Suddenly, Natasha shot out her foot and kicked Steve’s leg lightly. “You falling asleep there?” she asked. 

He rolled his eyes a little, but did look down at his watch. “It is getting late. Or early, I guess.”

Wanda nudged Sam beside her and, with a mischievous glint in her eye, said, “Yeah if you want an invite to go home with somebody, you better get a move on.” 

Natasha let out a surprised laugh which made Loki smile. To him this seemed a usual level of teasing for Wanda, but perhaps he was actually seeing this Wanda coming out of her shell in real time. 

“Stop it,” Sam insisted, but he didn’t look angry. “Did we all forget the fugitive thing already? I’m not leaving with anybody who’s not at this table.” 

At this Natasha started fully giggling and to Loki’s surprise Steve started laughing as well. Sam looked between the two of them, then to Loki for help. “What’d I say?” 

Loki shrugged, “Oh, nothing at all.” 

He took a sip of the drink in his hand, watching Sam realize and punch Steve’s arm. “Not like that!” 

He had done it again. Stranded in a different universe with a power beyond imagining and he was befriending the Avengers. 

He suddenly thought of the Loki who belonged to this universe. If the two of them were so alike, surely he could come around to this too; change, grow, want to let someone else in. Thor had been trying to pry through small cracks for centuries. He wondered what Other Loki and Thor were doing now. 

Natasha was still giggling. 

It was an odd group, but they were his. And he, against all reason, was theirs. 

Loki put down his drink. “All right, all right. Steve is right, it is getting late and it has been a long, odd day. We should probably go back and get some sleep.” 

He stood up as if ready to go, but then looked down at them with his most impish grin. 

“Or…”

Chapter Text

Loki was adaptable. He always had been. It made him good at deceiving people. 

Now, he wondered if he was deceiving himself. 

Moving from mission to mission with Natasha, Sam, Steve, and Wanda felt like home. It had been too simple to put them at ease. He knew their quirks and what jokes they thought were funny and which desserts they liked. He knew their fighting styles and inserted himself seamlessly into the mix. 

He knew his own fighting style less well now, finding he had to exert much more focus to keep himself from being lazy and unintentionally vaporizing somebody. Combat with regular mortals had never been much of a contest even before he had been cosmically powered up; now it would be nothing to destroy anyone he wanted without even coming close to them. That kind of power made him more dangerous to himself and his team, so he took care to be sharp and steady and deliberate with every move he made. 

It required a level of mindfulness of his own actions he had often avoided in the past. He had even started meditating, something his mother had always praised—especially for powerful magic users, to connect with the seidr on a deeper level; as a way to know yourself. Whenever she had forced or bribed Loki to try it, he would spend most of the time thinking up new, inventive ways to annoy his brother or make his father mad. 

Now he made himself sit for a couple hours each day, alone. Quiet. The boredom of it was painful as he had nothing to do but feel the loss and the weight of everything, but he clung to the pain. The pain was a reminder that he wasn’t home, and he didn’t want to forget that. It was easy to love these other universe versions of his friends. But his real friends weren’t here. They were lost to him and he to them. 

So he would close his eyes and try to block out the world he was in and feel them. How long would they keep hoping he would return? How long would Tony keep trying to find a way to get him back before he realized he had to move on? 

Loki felt ill thinking about it. On the one hand, he didn’t want his friends to be hurt. But on the other, he didn’t want to be given up on. He didn’t want to be just a blip in their lives, a couple odd years where the God of Mischief became a coworker, a friend, a lover, before vanishing and becoming only an anecdote to reminisce over every now and then, the details blurry and all the big, complicated feelings replaced only with nostalgia. 

He wanted to be there. He wanted them to want him. 

------------------------------------

He was up in the sky again. 

The team had wrapped up a mission in Morocco two days ago and flown to Palestine to regroup. Loki hovered high above Al-Quds, the night sky looking endless and bursting with stars. The moon was full and bright and the lights below glowed with a yellow-orange warmth. (Loki was also glowing, the heatless flames of orange-blue power surrounding him.)

Sensing movement below, Loki looked down to see two glowing red orbs heading towards him. He paused in his drifting, waiting as she came closer so she could stop to float in front of him. 

“You followed me,” he said. 

“Just to see what you were up to,” Wanda said casually, as if she had followed him to a shop down the street and not hundreds of feet in the air, Usually I’m the one sneaking off. Natasha doesn’t like it, you know.” 

“Mmm,” Loki acknowledged. 

Wanda took in the breathtaking view around them for a beat and then said, “I didn’t know Asgardians could fly. Thor needs his hammer to do it, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. I may be the first to do it on my own.” Certainly the first Jotun to ever fly, assisted or not, he didn’t say aloud. 

Wanda looked towards the ground, warily this time. “I’m not sure how long I can stay up here.” 

Loki nearly laughed out loud, but sensed her honest fear and caught himself, grimacing instead. He’d fought side by side (and above) this Wanda several times at this point. He’d clocked her hesitation, the careful bursts of power that seemed to take more effort than they should have.  He’d assumed she was holding back.

“Forgive me if I’m off the mark,” he began carefully, “but you act as though you don’t know the extent of your power. Are you trying to conceal it from the others?” 

“My power is limited. And dangerous,” she added, looking ashamed. 

“Dangerous, maybe, but limited?” Loki did laugh now, softly. 

“What do you know about my power?” she asked. She was defensive, but undeniably also curious. 

Loki hesitated,. He still hadn’t said anything about Infinity Stones to anyone in this universe. But, he thought, she should know the source of her own power. 

“It comes from the creation of the universe itself. An essential aspect of the fabric of everything that is or was or will be. Power that existed before there was anything and perhaps will remain when everything else is gone.” 

In the combined glow of their powers, she looked shocked by his words. He may have laid it on a little dramatically—he had always found that Wanda, like him, appreciated drama. 

“Are you afraid of it?” he asked gently. He didn’t want to condescend to someone he suspected was the most powerful person on the planet, but he asked in case it was the right question. 

She took a deep breath and let it out shakily. “I’ve hurt people. When I didn’t mean to. I…. I killed people.” 

Loki shrugged. “Mistakes happen.” 

Wanda frowned at him. “People died. And my mistake tore the Avengers apart.”

“None of them have clean hands,” Loki scoffed. It wasn’t that he wanted to be insensitive, but surely she couldn’t think she was worse than the rest of the company she kept. 

There was a reason Loki got along with them so well.

She looked down at her own hands then, red, but with power, not blood. “How do you live with it?” she asked quickly. 

Loki considered. He had spent a long time with this question and the answer had come so much easier when he had other people to share it with rather than going at it alone. 

“Scar tissue,” he said softly. 

Wanda cocked her head a little, her brow knitted. 

Loki went on, “Natasha calls it ‘red in her ledger.’ Something that you can wipe out if you put enough black on the other side. That’s really all we can do, try to be better than we were yesterday.” 

Wanda stared at him now as if she hadn’t actually seen him before, despite the fact they’d been together nearly every day for the past three weeks. The heaviness of it all was weighing on both of them as they hung in the sky. 

Loki held out his hand to her. “Shall we do a few loops around before we head back?” 

Wanda glanced downward briefly, then grabbed his hand.

—----------------------------------

Loki was on the couch, Wanda sitting on the floor between his legs as he elaborately braided her hair. A tablet propped up on the makeshift coffee table—an empty crate Steve found outside—was playing an episode of Bewitched.  

Sam was breathing hard as he did quick and precise push-ups on the floor nearby, trying not to count them out loud. ( Steve never counted how many push-ups he was doing.) Sweat was dripping from his forehead onto the scratched wooden floor, but he ignored the gross puddle forming and went down and up and down and up. He was getting close to dropping, but wouldn’t quit until his muscles forced him to. 

As the TV audience burst into laughter from Wanda’s tablet, Sam’s arms shook hard and then collapsed under him. He lay still on the ground, coming out of the dissociative focus he’d forced himself into and taking deep, steadying breaths. Maybe the super soldier workout regimen wasn’t meant for mere mortals, but as long as it wasn’t actually killing him he had no intention of giving up.

He pushed himself up into a sitting position, working to slow his breathing back to normal in between huge gulps of their temporary apartment’s tepid tap water. Glancing across the room, he saw Loki regarding him, his fingers still moving in Wanda’s hair. Sam stared back, fiercely pretending he wasn’t unnerved by the attention. 

Loki had brought a lot of life back into their little group, but there was something about the magical alien god that made him inscrutable. And Sam liked to think he was good at reading people, it was something he relied on both in the heat of battle and working with therapy patients, so this was more than a little annoying. It had to be the magical-alien-god thing that was throwing him off.

Exhaling out, Sam got to his feet. Stretching and shaking out his arms (which felt slightly less on fire than after his last attempt, a win), he headed over to the small kitchenette to refill his glass. He glanced back at the couch and noted the smile on Wanda’s face as she watched her silly, old show. She’d been growing more at ease since Loki had arrived, he’d noticed. Maybe having another magical person around made her feel better. 

He chugged an entire second glass of water before setting it down so he could stretch his arms more, and he wondered for the millionth time how he’d gotten himself into this position. Decorated combat veteran to international fugitive was quite the fall from grace, and while they’d found a way to keep themselves busy with their clandestine humanitarian missions, it was still jarring. They moved around so much, sometimes he didn’t even remember which country they were in.

He missed his sister. He didn’t dare call her—he wasn’t willing to let her lie to the government for him. He could imagine pretty well what Sarah would have to say to him though, and his cheeks burned a little thinking about it. 

Loki’s phone vibrated loudly several times in a row. Which was so weird. Loki was lost in a different universe, yet still had multiple texting buddies around the world apparently. 

Usually it was Dr. Jane Foster, the scientist trying to get Loki back to the right dimension. Sam was glad that wasn’t his job. None of their group were experts in quantum astrophysics, but from what they gathered and overheard, it wasn’t going particularly well. If it was, Loki wouldn’t be here. 

He drank more water, watching Loki tie off the end of the braid he’d been working on and pick up the phone. He scrolled through long paragraphs of message, frowning more the farther he scrolled. 

“Good news?” Sam asked. 

Loki rolled his eyes. 

The easy familiarity Loki had with all of them was kind of nice, but also pretty unnerving due to the alien god thing.  

The front door swung open and Natasha came in carrying a tote bag of groceries. 

Plopping it onto the counter next to Sam, she said, “Wanda, I have so much paprika. I let this nice, old lady completely con me, but I really didn’t know there were so many kinds.” 

Sam leaned over to peer into the bag, about to reach in when Loki stood up abruptly.

“I have to go,” he said.

They all stared at him, confused. He continued, “Back to New York.” Then he looked as if he didn’t know what to say… or like he was unsure how much explanation he needed to give to them. 

Sam honestly wasn’t sure how much explanation he wanted. He caught Natasha’s eye and she shrugged. “Okay then,” she said, clapping her hands together like that’s that.

“Are you… coming back?” Wanda asked. She was still seated on the floor and looked up at Loki with big eyes, her brow knitted.

Loki hesitated again, and Sam resisted the urge to say, “Spit it out, already!” He couldn’t imagine what news Loki had received that had him acting so cagey, but the only news he was expecting was about traveling back to his dimension. 

Which would make questions like ‘are you coming back’ pretty complicated. 

Loki opted not to answer. He looked at Wanda, something that looked like regret in his expression, then abruptly turned his attention to Natasha instead. “Can I speak to you outside before I go?” 

Natasha looked as bemused as Sam felt. She glanced at him again before heading back out the door, leaving it open for Loki to follow her. 

Loki turned to Sam first, clapped him on the shoulder and squeezed a bit. “This was fun,” he said. 

Sam found himself saying, “Yeah, it was.” 

Loki waved to Wanda and left, closing the door behind him and leaving Sam feeling some type of way. 

----------------------------------------

You’ll be right back, Loki said to himself. Jane had sent him a lot of information all at once and asked him to come talk in person, but that didn’t mean this is it. 

But what if it is?

He closed the door behind him and found Natasha leaning against the side of the painted concrete building with her arms crossed. She looked at him as if to say, ‘Well?’ 

