A/N: Heyo, this is back! I didn't quite realise how long it'd been, so I'm sorry. School and junk like that.

Sorry for the brevity and lack of excitement featured in this chapter; I had to get us somewhere. Expect better in the future. Expect cute weddings.

Chapter 1: Nothing Is Ever Simple

"No," Loki said firmly, his hands planted on the table.

"You're being unreasonable, Laufeyson," Fury replied, staring Loki down with his one eye.

"It's not mine to give. Extremis belongs to FuturePharm."

"Which you created specifically for Extremis!"

Loki's patience had run short for that debate. It had been rehashed over and over in the last month. "To take control of it away from myself," he pointed out. "I don't want sole responsibility of such a priceless piece of technological development."

"Unlike your teleportation and the Lightningrod suit, of course," Fury countered.

He had a good point. Despite them asking repeatedly, Loki has never let them study the Lightningrod suit.

"It's my belief, as both an Avenger and a physicist, that between the Lightningrod suit, my teleportation technology and Extremis, I have in my possession the most promising and dangerous technologicial advances of the century thus far," Loki replied. "They're dangerous, they're untested, and they're not going to end up in the hands of SHIELD. Not when I can remember so clearly your original intentions for the Tesseract."

"So instead, you're happy for them to reside in your hands? Despite your history?"

"My history of what?" Loki said in exasperation. "Being helpful? Oh, gods, what a villain I am. Truly dastardly."

Tony and Maya kept quiet. As involved as they were in Extremis, this in particular really was Loki's fight.

"Need I remind you that Malekith took control of you?"

"Are you really bringing that back?" Loki said. "I seem to recall a particular group email that claimed that all who were under the control of Malekith's sceptre would not be prosecuted. I have it saved in my 'Shit Fury Says' folder on SADIE."

There was moment of silence before Loki continued.

"Are you actually bringing new material to the table, or is this just harrassment?" Loki said.

That debate wasn't the first. Or the fifth.

SADIE had managed to remove the video of Loki vs. Killain in a matter of minutes, but it didn't matter; it had been copied and widely viewed in the short time it was up.

At first, there had been public uproar. Loki was being persecuted as a cold-blooded killer, because, well, that sure was what the footage had made him look like.

Tony and Loki's strategy had been to release the matching video from Tony's helmet camera. They'd only released a snippet, to cut out the part where Tony and Loki had been negotiating killing him and to remove the death itself, but it had been quadruple-verified as authentic and Loki's supporters had lapped it up. After all, it showed a glowing guy attacking him repeatedly, and showed that Loki had killed him only after Killian had tried to burn Tony again.

There was still a lot of doubt - there always was in cases like that - but Loki was generally in the clear.

Darcy had made a great game out of encouraging the fringe theory internet folks to come up with their own versions of what had happened.

However, a new question had been raised. Was there such a thing as a justified murder, especially for an Avenger? Loki said yes. Repeatedly, loudly, and at a press conference.

"He was a terrorist and a violent psychopath," Loki had said. "He had killed and damaged so many American citizens, blown them to pieces and blamed others, and you're asking if I was justified in killing him? Of course I was! It was beyond self-defence and beyond saving Tony Stark; in this case I was trying to protect each and every citizen of this country, and because I succeeded in doing so, at least in this case, then I refuse to believe I have done wrong."

It had been a powerful statement, and as it turned out, most people agreed with him. He was largely exonerated in the eyes of the public.

That wasn't the point. The point was that the bubble had burst; the idea of the righteous, do-no-harm Avengers had been destroyed when Loki had had to defend a murder.

Fortunately for some high-ups, that coincided neatly with Clint, Steve and Natasha's warning that they were being officially reassigned come February. That pushed the Avengers in general out of everyone's hair.

However, it didn't settle the debate about Extremis. Tony and Loki had been working hard to keep Fury off their backs; Extremis really was the new gateway to superhumans, and SHIELD loved the idea.

