They're expecting a report.

In all honesty, Loki's surprised they've waited this long. In the months that he's been on friendly terms with notS.H.I.E.L.D., one thing he's picked up is that they're very particular; if something happens, they want to know about it , and they don't want any details spared. In all this time, there have been no official requests for debriefings on their time with Thanos. It was only a matter of time before it came, and, when it did, he was not the least bit surprised.

"What do we tell them", Loki sighs, fidgeting with his tie. He turns to the mirror and scoffs. "I can barely remember all that happened, and I know you see no comfort in discussing it-"
"Hey." Anthony looks up from his own tie and gives him a pointed look. "We don't have to tell them anything."
Loki shakes his head. "These people have given me a second chance."
"That doesn't mean you owe them your mind." When Loki doesn't answer, Anthony sighs, rises from the bed, and joins him at the mirror. There's a space between them, as there often is these days. Things have definitely changed between them. Somedays for the better and others for the worse. On days like this, when one goes to lean into the other, only to suddenly rear back and put a mile's worth of space between them, it's for the worse.

"Are you listening to me?" Anthony gives his shoulder a shake and frowns.

Loki turns from the mirror to look over at him. He smiles, relishing in the comfort of Anthony's touch, and shrugs sheepishly. "Sorry", he says, then turns and walks over to his dresser, where an array of nail polishes rest. Seafoam green, his least favorite of the greens, and spotted black are all that remains. He picks up the latter, hops onto the dresser, and begins to paint his nails.

Anthony sits beside him and watches, his eyes darting between Loki's hands and his eyes. "So", he says after a moment. "It's Loki tonight. Right?" Loki looks up. Anthony gestures to the clock and offers a smile. "Lila's on vacation in Monte Carlo?"

Loki rolls his eyes. He turns his attention back to his hands. "I'm not particularly fond of Miss Lila", he explains as he drags his brush against a nail. "If her presence is not required, I'd rather just arrive as myself."

"Really? I mean." He holds his hands out and shakes his head. "Not that you aren't a dashing devil yourself but I figured…" He shrugs, then leans back against the wall. "I dunno. I kinda figured you liked being her."

"I suppose." Loki shakes up his bottle and tosses it towards the bed, guiding it through the air before swiping his fingers up and down. "But I…" He bites his lip and turns his gaze to the ceiling fan. "I've spent my whole life wearing the face of another and not feeling like I belong. Being Lila, it brings that all back. Only, it's worse because I know it's not real, but I have to maintain the facade." He allows his hands to fall between his legs. "If I'm going to do this, it's going to be as I've been since Odin brought me to Asgard; it's going to be in the skin I feel most like myself."

Anthony places his hand beside his. "What about your other skin", he asks softly, the wrinkles around his eyes becoming prominent as he sees Loki wince.

"Never."

"Okay." He brushes his finger up against Loki's and nods. "That's okay."

Loki takes in a breath. He stands from the dresser, places his arms over his head, and closes his eyes. eserves it", he says; he lifts his hand, and Mordecai takes off out the door and down the hall.

"You're too hard on yourself", Anthony murmurs, and, aside from him complimenting Loki's nails, neither says anything more after that.

A black car pulls up in front of the Tower a little while after that. The windows are tinted, which Loki can't necessarily say he's comfortable with. But it's a short ride, and he and Anthony are talking again, so it doesn't bug him nearly as much as it should. After that, the stuffy men up front guide them into what appears to be an abandoned warehouse but is actually a pristine establishment with glistening, white walls and employees in grey uniforms.

"I thought you said notS.H.I.E.L.D. was...reformed", Loki whispers, drawing closer and closer to Anthony as they delve deeper into the base.

Anthony just shrugs. "Better", he corrects. "Not good. Trust me, this way better. Not as easy to keep secrets." Loki keeps staring at the walls and cameras. Anthony purses his lips; he looks back to the men ahead of them, never once faltering in his step. "Don't let it intimidate you. It looks worse than it is."

Loki shoves his hands into his pockets. "I think it's them you need to worry about", he says, miraculously willing a smile to his face. "I've been here for months, and this is the first time they've requested my audience."

Anthony chuckles. "Maybe they're just shy."

Obviously not. If that were the case, they wouldn't be there, about to disclose fifteen canyons worth of trauma.

Loki grits his teeth. He brushes his hand through the air in pursuit of Anthony's and is almost surprised to find Anthony already reaching out with trembling fingers to grab hold of him.

They enter the room that way; shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand. The men and women at the table all look up and zero in on their hands

"What was that you were saying about intimidation", Loki murmurs, taking a seat at the end of the table.

"Ladies! Gentleman." Anthony sits down beside him, beaming so bright it makes Loki's face hurt. "Pleasure to see you all, as always."

"Stark." The Director taps his fingers against the table, the faintest hint of a smile upon his face. "Glad you could make it." He then turns to Loki and nods. "Loki."
"Director."

"All right." Anthony pops his lips, then turns to look around the table. "So how we doing this? Hands raised for a question or is it a free-for-all?"