“I’m getting my hopes up again, even though I am trying desperately not to,” he said, openly. “But… it’s important, so just in case I don’t come back, I have to ask you something first.” 

She frowned slightly. “What is it?” 

He glanced around them, making sure they were alone, then said, “Will you tell me everything you know about the Red Room and what I would need to do to stop it?” 

Natasha paled and he couldn’t help reaching out to place his hand on her shoulder like he would with his Natasha. She shrugged off his hand and he pulled it back immediately, watching as she straightened up, clearly distressed. 

He could see it on her face—she understood him perfectly. That things were different in his universe, which meant the other Natasha thought that she’d already brought down the Red Room with Clint back in 2008, her first S.H.I.E.L.D. operation. 

The other Natasha thought that Yelena was free and doing as she pleased with her life. 

Natasha flexed her hands into fists a couple of times before taking a deep breath. She still didn’t speak, looking like she was collecting her thoughts, perhaps deciding where to begin. 

So Loki spoke up quietly, “I will find her and make sure she is safe. I promise.” 

Natasha met his gaze. He could see her longing to believe that a promise from Loki meant something. After a moment, she nodded and began. 

—----------------------------------------------------

Loki was repeating every word Natasha had said to him as he streaked across the sky, west and north towards New York and the Avengers Compound. 

Steve hadn’t returned before he left and Loki hadn’t waited for him, though he felt a twinge of regret over it. “Tell Steve…” he’d said to Natasha, but then trailed off, unable to think of what to say. In light of his maybe-goodbyes, it was getting more confusing to keep his feelings straight for the people here and his family at home. Besides, surely Steve would be at least a little relieved to find Loki gone.

He landed hard outside the compound, his feet making a slight crack in the asphalt. The sky was grey, completely overcast and a strong breeze was blowing leaves off the trees; a pile of them swirled around at the door, which slid open automatically as he walked towards it. Jane was waiting for him in the atrium and hurried over the moment he stepped inside. 

“Hi, I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, smiling up at him. “I hope it wasn’t any trouble to come back on such short notice.” 

Loki’s heart sank immediately. If they had figured out how to send him home, she would have said so, without preamble or small talk. 

He made himself return her smile. “Not at all,” he said.

He thought she could tell that he knew, but she just said, “Great. Let’s go upstairs, Erik is in our lab.” 

Loki raised an eyebrow. “And you told him I was coming?” 

“Yes,” Jane said, rolling her eyes. “I told you it would be fine, he just needed a little time to get used to it. Come on.” She pulled at his arm to get him moving. Like they were normal friends catching up about their normal lives, he told her about an amazing baklava he’d eaten, and she let him know that she’d been back to the drag bar in the city. He was happy to see her, but the more they talked, the more he could feel the bad news that was coming. 

He saw Erik before Erik saw him, through the clear glass that made up the walls of all of the labs on this level. Loki tried to organize his thoughts to decide on something to say to him—how to thank him for being here and doing this work for someone he intimately knew to be a villain. 

Erik turned around just as they walked inside and to Loki’s surprise a wide grin spread across his face. 

“You’re here,” he said looking delighted, although there was a certain gleam in his eye that made Loki think he wasn’t being entirely sincere. 

Erik continued, “I can say with absolute certainty—we can send you home.”

“Erik…” Jane said as Loki’s insides somersaulted with a violent jolt of disbelief and hope. 

“We can,” Erik insisted, “If we rip this whole universe apart.”

“Erik!” Jane admonished. She put her hand on Loki’s arm and said, “I’m sorry, that’s not how we were going to tell you.” She shot a glare at Erik that was angry enough to make him look a little ashamed, though probably not completely sorry. 

Loki’s stomach was twisting and he tried to keep himself together enough to listen to what Jane was telling him. 

“We can’t get past the paradox problem,” she was saying. “It happens in every single version of every simulation no matter what we do.” 

She continued on, elaborating on what she’d said in her texts earlier, then she pulled up holoscreens with the specs on all of the trials they’d been running, but Loki couldn’t focus. He wasn’t going home today. Perhaps he wasn’t going home at all. This was the end and it truly was hopeless. He was collapsing in on himself, a singularity of despair, and all he could think of was… 

“What did Tony say?” he said abruptly, interrupting Jane and Erik (who’d been going back and forth about gluon fields and traceless matrices). 

Jane held up a hand to shush Erik and answered Loki, “That it was good we were giving up because now he’ll definitely figure it out first and we’ll both feel stupid.” 

Loki took a deep breath in through his nose and exhaled it slowly. “So, he doesn’t agree with your assessment?”

“It’s not for him to agree or not agree with the facts of the situation,” Erik said, although the hostility and glibness had gone from his tone. Looking at the man’s face, Loki thought he could see an edge of pity now—which must mean Loki looked truly pitiful. 

“The facts being, it is possible, but would tear this universe to shreds?” Loki inquired dryly, trying to clear whatever expression from his face was making Erik Selvig suddenly feel sorry for him. 

“Loki…” Jane began. She stopped, sharing a look with Erik, then continued, “Erik, aside from being a jerk just now, has studied and written extensively about the possibility of interdimensional travel. It’s always been theoretical before because you’d need the base energy of the sun to generate enough power to even hint at making it possible. And well, it turns out you can generate that kind of power, which made it all a lot more real, but…” She sighed. “We can’t make it work without destroying everything .” 

Loki heard her words and said nothing as he grappled with what they meant. He almost thought he could feel the entire multiverse, twisting and twining around him like an infinite number of branches, and spread throughout them were an infinite number of Lokis. How many were selfish enough to destroy an entire universe to get something they wanted? How many would have no problem sacrificing billions of lives, an entire reality of stories, so they could have the only thing that ever made them feel whole? 

Probably a lot of them. 

He wished he were one of those Lokis. Almost. 

“Enough,” he said abruptly, cutting off Jane who had continued speaking while his mind had looped and spiraled. “I get it.” His voice was pitched low, quiet, with danger underneath he didn’t try to conceal.

Loki put his hands in his pockets and strode past Jane, his footsteps echoing loudly in the now quiet lab. He looked down as he approached Erik, smiling a little as if enjoying a private joke with himself. Loki could sense the tension building in Erik, saw him brace his hands on the table behind him. 

Loki stopped directly in front of him, an uncomfortably small amount of space between them. The two of them were about the same height, but Erik’s perceptible cringe away gave Loki the slight advantage. He smiled again, bringing his gaze up to look directly into Erik’s eyes, which were nearly as blue as they had been when he had been under the Mind Stone’s control years ago. “I get it,” Loki repeated softly. 

Erik nodded, clearly struggling to get ahold of himself and appear unmoved by Loki’s tone and closeness. “Good,” he said. 

Loki smiled. “Of course you can’t figure it out. It was foolish of me to imagine anyone besides Tony Stark could even begin to grasp the science behind something like this.” 

Immediately Erik abandoned his cringing pose, puffing up to say, “Now wait—”

Loki reached out and grabbed hold of Erik’s upper arms so that Erik abruptly stopped speaking, letting out a slight yelp of surprise. For a moment, neither of them said anything as Loki squeezed Erik’s arms just a little too tight and kept intense, unnerving eye contact. He stared with a lurking, evil type of amusement, like there was no possible way to know what he would do next. 

But while he was enjoying messing with Erik in this way (small payback for getting Loki’s hopes up before gleefully crushing them), Loki wasn’t actually thinking about him at all. Mostly, Loki was considering if his Tony would rip a universe apart for him . 

Just as abruptly as he had seized him, Loki released his grip and Erik let out another involuntary noise, this one more of a gasp of relief. “Well,” Loki said, clapping him on the shoulder, his voice suddenly light and friendly. “You tried your best, that’s what matters. Right, Jane?” 

Finally looking back at Jane, he found her with her palm over her eyes shaking her head in exasperation. 

He crossed the room with all appearance of calm control and pressed his cheek against hers in farewell. “We’ll talk soon.” 

The last thing he heard as he went out the door was Jane hissing, “I asked you to be nice!”  

Chapter Text

Natasha’s eyes opened to the sound of the front door of the apartment shutting quietly. It was early, not even Steve was up yet—he was next to her, breathing deeply with his mouth slightly open, one arm tucked beneath his pillow and the other stretched out just enough to brush her arm. Wanda was still asleep on a small, stiff military cot (that Sam had volunteered to take but Wanda had argued that she was shorter, so he should have the couch). 

Natasha sat up silently. The door of their tiny bedroom was ajar and she strained to listen to any sound from the next room. Someone had come inside and, from the footsteps, she thought it sounded like Loki . 

Everything remained quiet. Sam, who had spent the night on the couch inches from the front door, clearly wasn’t being attacked and perhaps hadn’t even woken up. And Natasha’s heart sank. If Loki was here, then… he was still here. In this universe. Which meant he wasn’t back in his own universe helping Yelena. Not her Yelena, but the other Yelena. The one who Natasha would never have guessed existed a month ago, but had been occupying her thoughts since Loki left yesterday. 

Loki appeared in the doorway and caught her eye. She tried to give him a reassuring sort of look, like it was okay and that the next time would be the real thing. But she thought he probably had a matching pit in his stomach as he flashed a small, wry smile and shrugged. Then he continued on down the little hall and a moment later she heard the bathroom door close followed by the shower turning on. 

Natasha laid back down—not as carefully as she’d sat up and Steve stirred slightly, moving his arm to wrap around her waist. She sighed, staring up at the ceiling and trying not to think about her not-sister in another dimension under Dreykov’s control. About any of the girls there. She put a hand on top of Steve’s arm and shut her eyes. 

—-------------------------

Loki had been acting as if he hadn’t ever left, like he hadn’t been to the compound or said any goodbyes; like nothing had happened at all. The others had nervously followed suit and Natasha had elbowed Steve at least twice to stop him from asking about it. She thought Steve was a little put out that Loki had almost been gone forever without him knowing about it, but she didn’t ask for confirmation. It was a confusing feeling that they might really miss this Loki if he left. 

Well, besides the brief outings they all took to not go too stir crazy between missions. Loki was off on some unknown errand now while the rest of them sat eating breakfast at a kitchen table that was, for once, actually large enough to seat four. 

Sam was reading out loud from his phone, sharing choice comments from a reddit thread called r/ISawCaptainAmericaYesterday. He was halfway through a story from a girl who had been taking surf lessons from Steve in Costa Rica for the past week when the door flew open and hit the wall with a bang. 

Natasha kept her seat, because it was just Loki returning from wherever he’d been and she was mostly used to these types of theatrics from Loki by now. 

“We’re going to Austria,” Loki announced happily and with a snap of his wrist he unfurled a large poster. 

“Did you steal that from somewhere?” Sam inquired, but without much judgement.

“No, I magicked a copy of it so I could flourish it in front of you like this,” Loki answered, looking very pleased as he shook it at them. 

It was impossible to know if he was serious. 

“What is… Krampuslauf ?” Steve asked, frowning at the poster.

Wanda smirked. “The American boys don’t know Krampus.” 

“You’d better tell them,” Natasha said. “Though it’s probably too late. I happen to know you’ve both been misbehaving quite a bit this year.” 

Natasha hadn’t heard the story the way she imagined Wanda had; parents whispering the tale in a darkened room with a mischievous glint in their eyes while twins huddled together and hid half their faces beneath a quilt, partly terrified and partly delighted. But she had been told the story, along with countless others in lessons so she could blend in properly and not alert civilians by being unfamiliar with their customs. 

Her childhood had been life or death every day for real; the Red Room hadn’t needed fairy tales to scare the girls there. 

“Krampus,” Wanda said, placing her hands flat on the table dramatically, “is part demon, covered in shaggy hair, with one cloven hoof and goat horns growing from his head.” She looked around to make sure she had everyone’s complete attention, her voice drawing out the words to paint a picture. “His long, pink tongue hangs out of his mouth between his pointy fangs. And once a year, he comes through the villages and towns to visit badly behaved children. He snatches them up,” she cried, banging a fist on the table and making Sam jump in his seat, “puts them into his sack and beats them with reeds.” She smiled in satisfaction at the looks on Steve and Sam’s faces and even Loki looked surprised. “The especially naughty children are carried away, who knows where… Perhaps he eats them. Or,” she paused, “perhaps he carries them all the way to hell.” 

