"We don't have tea," Bruce explained, proffering a steaming cup of coffee.
Loki took it anyway, slamming the beverage back before it could even burn him. "Thank you, Doctor Banner."
Bruce took the seat next to him. "Are you more professional on SHIELD missions or something? Should I call you… Mr. Loki?"
"Eleanore's assigned me the surname 'Eldrsen' while I'm here, if you need something like that. But no, I… I just reverted. Bruce."
"That's alright. I guess I got the PhD's for nothing if no one uses the title."
"Four hours," Clint reported from the cockpit.
"Two for us, suckers!" Tony crowed from the speakers.
"We can turn them down if you want a nap or something," Bruce offered.
Loki leaned his head back. "I prefer the updates."
"Can you see what I'm seeing?" asked Eleanore's voice.
The screens around the plane lit up. Loki grabbed an unused tablet so hard the glass cracked under his thumb. "Eleanore?"
"What are we supposed to be seeing?" Clint asked, his raised voice floating back from the cockpit.
"Magic, right?" Eleanore asked. "All we have are these thermal night-vision goggles, but it looks right. And Loki, look." The camera shifted downward, dizzying, until it came to rest on cooler-looking feet. "It's not getting us. What kind of samples should we get?"
"You should get out of there," Loki ground between his teeth.
Banner crossed his arms, looking over Loki's shoulder. "Eleanore, what's your actual status? Is Steve still conscious?"
The screen showed Steve's outline and Tony's voice muttered over the comms about a 'jawline of righteousness'. "Yeah, he's right here. We weren't near this, anyway."
"I'm alright," Steve concurred.
"What kind of samples?" Eleanore pressed them.
"Princess," Tony said, "this is me saying this. Go to a hospital and leave the science for later."
"I'm actually going for a WWTD," Eleanore retorted.
"That's 'What Would Tony Do?'" Bruce clarified. "It's this play on a religious thing— nevermind."
"I'm just going to start putting rocks in tupperware," Eleanore decided. The camera showed her doing just that, going for the 'hottest' pieces of rubble she could find.
The screen divided to show Steve's view as well. He went for pieces of softer material, tiny bits of technology. "I found the phone. What should I look for here?"
"Green," Bruce said. "Motherboard, chips, anything."
"The calls from that phone routed to a burner that's already been deactivated," Darren finally chimed in.
"Wait," Loki said. "Steve, move back two steps."
Steve did, and his sightline found Eleanore. Behind her flared an agent, a human, with insidious magic worming up his body.
"That's enough samples," Steve decided. He put his arm behind Eleanore's back and gathered the other agent in the same way.
- x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x -
Once the SHIELD plane was in the air, Loki simply listened as Tony, Bruce, Clint, Natasha, and Darren hounded Steve and Eleanore for information. Darren stuck with caring-but-repetitive questions after their well-being. Bruce was more specific, so Eleanore and Steve took each other's temperature, pulse rate, blood sugar, and filled three vacutainers each with their blood for future testing. Tony asked about the technology they'd faced and seemed disappointed with the answers he got. He pressed further, asking about the labs they'd found.
"We'll talk about that in the debrief," Steve said firmly. "We're landing, here. We'll give you updates after they check us in."
The updates consisted of Steve's quiet words every fifteen minutes until the Starks arrived. Then there was staticky jubilation, and then sparse words from Tony. Darren paid them absolutely no mind from the moment he left his suit. Then Steve joined the comms, as he had on the plane ride to Sydney, and his words— and the words he left unsaid— weighed them to the ground.
"We're alright. Cleared medically already. They're testing our blood, but it looks like no microbots this time."
But he didn't say how they had escaped that explosion, and he didn't invite Eleanore to the conversation. Loki had heard her twice in the background, directing someone on how best to store a vacutainer full of her blood, then again insisting she would not deal with an IV right now, she'd drink water, end of story.
"I don't know," Tony said aside when another doctor came to distract their prodigal teammates. "They look alright. I've got every sensor on both suits pointed at them. I think we're in for a shit debrief, if I have to be candid. But I don't know."
Loki knew. As soon as the elevator doors opened and he caught sight of Eleanore and Steve and the guarded way they watched everyone around them, he knew. Steve had already carried this burden before Loki ever met him. It was new to the mutant woman's shoulders.
Killing.
It was part of life on Asgard. Mostly, when Loki was young, killing animals for sport. Then other people when Thor went off to battle because who protected the protector?
"Holy shit," was Clint's comment.