"I'm thinking free for all", a woman says, tossing her hair over her shoulder. Before Loki can send Anthony a worried look, she's leaning across the table and staring into his eyes. "Mr. Odinson", she begins, and Loki clenches his hands underneath the table. "What, if you don't mind my asking, is your relationship with Thanos?"

Well. He wasn't expecting that.

Loki scratches the back of his head and lets out a breathy laugh. "Um. Once upon a time, we, um, we were…" He inhales, then lets the air go in a short, choppy release. "Well, it's a bit difficult to explain."
The woman smiles. She jots something down in the notebook before her, then looks back up and asks, "Okay. I'll rephrase: how was it that you came to partner with him this time around?"
Loki's awkward attempt at an amicable expression dissolves into a scowl. As the woman continues scribbling away, he narrows his eyes and says, "I wouldn't call it 'partner' so much as 'prisoner'".

"Uh huh." She lifts her pen to twirl it beside her ear. "Semantics aside, do you think you could you answer my question?"

Loki looks away from the woman to take in the faces of the others seated at the table. The Director and Anthony, they're the only ones he feels comfortable discussing this with, and that trust only applies to the former because of his relationship with Anthony. With everyone else, it's clear just where their sentiments lie. He knew the meeting wouldn't be easy, but, somehow, he figured there'd be less animosity.

Anthony slips his hand underneath the table and back into his, and his words from earlier come back to Loki. How this meeting was to be of benefit to both sides. notS.H.I.E.L.D. would have further information on Thanos, and Loki would have the opportunity to present himself in a sympathetic light. It won't erase the past, but it could help proving his current allegiance.

"After falling from the Bifrost", Loki states, turning back to the woman, who's resumed writing in her notepad. "I was...alone. And lost. I'd recently learned of my true heritage and was in pursuit some direction." He blinks and looks down at his wrist, where his silver band has sat since his early childhood. He traces a finger along its length and bites his lip. "Most of my alliances were of Asgard or Asgard's companions, but there was one man I'd befriended that I knew I could turn to should I ever need guidance."
"Thanos", Fury says, looking between he and Anthony.

Loki nods. "Yes. In our younger years, we engaged in a dalliance."

The woman with the notepad looks up from the table. "A dalliance", she repeats, her pen long forgotten. "You were dating."

"Yes."

The woman across Notepad Lady clears her throat; once she has Loki's eyes, she huffs, shakes her head, and says, incredulous, "You dated a galactic terrorist?"

So much for "sympathy points". Loki sits up further in his seat. "I was going through a difficult time in my life", he says, trying to make his voice sound non-defensive. From the looks and the hand squeeze he gets, it's probably not working. "He was strong, confident, sturdy." He blinks, lowers his eyes, and when he resumes speaking, it's in a softer voice. "And he wasn't always a terrorist."

"Right." The skeptic scoffs and leans against the back of her seat. "Because that makes it so much better."

"Louise." Fury lifts a hand, then turns his eyes onto Loki. "So you were dating. How did that lead to you two working together?"

Loki shrugs. "He took care of me", he mutters. "When I quarreled with my father or needed a respite from home, I turned to him, and he asked no questions...He was kind to me, gratuitously so, and I wanted to earn my keep; he had a lot of affairs, and he needed someone to tend to them."
"Like a secretary", Fury supplies, and Loki nods, his shoulders going lax with relief.

"Yes, like a secretary. The 'universal balance' and such?" He shakes his head. "That didn't come until much later on. I wasn't even aware of his goals until some time before my Fall. Perhaps, I didn't want to know."

Fury keeps looking at him, so he continues, choosing his words with scrutiny as he recalls that fateful day. "By then, his toils had long since turned from humanitarian efforts to more...nefarious means. Where he once provided aid to struggling populations, he began arguing for extermination. When no one listened, he turned to magic." He bites his lip and averts his eyes to the shining surface of the table. "He turned to me."

One of the men, doning what Anthony calls a Rolex, raises his eyebrows. "And you said 'yes'?"
Loki purses his lips. "He was all I had", he responds cooly. "I'd've done anything for him."

"But not for forever." At the end of the table, a mouse of a woman with acid blue air looks up from her lap and cocks her head to the side. Everyone turns to her, but she retains her resolve, watching him with eyes that are not prying but curious. "You left him at some point. Right? That's how you became his prisoner?"

"...yes. After escaping from Asgard, I took to the cosmos and stayed there until his minions eventually found me."
The blue mouse rubs a finger underneath her nose. "Why did you leave", she questions, and all heads swivel back to Loki.

Why did he leave? As these people would tell it, Loki's a madman yielding the secrets to terror. Surely, he should have been thrilled to level entire civilizations to dust with the mere snap of a finger. It doesn't make sense that he would grow weary of all the death and the grief and the guilt, the pain, the sorrow. It doesn't make sense that his conscience would grow so heavy that most days, getting out of bed had become an entirely new struggle in its own right. It doesn't make sense that he would abandon the love of his life because he'd grown to fear him just as his experiments had.

It doesn't make sense. Loki doesn't make sense. This meeting doesn't make sense. To these people, Loki will always be the man that came to their home with the intent to destroy and to conquer. Nothing he says will ever make a difference.

