Quote from Evie's text book taken from - Dr David Tong Mathematical tripos part iii
Enjoy guys! I really want to get another one out before New Year, but I don't know how possible that will be (writers block, yay! *Kermit the Frog arms*). So until then a very Merry Christmas to you all, and just in case I don't make it; happy New Year.
*kiss*
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"This stuff is nonsense!" Jane sighed for the hundredth time, staring at the incomprehensible list of letters and numbers.
"Well it must have meant something to someone." Bruce was sat in the chair that Tony usually preferred, so that he was face-to-face with Jane's image on the computer monitor. Once again they had decided to collaborate over Skype and so far it wasn't working in the least. The labs were messier than usual and the physicist had cleared off a small portion of the worktop so that he could lay out the sheets Loki had retrieved from the infiltrated base.
"Stop being so optimistic." Tony's voice came from the floor where he was lying on his stomach and poring over another photocopy of the data, a highlighter in one hand. "I'm beginning to think Hydra just put this here to troll us."
"There is some vague order to it, but nothing I can make out." Bruce took his glasses off and rubbed a tired hand over his eyes. "To be honest it's all beginning to blur."
Tony waved a hand at the ceiling. "Jarvis, more coffee."
"Magic word, sir?"
"Now."
On the monitor Jane snorted with laughter and Bruce rolled his eyes.
"You know Jarvis is probably going to pummel you the moment he has a body."
"Most likely." Tony picked up an arm he had been working on in the Big Jarvis Project and waggled it at Bruce. "But until then, I can order him around a bit longer." He threw the arm back under the desk again, where it crawled off. "So, who's started playing join-the-dots with the letters?"
"Is that meant to help?"
"No but if you tilt your head a little you can kinda see a penis."
"Not getting enough?" Jane asked innocently, causing Bruce to let out a startled laugh whilst Tony sat up enough so that she could see him poke his tongue out at her.
"I'm getting plenty thank you!"
"Plenty of what?"
Both men turned to see the doors to the lab sliding closed behind Loki who was holding two mugs of coffee. He was looking quizzical.
"Getting plenty of you." Tony answered cheerfully.
"You talk to Dr Banner about that?"
"And Jane." The man sat up to wave a hand at the computer monitor. "Loki, Jane. Jane, Loki."
The woman met Loki's gaze with a stunned expression, evidently not having expected to actually ever meet him – over Skype or not. The God inclined his head gracefully, brushing aside the fact that the woman looked less than pleased to see him.
"Pleased to meet you, Dr Foster."
"Can't say the same's true." The woman's eyes narrowed. "Tony vouches for you, but I'm still going to clout you round the ear if I ever see you in person."
Loki rolled his eyes with a sigh, setting the two mugs down, one beside Bruce, one down on the floor next to Tony. "If you think that surprises me you will be sorely disappointed." A sharp grin crossed his face. "And do please give my love to Selvig."
"You Asshole! How can you-?" There was probably more Jane wished to shriek at him, but she was interrupted by someone elbowing her.
"Hey, who you yelling at?" Darcy's head came into the frame of the webcam and she took in the scene, then her eyes widened as she focussed on Loki. "Hot damn! I'm converting to Paganism!"
The God blinked at her, then, simple as that, dismissed her and looked down at Tony. "How is it going with the data?"
"Zippo, but if you draw lines between all the Beta's you can make a penis shape."
As Loki raised an eyebrow at his husband's artwork, Bruce held up his own copy of the data with a sheepish grin. "Actually, joining the nines together looks sort of like an outline of Italy."
"The sixes make the McDonalds golden arches." Jane offered, looking down at the sheets out of sight of their screen.
"So other than some questionable entries for the Louvre, has anyone found anything useful?" Loki looked every inch the disapproving parent as he glared at the three of them.
"Not as such, no."
"Then I'm leaving. Call me back if anything interesting happens." The trickster turned to leave, then turned back to glance at the computer again. "Oh, and Miss Foster, just so that you know, I was not actually aiming for you or your human friends during Thor's fight with the Destroyer. Collateral damage occurred, yes, but…it was not intentional."
The woman sniffed haughtily. "Is that meant to be an apology?"
"Take it as you will. And, really, please do tell Selvig I say hello."
Loki vanished before Jane could throw something at her webcam.