And it was astute. Steve was cleaned up, hair wet, but he looked ready to throw anyone who moved even slightly wrong through a wall. He stayed on Eleanore's left side because Darren was guarding her right and Tony kept getting in the way of the medical personnel who tried to approach from the front.
"Are you alright?" she asked Loki when he got close enough.
Loki blinked at her. "Yes."
"Same," she said. "Can we do that thing where we ignore the immediacy of an issue and act like everything is normal?"
"Yes."
So that was what they did. Clint and Romanov talked their way around the other SHIELD agents with a mixture of authority and promises they'd watch 'the subjects'. Bruce began speaking in medical jargon, which glazed over the eyes of the non-doctors in black tactical gear. They all ushered Steve and Eleanore onto the plane.
- x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x
"You alright?" Steve asked, seating himself next to Loki in the middle of the cabin.
Loki shook his head, looked over to Eleanore, who was asleep with her head on Darren's shoulder. "That question's been posed to me already."
"I know. Still." He pointed to the container of rock in Loki's hand. "Anything weird about that?"
"I think my definition of 'weird' has expanded in my time on this planet."
"Same here, but since I woke up in this century."
Loki gave him the container, watching with satisfaction as the magic retreated to the other side to get away from his protective spell. "Nothing any more 'weird' about that. The winery was the magician's source of transportation before it was the lab facility."
Steve's jaw squared. "Everyone made it out?"
"Everyone who was alive when the explosion happened, yes."
"Any data recovered?"
"Nothing. The computer systems were powdered." Annoyingly, irretrievably obliterated. When Loki's head had finally cleared, he'd gone back to the scene with Clint at his side. They'd sifted alongside Stark drones and SHIELD agents. Metal-mineral dust and sickening power, nothing more. "I assume you found the same, since your prison exploded."
"We know who took us," Steve supplied, lowering his voice. "This mutual enemy Elle and I had, from before you got here. He was working with the magician."
"Ah." Loki nodded his approval. "'Was,' and 'had'. You did what needed to be done."
Steve's jaw locked. He glanced at Eleanore, cementing Loki's suspicion.
"You're a terrible liar, Captain. Even when you're silent."
"She doesn't want to talk about it yet," the Captain said. "She can have some time."
- x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x
Time was something they all had on that flight back to the Washington D.C. Eleanore slept for three of the six hours and spent the next one talking to Bruce and Tony about the results from the blood tests that were coming in from the SHIELD testers in Australia.
Loki watched from a distance. His eyes were heavy, and his muscles were frustratingly relaxed in this stupid leather seat. He bit his tongue to stay awake and spoke to Clint and Steve on and off whenever they felt like interacting, which was annoyingly often.
The last two hours of the flight took them through a quick dawn into a new day. They landed at the Triskelion at six thirty AM.
Alan was the loudest. "Elle!"
But he was by no means the most vocal. June rose above and beyond. "Oh my god, are you— you look so sick! What did they do to you?!"
"Not now," Lydia said. She silently gathered Eleanore into her arms.
Loki kept the same distance the rest of the team did, barring Darren. The younger Stark stayed close until Eleanore reached out for his hand again a minute of so into the hug. This lasted a few minutes more until Agent Hill and Director Fury approached from the roof's door.
"Debrief?" Eleanore asked them.
"When you're ready," Agent Hill said.
Eleanore nodded, her lips tightening in a false smile. "Now's good. See you at home, Mom?"
Everyone gathered around the Captain, who drew himself up into the leader he was supposed to be.
"It wasn't good," he began. "It was Dr. Rouldkin. He took Elle because he was experimenting on mutants anyway, and he wanted revenge. She had to kill him so we could escape. I don't think she wants to talk about that much."
Lydia took the news calmly. A nod, a pained expression, and then she was placid.
Tony spat fire. "What do you mean, he was experimenting on mutants 'anyway'? He tested her? Was she some kind of lab rat to him?"
"Dad," Darren said. "Think about it. Mutants."
"Waterworks— oh." Tony blanched.
Alan's fists clenched. "How could he test her feelings thing?"
"I imagine they'll cover that in the debrief," Loki said. His chest constricted, forcing the words out. At least his voice sounded much lighter than he felt.
"Yeah," Steve confirmed when Tony opened his mouth. "Yeah, I… I don't want to tell her whole story for her. But I think that's what she wanted me to tell all of you. Or maybe just you, Lydia."
Lydia nodded once more. Heaved a deep breath. "We'll be at the apartment when she gets home, then. See you in a couple of hours."
- x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x -
For some reason, Loki had not thought much past bringing Steve and Eleanore home. Perhaps his exhaustion had combined with urgency and fear for his own life to produce such short-sightedness. He regretted that now. He'd regretted it for hours since arriving back at the apartment with his mortals.