There was a moment of stunned silence that followed this story, broken by Loki letting out a loud, “Ha!” before continuing, “This is even better than I thought!”

“I’m sorry, they tell that story to little kids in Sokovia?” Sam demanded. 

Wanda nodded, “Not just Sokovia, many places in Europe.” 

“Well that’s terrifying,” Steve agreed. 

Sam shook his head. “And they think Americans are weird.” 

Loki tossed the maybe stolen, maybe magicked poster down onto the table. “It’s on Monday, get excited.” 

---------------------------------------

Wanda could feel her heart beating with excitement as she and her four companions reached the metal barricade that would separate them from the procession. It was very crowded, but Wanda had placed a hand on people’s shoulders and they suddenly found themselves happy to move aside and allow their group to pass until they stood at the very front. 

It was dark, despite the streetlamps and twinkle lights that decorated the buildings along the road. It was also freezing, so it worked out very well for them all to have their heads and faces covered. Except for Loki, who wore an overcoat with a scarf casually draped around his neck more for decoration than warmth. He had no hat or gloves and seemed unbothered by the cold. 

Wanda liked the cold, it reminded her of home and its sharpness made things feel bright and clear. She wrapped one hand around the barrier in front of them, feeling the iciness of it through her glove. 

There had been a scaled down version in her hometown some years, when the war had not been quite so bad. But that was just to entertain the local children, nothing like this . Here, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of locals and tourists lining the streets for over a mile, all awaiting the release of the beasts. 

“It’s snowing,” Steve said beside her. She looked up and, sure enough, light flurries had started to fall. The excitement of the crowd seemed to swell even more from this development. 

She had told Vision about this, two days ago when they’d stolen a single night together; wrapped in his arms were the only times she spoke of Pietro. She’d shared how Pietro loved to try to scare her around this time of year with Krampus tales, jumping out at her from around corners and out of closets. But he usually ended up scaring himself, and he’d be unable to sleep until she climbed into bed with him. Don’t worry , she’d say to him. Now Krampus will eat me first . 

“See, Sam?” Natasha said. “Look at all the little kids here, you can be as brave as them can’t you?” 

“I’m not scared!” Sam insisted.

They’d been teasing him since Wanda had related the story of Krampus and she smiled. It reminded her of having a brother, which both comforted and stung at the same time. 

Suddenly, a loud horn sounded, echoing through the street. More horns followed and the sound reverberated all around them, like it was coming from all directions.

Then it started, but not with the demons Wanda was expecting. The parade opened with St. Nicholas himself riding a sleigh, motorized as there was no one pulling it. He wore red and white with a tall, ornate mitre on his head. Surrounding the sleigh were young women and children dressed all in white and angel wings. 

“Is this supposed to make us feel better before the monsters come?” Sam asked. 

“Last chance to be good,” Natasha said in a sing-song voice. 

“Last chance to run for it,” Sam responded, sounding like he was considering it. 

An enormous column of fire erupted about a block away from where they stood. Screams filled the air; Steve was ready to vault over the barricade when Loki grabbed hold of his arm. “It’s only Krampus,” he assured, and sure enough the screams transformed into laughter. The column of fire shrank back down, although black smoke still billowed through the streets and there was a strong smell of accelerant. And then the beasts were loose. 

The sound was incredible: a cacophony of deep, clanging bells dangling from the neck of each Krampus. Their costumes were far more convincing than anything Wanda had seen as a child and she felt a flicker of adrenaline rush through her at the terrifying sight of the street filled with them, just as she’d described. Covered head to toe in matted hair and fur pelts, elaborate masks so detailed they seemed alive with sharp fangs and lolling pink tongues. Some of their eyes glowed a bright red, casting an even scarier glow over the gruesome faces. Their headpieces were enormous; she saw giant horns, some that curved around like a ram’s, and some with many horns pointing in all different directions, and there were several that looked rather like…

“Loki, do you know these guys?” Natasha yelled over the noise, pointing towards a group whose enormous horns stuck out of their foreheads and then curved backwards—precisely like the headpiece Loki had worn when he’d attacked New York four years ago. 

“Oh yes, this is our family reunion and I wanted you all to be here,” Loki replied easily. 

Wanda smiled, but then jumped back with a yell, stepping on Loki’s foot as a Krampus leapt up on the barricade and pushed his face right towards her own. He growled loudly and though her heart was pounding, she couldn’t help laughing in surprise. The creature growled louder and then jumped back down to the street. He carried a large stick which he hit against the barricade several times, making the children next to them shriek. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Wanda heard Natasha saying in a teasing voice and leaned around Steve to see Sam with his hands up on either side of his face struggling to keep his expression neutral. Wanda bit her lip as Steve put an arm around Sam’s shoulders. 

“We’ve got you,” Steve said reassuringly and Wanda laughed in surprise.

“Don’t help them gang up on me, come on.” Sam elbowed Steve, but Wanda noticed he let Steve keep his arm draped over his shoulders. 

“I love Krampuslauf, ” Loki said quietly and Wanda looked up to see his eyes shining. 

The parade continued, each group somehow even scarier than the last. Many carried long chains that they swung and hit against the street and the barricade. Some carried torches and some breathed fire, bursts of flame into the air that made the crowd shriek. Baskets adorned their shoulders, just large enough to fit someone inside. They were all different; some walked with a terrifying gravitas, while others darted here and there, crashing against the barricades, shaking the metal barriers or hitting them with sticks. 

Most seemed to enjoy taunting the crowd, prodding and poking at people or snatching hats from heads and running off. Smoke canisters kept going off, filling the streets with white or red clouds that dissolved into a fog from which more and more Krampuses emerged. 

They watched about twelve or so in white fleeces as if they’d slaughtered a flock of sheep to wear for the occasion. Their masks had blue skin covered in scars and short horns sticking out of their heads like goats. “Now that one there does actually look very like my father,” Loki commented, pointing to the one closest to them who was dragging two huge chains along the ground. 

“The king of Asgard looks like that ?” Steve said, skeptically. 

“Of course not,” Loki scoffed, “didn’t Thor ever mention that I was adopted?”

Wanda glanced at Steve. She could see from his and Natasha’s faces that Thor had indeed mentioned this detail, but perhaps they’d never really thought about what that meant. 

“You’re joking,” Natasha said to him, clearly hoping that it was a statement and not a question. 

Wanda watched Loki’s face as he smiled and answered, “I’m joking.” 

Natasha looked relieved and turned back to the chaos of the parade, but Loki met Wanda’s gaze and winked. He wasn’t joking. She narrowed her eyes at him, a few more pieces of the puzzle that was Loki falling into place. 

He leaned down suddenly and put his mouth close to her ear. “Cover me,” he whispered. 

Before she could ask what he meant, he was gone, lost in the crowd which quickly moved up to fill in the space where he’d been. She turned back, surreptitiously glancing towards her companions who didn’t seem to notice that Loki had left them. 

She thought she probably should be nervous about whatever was about to happen, but instead she felt a flutter of anticipation. Loki had been spending more time with her, working with her on her magic. To appease her, they worked on control and precision, but his preferred lessons were more about pushing the boundaries she imagined for herself. 

So she wasn’t exactly surprised when an enormous roar of delighted shrieking sounded from the front of the crowd. 

They had seen several Krampuses walking around on short stilts, the kind that strap on to your shoes and add a foot or so to your height, but now down the street strode an actual giant. Twelve feet high and as blue as corn flowers, Loki wore nothing but a patchwork of white fur and a crown of enormous horns that glittered in the streetlamps and flare-light like crystal. Or ice. His eyes were red, as if filled with blood, and his blue face was covered with a pattern of ridges. 

Despite all this, it was undeniably Loki who waved to the crowd with his most mischievous grin on his face. A thrill went through Wanda as she looked up at him, taking in the fear and confusion and awe and excitement of the crowd around her. Feeling what they were all feeling was intoxicating. 

“Oh my god,” she heard Natasha mutter under her breath as she, Sam, and Steve realized what was happening. 

“I’m going to kill him,” Steve said flatly. 

Wanda summoned a wave of magic to her fingers and then released it through the crowd. This caused a different tone of shrieking as everyone’s phones went dead at the same time. Putting a foot on the bottom rung of the barricade, she leveraged herself up using Steve’s shoulder and yelled as loud as she could. “It’s a hologram!” 

Other people took up the cry, looking delighted to be in on the secret. They told their neighbors and pointed in a superior way. Couldn’t they see the haze around the edge? Obviously it was tech. 

“Is that how holograms work?” the woman next to Wanda asked aloud. 

Steve looked at Wanda, who was just about his height standing up on the barrier as she was. She raised her eyebrows at him, silently imploring him to let go and play along. 

He sighed heavily, but then reached his hand into his pocket. Finding a tin of mints, he pulled his arm back and threw it. The tin hit Giant Loki directly in the cheek—and passed right through it, leaving a glowing hole for a moment before the image closed up again. 

“See, I told you!” shouted someone nearby. 

The crowd gasped with glee, laughing and pointing. The children next to Wanda waved frantically, trying to get Loki’s attention. He stopped and leaned down to them, showing enormous pointy teeth, making them scream and grab their mother. Loki’s gaze flitted over Wanda and landed on Steve who was shaking his head. But Wanda could see him biting the inside of his bottom lip. 

The Krampuses, who had scattered in confusion, now formed ranks around the giant. Two fire breathers ran around him to walk in front and blow a path of fire for him. 

“Oh my god, he loves this,” Natasha said. 

“Yeah, not much opportunity to get attention when you’re on the run and supposed to be laying low,” Steve said, folding his arms. 

“But hey,” Wanda said optimistically, “Sam, you don’t have to be afraid anymore! We’re personal friends of the King Krampus!” 

Sam broke the stoic face he’d been keeping to match Steve’s and laughed. Wanda jostled Steve a little. “Don’t worry, I took care of all the tech, there’s no photographic evidence. Just a beautiful memory.” 

Steve shook his head again, but this time he smiled.

-------------------------------------

As Christmas approached, Loki felt himself growing more despondent. He knew it was Midgardian sentiment gripping him, but he was unable to shake it. This was supposed to be a third perfect Christmas with the Avengers. His family, who he hadn’t seen for exactly one hundred days. 

In that time, he had impossibly recovered different versions of some of them. He still marveled at himself that he had done it. All of those times he had considered flying away into the depths of space or reliving the ‘good’ old days and razing the planet and instead…

“These are the ugliest things I’ve ever seen,” Loki said, holding up a scarf to show Wanda and Sam, who were also crowded around the stall at the Vienna Christmas Market. 

Sam chortled deep in his throat, trying to keep a straight face so the vendor wouldn’t catch them mocking his wares. 

It was knitted black with colorful polka dots. Sam reached out to touch the fur that edged the scarf. “This looks like a cat my sister had when we were kids.” 

Wanda made a face. “Cat scarves, lovely,” she said sarcastically. 

“Truly hideous,” Loki said. “And look, there’s different colors too.” He fingered through the pile for a moment and then waved to get the vendor’s attention. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’ll take ten of these.” 

“ Ten? ” Sam asked in horror as the vendor happily took the scarves from Loki and started to put them into a shopping bag. 

“You never know when you might need a last minute gift for someone,” Loki said casually, handing over a rather ridiculous amount of money and taking the bag of ‘cat scarves.’

“How can you have so many enemies when you’re not even from here?” Wanda asked, making Sam laugh. 

“Oh, it’s easy enough when you’re me,” Loki said. 

The three of them kept walking, looking at far less ugly crafts and wares. Wanda was running her hand over a tapestry when Natasha and Steve found them. They had gallantly offered to wait in the gluhwein line, both so that the others could keep shopping and also to not draw attention by being altogether in a group in the same spot for too long. (Lines could be risky, people had nothing to do while they waited but scrutinize whoever was around them.)

