Author's Note: Sorry about the late update, folks! I feel I should alert you that updates will probably be slower through to the end of the year, as I am writing a fair number of things for gifts/exchanges etc. that are on a time schedule. But rest assured that this is not going to be abandoned! (At all, ever, I hope.)

Loki returned to his room embarrassingly near to exhausted and torn between a feeling of satisfaction at productive work well done and a feeling that he was a horse that had just been put through its paces. He rubbed at his forehead and half smiled.

A curious lot of mortals. Persistent, nearly irritating, woefully ignorant, but not complacent. Not content with the limits they were given. In that way, he thought dryly, almost unnervingly like himself, who had never been satisfied, never content, eternally seeking more. Not like Asgard, steady, stable, eternal perfection.

(Ha.)

Loki tried not to let his mood darken, reining in his thoughts with ruthless force, and opened the door to his room. He stopped in the doorway and pressed his lips together, staring at the occupant already present and standing with his hands behind his back, looking at Loki's one piece of decoration, a print of Escher's Day and Night. He turned, likely at Loki's quiet, 'hm.'

"Interesting choice," he remarked, with a little gesture over his shoulder. Loki kept his expression perfectly neutral.

"If this is going to become a habit of yours," Loki said levelly, "I am going to begin to set up an unpleasant surprise for you."

The smile he received in return was pleasantly placid. "I'll keep that in mind." A quick examination of his room revealed nothing out of place. Loki stepped inside and leaned against the wall by the door. An interesting man, Loki thought. He wondered what he would learn, if he went looking.

Something to keep in mind, perhaps.

"It's been a bit," Loki observed. "And here I thought you would be keeping an eye on me."

"I have been," Coulson said. "From a distance. Been busy?" Coulson asked politely, and Loki shrugged one shoulder.

"Certainly not intolerably so."

"Somebody said they saw you wandering off with one of the lab technicians." Loki offered a fractional smile.

"You yourself recommended I…cooperate with them, did you not?" There was an unfortunate itch quivering under his skin. This polite stepping around whatever the true purpose of Coulson's visit might be could be fun, perhaps, but under the circumstances…

It occurred to Loki that he was, perhaps, just the slightest bit tired of intrigue and uncertainty. That part of him missed the solidity and reliability of the life he had begun to craft for himself, unwanted intrusions or no.

But he had committed to this course.

"I guess I did say something like that."

Loki watched Agent Coulson, eyes slightly narrowed. "Though I confess it seems…quiet, after the recent excitement. I must wonder if you have – ah. Decided to remove me from active duty."

"I assure you that's not the case. According to the report you submitted you performed satisfactorily regardless of success. And your account was corroborated by Barton's."

Loki could not keep his eyebrows from jumping up. "Performed satisfactorily?" You survived, murmured one thought, only to be followed by another, but survival might not be a measure of success.

"So says the official evaluation." He was examining Loki with that strangely inscrutable gaze again, and Loki felt himself fidget, and was promptly annoyed by it.

"Is that what you came to tell me?" Loki made his tone just faintly touched by impatience, and Coulson shook his head, and Loki was trying not to let his growing sense of irritation (unease) show.

"Not so much."

"Then what," he said, a bit more sharply than he meant to. "Whatever your business, I would sooner you-"

"I'm…concerned," Coulson said, cutting him off, sounding anything but concerned, and Loki's temper flared at that but was snuffed out by the next, somewhat baffling words: "That you might think we sent you in on bad intel on purpose."

That drew him up short. Barton, he thought, must have mentioned it. The suspicion had lingered, after all, though he had been careful not to voice it. If it had been, after all, that made it part of the game, and if not then it would not do to appear paranoid. He tried to evaluate the agent's expression and found it irritatingly difficult.

After a moment, Loki straightened and crossed the room and sat down at the chair by his desk, as though untroubled by the second occupant. "Is that so."

"Yes," Coulson said. "That's so."

Loki regarded him out of the corner of his eye, trying to determine what answer was expected, or perhaps what answer would be best. He could not be sure of either. "I concluded," he said finally, keeping his voice neutral, "That you would not risk your Agent Barton in such a fashion. You seem to find him valuable."

Coulson's posture was ramrod straight as he turned to face Loki, managing somehow to look at ease despite the rigidity of his body. "Whatever doubts SHIELD might have about your intentions," he said levelly, "You signed the contract. Which makes you entitled to our protection the same way as the rest of our agents."