"Are you sure you don't want more potatoes?" June asked.
"I'm good," Eleanore promised from the island stool.
"You sure? You know the doctor said to eat plenty."
"She ate a plate, Mom," Alan said from the opposite stool.
"And I'm kind of tired," Eleanore added.
Darren rubbed her shoulder. "I'll get you some water?"
Eleanore refilled her glass. "I got it, but thanks."
"June, you and Alan probably want to get home," Lydia suggested. She ushered them out over smaller protests and returned alone. She and Eleanore cleaned the kitchen in comfortable silence.
The silence was less comfortable once Lydia was gone.
Steve sat on the couch. Eleanore and Darren slouched in Eleanore's chair with Charlie curled between them. Loki maintained his distance, placing himself on a stool with the island counter in front of him as some kind of barrier.
"I didn't think this far ahead," Eleanore commented.
"What do you mean?" Darren asked.
"It's like… kinda like after my grandparents died both times. After the funeral, when everyone went home. It's like that. I guess I do know what to do," Eleanore amended. "It's just weird. You guys are acting weird. So am I. I think I'm going to take a shower."
Darren looked like he wanted to follow her into the bathroom. He sat back in the chair, almost as lonely and forlorn as he had been these past days.
"It'll be alright," Steve assured him.
"I'm going to stay here tonight," Darren said. He looked at Loki. "Maybe for the foreseeable future."
Loki nodded. "That will also be alright."
- x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x -
'Alright' turned out to be 'average' once the young lovers were asleep behind the closed door.
Loki didn't sleep that night, though he wanted to. Eleanore had been right; this all felt incredibly strange. Things once ordered had been disordered. Now they looked out of place, rearranged, though they were back where they had always been.
At least tea tasted the same, Loki mused at four in the morning when he finally gave up on his bed. He hadn't had this tea in days. Its spice wound up into his nostrils. The slight sweetness warmed him; a reminder he also hadn't had a truly warm bite of food in days as well.
"That smells good," Eleanore said from the doorway of her room.
Loki set the mug down. "Did you master silencing magic in your absence?"
"No, Darren puts a spell on my room when he stays. You mind if I… have coffee with you?"
"It's your kitchen." Loki watched her place the grounds, pour the water. "You can't sleep?"
"Jet lag or something," Eleanore said. "You can sleep if you want. I'll stay up. You look exhausted."
"So do you."
"I bet." She sat at the counter across from him. Dawn wasn't even beginning to break, so the room was only illuminated by the tiny light plugged next to the sink. "So those buildings are probably a bust now, huh?"
"Yes, by now." Loki sipped his tea. He felt like she was leading up to something.
"What about where I was? That basement maze thing?"
"It's gone. Well, collapsed. The Hulk also made mincemeat of the rubble. The magic indicates that it was their base of operations."
"How did it collapse?" Eleanore asked.
"The transport ruined its stability. Some of it is still upright," Loki amended. "That is how Natasha and the others escaped. The front portion didn't cave in until the Hulk started bashing. I should not have underestimated this magician. We should have searched outside the city."
"Everyone looked okay. Were they okay?"
"If you mean the Avengers, then yes. I healed rather quickly from the rubble, and no one else was caught that deep."
Eleanore's brows drew together. "You got buried?"
"Not for long," Loki lied, because he had no idea how long it had actually been. "The Hulk pulled me out foot-first. Once he helped determine you were not also entombed, we abandoned the scene."
"Is your foot okay?"
"Yes."
Eleanore studied the whorls of creamer in her mug. "Did you see the labs?"
"Yes."
"Did Steve tell you?"
"He told us you were in the labs." The truth might get him farther here.
"Did he tell you about the other mutants?" Eleanore clarified. "I mean, do you know how many bodies they found? Or… I can identify them, probably. I knew their names."
What did you actually face, child? Loki forced himself to breathe normally again. "Two," he said. "Two that Romanov and I found. Clint and Natasha freed the rest we came across."
"They got out? They're alive?" Eleanore asked. "Alive, alive? Like, home with their families?"
"I… suspect so," Loki said. "I didn't keep track of them. You could ask Clint."
"But you saw them, for sure. For sure? Who was it? Like, what did they look like?"
Loki leaned away from her enthusiasm. "They were alive, Eleanore. In the plane with us." He wasn't going to tell her that he had real trouble recalling their features specifically because the lights had been far too bright and every lurch of the plane made him want to vomit.
Eleanore sat back. Her mouth crumpled strangely, and she covered it with her free hand.