But even Steve was much more relaxed with being out and about in broad daylight when Loki was with them. Everyone here was bundled in hats and scarves, and the bright morning sun called for big sunglasses. And Natasha had practical tricks for crowded tourist spots; she was wearing a giant pair of fuzzy red earmuffs and Sam’s scarf was striped in shades of bright green, the idea being that fugitives trying to hide would never be walking around in such eye-catching garments. 

But of course Loki was their ultimate defense. In less than a second he could alter any of their appearances just enough to embarrass anyone who might try to call them out. If some confident law enforcement officer demanded Steve remove his sunglasses, hat, and scarf he’d find deep brown eyes, curly hair, and a wide nose covered in freckles. Someone who had, at first glance, perhaps resembled Captain America, but on closer inspection clearly wasn’t. 

They’d practiced this many times, sometimes seriously and sometimes for fun, a common game back with his own Avengers that had hurt his heart even as he’d laughed with his new friends. 

Natasha and Steve held out the mugs they’d brought back. They were burgundy with Weihnactsdorfer written across the top in white and an illustrated Santa Claus standing in front of the Maria-Theresien-Platz where they stood. Loki took one carefully to make sure the others weren’t dropped. 

The wine was hot and spiced and delicious. When they’d finished, Loki waved a hand over the mugs, magicking them clean so he could put them in his shopping bag without getting the cat scarves sticky. The wine and the company and the enormous array of silly things to buy helped, but he was antsy. His inability to break back into his own universe was creating a pent up energy and he needed somewhere to put it. 

Natasha put her hands in her pockets, looking around. “Well, we can officially check this off of our tourist Christmas list.” 

Sam put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Come on, you kind of like the tourist thing, you can tell us.” 

Natasha was saved from having to answer when Steve pulled off one of his gloves to retrieve his phone which was vibrating. He read a message, frowning slightly. 

“Tour’s over?” Loki asked. 

“Yup,” Steve said. 

Loki smiled. Perhaps a good fight was exactly what he needed. 

Always get back up.

Chapter Text

His phone was vibrating. Somewhere. Loki felt around for it, keeping his eyes shut until he discovered it under his pillow and pulled it out to look at the screen.  

Tony. Well, Wrong Tony . Loki frowned, mildly wondering if he was actually still asleep or not, but tapped the screen and put the phone to his ear. 

“Hello,” he said.

“Hey,” Wrong Tony said, sounding very awake. “Come over.” 

Loki squeezed his eyes open and shut a few times, more certain he was dreaming now. “Is this one of those middle of the night sex calls?” he asked groggily. 

He heard an exaggerated sigh over the phone. “We’re having a thing at the compound and you should come.” 

It was Christmas Loki realized, waking up a little bit more. Still Christmas Eve in New York. 

Loki sat up on one elbow. “You’re at the compound?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” Tony responded, sounding annoyed to repeat himself. “How soon can we expect you? Three minutes?” 

Loki considered just hanging up. It wouldn’t have been too hard to fall back asleep. Steve was asleep on a mat on the floor a little ways from where Loki lay on the couch. 

Instead, Loki answered, “A little less.” 

~~~~~

Streaking across the night sky, Loki tried not to overthink this. But… Christmas Eve, at the compound? That’s where he was supposed to be right now, a universe away, with his Tony and his family.   

Here in this universe, in the days leading up to Christmas Eve, he’d more than once considered surprising Sam, Nat, Steve, and Wanda with a decorated Christmas wonderland in their latest safe house. He could easily picture their reactions—Wanda’s eyes shining with wonder; Natasha, pleased and pretending not to be; Sam, wary of any display of Loki’s power, but still egging everyone on to get into the Christmas spirit . And Steve would probably catch his eye or clap him manfully on the arm at some point and say thank you with enough weight to suggest that it wasn’t just about the decor, but about how Loki had saved all their lives, how he he had stuck with the so-called rogues through hellish missions and ramshackle sleeping arrangements across half the world. How he had somehow become a trusted ally, no, friend , when they desperately needed friends.

But he’d found he had no real enthusiasm for the idea. If I’m still here next year, we’ll have a real Christmas, he’d thought to himself, immediately followed by a wave of nausea. 

He kept getting so close, but didn’t want to fully commit to this world, these people. That would mean he’d given up—and he couldn’t give up. He had to go home. 

It had snowed in New York, so he politely flew all the way to the door to avoid tracking snow and salt inside. They clearly still hadn’t done anything about security measures against the Other Loki because the doors slid open for him immediately as he walked in. Someone behind a desk only half looked up from the book they were reading and said, “They’re in the library, go ahead up.” 

He followed these instructions, noting the bare walls and hallways. (No Lokis or Wandas to cover the whole place in Christmas.)

He found a small group waiting for him and quickly braced himself as Jane practically ran over and hugged him tightly, a bit to his surprise. When she pulled back, she looked up at him, smiling but with worried eyes. “Merry Christmas, I’m really glad you came.” 

Loki smirked back at her. “You started drinking without me,” he said, making her laugh. 

She turned and Loki took in the rest of the group approaching to greet him, his insides jumping as his eyes met Tony’s from across the room. Pepper was next to him, with Erik and…

“Hey, I’m Darcy. I was with them in New Mexico so you did almost kill me that one time.” She grinned and stuck out a hand for him to shake. “But it’s nice to meet you!” she said brightly. Or very sarcastically, he couldn’t quite tell which.

“Likewise,” he said, grasping her hand. Darcy was an odd duck. Perpetually joining Jane on scientific research missions with unclear scholarly responsibilities. She was at ease around everyone and anyone and had absolutely no respect for authority figures or Asgardian gods. Loki liked her. 

Erik looked a little sheepish, but mostly defiant standing next to her. However, he extended his hand. Loki maintained steady eye contact and quirked the corner of his mouth up as he reached out to grasp the man’s hand in his. It was Christmas, after all. 

Then Pepper was hugging him, much more of a surprise than Jane. As Loki returned the hug, his eyes met Tony’s again and Tony clapped him on the shoulder; the physical contact sent a spark through Loki’s body and it took a concerted effort to tamp down the feeling. 

Then he saw it when Pepper pulled away from him. 

Familiar enough with Midgardian customs, especially one that was featured so constantly in film and television, when he saw the ring on her finger he knew immediately what it meant. So he knew why it felt as if a stone had dropped into his stomach and there was a slight buzzing in his ears and he felt like he was drowning, all at once. 

But worse than feeling like this would be them seeing him feeling like this, so he snapped the feelings up and shoved them down into the deepest depths of himself and, pretending he hadn’t noticed anything at all, asked, “So, what’s the thing going on tonight?”

Pepper explained about the party upstairs. A little gathering, actually Tony’s idea, but just them and people who worked at the compound, and they hadn’t wanted Loki to be alone. 

Loki hoped he was giving the impression of listening to her. This isn’t your Tony. This one is hers. You sent him to her for what other reason than this? Be happy. 

He’d never mentioned the Pepper of his universe to Tony. He might have done that, the way he used to be. Rubbed it in Tony’s face, told him how beautiful Pepper looked on her wedding day and how Madeleine had cried when she’d seen her bride, the vows they’d made and how good the filet mignon had been. 

Madeleine worshipped Pepper. He wondered if she had someone else in this world or not.

“Okay,” Wrong Tony said, clapping his hands together and snapping Loki out of his spiraling thoughts. “Why don’t you all head over and Loki and I will meet you there in a minute. Just have a little business and quantum mechanics to discuss.” 

There was agreement to this and then Loki and Tony were alone.  

~~~~~~~

Loki didn’t look at Tony as the silence stretched on between them, a rare occasion where Tony was lost for words. It was just that, Tony had seen Loki noticing Pepper’s ring, he had seen the moment Loki had gone ice cold, even while he kept his eyes warm and his voice light. Because apparently they had spent so much time together at this point that Tony could perceive the slightest changes in Loki’s moods—or, more likely, his brain was just making all this up to torture him.  

He had considered telling Loki a thousand times before he got here tonight. He had considered telling Loki before he’d even proposed. He’d literally typed out and erased a dozen texts. Because really, Tony getting his shit together vis-ȧ-vis Pepper had only happened because of Loki, who had burst into his life and changed everything. 

And yet, he hadn’t done it. He hadn’t known what to say. Whatever was between Loki and the Tony in the other universe was obviously very intense and serious, but what was between Loki and him wasn’t nothing. He had no idea what it was, but it had prevented him from telling Loki about the ring, and now here they were. 

“So,” Tony finally began, leaning back against a desk. “I guess you’ve already heard about the whole tearing the universe apart situation. And I guess you understand why we don’t want to do that.” 

Loki didn’t look at him, casually running a hand along the spines of some books on the shelf beside him. 

“Yes,” Loki said, shortly. “I’d feel the same.” 

“Hm,” Tony replied. He was trying to parse if Loki was more sad or more angry. “Or. Maybe you see us as fake versions of the real thing, so you’re willing to sacrifice all of us.” 

One side of Loki’s mouth quirked upward wryly. “No,” he said softly. “I don’t think that.” 

There was silence between them for a moment, but Tony sensed that Loki wanted to say more.

“It’s something I would have said to my Tony,” Loki said, quietly. “ I’d do anything for you. I’d rip the universe to pieces for you. But now, presented with the prospect of actually doing that… Well, perhaps I’m not as audacious as I thought.” 

Tony sighed in annoyance. He still couldn’t admit that there was something so impossible he couldn’t figure it out. Even when presented with what Erik and Jane had been working on, he’d spent days barely sleeping trying to rework it, certain that they’d missed something and if he just made one more tweak, ran one more simulation, he’d be able to pick up the phone and tell Loki he was going home. 

But it hadn’t happened and now it was Christmas and he was what? Flaunting his relationship with Pepper while telling Loki he was stuck here forever?  

He gritted his teeth and forced out words that felt like a lie, but he hoped were more of an… educated wish. “It’s just a setback. We’ll figure it out. If you got here, then there’s a way to get back. Period.” 

Loki looked at him then, clearly seeing right through him— knowing him. Not just from spending far too much time palling around in the lab months ago, but because he and the Tony in the other universe were, much to his alarm, extremely alike. 

Now, they seemed to have switched places. Circumstances, anyway. Loki had found him sad and alone, but now he had Pepper, he had a mission, he was regrowing a life. And the Other Tony… had his life snatched away from him.

Say something , a voice inside Tony’s head said. Say something. Apologize or… thank him. Just acknowledge it, say something.  

Loki said nothing, and Tony, instead of listening to anything the little voice was telling him, found his voice coming out falsely upbeat. “Come on, let’s check out the buffet situation upstairs.”

Loki pursed his lips in an almost smile. “You go on, I’ll be right there.” 

—----------------------------

Tony had hesitated a little, but must have decided to respect Loki’s wish to be alone and he left without saying anything else.

Loki left the library as well, but instead of heading to the living room for the party, he went downstairs to the lab. It was dark, just the emergency lights glowing softly around the edge of the ceiling. He walked to the spot where he had first stood in this alternate universe and then slowly sank to the floor, crouching with his elbows on his knees. He closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. As he often did, he tried to fling his mind out and away and back into his own universe, imagining he would open his eyes and his own Tony would be in front of him to bring him back to the party. 

“Tony,” he said out loud. He hesitated, but then continued speaking. “I hope you’re not pathetically sitting on the floor of the lab too. Although it would be something if we were actually sitting right next to each other without knowing it.” 

He tried to feel it, the warmth of Tony’s body, their arms and knees just barely touching. “I miss you,” he breathed, his voice lowering to whisper. “Sometimes more than I think I can bear. And yet I do, and the days pass, and I’m still here.” 

Some machinery was humming quietly, the only sound in the room besides his own breathing. Every inch of his being was longing . For Tony, for Thor, for his mother, for his life. It wasn’t fair . 