Loki did not let his flicker of surprise show on his face. Probably, he should have been insulted at the idea that he would require protection at all. Probably. But he was… "Is it that simple?"

"Barring further complications, yes. Besides," and there was that flicker of very faint amusement again, nearly undetectable, "I get the feeling that trying to stab you in the back wouldn't end well. For us."

Loki could not keep down a sharp-edged smile. "Wise."

"I have that reputation in some circles." Coulson's eyes fixed on Loki. "Is that clear?"

Loki crossed his legs, ankle-to-knee. "You are not going to attempt to eliminate me intentionally."

"No," Coulson confirmed. "We are not." It was, of course, a matter of pragmatics, and of his usefulness. Further, a blatant play for his loyalty. At this stage, knowing even what little they did, of course they would want to tie him to them, and the most effective method of doing so was to appeal to loyalty and self-preservation. We will protect you even from ourselves. Obvious. Transparent.

Nonetheless, Loki felt a little pleased in spite of himself. Pathetic weakness, perhaps, to be placated so easily, but the voice that murmured so was quiet and easily ignored.

"Understood," he said, and offered a half smile. "I will keep that in mind."

Coulson nodded, and his gaze moved away, but he did not seem in any hurry to leave. Loki waited. If he had something else to say, no doubt he would get around to it. After a few moments, he retrieved an empty glass and filled it with water from a pitcher on the corner of his desk. He sipped delicately. "And yourself, Agent Coulson? What occupies your days?"

"Same things that usually do," Coulson said. "Keeping things running, organized. Making sure Mr. Stark behaves. Investigating unsubstantiated reports of some kind of massive magnetic disturbance. Sifting through reports."

"A busy schedule. And yet you found time in it for me. Are you so friendly to all your new recruits?"

"Only the ones our tech estimates have enough raw power to take out a city block."

Loki felt his mouth twitch. "Only one?" he said, and then nearly thought better of it, but it won that little flicker of amusement away. He would not regret it too much, and it might easily be taken as a jest. "Fair enough. I will accept your…concern…as touching." He paused. "Was there something else?"

Coulson looked back at him. "You said you didn't choose to come here," said the little man, and sounded for the first time genuinely curious, though faintly. "Where were you trying to get to?"

Loki felt his stomach clench and chuffed a laugh with a bit too much bitterness. "To? Nowhere. Away from, say rather," he said, and almost immediately was irritated with himself. Coulson showed no great reaction, however.

"Away from what?"

Loki looked down at his glass of water and swirled it in a circle. He felt suddenly tired. All the quiet of the past few months and suddenly, in a few days' time… he glanced up and smiled thinly. "Family drama."

"Hm," said Coulson, looking at him with that bland, skeptical stare. Loki held it for a few moments, and then glanced away, toward a blank wall.

"Secrets and lies," he said, finally, fingers toying with the glass. It felt cool against his skin. "And a legacy I could never live up to."

"Ah," said Coulson, and curiously enough, nodded. As though satisfied. "Crash landing on Earth wasn't planned, then?"

"No," Loki said, remembering how he'd felt first opening his eyes and realizing where he was. "No, it was not."

"Mmm," Coulson said, and Loki watched him, attempting to glean something about his thoughts. Ultimately he dismissed the effort, just as the agent turned back to him. "Well, Agent Silver, good to get the chance to talk to you again. Clear up misconceptions."

Loki kept his eyebrows from pulling together. "Indeed."

"I'll leave you to it. And in case you were wondering, I don't think I'll be making a habit of unannounced visitors, though you're welcome to booby trap your room anyways." The man turned and headed for the door, only to stop within the frame of it and glance back.

"You'll do all right here," Agent Coulson said, and Loki glanced at him in surprise, but the small, unflappable man was already gone. Loki looked after him, face relaxing into the slightest of frowns.

~.~

The next day, for lack of anything more entertaining to do with his time, Loki wandered back down to the labs. At the very least, he thought dryly, they were using what minds they had, and that at least made them more interesting than the alternative company. Which was...more than likely another afternoon by himself.

He bypassed the keycode Chandra had used to access the lock with little more than a touch and a slight pulse of power, and slipped into the lab. It looked much the same as it had before – chaos just on this side of organized. He could hear Chandra's strident voice barking something that sounded like a scolding.