Loki was most disturbed because he couldn't feel her reaction, so he had no idea what to expect next. And he didn't like dealing with emotional women. Darren could be her support; why hadn't he told her about the importantly-alive-alive-home-with-their-families-for-sure mutants?
"Rouldkin said he killed them," Eleanore explained from behind her hand. "That was what made it so easy to— Oh my god. But I don't even feel bad. But I killed him. But I don't regret it. But they're alive."
"And you're alive because you killed him," Loki said. "A monster should not exist." And you shouldn't be near more than one at a time.
"I was angry, though. If he hadn't said that, I don't know if I could have done it. Because of the drugs," she explained. "I couldn't do anything. But he made me so mad when he said the rest of them were gone, and I got this rage, and I found the blood vessels in his head and burst them."
"Efficient," Loki complimented, cataloging once again how deceptively dangerous this woman was.
"He said he was going to do the same thing to Steve," Eleanore added.
"I'm certain he was telling the truth about that."
"He was. He did it before. He was a piece of shit. I don't even feel bad speaking ill of the dead. I got him fired. Those bodies you found are because I made him angry."
Loki actually chuckled at her melancholy. "It's fairly safe to speak ill of the dead, you know. Especially corpses who made such horrible choices. None of which you forced them into."
"I do sound kind of dramatic," Eleanore agreed. "You should go to sleep. I'll stay up, alright? A couple of hours?"
Loki thought about it. His exhaustion inclined him to agree. The apartment was safe. "You'll stay within these walls?"
"Yeah. I like these walls."
"Then I'll take you up on your kind offer." Loki sent his mug to the sink and walked around her to his bedroom door. He closed it, tore down its sound barrier, and collapsed onto the bed.
- x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x -
It was a dreary, drizzle of a day when Loki opened his eyes. It was also nearly noon. His bed smelled like his own slack-jawed drool and Alan's spicy soap that sat in it's "Hair-And-Body-All-In-One" glory in the shower. He could hear Eleanore and Darren in the next room.
"I don't want to wait and rest, I want to get back to work."
"Orders are orders, Dear. Ace the psych eval in a couple of days. I'll stay with you."
"I'd rather you work on finding this sonofabitch, Darren. We can't all be out of commission just because I got blasted from the past."
"I'm tired, too. It would be nice to just be around you."
"You're fine, you got like ten hours of sleep. Go get dressed."
Darren grumbled, but his footsteps faded back into Eleanore's bedroom.
Loki stayed where he was, perfectly still, listening while Eleanore scraped some sort of utensil against something and spoke nonsense words to Charlie.
She started just repeating his name and rhyming increasingly improbable words with it. "Barley, Farley, Marley, Carly, Harley, Party, Farty, Barty, Bard, Farb, Blarb." The cat responded with trills.
Darren returned, and Loki also heard the sound of a light kiss. "Bye, Char Char. And bye, love you. Let me know if you need anything. I'll pick up supper?"
"Thanks. Ow, my foot keeps cramping up."
"Put a banana in your ear," Darren suggested in a voice that sounded like his nose no longer existed. He followed up with, "A boodada id by ear?"
Eleanore actually squeaked a laugh. "Oh my god, there might be a new trend of millennial Dad Jokes about to surface. I should see if Kelly still wants to talk to me, so we can do a study."
"Good idea." Another kiss-peck sound, and the hall door closed.
Loki waited until he was certain the absent-minded younger Stark wouldn't return for something he forgot to start another argument. Then he rose, magicked clean clothes onto his body, and emerged. "I see a couple of hours has different meaning for you."
"But you feel better," Eleanore pointed out around a spoon in her mouth. An orange bowl sat in front of her filled with some kind of cream.
"What is that?" Loki asked.
"Frosting. For lunch. Mom made it and left it in the fridge. Want some?"
"No, thank you." Loki sat down across from her; a reversal of their positions from earlier that morning. He summoned a mug, water, and a teabag to steam away in front of him. "So, an evaluation for you?"
"Psychological one. For me and Steve. But I don't know what they would do if we failed. I don't think they've given Steve a real test since he woke up."
"Mm. You are the evaluator, in his case."
Eleanore shrugged. "I don't even have a psych degree. Oh, hey, do you have those posters?"
It took him a moment, but Loki remembered what they'd both forgotten. He pulled specifically until two tubes sat in his hands. "I should have given these to your relatives."
"Not both of them." She took the one with "Church" in the title. "That 'fields' one is yours. Happy late birthday? I can help you hang it up if you want."
Loki sighed through his nose. "Is your brain filled with nothing but gifts? You and your mother."
