This is so totally, blatantly an Avenger/Halo crossover. Cause I can, to a point anyway. Also, you know what happens next.

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Loki monitored the Chief's vitals with an automatic subroutine while she crouched in the dark, hidden in a small cave on a rock surface. He frowned and set about applying biofoam and heating the pads of her armor while she waited out the sudden dust storm. The Chitauri had planned an ambush for the God of War – at least that's the closest Loki, could translate their speech to. He may have gotten the translation wrong for 'god to goddess', but the MJOLNIR armor the Avengers were issued rendered them fairly sexless – and had been sorely disappointed when she'd decimated them with her Avenger issue assault rifle.

It had been his plan – a counter attack from above in a canyon alcove and he'd upgraded the magnetic pull of her boots, which on a mineral rich planet led to a heavy impact that had knocked a small troupe of the Chitauri back.

One of their plasma weapons – a new one Loki hadn't had prior knowledge of – had managed to pierce through the Chief's shield and through her armor. It had dissolved into her skin and like acid, had eaten away at the flesh near her thigh. Luckily, there hadn't been much of it left after its previous contact with her armor, but it was enough for her to stagger while she ran from their cavalry. Cavalry he hadn't taken notice of on his radar until they'd closed off the route he'd originally planned to use for their escape. Sif had been forced to cut a bloody and hard path to turn tail which had resulted in aggravating her wound.

Then the dust storm had thrown them twelve feet into the air and gave Sif heavy cover to escape under.

"Sif," he called through her comm channel. She tilted her head to show she was listening. "I can't make contact with the Watchful Eye. I can't pick up any comm chatter. We may be here…for a while." He said grudgingly. He didn't like admitting he didn't know something, or that there wasn't an immediate solution or plan that he had on hand. It made him feel inadequate.

Sif nodded once, "Did you drop a beacon?"

Loki huffed, "Of course I did."

She grunted and stood up, looking out of the cave and saw that the sands were dying down. Hopefully the sudden dust storm took out any remaining Chitauri. "We'll need to move, see if there's anywhere else that has better reception so we can request an extraction."

"We still need to find the Tesseract coordinate here." Loki put in hurriedly. Sif paused in her steps – ever since Loki had had direct contact with the Chitauri leader he'd been obsessive, about the Tesseract, imagining that High Command was conspiring against him and looking for any signs of rampancy to issue out the dispensation order. Loki had always been, spirited, but since his contact with Thanos, he'd had mood swings. He'd be put in fits of grief or most often, rage.

It hadn't affected their work, so Sif had allowed it to go without comment for the most part until Loki had, in a moment of a swing of depression confessed to her that since he met Thanos, he'd been consuming too much data. He was entering rampancy. They had been outfitted together for five years, and he'd been a part of dismantling the Chitauri's plans of taking their war directly to Earth.

He'd been lost to Thanos for six months, and hadn't been returned to Sif's care for another three after she'd been in cryosleep, adrift on a ship when she'd finally found him again, unwell and lost. But returned was a gentle word, and misleading. On the official report that Tony Stark, the MJOLNIR creator, had had his assistant Pepper hide the fact that the Chief went AWOL to find her A.I after he'd been taken once the immediate threat of the Destroyers had been eliminated.

"Loki?" Sif called into the darkness, sparks flying up and consoles scrolling green and blue data that looked like nonsense to Sif. She turned her helmet light on and called out again, her assault rifle held at her side.

"I didn't think I'd see you again." A tired voice came from her left. Sif's head whipped towards it and she brought her rifle up. Her light caught sight of Loki, normally green and gold and black in color, but there was a sickly blue tinge to him. Sif's stomach clenched. "I waited. With him. His name is Thanos, and he calls himself a god. I knew you'd come, but I couldn't calculate exactly when you'd arrive – if there would still be me or just the…leftovers."

"I'm here." She was not one for words. It was not her nature to be verbose, nor was it in her Avenger upbringing to be so. It was one of the reasons Dr. Frigga Borson had paired her with him.

