A/N: Sorry it's late. Exams, horse-related drama, personal drama, other excuses. Whatever.

And then I was going to be lazy and just post a short chapter but that chapter count's getting awful long without the second big plot point starting yet.

But you get some important Loki POV stuff! Enjoy.

Chapter 24: Parallels

Loki slept even worse than usual. Adding more guilt to the usual myriad of negative memories and emotions that kept him up hadn't helped, for some reason.

Neglecting to drag himself out of bed to join Thor and Jane for dinner - he had some fairly serious jetlag, they'd understand - he just lay there, semi-conscious, too many thoughts in his head.

Eventually, he gave up on the soft bed - there were three bedrooms, the master, the soon-to-be-used nursery and the guest room - and dragged himself out of bed around 4am.

Not wanting to wake anyone, he rummaged through the bookcase in the room, but unfortunately, it was largely books that they hadn't been interested enough in to put in the main rooms or the master bedroom. Loki ended up with a botany guide.

It took him three quarters of an hour to give up on that.

Then he changed into exercise clothes and did his stretches, trying to strengthen his wrecked and atrophied abdominal muscles. It hurt, but he needed to do it.

The room wasn't overly large, so Loki couldn't exercise too much. If it had been daylight, he might've gone outside, but he didn't overly trust London at night, even with his skill set. Plus the security cameras.

It was more the pain than the exertion that had a little bit of sweat on his forehead. And he hadn't showered after the day of flying, after what he did in Mandarin City - don't think about it - and after having sex with Tony. Actually, he was goddamn filthy. He used to be such a clean freak before the hydrophobia.

Shower time.

Shower. Time.

"You can do this," Loki muttered to himself. "Hydrophobia is for headcases."

It took him about ten minutes of working through memories and breathing deeply before he headed for the ensuite bathroom and reluctantly stripped off.

He tilted the shower head so the water wouldn't cover his face, then turned it on and let it heat up.

Water running.

- "Tell us!" A heavily accented voice screams.

You don't have any words left. None of them would work anyway-

Loki took several deep breaths. Wondering if anyone had invented a better way of cleaning off, he stepped under the hot water.

- You keep a diary the first few days, but you quickly realise there's no point, because odds are you'll be dead when they realise you don't know anything-

Focus on the soap, Feison.

He cleaned himself as quickly as possible, then dived out of the shower without getting his hair or face wet.

- You're starting to think that being tortured is better than being thirsty. At least with the torture, you can try and drink whatever water you don't inhale and choke on-

His skin went pink with how hard he rubbed it to get dry. Then he hunted down his shampoo and washed his hair in the sink, rubbing that dry viciously too. Finally, he used tissues to clear off the remains of his makeup, then rubbed his face clean with his damp towel. He hadn't submerged his face. Fantastic.

- Your eyes burn when they hit the water, but you don't know how to blink or do anything anymore -

In Loki's opinion, the seizures had been the worst. Sure, he'd had the pleasure of being unconscious a lot of the time, but when he'd been awake, he'd been disorientated and permanently in pain, his body trying to give up. He couldn't even remember a lot of it; his memory of back then was blitzed, just a kaleidoscope of disjointed images. It was a period of a couple of days that he only remembered as a blur. Then he'd been picked up and stuffed into a manky van. Pain, blood, then he'd woken up in hospital from a two-day coma. He'd only survived because he'd been so dehydrated that he hadn't lost too much blood.

But the seizures had been the real torture.

Loki's goal of not thinking about Afghanistan had failed miserably, and he was just sitting on his bed in his underwear trying to not hyperventilate.

Botany. Botanical thoughts.

-O.O-

Once Thor was awake, Loki dressed himself tidily and left his room in search of breakfast.

"Ah, brother! You're awake," Thor smiled as Loki filed into the kitchen. "Do you feel better?"

"A little," Loki said. "What are you cooking me for breakfast?"

"Pop tarts or nothing," Thor told him, retrieving the toasted goods and putting them on a plate.