Sliding himself out of notice, Loki wandered in. He peered over shoulders and examined various equipment which use was opaque to him. He observed largely incomprehensible experiments over various shoulders, discovered one technician playing some sort of game on her computer, and observed an argument on the relative merits of beatles versus rolling stones, which remained curiously compelling until Loki gathered that they were discussing music and not, in fact, natural phenomena.

He found his attention most drawn,however, by a curious looking apparatus in one corner, sitting on a table it had to itself. Amid the clutter, that seemed remarkable enough. A metallic ovoid of remarkable smoothness that seemed to hum to his senses, and after his eyes strayed to it for the umpteenth time, he wandered over.

After examining it for a few moments, he reached out and touched it with one finger. All his hair seemed to stand on end at once, and Loki jerked away, startled. Something was nagging at him, but he could not quite find it. Like a memory just out of reach.

And regardless, he was curious. It was certainly not like the others in the room.

Frowning at the device, a moment later he dropped the working keeping him unnoticed and snagged the sleeve of the nearest passing minion, a man unremarkable to Loki's eyes. Lab technicians, was that was Coulson had called them? Regardless.

"What is this," he asked, indicating it.

"Oh," he said. "That's," and then appeared to register Loki's face and jumped. "—when'd you come in?"

"A few minutes ago," Loki said, easily. "You really ought to mind your surroundings more closely, much of this looks terribly fragile." He released the sleeve he had claimed. "Your name?"

"Ryan," said the boy, after a moment of staring blankly. "Ryan Welch."

"Good day, Ryan Welch." Lok offered him a smile that he thought was admirably patient. "Well, what does this artifact of yours do?"

"Uh." The young man seemed nervous, lifting one hand to scratch at the back of his head and then dropping it as though he'd been scolded. "We don't actually know." Loki raised his eyebrows and waited. "—well. It's not really ours. It's an. Um. Artifact."

"Artifact," Loki repeated. He looked back at it again. Between that hum to which he suspected the mortals in the room were utterly insensate and the isolation of the thing, he could make a guess. "By which you mean…not of Earthly origin?"

The boy seemed curiously uncomfortable. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I guess, that."

"Hmm," Loki said, thoughtfully. "Have you touched it?"

"Yeah," the young man said, with a fidget. "When we were examining it. Feels kind of weird, like static electricity."

Static electricity, Loki thought, was the sharp, quick shock created by fleece slippers on carpet. Not in the least the same. "Mm. I see."

"Do you…know something about it?" Welch sounded almost hopeful. Loki raised an eyebrow at him, and then looked back at the device. He did know something, he was sure of it, but could not quite recall…

"If I may-" he started to say, and was interrupted, to a flash of annoyance that Loki quickly pushed down.

"—hold on, is that - Agent Silver? How did you get in here? Ryan, did you-" The boy quailed, and Loki bit down an urge to laugh that was, perhaps, unkind.

"No," he said, with an easy smile. "I let myself in, quite without help. A pleasant day to you, Miss Sheffer."

"Doctor Sheffer." She frowned at him, and Loki kept his face placid with only a bit of effort. "That door is locked to anyone not possessing the proper clearance code, which I'm pretty sure you don't have."

Loki lifted a hand and waggled his fingers at her. "I have certain advantages others do not." He nodded at the item that had drawn his attention. "It's an interesting object you've acquired there."

Chandra's arms crossed. "Recognize it?"

Loki considered her, for a moment. "I might," he said, finally. "I suspect I do." Chandra's eyes narrowed, and Loki offered her a bit of a smile. She pursed her lips.

"What is it, then?"

"I can hardly be sure unless I examine it properly. I am not certain what it is, only that I have seen it before."

Chandra's eyes narrowed another hair. "What does that entail?"

Loki shrugged. "Guessing, mostly. Or – if you will – testing a hypothesis. If I am correct, there should be no harm done. If I am not…well, likely nothing will happen at all." He could see her struggling with that. Curiosity and her reluctance to share. Loki waited. They were drawing attention from other eyes, too, curious sideways glances poorly hidden.

"Um," said the boy he'd been speaking to. "It's been four months and we still don't have any clue about what it is. If he…if Agent Silver can tell us, it'd be nice to know?"

Loki caught only a fraction of the glare Chandra shot at the unfortunate Ryan, and saw him flinch. But then she looked back at him, and nodded, very slightly. "Okay," she said. "Fine. Do your…whatever."

