What if there is more going on behind the scenes then realized - as is typical with the Marvel Comicverse. This is a short one shot - perhaps to become an entire story - about the ending of The Avengers Movie. – Chapter Edited for grammar and minor spelling issues –
"If it is all the same to you, I'll have that drink now." Loki shifted to sit a bit more comfortably.
All of the Avengers – apart from Clint with his arrow trained at the center of Loki's forehead – looked at each other.
Tony gave a half smile. "Well, I did offer him one." He broke off from the group and walked up to his bar, grabbing a bottle from underneath the shelf. "To be perfectly honest, I could use a drink. Hell, we could all use a drink." He pointed at Loki, "And after having his ass handed to him so badly, I bet he could really use a drink about now."
Thor looked at Loki, then back at the Man of Iron a little unsure of what to say.
"Are you crazy? He tried to kill us and take over the world!" Natasha objected with her voice steady, albeit a bit raised.
"He failed." Tony started mixing a strong looking drink, "If I want to give someone a drink, then as this is my tower, I damn well will give it to them."
Steve Rogers and the Hulk looked at each other and shrugged. As the Hulk changed back into Bruce, they sat on the couch to catch a breather. "Let's just get this over with; I need some time to take all this in." Steve said with a sigh as he rubbed his temples.
Loki looked as though he was going to say something, but thought better of it upon a glance at Thor.
Clint exhaled loudly and lowered his bow. "I'll have a drink, double shot of whiskey. If he tries anything, he will have an arrow through his eye in less time than it takes to blink."
Thor finally said something, "He will not try anything. I am certain that our Hulk friend will prove to be an adequate deterrent." His eyes locked with Loki and saw a glimmer of agreement within them. "It is settled. Loki shall have a drink, then be taken back to Asgard for judgment." The other Avengers – and Loki – looked at Thor with a mixture of varying expressions from anger, disbelief, and fear. Everyone thought better of voicing their objections to the demi-god.
Loki pushed himself off the ground, or attempted to until he found that standing was not yet an option after the severe floor-smashing that had just transpired. After standing for mere seconds, he stumbled and fell upon the closest Avenger. Fortunately that was Thor, as he had moved over in anticipation of Loki having some trouble in making his way to the counter. If it was any other Avenger, Loki was fairly certain that he would have been dead, or at the very least unconscious again. As it was, everyone suddenly stiffened and focused on him. Everyone, that is, apart from Thor who was concentrating on assisting him in walking. As soon as he was sitting he pushed Thor away and glowered at him.
"Here, " Tony handed Loki a dubious and potent looking drink. He watched as Loki accepted the proffered drink and sniffed at it cautiously – perhaps checking for poisons or drugs?
Loki, satisfied that the liquor was free of anything that could be harmful to his health – that is, apart from the alcohol – he closed his eyes as he downed the drink faster than one could blink. As he placed the glass down a small heavy sigh escaped his lips and his shoulders seemed to broad out.
"What is it brother?" Thor was being to sense something was amiss, close to the feeling he was getting from Loki on the stone outcropping some days prior.
"If I may ask, what has happened to the staff?"
Loki voiced his question with all the calm of a stone wall, but Thor could tell that there was something going on beneath the frozen green eyes. Was Loki actually afraid of something? "It was destroyed when Black Widow closed the portal."
"Don't even think about trying to escape or do some more damage, I'll fucking kill you before you can twitch." Clint had his bow up with and arrow in the quiver in less than a second, pointed mere inches from Loki's head.
Loki ignored the mortal and looked at Natasha square in the eyes, "Are you positive that the staff was destroyed? The crystal set inside has disintegrated, yes?"
Natasha hesitated, but after Thor nodded his head, she told Loki the truth, "It melted. The staff melted and the crystal broke into a sort of powdery substance and blew away with the wind."
Almost instantly there was a change that came over Loki. His eyes suddenly became more weary but yet somehow less burdened. A slightly crazed smile appeared upon his face and he laughed. It was a small chuckle at first, but soon had blossomed into a half-crazed mirthful laugh. "Do you, any of you, understand what you have done?"
Stark narrowed his eyes and looked over both Loki and a confused looking Thor, waiting to listen to what he assumed would be a villainous-tell-all monologue. Those always served to inform someone enough in order to defeat the 'all powerful' super-villain.