Loki made a face, which made Thor chuckle at him. "Where I last was, I had a full breakfast cooked for me every day," Loki tutted.

"It's unlikely you'll get service like that around here," Thor said good-naturedly. "What are your plans for today?"

"It depends," Loki said thoughtfully, rummaging in the refrigerator for something to eat. He settled on yoghurt and muesli. "On your intentions."

"Because we aren't questionable spies, Jane and I both have work today," Thor said.

"Oh? What does she do?" Loki said. He already knew - astrophysics - but his intention was to keep the fact he'd had his eye on them a secret.

"She is a woman of science. I'm sure you'd find her work very interesting."

"Any explosions?" Loki said with an impish smile.

"Unfortunately, not yet," Thor said.

The effort Loki put in to look sociable and cheerful was wearying.

"Today, then, I plan to threaten the person who should be paying me, sell my soul and generally commit acts of evil," Loki said, affecting a joking tone.

Evidently, Thor didn't think he was serious, because he smiled, finished his Pop Tart and clapped Loki on the back.

"Behave yourself, Loki," Thor said fondly, dropping his plate in the kitchen sink.

"One more thing," Loki said. "Do not, under any circumstances, tell Frigga and Odin I am in the country."

"Well-" Thor began.

Loki narrowed his eyes. "You've already told them, haven't you?" When Thor looked slightly sheepish, he said "We're going to dinner with them, aren't we." Thor's facial expression tipped him off again. "Tonight, yes?"

"I am afraid so," Thor said.

Loki bared his teeth sharply in frustration; if he went outside, there were so many cameras that SHIELD could probably find him. He'd put himself at risk already. "Fantastic. Tell the whole country I'm here, why don't you."

"Your parents are hardly the whole country-"

"They're not my parents!" Loki said sharply. Then he rubbed his face with his hand. "Add familial drama to my situation. Perfection."

-O.O-

Tony woke up that morning feeling horrible. It continued from there.

"JARVIS," he said, lying in bed. "Am I dead yet?"

"No, sir," JARVIS replied.

"Damn it," Tony said. With that, he rolled out of bed with a groan.

He needed to reclaim the legs from the Iron Man suit. He needed to do something that looked like good PR for Iron Man. He needed breakfast.

Before that, though, he needed exercise. Clear the head with the new miracle treadmill!

After breakfast, the SHIELD meeting of yesterday was to resume. What joy.

When they were all assembled around the table, Natasha stood up. "We need to find Agent Feison before he has the opportunity to utilise his knowledge against us."

"You really think he will?" Bruce said. "He strikes me as the type to finish the job and never speak of it again."

Natasha shrugs. "Loki does what's best for Loki. I'd say he needed the money."

"But he could've just asked for it," Tony growled.

Natasha raised a rather cynical eyebrow. "It always amazes me how people can be prideful and not recognise it in others."

"Point taken," Tony sighed.

"So what do we know?" Steve asked.

"We know he used his credit card at Urumqi International Airport," Natasha said. "His passport wasn't used, but that doesn't mean he didn't fly anywhere, and nothing that could be used to trace him has been activated since then."

"Intentionally?" Steve said.

"Without a doubt," Natasha said. "He's not stupid, and he's smuggled himself out of countries enough times to do it seamlessly. I'd know; I taught him."

Tony noticed then how extremely rigidly Natasha was holding her face. She was trying to hide how upset she was.

"So where would he go?" Clint said. "Disneyland? Happiest place on Earth."

"Home to England, maybe?" Bruce said.

"I wouldn't think so," Natasha said. "As I learned from his file, he has no available biological family members and he has a rocky relationship with his adopted ones."

"He could have friends, though," Steve said.

"I doubt it, but we can't rule it out," Natasha said. "SHIELD is running a face trace, but Loki knows they can do that, so odds are he won't be found until he wants to be."

"Fantastic," Tony said. "So you're saying we know nothing? I'll get back to work, then."

And with that, he stood up and left. He had work to do.

-O.O-

"Basically, Tony, she's always got the upper hand while the military is on her side," Pepper said over the phone.