"Work my magic?" Loki could not resist saying, to receive his own withering glare. Loki bowed formally to her and gave her his best charming smile. "Gracious lady, I shall see to it at once."

He could feel her and the boy Ryan both watching as he turned back to the machine. He knew he had seen one like it before, something similar, but a long time ago, nearly lost to memory.

"How did you bypass the card reader?" Chandra's question registered only vaguely.

"A gift for mimicry," Loki said, absently, and reached out to lay his fingertips against it again, to that same sense of current coursing through him, though to his senses there was no true flow of energy, not of the kind he was familiar with. Something else. So tantalizingly familiar, and if he could remember...

"There's something we thought might be a lock mechanism on right side," Ryan volunteered, a bit less hesitantly. Or maybe writing…"

"That's not really an answer," Chandra objected. Loki exhaled through his nose.

"I begin to appreciate the frustration of unending questions," he said mildly, moving his fingers over the smooth metal of the thing's surface around to the right side, feeling for what the boy had mentioned. His fingers caught on the irregularity soon enough, and almost at the same moment, the strange sensation stopped, as did the humming. He paused, frowning, and at the feeling under his fingers, the patterns of the metal seeming to twist on itself in a strange way, it came back to him.

Sit with me. Listen.

"What," said Chandra, almost immediately.

"I have seen this before," he said, pulling his hand away. "It's not a lock. Not really. Nor does it require any of my magic to open."

"Where is itfrom?" That was Chandra.

"Not here." Loki stepped back. "Quite a long way from here, in fact. Or from anywhere."

"Is it a weapon?" Someone else, and Loki wondered how many of them were watching now. He was tempted to turn and leave them all to puzzle at it on their own. "What's inside it?"

"As I said," Loki said, stepping back with a gesture. "You need only ask politely." He looked to Chandra. "If you would like to do the honors, perhaps?"

Chandra was eyeing him with something like wariness. "…just ask?" she said, sounding dubious.

"Politely," Loki repeated. "It only opens once." I don't understand. Hush, child, you don't need to.

Chandra stared at him, and it was Ryan who stepped forward. "Um," he said. "I guess. If you wouldn't mind opening?" He blushed, brightly, and someone at the back tittered. For a moment, silence, and then the metalic shell clicked once, twice, and the metal surface shimmered into transparency. Ryan jerked back.

"Wait," Loki said, flatly. Another click, and then it began to sing.

He remembered that voice. Clear, sweet and bright, in no language known, and exquisitely sad. A recording, Loki was perfectly aware, but it didn't sound it. "What is it," a redheaded technician asked, and her voice sounded harsh and discordant.

"Hush," said Loki, not quite sharply, and there was silence. The last one of these to come to Asgard had been many years ago, when he was still small, and he remembered Frigga pulling him onto her knee and telling him the story. They had sat in her garden and listened to that ancient voice sing, and Loki remembered weeping.

His heart hurt. Remember this, Loki, she'd said, quiet and sad and for the first time he could remember, old. All things must end. Whether good or evil, all things must end.

It was not so long, in the end, and as the last notes faded, so too did the translucency, and it was once again a plain, metal container, but no longer humming. Its message given.

They were all looking to him, now. Loki felt his shoulders twitch.

"A history," he said. "A record. Or so I was told, once. That they belonged to a very old people, long dead, even their name lost to memory. That they knew their own end before it came, and sang their story so that they would not be forgotten. I remember being told that these capsules drifted through space until finding a planet where their story could be heard."

"What's the story?" someone asked, and Loki did not bother to look at them. His eyes were on the dull metal. He felt the corner of his mouth tug.

"That is the irony," he murmured. "No one knows. The language is forgotten. A song sung to nobody at all. I have heard some deem it arrogance, that they would assume their language would endure even if they did not." He shrugged one shoulder. "Or else hope."

"And that's all anyone knows?" Incredulous. Loki swallowed the urge to laugh. Remembered – but doesn't anyone know any more?

It may be nothing but a legend, in the end.

"That is, yes. That is all the light I am afraid I can shed on this mystery of yours. Not terribly useful, I am afraid." He threw his audience a crooked smile. "I hope you will not hold it against me. Now if you will excuse me, I daresay…" He slipped out, with fluid, easy grace. They did not attempt to summon him back.

He went up to the surface levels of the complex and navigated his way to an exit. Stepping outdoors, he broke into a sweat almost immediately, and nearly turned back inside. He held his ground.