Maya was just keeping out of it. Loki had given her a small lab in Laufeyson Tower to run her experiments and the place had been slowly filling up with plants ever since.

That wasn't to say that Tony and Loki weren't working on Extremis: for a start, they needed to stabilise it in Loki and Pepper and try and remove it. Tests proved it would pass out of the body in time.

"Look, Blackbeard, Loki's right," Tony cut in. "We've been over this. Extremis belongs to FuturePharm and isn't available for sale or rent right now. Maybe when it's stabilised, you can talk to the corporate lawyers about negotiating a deal."

"You don't have corporate lawyers," Fury pointed out. "You don't even have any goddamn employees!"

"Not 'we'," Loki said gently. "'Them'. We aren't FuturePharm."

"You are!" Fury shouted, then took a deep breath. "Get out of my office before I throw you little shits off the Helicarrier."

They did leave.

"I think that went well," Maya said dryly.

"Absolutely perfectly," Tony agreed.

Loki held out a hand to them. "Go team."

They placed their hands on his as a mockery of a team cheer as Loki teleported them back to Laufeyson Tower.

Appearing in the FuturePharm lab, the scent of earth and something burning assaulted them. Maya dashed over to the main worktable, where a small lavender bush had exploded about half an hour ago.

"Another failure," Maya said. She drew a clipboard over to herself and drew a line through something written on it.

"Show me the structure," Loki said. She passed him the clipboard and he examined it, Tony inspecting it too.

"You've been changing this?" Tony asked, tapping a part of the equation she'd been using.

Maya nodded. "Changing it according to your specs, too, and we're getting longer intervals between introduction and explosion, and the explosion's not as fierce. But we've reached the upper limit and it's still not completely stable. If you two've thought of anything, now's the time to tell me."

"Well, I thought..." Tony said, dragging some note paper towards himself and writing something out on it. "Might increase the heat factor of the whole thing, too, but mostly I figured-"

"Tried that. It didn't explode, but the heat overflow was so great that the whole plant set on fire."

"I remember that," Loki said. "That was a mess. Let's not do that again."

"Just a suggestion," Tony said, raising his hands defensively.

"The principle's sound, it just doesn't work out," Maya said. "Get on the scanner, Loki."

Loki didn't bother to protest: he was used to it by then. Instead he just stripped to the waist and stood in a little patch of open space so SADIE could take accurate scans of his body temperature.

To their credit, Maya and Tony barely reacted, just added the new results to the graph they'd been running of Loki's body temperature. Right after the introduction of Extremis, he'd been an unhealthy number of degrees above standard human body temperature. It had been very slowly decreasing since then; according to their calculations, in another month and a half it would leave his body entirely, so long as he didn't replenish it.

After getting used to it, however, Loki didn't intend for all of it to leave his body. He just wanted a more stable version. At the moment, the uncontrolled and constant healing and repairing going on in his body was raising the temperature just a little, but Loki had theorised that Extremis would fight back quite violently against the Lightningrod suit now that it had settled in his body. Not wanting to experiment, Loki had simply declared himself grounded until Extremis's effects weakened or in case of emergency.

After the group check-up on Extremis, Tony and Loki left Maya to her work and headed back to Stark Tower to see everyone.

As it turned out, they'd already been briefed on the meeting. That was, Natasha had, and she'd passed the information on to Clint, who'd complained about Loki's stubborness to Darcy, who'd thought the matter over and decided Loki was in the right.

Hence why Clint and Darcy were shouting at each other.

Steve and Bruce hadn't been briefed, but they could figure it out from what Clint and Darcy were saying rather easily.

Clint and Darcy's relationship had always been a slightly odd one, held together more by mutual wicked senses of humour and general enjoyment of each other's company than romantic attraction. Neither had long term plans, but one doesn't date someone for half a year without feeling somewhat attached.