"What have we done?" A de-hulked Banner asked from the edge of the couch.
"You have," Loki paused to catch his breath and wipe a tear from his eye. "You have released me from the Chitauri, and through their proxy, Thanos – the Avatar of Death."
"Huh?" A completely clueless Steve Rogers exclaimed.
"What do you mean brother?" Thor was wary of his brother, especially after all that had happened, but it did seem as though Loki had not been himself. He had attributed that change to the 'journey' that Loki had been strung along, wittingly or no.
"None of you can see? Are all of you so dull that you cannot see that which stares you down – as plain as the very nose upon your face?" Loki questioned not with an air of godly superiority, but with that of a Professor pointing out the answer to a question.
Surprisingly it was Clint who first spoke up. "Oh my God. That's why you didn't have me shoot Fury in the head!"
"What?" Tony, Natasha, Steve and Bruce all exclaimed at once. Thor had scrunched his eyes, lost in thought as he attempted to move the pieces – he knew they were all there – into place.
"When Loki first showed up through the portal and he," Clint paused for a moment. "After he turned me, we had to leave and Fury was in the way. So Loki had me shoot him where the body armour was the thickest. I actually haven't given it any thought – honestly didn't even remember that – until now."
Loki pushed his glass over to Tony, indicating that he would like another. Tony rather robotically complied and refilled the glass, handing it back before realizing what he had done. 'Too late to take it back now,' thought Stark as Loki finished the drink off just as fast as the previous.
Stealing himself, Loki took a breath and looked over the 'Avengers' that were assembled within the smashed remains of a once spacious penthouse. "If I had had you kill him, then this world and perhaps even the Universe might have been destroyed. It was a terrific gamble, but I had hoped that everything would have worked out according to my plan."
"Wait, are you trying to say that you wanted us to defeat you?" Banner asked as he looked at Loki with disbelief.
"I second that statement." Tony quipped.
"Loki, if this is one of your lies, the Allfather help me I shal-" Thor was cut off by Loki.
"No Thor, this is no lie. No form of trickery. All of you may believe what you will, but the truth be told I had to manipulate events so that I would be able to escape Thanos with little suspicion. However, be warned that I have but few hours left until they find a way to being to monitor me again."
"Did anyone here not think it strange that the portal was conveniently able to be closed by the sceptre? I was, after all, in control of the good Doctor Selvig. There was nothing that he could have done to the machine without my knowledge."
"So you are saying that you had Erik build a way to shut the device off?" Thor looked a little confused.
"Of course I did!" Loki almost growled as he pushed his glass towards Tony once again. "If you would listen quietly then perhaps you will know why I did. The true intent of the master of the Chitauri is not this puny mortal world, nor even the tesseract. Instead Thanos wishes to possess the Infinity Gauntlet that sits in our very weapons vault within Asgard."
"The Infinity what now?" Clint asked. This was starting to get a bit more complicated then he first thought.
Loki shot him a look to quiet him as he finished the drink handed to him by the Man of Iron. "The Infinity Gauntlet. When the Chitauri found me, and Thanos found that I was from Asgard – they persuaded me to join their cause. Thanos planned that I would come to Earth, be defeated in some shape or form by my brother, and then be taken back to Asgard. Once in Asgard he would have me bide my time until the perfect moment, then steal the Gauntlet away to him. I had been watching SHIELD for almost a year and I began to create a plan to escape the hospitality that was that of the Chitauri." Loki paused, another drink.
"So in this master plan of yours, you wanted to be beaten to a pulp by the Hulk?" Tony asked a bit incredulously as he filled the glass with a different drink. He had stopped mid-way through his first one, as engrossed as he was in the story.
"Well, that was not a specific point of the plan, but it most assuredly provided the believable defeat that was needed to convince Thanos that you believed to have won. Tell me Thor, you were planning on whisking me away to Asgard shortly after the battle, correct?"
Thor looked at the other Avengers a bit guilty before looking back at Loki. Meeting his gaze he answered. "Yes, for the Allfather to judge you for your crimes on Midgard."
"Yea, about that! Do you realize how many people Loki has killed? If anyone should judge him for his crimes, it should be us humans." Clint bit off harshly, anger leaping behind his eyes.