His eyes flew open and he stood up abruptly, almost stumbling as his brain adjusted back to the reality of the room after being so far inside his own thoughts and feelings. Squeezing his hands into fists which glowed faintly in gold and blue, he said, “I will come home. I will come home, I promise.” 

~~~~~~

When the elevator opened, he stepped out. He could hear Christmas carols playing softly in the living room, glasses clinking, people chatting. He thought he should walk into the room, but found he couldn’t move. 

What was he doing here? The people of this universe thought him nothing more than an irredeemable fiend who had almost destroyed their planet—and while that last part was true, he’d done a lot of work to shed the irredeemable bit. 

Still, his presence would add nothing good to this party, and for him it would just add more weight to the gaping pit in his chest. 

There were stockings hung on the fireplace. For Christmas back home, he always magicked it to look like a traditional brick fireplace with a large open woodfire, like in a storybook. This one was the usual steel and concrete modern type where you pushed a button to turn on the flames. The stockings had no names on them, not intended to be filled. Just decor, ambience for the guests. 

Loki gestured minutely towards the stockings and five of them suddenly sagged with the weight of gifts. Then he wondered if anyone would even notice them. It didn’t really matter, and yet… 

Loki looked in at the party, subdued compared to the parties they had started throwing in his universe. The one he should be at right now. Were they still having it? 

This was just a small, corporate party with Tony and Pepper the shining stars at the center and everyone else orbiting around them. He could go in for just a bit, schmooze, chitchat, pretend to be interested in the smalltalk, pretend to be celebrating the happy couple. He intended to take a step forward, really, but he couldn’t do it. He physically couldn’t move. 

He turned away instead, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he stepped into the elevator. He typed a text to Jane. Check the stockings for you, Darcy, Erik, Tony, and Pepper after the party. No peeking. I’m trusting you to keep Santa a secret.

Mostly coal I assume. But I will. Merry Christmas. She sent a heart emoji and didn’t question why he was leaving. It must be obvious. 

He sighed, put his phone back in his pocket, and got outside as fast as he could. The cold air filled his lungs sharply and he savored the sensation. It had been so warm in there. Stifling. Suffocating. He didn’t belong here. Not just here, at the compound, but anywhere here. There was nowhere for him to fit, no matter how much he tried to wedge himself in. Here, Tony married Pepper and there were no Avengers and the Other Loki—who knew what that guy was getting up to right now? Probably his best to ruin his own life and alienate anyone who might want to help, because that’s what Lokis did in this universe.

Maybe if Other Thor returned… He wanted his brother very badly at that moment, and even his fake brother from this universe would be an extremely welcome sight. He hoped that Other Thor was all right. Perhaps he should have offered to go with him and the Other Loki instead of all this sulking around Midgard. But when he’d left them, he’d thought he was going home…

He bent his knees, summoned the cosmic power that lived within him now, and launched himself into the sky. 

~~~~~~

Arriving back, he found two things to be true: the first was that there was no way he could go back to sleep now, and the second was that he couldn’t entirely let go of the idea of doing something special for the team for Christmas. So, by the time the others woke up, he’d made an enormous number of thick, fluffy pancakes—blueberry for Sam and Nat, chocolate chip for Wanda, and strawberry-banana for Steve. A small, wrapped parcel was at each of their places at the table. 

Their appreciation seemed to bounce off of him instead of sink in. He felt a little dazed, as if his mind was still trying to push through some invisible boundary back to his own world. But he was roused when the wrapping paper was torn from the gifts. 

“Wow,” Natasha said, unfolding the length of polka dots and fur. “These are…” she trailed off. 

Steve picked up where she’d left off, trying to put some enthusiasm in his voice. “It’s definitely… a scarf. I think.”

Wanda caught Sam’s eye and they both started laughing.

Natasha relaxed immediately. “Oh, it’s a joke, thank god,” she said, relief in her voice. 

“No,” Loki said, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. “You’re all really hurting my feelings very badly right now.”

Sam gamely put the scarf around his neck. “I can totally pull this off. Polka dots and cat fur are all the rage for the new year, obviously.” 

Loki felt the invisible boundary crack just a little, allowing through hints of feeling present and wanted and happy . He decided he couldn’t sit here at Christmas breakfast any longer. 

He stood up, perhaps too abruptly as everyone stopped talking to look at him. 

“Sorry,” he said, trying to sound casual. “I’m just… I’m just going to go for a walk.” 

He stood up without looking at them, but before he reached the door he heard Natasha say, “I’ll come with you.” 

~~~~~~~~~

It hadn’t been a question, and Loki didn’t argue as Natasha grabbed a coat and followed him out the door. Before shutting it all the way, she shot a glance back to the three still at the table and raised her eyebrows in signal. 

Loki was very prone to shifting moods. They all were really, but Loki was the most extreme. She could almost physically feel him sometimes, struggling between planting himself solidly in this world and succumbing to overwhelming sadness over the loss of his own. She hated that she couldn’t do anything about it. She’d punch a hole through the space between the worlds for him if she could. 

He’d saved her from another dimension and she couldn’t return the favor. 

Except with company, that she could do. The two of them walked without speaking for quite awhile. They were in Tbilisi at the moment and made their way to a tree lined street that wound along the Kura. It would be prettier in the summer when there were leaves on the trees, but it was still pretty even with the bare branches and grey sky. The majority of the people here wouldn’t celebrate Christmas until January so, for the rest of the city, it was an average day. 

“Today is hard, isn’t it?” Natasha asked, finally breaking the silence between them. 

She wouldn’t mind if he didn’t respond, but she thought she’d see if he wanted to. 

After a few moments he said simply, “Yes. It is.” 

Natasha nodded. “You went out last night.” 

“But briefly,” Loki replied. 

She could guess his destination and assumed he knew that. Before she could ask anything else, Loki spoke again, the words seeming to spill from him, “Tony and Pepper are engaged to be married.” 

“Whoa,” Natasha said. That was unexpected. Last any of them knew, Tony and Pepper’s volatile on-again-off-again relationship was permanently off. “Tony must have really turned himself around.” 

“It would seem so,” Loki said. 

He was keeping his voice casual, but Natasha knew he must be hurting, and she wasn’t really sure how to comfort him. A duplicate of the love of his life, who he might never see again, was marrying someone else. She’d been in a lot of bizarre situations, but had no experience that would apply to this. At this point, she could hardly even imagine just the being in love part of it, without the interdimensional issues. The last time she’d opened up to someone like that… well, it had ended badly, he was very likely dead, and she didn’t imagine putting herself in that position again. 

At last she decided to just say, “That must have sucked.” 

Loki’s mouth quirked and a small laugh escaped him like a sigh. “Yes. It sucked very much, actually.” 

Taking advantage of the tiny smile that had appeared on his face, she went on, “Well he may be useless to use as a boyfriend, but you can still use him right? To go home.” 

“He seems to still think so, yes,” Loki said, sounding pessimistic. 

Natasha looped her arm through Loki’s and squeezed a little. “Then he will. He sucks, but he’s too stubborn to quit. He might even work harder now—I bet he feels bad, even if he didn’t say so.” 

Loki sighed. “It shouldn’t bother me.” 

Natasha shrugged her shoulders a little. “I think it would be weirder if it didn’t bother you.” 

Loki fell back into a quiet contemplation and Natasha let him. They kept walking, stopping at a cafe briefly for hot teas. They were just finishing when Natasha felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. She stood up and said, “Let’s head back.” 

~~~~~

They’d put up a tree to surprise him. 

Natasha had been ahead of him returning to the apartment, but then stepped aside so that he would open the door first. So he did, and there it was. A real pine tree, small and lopsided, but filling quite a bit of the tiny space, wrapped with a strand of twinkling white lights and crowned with a star made of tin foil on top. The bright, natural smell of it was incredible.

“Merry Christmas!” Steve and Sam sing-songed in a near unison. They stood on either side of the little tree with their arms out in a flourish. The tree sagged a little further to one side, and Loki caught Wanda surreptitiously waving a hand, coaxing it upright once more with magic. Such a silly little use of her power, nothing like the fantastical displays the two of them would conjure up back home. And then the damn thing sagged again anyway.

He couldn’t help it—he laughed. A lot. He laughed even harder at Sam’s put-out expression and Steve’s grumbles about how hard he’d worked on the star. He laughed in between gasps for breath and attempts to explain that he wasn’t laughing at them (when he very much was). Wanda had joined him almost immediately, and he heard her say the word “shenanigans” in a delighted whisper between chuckles, while Nat patted him awkwardly on the back as if afraid he might choke.

Loki supposed he would feel bad if he ripped this universe apart. Not just because it was “wrong,” but because somehow, there were people here who cared about him. Enough to try to invent science that didn’t exist, enough to try to bend every law of nature. Enough to put up a Christmas tree. 

“You like it?” Wanda asked, when they had finally caught their breath.

He didn’t know what to say, but she walked over to him and he allowed himself to be hugged and to hug her back. He cared about his real, unreachable family, but these people… he cared about them too. 

Chapter Text

More time passed. The particular ache that came with Christmas passed. 

It made it a little easier. He let himself, or perhaps, made himself relax into this new life and all of the ways it resembled the life he’d left. He went running with Steve in the mornings and took meandering walks with Natasha in the evenings. He enlisted Sam to sneak out with him when the others didn’t feel like clubbing and urged Wanda to embrace how much power she had. He made them watch stupid moves that they’d never seen but he already knew they liked and drove everyone crazy by playing “Despacito” non-stop for two weeks, innocently claiming that he just wanted to keep up with what Midgardians like. 

Their covert missions continued, some coordinated with Nakia and others tipped from Natasha’s sources. Steve was determined that they wouldn’t be idle, that they’d keep doing good no matter what anyone thought of them. They had the tech and the skill to be entirely untraceable and, with Loki’s magic in the mix, there wasn’t much tension over being caught by any of the law enforcement agencies looking for them. (Loki thought if he was employed by one of those agencies that he’d be pretty embarrassed and perhaps look for better ways to spend his time.)

A major blow to morale came when Loki was forced to recall something that his multiversal travelling had put right out of his mind. He was at the kitchen table in their current safe house, scrolling on his phone while the others finished breakfast and he didn’t help with the dishes. His stomach dropped and before he could think to stop himself he said out loud, “Oh no.” 

The others stopped what they were doing and he looked up from his phone at their alarmed faces. “What is it?” demanded Natasha. 

Instead of backtracking his tone, he put his phone down solemnly and shook his head. “I had forgotten…” he said, anguish in his voice. 

“Whoa, it’s okay, whatever it is,” Sam said, sitting back down at the table. Loki had everyone’s full attention now, Sam and Natasha both looking like they might reach out to grab his hand to comfort him, Steve with a dish towel in his hands, and Wanda holding an empty plate at the sink. 

Loki took a steadying breath and let a few tears well up in his eyes. Then he announced the horrible news: “The new season of Game of Thrones doesn’t start until July this year.” 

There was silence. And then Steve balled up the dish towel and threw it at Loki’s face. 

“And there are only seven episodes! Instead of ten!” Loki cried, as if he hadn’t noticed.

Natasha sighed and noisily slid her chair back as she stood up. “I’ll be in the shower,” she said and left the room. 

Sam snatched up the dish towel, which had fallen on the table after hitting Loki in the face. “You can really cry on cue like that? You should be in movies or something.” Sam tossed the towel back to Steve who shook his head. Loki caught Wanda’s eye and she laughed. 

“I’m serious,” Sam said, standing up and stretching his arms up over his head. “Anyway, the walls are closing in on this place, I’ve got to get out for a bit. Anyone want to come with?” 

“Yes, please” Wanda said immediately, dropping the rest of the dishes in the sink with a crash.

Steve made a small tsk noise, but didn’t say anything as he continued to do the dishes and Loki continued to not help. 

------------------------------------

It was a beautiful morning on the outskirts of Bucharest, warm with a little sun pushing through a sky of puffy white clouds. However what had started off a few minutes ago as a pleasant outing had turned into Natasha berating Wanda on the sidewalk for leaving her phone behind for the umpteenth time. “If you leave that phone just anywhere and someone finds it before we can wipe it…” 

Loki had quietly backed away from this now familiar scolding and jogged back the couple of blocks to the somewhat dilapidated house of which they were occupying a definitely unsanctioned apartment on the third floor. Just in case, he employed a little magic to keep the wobbly fire escape from collapsing as he climbed it. 

Once inside, he headed to the bedroom where Wanda had slept last night. The door of the room was ajar and he lifted a hand to push it open, but stopped when he heard a hushed, serious voice inside. 