Generally speaking. Loki had been sort of with Angie for just over seven months and hadn't really cared for her either way. Sassy, but a meth addict, which balanced out.

In any case, their relationship wasn't dealing with the strain of Clint leaving in the near future. Darcy didn't want a long-distance relationship. Clint didn't seem to feel strongly on the subject.

Once Darcy saw Loki there, however, she just said "Fuck it, we're done," and stormed towards Loki, grabbing him by the tie and leading him out of the room by the neck.

"Hello to you too," Loki said once the door had closed behind them. "Take a few deep breaths, I think."

Darcy leaned against the wall, took a few deep breaths and steeled herself.

She'd never been a crier. Loki hadn't seen her shed tears on many occasions, but she did tremble when upset, which she was doing.

"Men are stupid," she told Loki after a minute. "'Specially you."

"That can only be a compliment," Loki said. "You and Tony both insult me when you try and be nice."

Darcy chuckled and wiped her glasses clean. "Here's how it's gonna work: you're going to send for pizza and Ben & Jerry's, then we're gonna watch movies. Tony's invited, Maya too I guess. I'm going to forget about boys - straight boys, I suppose - and it's gonna be fun. Or else."

"I can arrange that," Loki said. "I have a little business to conduct with my fellow Avengers on the subject of SHIELD, so Tony and I will be there soon, yes?"

"Go for it," Darcy said. "Teleport me home. Just remember: Clint called you a stubborn ass. Don't let that slide."

"How dare he," Loki said with a dry smile. "You like the one made out of cookie dough, am I correct?"

"And the Phish Food one. Don't skimp on me," Darcy said.

She ended up hugging him before he sent her back to Laufeyson Tower.

Once that was sorted out, Loki returned to the living room. Clint was conspicuously absent, but everyone else was still there.

"About the meeting," Loki said. "We did resist Fury again, to his annoyance. I understand if any or all of you disagree with my and Tony's reasons for doing this, but I'd appreciate it if none of you at least actively worked against us."

"Personally, I agree with you," Steve said. "After the Tesseract, I don't think I trust SHIELD with potentially dangerous technology. I'm just not certain I agree with your methods."

"Eh, we've been there before," Tony chipped in. "Nat, Brucie boy, you cool with that?"

Bruce did agree with them too, and Natasha didn't reveal her feelings on the matter, but did say she had no plans to help Fury on the matter.

"It's just Clint, I guess," Tony said. "I'm guessing that talking to him right now will go badly. He just got dumped."

"I'd imagine so," Natasha said. "I'll talk to him about Extremis."

"Thank you," Loki said. "And now, Tony, Darcy demands we eat grossly calorific food and watch terrible rom-coms. Feel free to run for the hills."

"Are you kidding me?" Tony grinned. "I live for shitty food and shittier movies. Let's get out of here."

-O.O-

By the time they made it to Laufeyson Tower with the requested items, Darcy had folded out the sofa-bed in her living room, put a quilt on it, and picked some god-awful movies. She'd consulted with Maya on the latter; the two of them had, surprisingly, somewhat become friends.

Something to do with very dry senses of humour and both having high-level characters on the same RPG. Loki just accepted it.

As a pre-pizza snack (which was apparently necessary) Darcy had made popcorn. After Maya appointed herself a spot on the other couch, Darcy steered Loki towards the middle of the couch mattress, plonked the popcorn bowl on his chest and curled up next to him. According to Darcy, her glorious chest was a pain in the ass to balance things on.

Once Tony had - slightly awkwardly - settled himself on Loki's other side, Darcy started the first movie.

"You okay?" Loki murmured to her, covered by the opening titles.

"Yeah," Darcy replied quietly. "It was going to happen."

"Doesn't make it any more fun," Loki said.

"I'll be alright," Darcy said. "Trust me. I'm tougher than a hundred Iron Mans taped together."

"Good to hear it," Loki said.

The break was a welcome change for all of them, anyway. There was always more drama waiting for them in the future.