Strangeness and familiarity and strangeness again. He wondered if Frigga had that memory as clearly as he did. If she thought of it even now.

Ultimately the heat was too much. Loki retreated back to his his relief, there was no surprise occupant, though for one absurd moment, he was almost disappointed. Coulson, he had begun to think, made surprisingly good company.

On a whim, he padded over to his computer and blinked to see one more email than he'd expected in his Inbox. From: M. Fairfax, it said, and Loki blinked, and opened the message.

Dear Luke, it read. I am not very good at this emailing, but you did not leave a forwarding address for me. I don't know what the rules are – this new job of yours seems very mysterious, and I might only be your landlady. But I know that sometimes a friendly voice can be good to hear. I wanted you to know that we are thinking of you, and hoping you are settling in well. Angela and I feel very lucky to have met you. It went on from there, little details, trivial things, and Loki caught himself smiling, just a fraction. He could almost hear her voice.

A moment later, another message appeared above Ms. Fairfax's. He did not recognize the address, and opened it, only to blink at it in surprise.

Thanks for the concert. Mind coming around for a bit next Tuesday? Got a few more questions. –C.

Brusque, he thought. Blunt, direct. (All those eyes, curious, attentive. Perhaps it was only knowing no better, but to them…)

Loki wrote a swift response before closing his computer and plucking up his book of the moment. Somehow I'm not surprised, he wrote. I'll see you on Tuesday. Don't bother to leave the door unlocked.

Interlude (VII)

You should not have done that.

The thought nagged at the back of his mind, troubled him. He still did not feel calm, even once back in his rooms. Paced back and forth at the foot of his bed – remade, he noticed, and not by him, which just made uneasiness prickle further along his spine though he knew it was only housekeeping – and flicked his thumbnail against the other fingers of his right hand.

It was a thoughtless, foolish reaction. Childish. Are you truly so pathetic as that-

(Yes, he thought, yes, that probably was the answer, that he was so pathetic.)

They were kind to you. A fine way to repay such kindness.

Loki squeezed his eyes closed. He could still see the look on Laurie's face. Her surprise and confusion and-

You weak, fractured thing. How did you ever think that you would survive here? See how easily you break and burn even the best of things offered to you?

The room seemed too tight, too close. Stifling. On instinct, he twisted himself out of there and into elsewhere, and almost fell onto the grass, stomach lurching with nausea. He took a few sharp, deep breaths of cooling night air, and sank to sit cross-legged, palms pressed flat against the earth.

Is this how you are going to live? Sneaking, crawling from shadow to shadow…

No, he thought, viciously, defiantly. No. I am not broken, I am not done.

This is another realm, now sundered from Asgard. Another beginning. You need not…

Why, he wondered, then, why had he? It ought to have been welcome, their openness, ought to have been his due. He knew things they could never hope to understand and had grasped power they could not even think to touch. Dangerous, he'd thought, but that was foolish. Of course he was dangerous, as any predator among lesser beasts might be. But that was hardly…

You chafe at indifference yet reject kindness. What is it you think you want, Laufeyson? Do you know yourself?

His thoughts felt like a tangled snarl he couldn't find the end of. He pressed the heel of one hand to his eyes, the meal he'd just eaten too heavy in his stomach.

"Hey man, got a light?"

Loki bit back his automatic snappish reply enough to simply say, "No."

"Bummer." Silence, for a few moments. "Hey. You okay?"

He did not bother to try to silence his sharp and jagged laugh. "Many seem terribly eager to ask me that question of late. I have no idea what they expect to hear." A few more moments of silence, and whoever his interrupter was, they wandered away, leaving him alone once more. It was a quiet night. Pleasant. Warm.

He took a deep breath and tried to center his thoughts. So he had erred. Acted unbecomingly. It will not happen again. Was that not enough? What more…

But it was not simply error, it was panic, it was fear. What had he thought would happen, what had he expected, and how did he think to make his way in this world if he fled so from all companionship?

Perhaps, he thought with a brittle kind of anger, that was it, that the fault had never been in others but in him, and the loneliness that had plagued him was only his own isolation.

He shoved himself to his feet and pushed all thoughts from his mind. Inhaled deeply. Keep moving, he thought. As he had thought, when first opening his eyes on this his new life. Keep moving. Do what you must.

Try again. And again. And again. This is an entire realm. You have only just begun.