“Just… tell him I love him.”

He frowned and slowly eased the door open, peering in to find Steve standing at the window with his back to Loki. His phone was pressed to his ear. “Yeah. ….. Yeah. …. Thanks.” 

Assessing that the intense conversation was now over, Loki stepped into the room and cleared his throat. Steve didn’t look up, just stared down at his phone in his hand.

“Am I interrupting?” Loki asked.

Steve finally looked up, his face pale. “No… no, I…” His face crumpled and he reached up to cover his face as a sob escaped him.

Loki forgot about this being an Other Steve from another universe; he only saw his friend in distress as he rushed forward. Before he realized what he was doing, or had time to consider that this Steve might not appreciate it, Loki had wrapped one arm around Steve’s shoulders and let the other come gently to the back of Steve’s neck, pulling him forward so that Steve was now sobbing into his chest.

It was shocking to see Steve fall apart like this; Loki had certainly never witnessed this in his universe. It was even more shocking when Steve lifted one hand to grip onto Loki’s upper arm, not just accepting the hug, but burying himself deeper into it.

After a minute, Steve pulled away and took a step back, clearly trying to get ahold of himself but still gasping a little as tears ran down his cheeks.

“What happened?” Loki asked gently.

“I, um…” Steve started, his voice choked. “That was… Shuri called. Um.” He stopped and closed his eyes and took a deep breath in and out, fighting to calm down.

“You know about Bucky’s… The code words that trigger the Winter Soldier?”

Loki nodded and Steve continued. “They, um… He’s… They don’t work anymore. He’s… Shuri said he’s free. That’s how she said it, he’s free.” Steve’s face crumpled again, and he tilted his head downward as if to hide it even though he’d now been openly crying in front of Loki for several minutes.

Loki was stunned. “What? They…” He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it. In his world, they hadn’t even thought it possible. But of course, in Wakanda plenty of impossible things turned out not to be. 

“Can we go see him?” Loki asked.

Steve shook his head. “Shuri says he’s still very raw and we should wait a few more weeks, but then…” Steve gave a small laugh that seemed to surprise him. “Then, I can see him and he’s…” He exhaled and rubbed both hands over his face at once.

“Sorry, jeez.” Embarrassment was creeping in as Steve calmed down. “Sorry, this is just…”

“It’s incredible,” Loki cut in. “I can’t believe it.”

“This didn’t happen in your universe, huh?” Steve asked. 

Loki shook his head. “We didn’t even… We didn’t think it a possibility. We all knew the words, had them well memorized and practiced in case… in case one of us had to regain control in an emergency. We thought that was the best we could do.”

Loki sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, leaning his elbows on his knees. Steve followed him, sitting down beside him, their legs almost touching.

“It haunted him,” Steve said after a moment. “Every minute, every day, he not only had the memories of things he had done, but the fear that it could happen again. And it did. He thought he’d gotten away, but someone got to him and he hurt more people and he… I was so afraid of what he would do. But we got him to Wakanda, and Shuri was so sure they could help, and I didn’t believe her. Even knowing everything Wakanda is and everything they can do, I didn’t really believe it until just now.”

Steve wiped at his face again and they sat quietly beside each other for a little longer. Loki’s head was spinning, but his thoughts slowed a little when Steve reached out and placed his hand on Loki’s knee. Loki looked up at Steve.

“Thank you,” Steve said quietly. “You didn’t have to be here for me just now. I think it’s what you would have done for the other Steve and… I kind of needed that. So, thanks.”

Loki smiled a little sadly. Steve got up from the bed and said, “I’m going to take a walk. I just need to move. I’ll be back soon.”

Loki watched him go. Here was another thing from this universe to add to the list of things he was desperate to bring back to his own. He wanted to believe there might be a reason for his coming here—he could learn these things to help his friends. He could try to believe that, instead of accepting that all this was a fluke that couldn’t be repeated or reversed.

Remembering his original mission, he twisted around to look over his shoulder, then stood up and grabbed Wanda’s phone off of the bedside table. 

 ---------------------------------- 

Wanda had been gone for just over two weeks now, longer than she’d ever left the group before. The last time any of them had heard from her was about three days ago when she’d sent Loki a selfie with the St. Giles Cathedral behind her. Natasha was growing more agitated and Steve was running out of ways to say that Wanda would be careful and that everything was fine . 

The four of them were in Calais, hunkered down in an abandoned AirBnB, much nicer than their usual fare and with a view of the sea. They were exhausted after the mission they’d completed several countries away (and fled the scene of quickly). Sam had won first shower while Natasha was out on the patio collapsed in a chair and looking out at the water. Loki sat at the kitchen table, removing the various weapons on his person and lining them up. Steve grabbed a glass from a cabinet and filled it with water from the tap, leaning against the counter and drinking it all in three large gulps.

A phone rang. Loki didn’t bother looking up from his knives until he heard glass shatter. Steve had put the glass down too hard; the pieces all over the counter. Loki frowned and asked, “Steve?”

Natasha got to her feet and leaned against the open door frame, watching as Steve pulled a low tech flip phone from a pouch on his belt. “It’s Tony,” Steve said quietly.

Loki put down the knife he was holding and he and Natasha kept silent as Steve composed himself and answered the phone, “Stark?” 

“Hey, Steve. No. It’s me, it’s Bruce.” 

Loki stood up abruptly. The phone was on speaker (had Steve done that on purpose so Natasha and Loki could listen in, or did he just not quite have a handle on how to work the phone properly?) so the shocking announcement was loud and clear.

“Bruce?” Steve asked in disbelief. His gaze darted to Natasha who had her hand over her mouth.

Now Bruce spoke all in a rush, but without much panic, like he was in shock and simply couldn’t believe what he was saying. “It’s me, we’ve got end-of-the-world, catastrophic problems. They’re coming, they were here and… and Thor’s dead, and Tony’s gone, and they’re coming for Vision next.” 

Steve locked down into crisis mode and demanded, “Bruce, who’s coming?”

There was a pause where Bruce seemed to be taking a couple of deep, gasping breaths. Loki hadn’t noticed Natasha coming up beside him until now as she grabbed onto his arm tightly, her face ashen.

Finally Bruce spoke again. “Thanos, it’s Thanos. He’s collecting the Infinity Stones, and once he has them he’s going to destroy the entire universe. He’s sent his… his children, these disgusting alien guys—they tore up the city to get a Stone from this wizard and… and Tony’s gone, I don’t know if he’s alive, he went after their ship, to space. Listen, they’re coming for Vision, do you know where he is?”

Loki felt his body go numb and blacked out momentarily—or at least that’s what it felt like as his vision tunneled and suddenly he couldn’t make sense of any more of the words. 

Thanos was coming. 

Loki had shared his fear with this universe’s Tony that Thanos would be back for Earth eventually. He had been so worried that Thanos might attack his own universe and he wouldn’t be there. But now the threat was no longer speculative, no longer a pit in his stomach or a worry in the back of his mind. It was real. 

Thor was dead. Tony was gone. Thanos was coming.

This couldn’t happen. Loki had power beyond measure and what was it for if not to save people he loved? To protect Midgard and the Nine Realms? How could this have happened?? How could he be too late? Why hadn’t he been there, where he was truly needed?

“We’ll find him,” Steve said. “Get to the compound and we’ll meet you there.”

Steve snapped the phone shut and closed his eyes for a moment. Neither Loki nor Natasha moved; Loki didn’t feel like he could breathe. When Steve spoke, his voice was deep and deliberate. “We all heard what he said, but there’s no time. Whatever you’re feeling, bury it for now. Grab Sam, grab your gear, and get to the quinjet. Now.”

Loki felt his mind suddenly catch up to something else Bruce had said on the phone. “Wait,” he said, fiercely grabbing hold of Steve’s wrist before he could march off to action. Steve looked into Loki’s eyes, frowning at the grip Loki had on him and the intensity of Loki’s tone. “There is an Infinity Stone at the compound,” Loki said.

Steve’s face fell. “What?” he demanded.

“They could be there already, Thanos’s Black Order. If… if they killed Thor. Thor knew it was there.” Loki released his grip on Steve. Fear was choking him now. How could this be happening? Thor couldn’t be dead—not this Thor, who was so like his own, who had called him brother without a second thought. Jane couldn’t possibly be facing down murderous aliens in her lab at this very moment, already too late for Loki to help her. This entire universe couldn’t be in danger. This couldn’t be happening. 

“Grab everything,” Steve said again, to get them moving. Natasha darted towards the bedrooms and Loki started to follow, feeling like he was moving in slow motion. Steve was back on the phone. “So, there’s one of these Stones at the compound. …. I know. We’re going for Vision and then making our way there next. I have to call Rhodey—they might already be there.”

Loki abruptly changed direction and strode out the patio doors. He thought he might have heard Steve call his name as he summoned his cosmic power and blasted into the sky.

Chapter Text

There was a large hole in the side of the building which Loki flew through and then he had only to follow the destruction. But when he reached the end of it, the lab was empty. 

The fear coursing through him was overwhelming, making it difficult to think straight. 

He scanned the room frantically, taking in several holes in the wall, broken glass all over the floor from shattered tables and instruments. The Tesseract was gone; the fortified case that had held it was bent and broken open, abandoned on the floor. Perhaps that should have been his main concern, but at the moment it barely registered . 

He half ran, half flew through the halls, panic threatening to choke him, until he reached the medical bay. Then, for the first time since he had heard Bruce’s voice through Steve’s phone, his body released some of the tension it was holding and he slumped against the doorway in relief. 

Jane was sitting up straight on one of the beds and holding an ice pack to the back of her head, a few small, superficial scratches on her face. Dr. Selvig was laying down on a bed further back, his eyes squeezed shut and lips moving as if he were whispering something to himself. He looked to be in worse shape than Jane, but also very much alive. 

Loki almost couldn’t believe it. He thought for sure he’d been too late, that these fragile mortals he cared about must have been ripped to pieces. 

“Loki!” Jane cried out, spotting him and jumping down off the exam table. He hurried toward her and they crashed together, his eyes closed as he wrapped his arms around her. He could feel her heart beating against him. Jane was alive.  

She didn’t linger in the embrace and pulled back quickly. Her eyes were wild as she said, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what happened. There was this explosion and before I could even move, that… thing came into the room and I hit the wall and that was it. Erik said they took the Tesseract. I’m sorry, Loki. You trusted us with it and it’s gone.”

“Jane,” he said, taking hold of her upper arms, his voice sounding oddly calm in comparison to what he was feeling. “Stop. There’s nothing you could have done.”

“I didn’t even try!” she shouted, pulling away from him. “I didn’t do anything except get knocked out and now it’s gone. What are they doing with it? How bad is this?”

Loki knew Jane could handle the truth, but he didn’t know if he could manage to tell her. How many Infinity Stones did Thanos have now? This felt different than his own mission to Midgard to collect one. This seemed like a final push. 

“Bad,” Loki said softly. “Cataclysmic.” 

Jane turned away from him and went back to the table where she’d left her ice pack. She picked it back up and pressed it onto her head again. 

She was processing the few words he’d offered, but she would want details. And it was then, with a jolt, that he realized the biggest detail that he needed to tell her. 

Bruce said that Thor is dead. Those were the words he had to say. He owed it to her to say them. 

Impossibly, Thor was dead. Tony could be dead by now as well. He couldn’t quite identify what he was feeling. It was so odd to feel this devastation when he wasn’t sure if he was mourning the idea of his own Thor and Tony dying or the reality of this universe’s Thor and Tony dying. They were acquaintances he had only known for a short time, and yet somehow they were so much more than that. 

Not to mention, an enemy who could kill Thor was the most formidable that Loki could possibly think of. They were screwed.

“Jane…” Loki said, dread sinking further into him. 

She turned. She waited. 

“We received a warning,” he finally began. “I came here as soon as I heard what they were after.”

“Who warned you?” she asked. 

“Bruce Banner,” Loki said. “He was… He was off planet and he was on his way back here. With Thor.” He desperately wanted to stop speaking (an unfamiliar feeling). If he said it out loud, it might really be true. 