Loki waved his hand, "Better a few then the entire Universe." He quickly noticed that the mood in the room grew dark. "Taking me to Asgard was exactly what Thanos had planned. But he also had planned that the sceptre with the link to their realm would not be destroyed, but rather taken to Asgard. It was how they were able to communicate with me and control me."
"What do you mean, control you?" Steve Rogers asked.
"What is the best deterrent? What is a way in which one might control another being?" Loki said with his eyes dark and clouded with all too recent memories.
"Pain." Natasha said that word with so much weight and knowledge behind it that sounded beyond her young years.
Loki said nothing but responded with the slightest of nods. "With the Sceptre still intact on this world, wherever it may be, they would be able to monitor what I did and what I said. The only place safe was my mind." He tapped his forehead lightly, face flushed slightly with the recent imbibed alcohol. "I did what I do best my dear brother." Loki said that last word with an air of all too familiar contempt. "I plotted and I schemed. I thought of every way to divert his plans with the minimal amount of lives lost. I am a god of Mischief, not of wanton death and destruction. I wish to rule, that much is true, but I will not rule a planet that is barren of all life."
"You said that we only have a few hours?" Tony remembered something that Loki had said earlier. "How much time do we have?"
"When did the Sceptre dissipate?" Loki looked at Natasha.
"Two hours ago, three at the most."
Nodding thoughtfully Loki looked back at the Man of Iron, "I have five hours remaining at the least. If I do not complete my part of the plan and return to Asgard, then the treachery will be discovered and this planet leveled before its time."
"What would you have us do Loki?" Thor asked.
"You must plan that on your own. Within five hours' time I will be in danger of being either completely controlled or killed if all does not seem right to Thanos. He and the Chitauri are monitoring only me and the actions and words that happen near me. I suggest that you take me back to Asgard and play along as though you have defeated me and the threat is over."
Loki stood up a little shakily from the liquor and looked at the other Avengers. "Plan. Plot. Scheme. Do whatever you must to come up with a plan against Thanos, the Chitauri, and even myself. Do not inform me of anything for they will know – if you lie to me to provide false information they may discern that something is not right. They may sense betrayal and all will be for naught. Thor, you must mention little to Odin and speak nothing to me whilst I am in Asgard. Monitor what I do closely, but make it appear as though you pay no interest to me."
"I am but a stolen relic from a different race, treat me as a Midgardian might treat a piece in a museum." He stumbled a bit towards the couch that Steve and Bruce were sitting perched upon and saw them tense, awaiting a fight. "Fear not little mortals, I intend no fight between us at this moment." He sunk into the couch and looked up at the scattered people, humans and demi-god alike.
Tony made another drink and fished out a strange looking pill from a nearby drawer. "Just in case I have some less than friendly people visit me," he explained a bit sheepishly. He walked over and handed it to Loki along with the drink. "This is a tranquilizer. I don't know how your body will respond to it, but it's strong enough to knock out an elephant for a few days, so it might be able to knock you out for a day as we work this out." Tony looked between Loki and Thor as the two once-brothers held a silent conversation with each other's gaze. If Loki didn't take the pill, then perhaps he was lying about the whole lot. Stark himself would never willingly take something that would place himself at the mercy of people he was fighting.
Satisfied that Thor would let none of the mortals harm him, Loki accepted the glass and the pill nodding. "Keep in mind all of you that when I awaken, I can know nothing of your plan. Even if I feel as though you may have betrayed me, or you believe that I feel this way," he locked eyes with Thor, "Say nothing for everyone depends on it." Loki finished his explanations and swirled the drink in the glass. He drank the entire contents in mere milliseconds. Just before he allowed the quiet peaceful darkness take him away from everything he felt that they should know. "If I am killed by you, any of you, it will delay Thanos by a few years. If nothing else is a viable option, then do what you must to bide time for the Universe." Closing his eyes, he slept.
The Avengers looked at this self-proclaimed king, a demi-god passed out on the couch with a sudden look of contentment upon his face.
"Well damn." Tony ran his fingers through his hair and looked at the others. "We have a lot of planning to do."
Please Review - I need to know what you think and I also need some constructive criticism if I am to branch this out from a one shot. Thank you.