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The data didn't yield it's secrets. Not that day, nor the one after that, nor the one after that. A week went by with some extremely frustrated scientists, but no results.
On the other hand, The Jarvis Project was faring much better.
Tony wheeled the…the thing up into the lounge on an office chair. It sat inert, head down like one of his power-downed suits and drew some odd looks from the few people there. It didn't actually look like one of his suits, though. The robot was humanoid, limbs slender and smooth, a light blue finish to them. It was tall, or at least would be if it was standing up and the lines were clean, unlike the harsh angles the suits had.
Tony tipped the thing's head up to attach a wire to the base of the neck and the face was revealed to those now coming over to have a look. And it actually had a face, again unlike the suits.
Evie, Rhodey and Clint all crowded round to watch what Tony was doing as he plugged wires in, adjusted joints and occasionally spun the chair around. Eventually he took a step back.
"Right, Jarv, you're good to go."
There was no reply – evidently Jarvis was using his computing power to concentrate fully on the task in hand. For a long moment nothing happened, other than a quiet hum of energy.
"Is something meant to happen?" Evie asked innocently.
Tony scowled and twisted a wire.
Then jumped back hurriedly as the whole thing went from slumped and inert to sitting up straight.
"Uh…Jarvis…?"
The thing was still as a statue, power humming through it gently.
"It's creeping me out a little." Clint said cheerfully. "And it looks like it's out of . You know, the Will Smith film? Was that intentional?"
"Not really. But give a robot a face and try to make it look friendly and in the end it's only going to end up looking like this." Tony sounded distracted as he tapped his lower lip and started at the robot in the chair. "Jarvis, talk to me, buddy. Are you in there?"
The head tipped, a slow nod before the eyes slid open. Highly refined optic technology faced the four watchers, fixed on them and focussed. It was possible to see the tiny machinery moving inside the fake eyeballs.
"Jarvis?" Tony prompted.
"Sir…" The robot's mouth opened slightly to let the sound out, and it sounded like Jarvis. "Systems integrated, sir."
"Can you move okay?"
The head nodded carefully, then Jarvis looked down at his hands, eyes having to focus again. Very slowly the fingers uncurled and flexed then tapped one-by-one on the arm-rests of the chair. He lifted one hand up very gingerly, elbow and shoulder working for the first time too, and watched his fingers as they twitched and moved.
"This is amazing, Sir." He touched each finger to his thumb, unaware that his face was portraying the emotions that were running through his systems. Evidently Tony had linked the coding for Jarvis' emotional responses to his facial coding. "I can…there is a physical response when I touch something, what is that?"
"You're feeling it. I programmed an electric field into your exoskeleton so that you can feel objects that you touch." Tony said with a grin. "At the moment it can differentiate between hard and soft things, hot and cold, rough and smooth, that kind of thing. Give me a little time and I can refine it. Hopefully you'll experience things in a way similar to humans – so you'll know if it's cold outside or something."
"I can just check the temperature for that."
"Yes, yes, yes, but now you'll know what it feels like! You'll know what we mean when we say it's cold, or hot or that the sofa is comfy." Tony waved a hand vaguely. "At least, I hope so. I had to get creative with the programming so we won't assume things straight away."
Jarvis flexed his hands again then looked down at his feet and began moving them experimentally. "What is my flexibility, Sir?"
"Well you could probably manage the splits, but nothing inhuman. Your joints can technically dislocate if you stretch them too far."
Evie looked perturbed. "Can he feel pain?"
"Eh, kind of. I couldn't really work out how to code for that and wasn't sure if I should, so you'll receive warning signals that correspond in severity to the damage – so they'll work like pain, but you won't feel anything in the way a human would."
Jarvis nodded slightly. "In the way I assess damage to my mainframe, then."
"Yeah, similar." Tony grinned. "And you'll have to learn to coordinate and such – you should be ambidextrous but you will need to work on it."
Jarvis held a hand out. "Does anyone have a pen and a notepad?"
Clint wordlessly passed him the requested items and the robot quickly began scribbling across the paper. After a moment he switched hands and finished his work with the other.
"There; does that count as coordination?"
It was a perfect capture of the outside of the tower, complete with tiny cars on the street and sun reflecting off the windows. All done in ball-point pen.
Tony blinked at it. "Damn, my programming's better than I thought!"