Eleanore laughed to herself. "If you don't like presents, then you are not ready to hear about Christmas."
"Gifts have their place. Usually, they are reserved for people who don't stand idly by while you're abducted."
"I don't think walking home from the gym counts as standing idly by." She leaned forward. "I know it was bad. Steve said the team did okay, but how are you?"
"Altogether, I believe I fared better than your car," was Loki's first measure to distance himself. This was ridiculous. "How is the Captain? I'm sure you're monitoring him closely."
"Yeah. I'm the evaluator. He's okay, I think. We got out of there— oh, did you see the magic samples?"
"Yes." And those were troubling enough. "Did they try to put any workings on you?"
"Not that I remember," Eleanore answered. "They used human stuff. Advanced human stuff, like I don't think it will pass that medical board certification or whatever for five more years, but I didn't see anything super weird about it."
"Yes, you would say that about a human experimenting on you."
"Well it made a gross kind of sense. If you accept that someone is a crazy piece of… what's the grossest animal you've ever seen?"
Loki considered that. "In terms of flesh, the giant slugs of the swamps of Niflheim."
"I was hoping for in terms of feces."
"I was hoping you wouldn't ask me specifically about feces," Loki chuckled. "But alright, are you looking for smell or texture?"
"Best of both worlds?"
"Mm… Niflheim again. The plains, which don't much differ from the swamps. There's something called a Coulen, which only… vacates its bowels once per Niflheim year. And they usually share the same cycle, so if you choose the wrong day to visit the Plains of Filhem, you will be mired."
Eleanore was giggling so much she dropped the spoon into the frosting. "I don't think I want to go there at all."
"Oh, that's a shame. Your tour of the realms will be incomplete."
"Three out of nine isn't too bad for a human. Did you do a tour? Like, school field trips?"
"Probably something like that."
Eleanore's phone buzzed on the counter. Maria Hill's name popped up with no photo. Eleanore picked the device up and held it to her ear. "Hello?"
"How quickly can you be on a quinjet?"
"Uh…" Eleanore looked at Loki. "Like ten minutes?"
"I'm sending the coordinates now."
"What are we facing?" Loki demanded.
"What's up?" Eleanore paraphrased.
"It's not a combat mission. No uniforms necessary. You're headed for a SHIELD facility in Canada."
"Was there an attack or something?" Eleanore pressed.
"No, it's identification and research. We have the modified spectrometers ready. Agent Simmons will meet you there." The line clicked and went silent.
"She must be in a hurry," Eleanore observed.
Loki nodded. "That, or she has little time for you."
"Maybe both." Eleanore hopped off the stool to walk into her room.
Xx
The flight was short enough, just under two hours. Loki kept track of where they were and where they needed to transport in case of emergency, even though the navigation on the jet was set to secrecy.
They landed to a chill wind and sunshine amid tall pines at the top of a cliff. Great mountains stretched in front of them, covered in the first green if spring. A tiny structure and a tinier woman stood waiting just behind the plane.
"Agent Simmons?" Eleanore greeted her.
The young woman's smile was bright. "Yes, that's me. It's a pleasure, Agent Engman, Captain Rogers, Agent Eldrsen. Shall we?"
They followed her into the little house, which turned out to be a glass-backed elevator that took them into the ground.
Loki noticed how Steve and Eleanore eyed the rock whizzing by. How they moved closer together, away from Agent Simmons, and into Loki's personal space. He placed stronger protection spells over them, recalling the dust coating his lungs at the last underground facility they'd all been in together.
"Just through here," Agent Simmons directed them.
Steve went first and froze on the threshold. Eleanore bumped into his back. Loki did not complete the idiot sandwich, but he understood the foremost buffoon's motivation directly.
"What?" Eleanore asked them both.
Loki said nothing. She wasn't tall enough to see the bodies laid out on the tables in the white room beyond.
"What do you need us for?" Steve asked.
"Really, we need Agent Engman," Agent Simmons said. "Agent Eldrsen, we would appreciate any insights you can offer as well."
"Steve, just…" Eleanore lifted the Captain's arm, but stopped in an awkward half-embrace at his side. Her knuckles whitened on Steve's wrist.
Loki's stomach dropped without his approval. He felt the blood leaving his face, his hands. Unbidden, he pictured a Craxl who'd shared his cell on the asteroid. One morning alive and clicking and annoying, dead and oozing purple the next.
"Sorry," said Agent Simmons, "I don't always remember to warn people about cadavers. Do you need to sit down, Agent Engman?"