Loki, used to her talent for saying only what needed to be said, nodded and sat down cross legged at the small console where his data crystal was still imbedded. She saw the cracks running in its side, and looked at Loki's haggard avatar. She stiffened, "Does this Thanos know anything about" –

Loki waved her off and gave her a tired look. "I gave him a good fox chase. I uploaded previous protocols about the Naval Forces, rank information, the newest designer clothes, etcetera. He doesn't know Earth's location. Or that we have partial coordinates to the Tesseract now," he gave a hollow smile.

"You did it," Sif relaxed for a moment. Their prior objective was complete, but they'd need to reach the Tesseract before the Chitauri.

"You doubted me?"

"I know better than to underestimate you like that." Sif stalked forward and reached for his data crystal. She was surprised, to say the least, when Loki's avatar flushed a violent blue and he lashed out.

"Does it mean nothing to you that I was tortured for six months FOR YOU?!" his avatar stood and his face was frozen in a snarl as if in stroke.

Sif remained where she was, "Loki."

The blue rippled and faded. "I've, I've been here for too long, I think. Pull me, Sif. I'd like to leave."

Sif did, although the feeling that accompanied sliding his crystal in her armor was so icy that she felt herself stagger from the pain behind her eyes. Loki put up a buffer between his crystal and her armor intake and he murmured something softly that sounded like an apology before Sif made her way out of the abandoned base.

Sif sat down at the rock wall behind her and began dismantling her rifle to clean it.

Loki activated his six inch avatar, projecting it into hard light so the Chief wouldn't need to hold out a hand. He wondered if she preferred being able to see him and hear him. "You should avoid bouncing around immediately. That wound needs to be rested. You'll use up more biofoam if you go now." Loki eyed the hole in her armor.

Sif opened a small compartment near her calf and pulled out a chamois. "If we don't leave under the dust storm, we'll lose cover. I have two magazines left, four grenades and my combat knife."

Loki frowned, "What happened to your sidearm?"

Sif's hand slowed while still wiping the rifle. "I don't carry a sidearm."

Loki's mouth parted and he looked away, brows furrowing. He blinked rapidly and swung back up to look at Sif who continued cleaning her rifle carefully. Of course he knew she didn't carry a sidearm. She carried more ammo and grenades in place of a pistol.

He wanted to see her expression, right now, what she thought of his casual almost innocent slip. Was she mortified that he was going into combat with her? Was she concerned for her safety? Was she – disappointed?

Instead, he could only see the amber gaze of her helmet and silence. For that, at least, he was grateful. He wrung his hands together and paced his body length across a rock. "It's getting worse."

She remained silent.

"Don't, don't tell me you haven't noticed – my slips like Alzheimer's – sometimes I feel so enraged and I hate everything and everyone for being human, and it's not fair that my lifespan is so short when I know and am capable of so much more, it's not. Fair." Loki's pacing became feverish and the lines of code that ran like archaic symbols over his face and hands ran blue. He eyed Sif again, a silent giant who had stopped cleaning her rifle to stare at him. His entire being changed color, "SAY SOMETHING! Don't stare at me as if I'm not here." He snarled.

"We're going to find Odin and he'll fix you." She said simply.

Loki's mouth twisted angrily. "Sometimes I just want to reverse the magnetism of your suit and trap you on the ground for your enemies or in the water so you'll sink."

"To stop me from finishing my mission?" she asked, seemingly not entirely surprised.

He hated her a little for that and it was this slip in his programming that caused him to continue on brashly, "No, because…"

Because when I'm gone they'll give you another A.I and it won't matter, not really since it'll be just like me since we're just programs. Since I'm not human, unnatural. Servant to lines of code and redundant program boundaries, it won't matter when I'm gone, no one will mourn or miss me because there's backups. Humans don't have replacements, doppelgangers. But A.I do.

"Because I'm in the rage stage of rampancy." He finished. It wasn't a lie, not really, but a misdirection.

Sif nodded, "You're going to be fine Loki."

His lips thinned and he stared up at her. "You don't know that."

"I swear it."

Loki allowed himself to sag. "You and your oaths." He murmured fondly and felt his emotions, confusing and mercurial fade out.