"So my choices are: roll over and do a few tricks for the bureaucratic fuckwads, or lose this," Tony paraphrased.

"Pretty much," Pepper said. "It's on you, Tony."

Tony kicked a chair. Then he said "I'm not going to lose."

"Go somewhere with a padded floor before you roll over, then, I guess."

"Not helping."

"Honestly, there's nothing much I can do."

Really, Tony thought as he hung up and drafted a new design for the power supply of the Iron Man, the only way I can win is push her out of the game completely.

Unfortunately, her foul play centred around the hacking and kidnapping, and his evidence for that was vague at best. In fact, he needed Loki to testify that it had even happened, and it didn't seem like the mercenary was going to come to his aid anytime soon.

Either way, he had work to do.

-O.O-

Loki stayed indoors all day, to keep safe. He sent Hammer a message on the phone she'd given him, telling her that he wanted his money promptly. Then he trawled the internet, in the absence of anything better to do.

As dinner drew nearer and nearer, he was formulating ways to head out into public without his face being caught by a security camera. He was in London, after all; there were security cameras absolutely everywhere and SHIELD had access to all of them.

He resolved to fuck it, and just keep his face down and covered as much as possible. Hammer had promised to pay him in the next few days, so he was planning to just wing it as soon as he had the money. Hopefully Thor wouldn't ask too many questions.

Thor and Jane both didn't get home until after five o'clock, when Loki was already starting to go stir-crazy. He hated doing nothing. As a child, he had been able to just mind his own business for days at a time, but his adult years of adventure had instilled a restlessness in him that wouldn't quit. He didn't even have any work to do; at least at Stark Tower he could keep chipping away at firewalls and dissecting Tony's blueprints.

Being bad was better than being bored.

And Loki was so very, very good at being bad.

He'd been considering, over the course of the day, taking action against Hammer once she'd paid him. He was still pissed at her-

- "You failed, Feison, as simple as that. I'm not going to pay you for not doing what I wanted," Hammer said boredly.

"I failed through the incompetence of his people! It was not my fault," Loki snarled angrily.

"But you still failed. Don't try and blame your own raw ineptitude on me"-

-and once he had his money, he was a free agent. Literally.

It was sorely tempting.

But once Thor and Jane came home from their respective jobs, Loki tried to push his schemes out of his brain and focus on surviving an evening with Odin. Frigga was a kind woman and Loki did like her, but Odin? Oh, no. Not after how they'd parted.

Nevertheless, he was trying to keep Thor happy, so he tidied up his hair from the loose curls it had been in and dressed himself formally.

Jane was coming. That was good, because the Burisons had political instincts and didn't like to make drama outside of the blood. Maybe that was why there'd been so much drama when Loki had renounced them.

A short taxi ride later, and they were arriving at a very nice restaurant that Loki remembered from his childhood. He ducked his head as he followed Thor and Jane across the footpath and got indoors as quickly as possible.

Jane hadn't said much to him, quietly respecting his privacy. That had surprised him; maybe Thor had told her to leave him be.
Loki looked around the surroundings, partitioned for privacy.

"This way, Loki," Thor said, gesturing after the waiter.

Loki nodded, keeping quiet as he wondered how much of a shitstorm he was about to step into.

"Mother! Father!" Thor said brightly as they approached the table.

"Hi," Jane said, peeking out from behind Thor with a smile.

"Hello, Frigga," Loki said, mustering as warm a smile as he could. Then he dropped that smile like hot shit. "Odin."

"Loki," Odin replied coldly. "Thor, Jane, take a seat."

"Luke," Frigga beamed. She actually got to her feet to hug him, and Loki uncomfortably hugged her back, wondering how unconditional love worked.

"It's good to see you too," Loki said, the honesty feeling odd. He took a seat on the opposite side of the table from Odin. "How are things?"

-O.O-

Tony was moping. He'd worked hard; he'd found that Hammer had disabled the tracking from his stolen suit legs. He'd also finished diving through all of Hammer's paperwork that allowed her to take over the War Machine program. She'd done it by the board, but people had reservations after her father's actions.