Eleanore let go of Steve. She rushed past Loki, down the hall and into a doorway marked with the symbol for a women's restroom. Retching coughs grew louder and softer with each swing of the door.
The splattering that accompanied it told Loki she hadn't reached a toilet in time.
"Oh, my…" Agent Simmons murmured. "It's not usually so extreme."
"What did you expect?!" Steve growled. "You shove her into a— nevermind." He clenched his fists and marched into the restroom.
Loki let him take care of that mess. Now that Eleanore had taken her shudder-inducing nausea elsewhere, he could focus on the bodies. They all had magic eeking off them in tendrils.
"Where did you find these?" he asked.
Agent Simmons gathered herself. "A bit south of here just outside a village. Well. What we found was a crushed-looking chunk of metal that had all our sensors going crazy. The cadavers were inside."
"Jemma, you about done— oh." A curly-haired man nearly ran into Loki in the doorway. His words stuttered as his eyes traveled up from the tablet in his hands. "Sorry. S-sorry. You're. Yes. Right. Carry on— well, I'll carry on. Thank you. Sorry." He scurried down the hall again.
"So now you've met Agent Fitz," Simmons observed with a pitying shake of her head.
Loki kept his opinion of the pathetic boy to himself. "When did you find these?"
"We found the metal a couple of days ago, and we discovered the bodies inside about an hour ago, once we got permission to laser our way in. We called you in originally, but now we'd like Agent Engman to see if she can identify any of them as possible prisoners of Dr. Rouldkin. We think the metal was some kind of preservation device, because these liver temps were nearly identical to what we would have expected from time of death."
Wrong. "Interesting."
The bathroom door swung open. Steve sprinted back to the elevator.
"Yes," Agent Simmons continued, "we think so. Have you seen anything like this before?"
"No. I have not. Excuse me." Loki braved the hall and the swinging door.
Eleanore was scrubbing her face with paper towels. She looked at him in the mirror's reflection. "I'll be out in a minute."
Loki took in the shaking, the burst blood vessels under her eyes. "You have time."
"Steve went to get my go-bag. For a toothbrush. I smell, don't come over here."
"I could smell you from the hallway." It was easy to disobey. Easy to follow his instincts and distance himself with words while he drew closer.
"I don't know why this happened," Eleanore said. "Pathetic mortal stuff?"
"Pathetic mortal stuff," Loki agreed. He made sure she could see the accompanying grin.
She wiped at the makeup under her eyes. "I can't talk through it right now."
"That's alright."
"Does it smell like a morgue in here to you?"
Loki added a neutralizing spell in front of her nose and his. "Now it does to neither of us."
Steve rushed back in the door, toting the black duffel bag. Eleanore rooted through it and started attacking her teeth with the mint paste and plastic bristles.
"I'm good," she decided after her tenth spit of the tiny bottle of Listerine.
"You sure?" Steve asked.
"Yeah. You okay?"
"Me? Yeah."
They both looked at Loki. He nodded. "Yes."
Xx
"Petr Jovanovich. Darla Zimmerman. Fred Wells. Carey Beyn."
Loki memorized those names. They stayed linked to the flatness of Eleanore's expression in his mind.
"Fred's skin is kind of like a frog's," Eleanore explained to Agent Simmons, who wrote furiously on a lined pad. "He couldn't last more than an hour without, like, a spritz or shower or something."
"Why is his arm broken?" Simmons asked.
"They were testing his bones."
She went on to detail about the tests she'd seen. Clinical detail.
"They tried to re-hydrate his skin after his heart stopped, but they couldn't."
"Carey lasted a few hours, I think. She had hair that could change color at will. So, they tested her for other powers, and that's why she's partly bald. It wasn't related to mood. Once she changed it to red, it would stay red. Or blue. Whatever."
"Darla is a lot older than she looks. Was. Well, I guess still is. One hundred and ten in July. She aged, but very slowly. So, everything here is because they took samples, like this off her arm. They thought she might regenerate at first, but she healed at a normal rate. But she was one hundred and nine, and her heart gave out under the stress."
By this time, Eleanore was going green again. She swallowed hard and spoke more quickly. "Petyr was twelve. He didn't speak any English, so I don't know a lot more. He had a healing factor. That's what they called it. Not as fast as Steve, but pretty quick. Like, this scar? It was a serrated blade that tore his skin. Two hours. And his blood volume also rose, so they tested him a lot. He died when they euthanized him. They thought he might neutralize it, but he didn't."
Next to Loki, on the edge of the room, Steve had been winding tighter with every word. When Eleanore was done, and when Agent Simmons' questions petered out, he uncrossed his arms. "That all you needed?"