"Creative differences", he eventually says, not meeting the eyes of the council.

Anthony squeezes his hand tighter. He lifts his other hand onto the table and says, "I think that's enough on the rewind."

Blue Mouse smiles and props her head up on her fists. "What would you rather talk about, Mr. Stark?"
He points a finger at her and winks. "I like your spunk, kid. When you're done with the matching greys, fill in an application for me."
She beams wide and starts to say something, but Fury lifts his hand and levels them both with smoldering looks.

"Stark, this is not a recruitment office." He stands from his seat and approaches the wall behind the table. With a light tap of his fingers, the wall shivers, and a crude map of the galaxy spreads along its length. "Now, from what you've told us, you two were held in this region", Fury says, circling around a purplish quadrant of the map. It's not a precise location, Loki can't help but note, but it's more sophisticated than he'd credit Midgardian tech with. "And this region, near as we can tell, is surrounded by an anomaly that keeps it in a constant state of atmospherical duress. No one without knowledge of this anomaly should be able to get in or out" He drops his hands on the table and exchanges looks between Loki and Anthony. "Care to explain how you two got out of there?"

"Well." Anthony shrugs. "The old T-man had some ships on the ready for whenever he brought in new people, experiments, guards, sadists, whatever. When our, um, doctors came to check on us, I knocked 'em out, and me and my pal here made a run for the shipyard." He runs his finger along Loki's palm and flashes the table members a grin. "Bing, bang, boom, we're back kicking it earthside in a matter of weeks."

Rolex smirks. "Bing, bang, boom." He taps his fingers against the table, then says, "What did he do to you two?" As he's saying this, his gaze slips over to Loki, where it lingers and smolders like the last burning coal of a fire. "And has it had any...lingering effects?"
"'Course it has. Wouldn't be torture if it didn't, am I right?"

Loki gives him a look, then turns back to the table. "He threw us in a pit for six months, where we frequently nearly drowned and starved to death. Anthony was often beaten, and I was drugged. Nothing else happened."
Rolex cocks an eyebrow. He looks to where Loki and Anthony's arms disappear beneath the table and stares at Loki with distrusting eyes. "Really?"

"Really."

Anthony presses against his shoulder. With his presence so close and the eyes on him, Loki feels, in more ways than one, like he's back in Avenger Tower all over again, tiptoeing about a field of seashells. Of course, here, he can't duck into a closet and wait until everyone's gotten bored and shambled back to their floors.

"Thanos has to know you've escaped by now", says the Notepad Lady. "What's he waiting for?"

Loki blinks. He looks up from his lap to stare at the lady. "What?"

She taps her pen against the table. "What's he waiting for", she repeats with a shrug. "I mean, he clearly has the knowledge and weaponry available to come back and wipe us off the galaxial maps. As you've stated before", she continues, now pointing the pen his way. "You know him better than anyone else, so I'll ask you again, Mr. Odinson: what's taking him so long?"

It's a good question. A question, actually, amazingly, that he hadn't considered before.

Despite his meticulous planning and longstanding goals, Thanos has never been one for patience. He prefers to accomplish everything sooner rather than later; it's why he so often turned to the drugs; always so eager to obtain information, even if it was done through means of torture. And just as Thanos is to Loki, Loki's always been a sore spot for Thanos. He'd never allow Loki to abandon him, not after spending so many years attempting to lure him away from Asgard. Then there's Anthony, who'd not only assisted in the Infinity War but had also broken Loki free of Thanos's spell. Even if Loki and Anthony were able to escape, they should not have had this long a period of peace.

What is he waiting for?

"Maybe an invitation", Anthony offers, and this actually draws a few chuckles from around the table. "I mean, us Earthians, we are supposed to be polite, are we not?"

The Director rolls his eyes. "I think the point Lainey is making is we need to keep an eye out." He crosses his arms over his chest and looks over everyone in the room. "He came before we were ready last time. We can't let that happen again. We can't afford to let that happen again." His eyes go to Loki's, but Loki's gone back to staring into his lap, and the Director's words aren't quite meeting his ears.

What's he waiting for?

. . .

"We'll be ready this time", Anthony says later that night. He grabs his shoulder, raises his eyebrows, and smiles. He's aiming for comforting, but he looks about as comforted as Loki feels.

Nevertheless, Loki wills a smile of his own to his face and nods. "Of course", he agrees. "We have everything we need."
They're here again. Face to face, with a doorframe separating them. How often have they found themselves at this crossroads, both wanting to pick the most desired path but too afraid to take the first step? Loki digs his nails into the frame and stares at him.

Stay.

Even if it is an illusion.

He shakes his head and takes a step back. "I'll see you in the morning, Anthony."
"See you tomorrow, Loki."
He closes the door and, a minute later, hears Anthony walking away. He presses his back to the door, then sinks to the floor and closes his eyes. The ceiling fan clicks and whirrs to life, kicking up dust as he breathes in and out and reminds himself that he is here, on earth, safe and happy.

"What am I doing", he whispers to the room.

No one's there to answer back.