It wouldn't take much to blemish her reputation permanently.

But he was still moping, because he didn't have a good way to do that yet that wouldn't involve potentially getting himself in the shit too.

He had resolved to ask Natasha. She was full of plots, and she didn't want Hammer on the Avengers almost as much as Tony.

But when he approached her, she was sitting in her room. After he knocked, she let him in.

"Hey, Tony," she said dully from where she was sitting on the floor. Tony noted a few pieces of paper and a bottle of vodka next to her. "Come have a drink."

The only other time Natasha had offered him a drink was when Clint had been hospitalised. It was a personal gesture.

"My pleasure," Tony said, slumping on the ground next to her. She offered him the bottle, which he accepted gratefully, taking a decent drink of the burning liquor. "It's hurting you, too, huh?"

Natasha didn't answer. The fact that she was sitting on the floor drinking in front of him was enough of a show of vulnerability to confirm that.

"I have exactly three photos of him," Natasha told him, gesturing to the paper she had.

"Can I...?" Tony said, reaching out for them.

She nodded. "Go nuts."

Tony picked them up.

The first was the most stereotypically Russian picture he'd ever seen, but Natasha was in some respects a very stereotypical Russian. It featured her, Loki and another guy wrapped up in fur coats, looking fairly stern and serious in a tiny little apartment.

The second was the polar opposite - it was somewhere bright and colourful and Loki was smiling and taking a selfie of himself and Natasha. Loki was wearing a lot of beads and there was a purple feather in a buttonhole of his unbuttoned shirt.

"That was Mardi Gras," Natasha told him. "Loki loved it."

Tony grinned wryly. He could imagine that.

The last one a mugshot of younger Loki in the same apartment as the first one.

"That was to send to SHIELD, so they knew who I was working with," Natasha commented.

"Loki's a weird bastard," Tony commented idly, looking at the Mardi Gras one again. Natasha was clearly trying not to grin in the photo, he could tell. In real life she was grim-faced.

"You miss him, yeah?" Tony said.

"He betrayed us," Natasha said. "Not just you. All of us. I'm not sorry he's gone. I'm sorry he did it."

"You know what, Nat? So am I. I hope he is too, but I doubt it."

-O.O-

Dinner had started tense, but amiable. Loki talked to Frigga about life (in his case, heavily watered-down and altered) and to Jane about science and to Thor about politics. He mentioned his job sparingly to avoid questions. He intentionally didn't talk to Odin.

That worked well through entrees, through the main and halfway through desert.

Until Frigga asked Loki about his work at MI6, clearly giving up on the tense atmosphere.

"I quit," Loki said. "Several years ago."

"I did not think you would stick at it," Odin said.

"Oh, no, I'm still a spy. I just freelance. The money's better and there's no paperwork," Loki said airily.

"I'm proud at least one of my sons has a real job," Odin said mulishly.

"Bitterness doesn't go down well with my sundae, dear Odin," Loki said, picking at his ice cream as he kept his voice calm and light.

Chocolate sauce, bitches.

The air was tense again. Jane may not have been around when Loki and Odin had had their famous falling out, but no doubt Thor had told her. That was, told her about how Loki had taken a job at MI6 specifically against Odin's direct orders just to hand a bone to Odin's political enemy. Loki hadn't even been that interested, not when an acting career beckoned, but he'd been determined to stick it to Odin, and he'd succeeded. It was one of the reasons Odin had fully retired now, and Odin clearly hadn't forgotten.

Loki sighed slightly. This was why he didn't come home. In fact, it was why he didn't have many friends. Resentments, once formed, died hard. And Loki was the type to provoke resentments.

Fuck it. I'm not staying here any longer than I have to. Family drama and domesticity is killing me, Loki thought tetchily. Hammer would pay him, and he could vanish into the world for another half dozen years without explaining himself to anyone. Hopefully.

A/N: Reviews? = D