Rhodey laughed at that. "Modest, much. But good work. Creepy, but good work."
"Are you saying you find me creepy, Colonel Rhodes?" Jarvis asked politely.
"Well…yeah. Pretty much. It'll take some getting used to."
"Yes, it will, but I think we will all manage in the end." The robot put his hands back on the arm rests and slowly levered himself to his feet, unsteady and unsure at how this standing thing was meant to work. Inside his head a tiny gyroscope was placed to help with this and when up he stood tall. "This is extremely unusual to be able to direct my sight like this. I am used to static cameras in rooms." He moved his head this way and that, the grin on his face making it very clear that he was excited about this new venture.
"Is this going to work then?" Tony asked quietly. "Can you deal with this, buddy?"
Jarvis turned to him, looked down at his hands again and then held one out to his creator. "I can deal with this. Thank you, Sir."
Tony laughed and shook the proffered hand. "It's about damn time you had an actual body." He frowned a moment and looked Jarvis up and down. "I haven't done anything about armaments yet; I didn't know if you wanted something incorporated or to carry something separate to yourself."
"Considering that this is a character attribute, rather than just accessories, I would rather I kept my weaponry separate from my actual self. I do not like the idea of being a walking weapon."
"Sure thing." Tony turned to Evie with a grin. "So, kiddo, have I delivered the goods?"
The teen surveyed Jarvis sceptically. The robot smiled hopefully at her, his face generic enough that the expression looked familiar. "You sure you can keep up with me, Jarvis?"
"I always have so far, Miss Evelyn."
Evie nodded slowly. "Yeah…yeah you have. This can work." She grinned. "Well done Dad, you delivered the goods. Again."
"Excellent! Time to tell the others then!"
Clint waved a hand – a bit like a school child. "Uh, question. Quick question. What happens if someone hacks Jarvis? Won't they be able to control him?"
Jarvis and Tony looked at each other. "Um, you can't hack Jarvis." The man said eventually.
"I hate to say it, but all computers are able to be hacked Tony."
"Not Jarvis."
"You can't just say that – if you want Jarvis as a physical entity in the battlefield with us I want guarantees that he's unhackable."
Stark shrugged, glancing at the robot helplessly. "How do I prove it, Clint? He's nothing like a normal computer; his programming isn't something a hacker would even recognise as programming."
"But it's still feasible to break into."
"It's not. It's like…It's like you knowing how to read English and then being handed a book in Cantonese – or Klingon. It's not just that his programming is superlative compared to anything else, but it's an entirely different way of writing a computer script." Tony sounded frustrated as he tried to explain. "Have you ever heard of an AI with his level of comprehension. Sometimes I think Jarvis is a better human being than any of us! He has emotion, conscious thought, he can invent and create. That's meant to be impossible – there are whole laws of computing written about how that's impossible. But Jarvis can and that's because he is something else entirely. No-one can hack him; I promise you that."
"Can I at least see this miraculous code? I know a bit of programming."
"Barton, believe me, it would be complete and utter gibberish to you."
Evie grinned. "Like that Hydra stuff you guys have been looking at."
"Yeah, like that. Fucking impossible."
Clint looked unhappy, but convinced. "Fine. I don't like it, but fine."
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Jarvis slotted into place easier than they could have imagined. He was such a staple around the tower anyway it felt quite natural to have him walking around as a physical entity. He was still wired through the tower as normal as well, and with the added suits he now could also control there was a whole lot of Jarvis going on with the Avengers. The processing capabilities that were needed to support the new systems in place weren't actually as large as people would have thought. Given that Jarvis already ran all of the computer systems in all of Tony's many properties, was hidden inside Shield/Hydra's systems and had feelers through most of the world wide web it didn't actually take all that much more to run a few suits. And to be honest, the new body was pretty much just an extremely advanced version of the suit in Jarvis' eyes.
He didn't necessarily hang around the team in person all the time – although he was still always there in spirit – but would occasionally join them for a film or something. More often than not, though, he was found in the labs working on upgrades to Tony's suit that he couldn't do as a computer interface. He also helped out with the weird data recovered from the Hydra base, but other than discovering some more shapes, there was nothing actually useful to be gleaned.
It had become a full team effort by this point; and was a major headache for them all.