Agent Simmons now looked sick. "Yes."
"Loki?" Eleanore said. "You see something?"
"I'd like to see the metal shell," Loki replied. Anything to get out of this room. The chemicals sat heavy on his skin. He cleansed himself and his team and removed the scent-shielding spell from his own person when they finally left the lab.
Of course, their destination was another lab. This one had dark gray walls of concrete with hanging fluorescent lights and Agent Fitz tutting about.
"Ah," said the nervous little man with the heavy accent. "Here for the— this thing."
"Yes," Loki replied. He explained a bit for Eleanore and Steve's benefit. "This thing. From which you retrieved the bodies."
Eleanore made to walk past him, reaching out to touch the smooth, black wall of the crumpled container.
Loki put one hand on her shoulder, imparting the ability to see the magic pulsating from the thing. "Stay back," he said quietly.
"Stay back?" Agent Fitz asked. "Stay back for what? From where? Why?"
"Because Loki can see more than we can," Steve told him.
"More of what, exactly?" Simmons asked.
"Magic," Eleanore said.
Loki pressed a bit to guide her behind him where Steve stood. This was familiar by now: the waiting power attached to nothing and everything. He waited for the two SHIELD agents to follow his instructions, then called up more power to reach the mess.
This time, when the container winked and the air exploded, he was ready.
"Loki?!" Eleanore called in the newly shattered darkness. Steve echoed her.
"I knew it was a trap this time," Loki told them. He called up a light for the hand whose arm Eleanore wasn't groping. He could see she had a death grip on Steve again, too. "No harm done," he said.
"No harm— the hell?!" Fitz shouted. "You bloody ruined my lab!"
"No we didn't," Eleanore said.
"You can't very well say it's not ruined, can you?"
Loki smirked at this suddenly courageous boy. "Darren Stark would, I think, simply say science happened here."
Agent Fitz threw up his hands, muttering about sensors and lack of equipment for measure, so it wasn't real science, because who could bloody see a thing in this stupid basement?!
Loki was more interested in the small grin surfacing on Eleanore's lips. "Darren would say that," she agreed. "What was the science?"
"What did you see?" Loki asked.
Eleanore pursed her lips and released her grip on Loki and Steve to mime shrinking. "Shhhoo-p." She finished with a pop of her lips
"Another transport?" Steve asked.
"Another transport," Loki confirmed.
Eleanore poked at the light, so Loki made a bit hover above her hand. "Did all of them pull at your magic like that?"
"Like what?" Steve asked.
"Like…" she tried and failed to represent it with her hands, pulling her wiggling fingers back toward her chest. "Like what I imagine a black hole would do. Like, gloooomp."
"I prevented it from taking my power," Loki said with a smile. Eleanore was observant, even after everything.
"Power?" Fitz asked.
"Magic?" Simmons added.
They both stepped toward each other and a bit toward the Avengers trio. Fitz crossed his arms. "You got anything actually quantifiable? Or just random noises?"
Loki tapped Steve's arm so he could see this working. The shards of glass and their vapors and metals rose at his bidding to shine once more from the caged ceiling lights.
"... What the hell," Fitz muttered weakly.
"That was neat," Steve said.
Loki smirked at the less-familiar humans who stood blinking in the unnatural light. "That should give you something to quantify."
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There were questions, of course. Just like the other young SHIELD children, Simmons and Fitz pressed Loki for details for every little part of the 'experiment' they'd just seen. They tried to lead him with words like 'ions' and 'matter displacement', and they grew increasingly frustrated when Loki told them their science did not fully encompass what they had witnessed.
"If you understand it, then we should be able to," Fitz insisted.
Eleanore huffed. Actually huffed, and she made the small man back up when she fixed him with a look. "A thousand years of learning something, and then like a month here, and you want him to speak in terms of Hawking? Try listening. And quit interrupting."
Loki waited until she was done berating. "… As I was saying. A transportation is more than a manipulation of time and space. Success depends upon a fundamental understanding of the being or object in motion." He realized he'd started the very 'Darren' habit of pointing his words at Eleanore. He decided to continue here, because she was the only one nodding. "If I were to shove one of these chairs across the room, it might fall because of weight distribution, mm? But if I keep everything around the chair the same and only change its place, then it just…" Loki called one of the wheeled spindle-legged contraptions to him, "… is."
Eleanore poked the chair so it swiveled slowly. "Could you send it back?"
Loki did, though he wondered if she would next ask him to return the magical sight he'd sloughed away at the beginning of his explanation. The chair appeared on the other side of the room again.