He forced himself to continue, “They were attacked and Heimdall helped Bruce escape, but the others…”

Her brow was furrowed as she stared at him, shaking her head a little with incomprehension. “What are you saying?” 

“He… the one who attacked them, he isn’t like any other enemy.” 

“Loki, I don’t want a riddle, what are you telling me?” she demanded. 

“Thor is dead.” The words came flying out of his mouth and he wanted to snatch them back. He couldn’t help tempering them a little, “Bruce says that Thor is dead.” 

“You…” Jane said, her voice shaking. With fury, he realized as she continued, “...are a liar. You asshole! I helped you this whole time! I was your friend and now you’re lying right to my face. Like I’m just anyone that you can trick, like I don’t know what you are. ” 

She shoved him hard and he let himself be pushed aside. He followed her as far as the doorway and watched as Rhodey jumped out of the way to avoid her, pressing against the wall as she stormed past him.  

Loki’s stomach turned, feeling sick as he watched her go. But he didn’t follow her and he didn’t blame her. Anger and denial were much easier than believing something as utterly impossible as this. 

Rhodey was on the phone and, once Jane had passed, he continued down the hall until he stopped in front of Loki. 

“I’m actually looking right at him,” Rhodey said into his phone and then held it out to Loki. 

Loki blinked but accepted the phone without question and pressed it against his ear. “Hello?”

“Loki, tell me what’s happening.” 

Pepper. A very no-nonsense Pepper, who would not take a single word answer like ‘cataclysmic’ well. But he didn’t know what to say. 

“Loki!” Pepper snapped at him through the phone. “Just tell me… Can he survive this?”

Liar ! Jane had spat at him. He wanted to lie now. 

He said to her, “I don’t know if any of us can. Tony’s odds are probably better than most.” 

But Thor was dead. 

-----------------------------

“Shit,” Natasha swore from somewhere behind them for at least the hundredth time. Steve was piloting with Sam next to him as they made the short trip from Calais to Edinburgh. This was not the usual configuration, but Natasha wanted her hands free to continue blowing up Wanda’s phone. 

But Steve didn’t mind. It helped him stay focused, having a clear job to do while he reeled with speculation over the very sparse information he’d heard from Bruce. He didn’t want to think about Tony in danger or what might be happening at the compound. His mind paved a clear path to Scotland where they would stop it from happening to Vision and Wanda. 

Natasha appeared between their seats, putting her arm on Sam’s headrest. “She definitely left it somewhere. Why does she keep doing this? Especially when we’re apart, how does she not understand how important it is that we’re able to reach her?”

Neither of them had an answer to that as Natasha angrily mashed the call button again. 

“Does Vision have a phone?” Sam asked, then, “ Is Vision a phone?”

“Sam,” Steve said sharply, indicating this wasn’t a time to be joking. 

Sam rolled his eyes. “I’m not convinced that was a stupid question, but fine, here’s the real million dollar question: what the hell are Infinity Stones?”

“No idea,” Natasha said. “Steve?”

“Well, if they’re after Vision I’m going to assume the Infinity Stone is his…” Steve tapped the center of his own forehead. “ That came out of Loki’s scepter. Which not only had that blasting power, but mind controlled Clint and Dr. Selvig and who knows how many others. And that seems very similar to the Tesseract, which I thought was a Hydra weapon, but now…” 

“You think it’s another Infinity Stone?” Sam finished. 

“That’s my best guess,” Steve shrugged. 

“Thor took it back to Asgard,” Natasha pointed out.

“But if Thor is dead…” Steve trailed off. 

“Shit,” Natasha said yet again, slamming her hand on the back of Sam’s seat and retreating into the back of the plane.

Steve had never seen her like this, emotional, not even attempting to disguise her fear and frustration, in all the years of knowing her. He had a suspicion that it didn’t have much to do with the extremely dangerous situation at hand and had more to do with the news about Bruce, but it seemed wise to keep that to himself.

“How many Stones are there?” he wondered out loud instead. 

“Hopefully a finite amount,” Sam answered, “if we’re going to have a chance of getting our hands on any of them first.” 

---------------------------------------

By the time Loki joined them, hitting the ground in a crouch that cracked the pavement beneath him, it was already over. The aliens were gone, Wanda was bleeding from a gash across her forehead and Vision, somehow, was injured. 

Sam helped Wanda with getting Vision to his feet, his mind reeling from what had just happened. Obviously, he knew aliens were real. His team had fought aliens before, not to mention they’d been hanging out with one daily. But when he had first decided to help Steve back in DC, he couldn’t have imagined anything like this. The odds they were up against, the scale of what was at stake…

Being an Avenger was crazy. 

Loki rushed over to Vision without bothering to acknowledge any of the rest of them and Sam pulled Vision’s arm across his shoulders to better hold him up–he was surprisingly heavy for a guy who spent most of his time floating around and going through stuff. Without a word, Loki and Wanda ran their hands over the android in tandem, magic flowing from their fingers. 

Sam couldn’t tell if they were trying to diagnose or heal, but it didn’t seem like they accomplished either. 

“It shouldn’t be possible,” Vision said, wincing. 

Steve surveyed his somewhat battered team, then focused his attention on Loki. “The compound?” he asked. 

Loki’s voice sounded hollow as he said, “Still standing.” 

When he didn’t offer any information, Steve let that go and just said, “All right, let’s go home.” Wanda ducked under Vision’s other arm and together they made their way back to the cloaked quinjet, tense and quiet. Sam didn’t like to  imagine what sort of thing could scare Loki more than he loved hearing himself talk.

Better to focus on something he could take care of in the here and now. They had left in such a hurry from France, all of their gear was in disarray. Sam let Steve and Natasha take the pilot seats and, once they were in the air, he set about getting everything back in order. While he always took impeccable care of his wings, he spent extra time examining every inch for any damage from what he guessed was only their first alien attack of the day. 

After he’d done all he could, he stood up. His gaze fell on Loki who was sitting exactly as he had been since he’d boarded the quinjet, hands clenched together tightly and gazing down, his eyes unfocused.

Sam sat down in the seat next to him. “You okay?” he asked.

Loki merely shook his head a little.

“Yeah, me neither,” Sam responded, settling back against the seat with his hands folded in his lap. “I’m really sorry about Thor. I mean, I know he’s not like your actual brother Thor, but… I can see you’re shaken up about it and I’m sorry. I didn’t really know him, but he was the nicest guy the few times I did meet him. He seemed like the type who was just nice for no reason.”

Loki smiled a little, maybe some warmth from Sam’s words permeating his shock. “He is like that, yes,” Loki said quietly. “I mean, he’s certainly capable of being not nice as well, but he loves very easily and it’s in his nature to like people.”

Sam considered that for a second and then said, “You’re kind of like that too.”

He glanced at Loki when he didn’t hear a response; Loki looked stunned. “What?” Sam asked. 

Loki shook his head, bemused. “No one’s ever said anything like that to me before.” 

Sam stood up, clapping a hand on Loki’s shoulder and giving it a little squeeze before leaving him to his thoughts again. He passed Wanda, curled around Vision protectively with a hand over the damage on his torso, a bit of red glowing between her fingers. When he reached the cockpit, he leaned on the headrests of Natasha and Steve’s seats. 

“Morale’s a little low back there,” he announced quietly. 

“Did Loki say anything about the Infinity Stone at the compound?” Steve asked. 

Sam shook his head. “I was going to ask him about it, but… he’s really upset. Doesn’t seem like the right time for a debrief.” 

“We’ll be there soon anyway,” Natasha said, checking the GPS on the screen in front of her and adjusting their heading a little. 

It was completely dark through the windshield of the quinjet as they flew west, keeping ahead of the sunrise. Sam hoped there’d be a little time to sleep before the next alien attack, but wasn’t feeling particularly optimistic. Natasha at least seemed back to herself, calmer now that she had her full team in tow. Though how she could be calmer after fighting literal aliens was beyond Sam. Leftover adrenaline had him feeling tense and restless. 

But then again, this was his first time with the whole alien threat thing. “I guess getting into it with aliens is just old hat to you guys, huh?” he wondered. 

“Oh yeah, totally normal,” Natasha deadpanned. “Just another day that ends in y.” 

“This time is different,” Steve said seriously, not taking the bait to lighten the mood. “These guys are serious… smart. Organized. The Chitauri were kind of…” 

“Brainless?” Natasha suggested. 

“Something like that,” Steve said. 

“Well, you fought Loki before,” Sam pointed out. 

Steve shrugged. “True.” After a beat he continued, “But even that… I mean, you know how Loki is now. Even when he was being evil he was… playing with us. Enjoying it. These guys aren’t interested in us at all. They have a singular goal.” Sam glanced at Loki, who kept his head down as if he hadn’t heard them. 

“Annihilation?” Natasha supplied again. 

Steve pursed his lips together. “Certainly seems like it.” 

----------------------------------------

Loki trailed behind as they walked into the compound, Steve and Natasha in the lead, a formidable unit. Vision had his arm around Sam’s shoulder, Sam supporting him as they went, with Wanda close on the other side. 

They found Rhodey in one of the conference rooms talking to a hologram of Secretary Ross. The others didn’t slow their stride at all, Steve even greeting him with a, “Mr. Secretary,” that on the face seemed respectful, but those who actually knew the real Captain America could tell had an underscore of flippancy. 

And people say I’m the theatrical one, Loki thought to himself, the snark instinctive and bringing a small moment of relief from the various worst case scenarios that occupied his mind.  He hung back further than the others, knowing his presence would cause even more of a problem than the group of fugitives that had just walked in. 

“You’ve got some nerve,” Ross said.

“You could use some of that right now,” Natasha said evenly.

Ross didn’t respond to that and turned all of his attention to Steve. “The world’s on fire and you think all’s forgiven?”

“I’m not looking for forgiveness and I’m way past asking for permission,” Steve said, gravely. “Earth just lost her best defender, so we’re here to fight.”

Loki felt a stab in his chest at those words. Tony. Earth’s best defender. That meant a lot coming from Steve. He knew what it would mean, what it would have meant to Tony to hear that, even if he would never admit it. 

“If you want to stand in our way,” Steve continued, getting right into the hologram’s face. “We’ll fight you too.” 

Ross looked at Steve with something like disgust, then turned to Rhodey. “Arrest them,” he said simply.

Rhodey, his arms crossed, gave a nod. “All over it,” he responded. Then with a flick of his wrist, vanished the hologram; Ross was gone.

He looked at the team with a slight shrug and observed, “That’s a court martial.” 

Then he smiled and held out his hand to Steve. “It’s great to see you, Cap.” 

Steve shook his hand, returning the smile and Natasha came forward to embrace Rhodey in greeting. With Ross gone, Loki stepped forward a little more, still lingering behind Wanda, Vision, and Sam. 

“Well,” Rhodey said, surveying them. “You guys really look like crap.” He focused on Loki, pointing at him over Wanda’s shoulder, and said, “Especially you.” 

Loki knew the intention of this was levity, which under different circumstances might have worked. 

“I think you look great.” 

Natasha’s head whipped around as Bruce entered the room and Loki’s stomach jumped a little. He hadn’t seen Bruce, any Bruce, in so long. He’d spent time with these alternate versions of many of his friends for as long as he’d been here, but Bruce had been presumed dead. And now with Wrong Tony and Other Thor presumed the same, seeing Bruce was a shock and relief all at once. 

Bruce smiled a little sheepishly and held out his hands. “I’m back.” 

“Hi Bruce,” Natasha said.

For a moment it looked like he wouldn’t be able to speak, his hands twisting together tightly. “Nat,” he said, softly. 

Bruce’s eyes finally tore away from her to Steve, Sam, Vision, Wanda, and….

“Oh my god, Loki,” he said, his eyes going wide.

Steve took a step forward with his hands up in a calming way, “Now Bruce, hang on a second—” But to Loki’s surprise as much as everyone else’s, Bruce ran forward, pushed past Steve, up the stairs, around Wanda, and grabbed hold of Loki by his upper arms.

“How are you here? I thought you were dead, oh my god, this is amazing!” he exclaimed and threw his arms around Loki in a hug.

“Um… I think we missed something here,” Sam muttered.