Finally it was Rhodey of all people who stated the obvious and insisted that they shelved the project until a better time considering they had other things to be getting on with.
Other things that included multiple more hits on various bases.
They raided a further five in the next two months – coming up against the same problem with each one. No guards, no personal, no useful data, just more explosives. They had at least started telling Evie what was going on and where they were going so she hadn't freaked out at them again, which was a bonus and since it was the height of summer she had other things to bother about anyway.
The heat wasn't doing any of them any favours really and Tony had the AC's running in every single room of the tower.
It came as a relief to all Avenger's when Coulson got in contact and told them to check out an old Shield hide-away in the Kamchatka peninsula high up in North East Russia. With a sub-arctic climate it was just what they wanted to hear.
Evie didn't seem worried to wave them off – laughing at the winter gear they were all toting in the New York summer and happily going back to the sunbed she'd set up on the balcony next to Tony's suit dock. Both parents had nagged her about sun-screen and the dangers of burning and she'd assured them that she could look after herself, especially with Jarvis to yell at her about skin cancer every five minutes.
In the end they left her to it.
Loki had finally persuaded the team that even if they insisted on taking the quinjet on missions, he was more than able to teleport the whole group and the machine which saved them hours of flying and meant they could tailor their leaving times to slightly more Godly hours.
He knew little about the area they were going to but landed them neatly beside a large lake, some distance from any settlements. The team had long got used to the dizzying sensations of the teleport so didn't spend any time complaining about the effects and instead took in the surrounding countryside.
Tony summed up all their thoughts.
"Is that another bloody volcano?"
"It appears so."
"Do you think Shield purposely put all their top secret bunkers on top of volcanic systems?"
"Better than Acme dynamite for defence." Bruce said lightly.
Thor swung his hammer idly in one hand, glancing at Loki, who was grinning slightly. "Remember that time in–?"
"Muspelhiem? Of course. One day Fandral will recover from his fear of fire."
There was definitely a story there, but it wasn't exactly the time to tell it, no matter how much they might have piqued people's interest.
The infiltration method for the Shield-turned-Hydra bases had been refined over the past few raids, and this time they were like a well-oiled machine; each knowing precisely what to do in what order.
Loki went in first as always, invisible to begin with, then taking out any guards there. A pattern had emerged wherein if the place was mined it was safe to presume that it had been emptied. They always checked – usually Tony, Sam or Rhodey would fly through – but so far not even another scrap of paper had been found in those ones. No mines meant that the place was active and whilst they would have to fight their way in they also usually came out with something to show for it.
This was an active base.
As Loki let his invisibility fade and was greeted with a hail of bullets he had to smile. Oh for the days when people didn't try to kill him on sight…
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It was a very certain type of teenager who would sunbath with a book on advanced particle physics. Evie had the tome propped up on her knees, a pencil casually being chewed when she wasn't using it to make the occasional note in the margin.
There was a tall glass of pink lemonade on the small table next to her, a bowl of popcorn to munch on, and her StarkPlayer blasting out through the speakers. She was one happy teenager.
"Miss Evie, you should be wearing a hat." Jarvis the robot was inside the living room behind her, but his voice was still able to reach all over the tower and now he was utilizing her speaker system.
"I'm fine, I have thick hair."
"You still need a hat on."
"Go away, Jarvis." Evie plugged her headphones in instead, which was less comfortable than listening to speakers, but meant that she didn't have to be nagged constantly. The sun was hot, the wind was just enough to stop her feel like she was crisping up and the book was brand new – it was a perfect afternoon.
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It was an active base.
Loki strolled in and took care of the first guards as easily as he usually did. The Hydra agents were prepared for pretty much anything – unless that included a God that simply appeared in the midst of them, fireballs in hand. No amount of training would prepare a soldier for that.
With the men out of the way – and Loki didn't seem to understand the term 'over-kill' as he disposed of them quite mercilessly – the rest of the team were brought in to begin the sweep of the place which, for once, was yielding some decent secrets.
It was tiny in comparison with other bases they had raided recently, only two levels of storage that had only a handful of personnel patrolling them. Easily dispatched.
"Containers. I fucking hate containers." Clint growled as he glared around at the huge storage boxes that were sat in the area. "Always Russian Roulette with which one's booby trapped!"