Eleanore waved her hand right where it had been. "So, no explosion because nothing is compressing here. Because you're not creating a chair-sized hole in the matter of the universe. But the chair is gone, so what holds things in place?"
"That's the trick your— the magician has yet to learn," Loki said. He did reach out and restore her sight because she was within arm's reach. Then he brought the chair back, and a bottle of water, which he handed to Eleanore. "If I did not stabilize their origin places, we would have the same destructive results."
Eleanore drank the water absently as he'd hoped.
"So," Steve said slowly, "so… you're using your magic— your power. It holds the universe in place."
"Well, it holds a place in the universe," Loki corrected him. "It's simpler if I just exchange the matter from my target to my origination."
"Like— c'mere, Steve." Eleanore pulled the Captain forward and stepped back at the same time. "Like that. There's still a person in each spot."
Loki felt his smile widening. His chest warmed. "Yes, that's a rudimentary explanation."
"But they're two different people," Simmons blurted. "Sorry," she said, "but I'm not sorry. The Captain's mass is in no way equivalent to Agent Engman's. By switching them, or by switching air for a metal chair, you'd still be creating a huge gap."
Fitz chimed in. "The sheer volume of the energy required to maintain stability for an event like that is phenomenal."
"Loki is phenomenal," Eleanore said simply. "I mean, have you been doing readings since we've been here? Look at this." She held her hand up to glow silver-white. "And look at him. And he's, like, barely trying."
Fitz and Simmons both hovered over one tablet. Their eyes darted from it to Loki and back so many times, Loki was certain they would get dizzy soon.
"Even with the recordings we just took of the chair thing, we don't have the data to explain it," Fitz finally muttered. "How d'you not tear the fabric of reality?"
Loki let himself smirk. "That's where the magic comes in."
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The plane ride back to D.C. was still quiet, but thoughtfully so. And it was interspersed with statement-questions from Eleanore that sparked small conversations until she and Steve sank back into their musings, leaving Loki to muse over them.
Brash, he thought, both brash. A word he'd long connected with Thor. But it applied here in a different way. These mortals grasped concepts he'd taken years to explain to the Thunder God, who still hadn't fully understood by the end. And, though Loki kept waiting for it, there was no "Stop," or "That's enough," from his small team. It seemed enough for them that Loki could work miracles, that he would try to bend his efforts for them. They asked for nothing more.
Of course it's enough, snarled the Other's voice. You're their little pet Frost Giant. If they could, they would breed more of you.
Loki shoved himself out of his seat to escape that pulling, tearing presence. Once up, he realized Eleanore was the only one in the cabin of the plane now because Steve was in the cockpit. He got her another water bottle from the supply cupboard to stymie that concern flooding her gaze.
"Thank you," Eleanore said, taking the water.
"As long as you don't hurl it forth again," Loki jested. He chose a perch on the other side of the aisle now. Distance, but a clear view.
She grinned. "Hopefully, I'm done with the hurling. Sorry about more scientists who don't listen to you."
"Yes, well. I take solace from the entertainment you provided in silencing them."
"I'll make Maria tell us what to expect next time," Eleanore promised anyway. She looked at the ceiling. "Maybe I wouldn't mind staying home for a couple of days."
"Coming up on the building," Steve reported.
Loki nodded carefully. "That could be beneficial. I'll continue by research in conjunction with Darren's findings in the lab. I find rest often gives way to insights, anyway."
"Yeah. But you only need like four hours of rest."
"I think someone with a psychological degree would tell you that 'sleep' and 'rest' are different."
Eleanore chuckled. "Smart ass. Good one. Good point, I mean. Actually, I think it's called 'self-care'."
"There you have it, then."
The plane jostled. Eleanore stood, stumbled, caught herself on one of the straps from the ceiling. "We'll have to trick Steve into it."
Loki stood as well. "I have a few ideas already. How long do the Harry Potter movies last, exactly?"
A/N: Less of a wait than usual! I didn't have this chapter as scripted as I wanted. It went through a bunch of re-writes, actually. There was a lot more crying in some of the other versions, but I am happiest with how this turned out.
Side note: This chapter alone is as long as my capstone course research project, but it was SO MUCH easier to write. Just in case anyone wanted to know that.
Vendetta: Thank you so much! I hope the reunion did justice to your expectations. I didn't figure Loki would be very effusive, so I left that up to good ol' June.
Gina: Thank you! I'm so glad you're enjoying this story! I love writing from the two different perspectives. I hope you also enjoyed this chapter!
Everyone Else: Thank you for reading! Please rate and review.
~PettyWhiteRose