Loki awkwardly patted Bruce a little and started, “Bruce, I...”

Bruce pulled away from the hug a little, still holding onto Loki’s arms. “Is Thor here? Did he get away too?” He looked so hopeful searching Loki’s face and then glancing over his whole person, as if checking for injuries. Loki didn’t know what to say.

“Bruce.”

Natasha’s voice diverted Bruce’s attention back to her. “It’s kind of a long story, but… if you were with Loki when Thanos attacked, you weren’t with this Loki.”

Bruce’s face wrinkled in confusion as he looked at Nat and then back at Loki, finally releasing him.

“What do you… what do you mean?” Bruce asked.

--------------------------

They had relocated to the library. 

Loki had immediately sat down on the couch while everyone else stood scattered around the room, clearly on edge. With his feet firmly planted on the ground, he leaned forward slightly, his elbows resting on his knees and his fingertips tapping together. He was mostly listening as they talked out what had happened. Everyone in the room was more than smart enough to piece together that Thanos knew how to find them and that he would be coming back. 

Thanos, who had tortured him, broken into his mind, forced all of his worst impulses to the surface with disastrous and deadly consequences. 

Loki wanted nothing more than to ignite and blast through the roof of the compound rather than wait for Thanos to return on his own terms. But Thanos had the Space Stone now, which meant they could be galaxies away in any direction and Loki had no idea how to track them down. For a moment, he shut his eyes and tried to see if he could feel the Stone somehow, some connection between the power inside of him and the power itself…

“There’s an Ant-Man and a Spiderman? And a Loki from an alternate dimension?”

Loki opened his eyes again when Bruce said his name, annoyed. 

“How did you find all of this out?” Natasha cut in, redirecting Bruce back to more pressing matters.

“It was Loki. He got Thanos doing a whole villain monologue,” Bruce said. Then his eyes flashed over to Loki and he fumbled, “I mean not you, Loki, the real Loki. Wait no, I’m sorry, obviously you’re real, I just mean—”

Loki shook his head. “We know what you mean.” Loki had certainly been considering himself the real Loki, it was odd to hear that word used with Other Loki instead. He sighed, thinking about his counterpart from this universe. The way Bruce had reacted to seeing him—like Loki was someone he truly cared about… perhaps their little chat on Asgard had actually gotten through to Other Loki. Perhaps Other Loki realized that going it alone all the time was actually a lot harder and sadder than facing challenges with true friends at your side.

Or maybe it had nothing to do with their talk, and Other Loki had turned a new leaf on his own. Maybe he always had it in him. Maybe all Lokis did.

Now, he was presumed dead yet again. But he’d been dead before. There was always a chance.

“But also from Wong,” Bruce continued. “The wizards have always known all about the Infinity Stones and didn’t find it necessary to share with the class. Until now, when it’s a little late. Each Stone controls an essential aspect of existence. That’s what Wong said, and they had the Time Stone—Doctor Strange wears it around his neck, but he’s gone off planet same as Tony and the Stone with them.” 

“So the only one we have left here…” Rhodey said. 

Loki kept his gaze on the floor, so he felt rather than saw the focus of the whole room turning to Vision.

“Okay, look,” Bruce said, a little desperately. “Thanos has the biggest army in the universe. He had the Power Stone already when he attacked us, he stole the Space Stone, he probably has the Time Stone now.” Bruce ran a hand down his face. “He is not going to stop until he gets…” 

Loki could fill in the blanks easily as Bruce hesitated: Until he gets all six Infinity Stones. Until he gets the power to wipe out all life in the entire universe with a wave of his hand. Until he kills us all.

Instead, Bruce said, “Until he gets Vision’s Stone.” 

“Well then we have to protect it,” Natasha said immediately. 

“No, we have to destroy it,” Vision said from near the window, his hand still clutching the wound in his side. 

Loki understood immediately what he meant, and also that no one in this room would allow it. The conversation devolved until Steve said, I know somewhere , and offered a very Captain America kind of solution where they drew on the strength of their friends and, maybe, they could all get out of this alive.

----------------------------

Wakanda. A chance to protect the last Infinity Stone on earth and hopefully save Vision along with half of all life in the entire universe. Sure, no problem. 

Natasha’s eyes followed Wanda striding out of the room with Vision trailing behind her, clearly still upset although less so now that a lifeline had been offered.

Bruce cleared his throat a little and spoke to Loki. “Sorry again about before. Just, when I saw you... I mean, it didn’t make any sense that you could be here but Steve and Nat weren’t trying to kill you. But I guess I just wanted to think it could be true.”

“To be fair, I’m not sure me being from another universe does make more sense than that,” Loki replied flatly.

“What are you doing trying to hug the Loki from this universe anyway?” Rhodey demanded.

Bruce looked embarrassed now. “Well, I mean, we kind of just fought this goddess of death together and saved all of the Asgardians and then we got attacked by Thanos, so I don’t know. I guess we kind of trauma bonded or whatever.”

Rhodey shook his head.

“I definitely thought you were about to get smashed,” Steve said to Loki. Loki offered a humorless smile in response.

“Speaking of you getting attacked,” Sam interjected, “you said that they threw you down to Earth to warn us. How do you know Thor is dead?” 

He had posed the question to Bruce, but Loki answered without hesitation. “Because if Thor were alive then Thanos and his children would not have been here.”

The room fell quiet at that. Natasha could tell Loki was angry at the question, indignant at the implication that Thor would have just let Thanos escape—that Thor wouldn’t have sacrificed everything to prevent it. Was that because she was an expert at reading people, or was it because she was actually starting to understand Loki, as her friend?

She sat down on the small couch next to Loki, observing him peripherally. He had spoken little since they arrived at the compound; he hadn’t offered anything in the way of his own plan or thoughts on the plan that was forming now. Now, he was trembling slightly, and Natasha thought perhaps it wasn’t shock or grief anymore, but now it was more likely from the need to move . To get to Wakanda, save Vision, destroy the Stone, kill all of these bastards who’d hurt people they loved. She could understand that. 

She reached out and put her hand on his knee, wanting to steady him or at least let him know he wasn’t alone in what he was feeling.

Sam, Steve, Bruce, and Rhodey moved together then, talking quietly. Sam glanced over at her and Loki; she could see that he felt bad about asking about Thor. But she knew he’d done it in the hopes that Thor might still be alive, he’d wanted to try to find some hope for Loki’s sake. 

“Is it just me or does it kind of feel like we’re back in the Nightmare Realm?” she mused.

“You should talk to Bruce,” Loki said suddenly, under his breath so he wouldn’t be overheard by the others. (Steve was trying to explain to Bruce and Rhodey about Shuri and the type of things Wakanda was capable of and being met with a million questions.)

Natasha glanced at Bruce who looked a bit less desperate and a bit more hopeful the more Steve talked. “It’s… it’s too late for that I think.”  

The way Bruce had greeted her hadn’t been warm, but she couldn’t blame him for being awkward. How else should he act after all this time? And after what she’d done? 

Loki put his hand over Natasha’s. “You’re both alive. That means it’s not too late.” 

She sighed. Perhaps that was true. The real truth was that it would be much easier if it were too late. It would be easier if he hated her and she could just push it down and get over it. The idea of opening back up to him was far scarier.

Loki squeezed her hand when she didn’t answer. “You should,” he urged. “Now, before we leave. Who knows what will happen?” 

Natasha knew that he meant that it was quite possible they were all about to die. Glancing back over at the group across the room, she was startled to find Bruce staring right at her. 

Maybe there really wasn’t anything to lose. 

“Can you create a distraction?” she muttered to Loki. 

Instead of responding, Loki waved his hand slightly and a huge crash sounded from down the hall. 

Natasha sighed. As Steve bolted from the room with Sam and Rhodey on his heels, she sarcastically muttered, “ Thanks, ” and trotted to catch Bruce who was bringing up the rear and had stopped just outside the door to peer after the others. 

“Can we talk?” Natasha asked. 

Bruce looked at her in confusion, then back into the room where Loki hadn’t moved at all despite the commotion. “Yeah, sure,” he responded and followed when Natasha tilted her head and started walking in the opposite direction from the ‘suspicious’ crash.

Rounding a corner, she stopped and leaned against the wall, trying to act as if her stomach wasn’t twisted in knots. She’d been dealing with death and loss her entire life; she had less experience with someone she’d tried to mourn and move on from reappearing alive. 

Bruce stood in front of her, fidgeting like he had been when he first saw her. He started to cross his arms then quickly switched to putting his hands in his pockets.  

“So, uh… you didn’t bring me over here to tell me you’re dating the alternate universe Loki, did you?” 

Natasha was rarely surprised by anything, but a shocked laugh escaped her at this and Bruce seemed extremely relieved by it. “How long have you been thinking that?” she demanded. 

“I wasn’t really,” he shrugged. “I was just trying to rule out the worst option for you pulling me aside, to get it out of the way.” 

She smiled, her chest tightening at the feeling washing over her. Bruce alive, Bruce joking with her, Bruce making her laugh. Bruce, who she had betrayed and thought she’d killed. 

She looked at the ground and took a deep breath, trying to re-steady herself for what she had to say.

“You don’t need to do this, you know,” Bruce said, surprising her again. 

“What?” she asked, looking up at him abruptly.

His expression was soft as he clarified, “Apologize. I assume that’s the real reason you wanted to talk, but you don’t need to do that.” 

Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. She did need to. She was desperately sorry and she did need to tell him that!

He held up a hand to wave off a reply. “You made a choice, but… it was the only thing you could have done. We were pretending that we had options because it was nice to imagine that we did.”

Natasha let out a sigh. She’d had so few choices in her life, her agency stolen from her before she could walk. But she knew Bruce was right. Neither of them had truly believed they could run away, leave the Avengers behind, live some quiet domestic life… If she hadn’t pushed Bruce into that chasm, they would probably all be dead. There hadn’t been other options, only fantasies.

“Well…” she said at last, “I shouldn’t have pushed you.” 

Bruce shrugged one shoulder. “I need a little shove sometimes.” 

She shook her head. “You shouldn’t let me off the hook like this. I don’t deserve it.” 

Her heart skipped a little as Bruce took his hands out of his pockets and stepped a little closer to her. “Don’t do that,” he said. He let out a little sigh and then held out one hand to her. 

Clenching her fingers together reflexively, she slowly reached out and took it. He ran his thumb across her knuckles while he tried to explain, “I’ve never cared about or dreamt of having some Barton farmhouse family, you know. Even back before everything. I was just worried that you did. And finding out that you didn’t get to choose…” Bruce squeezed her hand and she held onto him tightly, holding her breath. “I don’t even…” He hesitated again. 

With her heart pounding, she prodded softly, “What?”

His cheeks flushed a little and he looked down at their clasped hands. “I don’t even really care about sex that much.” Flustered, he continued quickly. “I mean, I’ve had sex, obviously. I like… I like the intimacy and closeness that comes with it, and sometimes it’s okay if I really know the person, but…”

He met Natasha’s eyes then, looking embarrassed and like he wanted to snatch the words back. 

She could hardly believe it. This whole time, she had thought she could never be enough in so many ways. She reached up and gently placed her palm against his cheek. His eyes fluttered shut as he leaned into her touch. 

“Bruce…” she said quietly. He opened his eyes and they simply stared at each other, so many misunderstandings untangling between them. She let go of his hand so she could reach up behind his neck and pull him down to her, burying her face in his shoulder.  

As his arms wrapped around her waist, holding her tightly, she said quietly, “I am sorry.”

And she was. Sorry that she was a weapon and sorry that he was a monster and sorry that they had so little time to have this moment before an alien army would be coming to kill them. Sorry that it was always something like that, for them.

“I know,” he said. 

The sound of someone clearing their throat broke the moment and Natasha leaned around Bruce to see Dr. Jane Foster standing in the hall. Her face looked a bit red and puffy as if she had been crying, but her eyes shone with a sharp, angry focus. 

“Sorry,” Jane said flatly. “I just came down to see if it’s time for us to go kill a bunch of aliens yet.” 

Natasha considered her for a moment before gently releasing Bruce from their embrace. “Yes, it is.”