Tony knocked his hand against one, painted blue with faded military markings along one side. "This one's rigged, or rather was, since I've just fried it."
"And the others?"
Ironman looked around the room – concentrating on the flashing visuals across the HUD. He pointed out three different boxes, blasting each with an EMP as he did so.
"Should all be safe enough now, but keep an eye on those ones."
They spread out through the area, a practiced team that had learnt to work together in such situations. It was a far cry from their first mission as a mismatched group that didn't trust each other and hardly knew how to communicate. Each knew their jobs and each knew them well.
There was a whole container's worth of tech from the sixties, several boxes of ancient guns with swastikas on them, parts of a biplane that Tony casually identified as a Sopworth Camel, some dusty files filled with Richter-scale prints and a pile of rocks that turned out to be covered in eroded Norse runes. Everything was along the same lines.
"This is just someone's collection of junk." Sam declared, kicking a box of videos over and spilling the tapes out across the floor. "Look at this! These died out when I was a kid!"
"This place is an archive." Steve's expression said it all as he ran a tired hand down his face. Whilst this hadn't been a hard job, they had still had to kill people to get in and that wasn't something they wanted to do if they could help it.
Well…Loki didn't have qualms about that, and Natasha didn't seem to care one way or the other, but mostly as a whole they hadn't wanted to kill people. And all for the equivalent of Shield's attic.
Tony raised his face plate so that his disgruntled expression was visible. "Well, this sucks. I think I'd rather find nothing rather than world war two crap."
"Even world war two crap might be useful." Rhodey sounded the pinnacle of sarcasm as he knocked a fist against the Sopworth's wooden propeller and paint flakes burst off in a puff of dust.
"Ha-de-ha, don't make me laugh. Guys, let's start packing this stuff up and get moving – we might as well get out of here sooner rather than later."
The rumble of agreement around the rest of the group was drowned out as Bruce pulled at some tarpaulin in the corner that had been so far overlooked and the whole thing came loose and slithered to the floor. His sudden whistle of surprise was piercing enough to draw everyone's attention.
"Oh boy…"
"Bruce? What did you – oh…oh crap." Clint was the closest and therefore the first to see what the quiet scientist had found. His exclamation brought the rest of them around and jaws dropped.
"Oh brilliant!" Loki's eyes were sparkling as he stepped up to the chitauri speeder – possibly the only whole one to survive the Battle of New York – and ran his hand along the side of the machine. "Look at this; it's practically intact!"
"You sound way too excited about that fact."
"But look at it. I imagine it can still fly!"
"Don't you dare even try!"
The excitement fell from Loki's face and became an angry scowl at Steve's sudden and very curt order. He turned to face the soldier, leaning back against the craft.
"What's wrong Captain? Don't trust me with it?"
"Actually I was more worried that it's probably damaged and could blow up in our faces if you mess around with it. That's chitauri tech, God knows what it can do!"
Loki glanced down at the speeder he was leaning against and uncertainty crossed his expression. "Oh, yes…"
"You didn't even think of that, did you?"
"…Not so much."
Steve rolled his eyes as he walked around the other side of the craft. "You Norse guys are so impulsive." He ran his eye over the chitauri speeder, trying to recall what he had seen the little machines doing during the battle all those very many years ago. "I thought all of this stuff had been destroyed, anyway."
"Apparently not." Loki had turned to face him, and so was leaning over the craft now, his elbows casually resting on the handlebars. He flicked the steering column with a finger. "Which is not really a bad thing, since anyone who saw these in action knows that they are extremely good in a fight."
Tony snorted with laughter. "Can't bank worth a damn, though. The amount of those I smashed into walls…"
"But a great turn of speed in a straight line; especially in a chase." Loki glanced over his shoulder and winked at Natasha, who frowned, a hand migrating to her hip. It was still a bitter memory that she had nearly been mown down by the God of mischief on one of those things and the only thing that mellowed it slightly was that Clint had made a fool out of the trickster with an exploding arrow.
"Well, since we're taking everything back with us I guess this is coming too." Bruce patted the back tail-fin of the machine. "And then we can all argue why we think letting Loki have it is an insanely bad idea."
Loki grinned, sharp and feral. "Believe me when I say that that is an argument I will win."
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Since sticking her headphones in Evie had been able to continue her reading undisturbed and had ploughed through a considerable amount of the large text book. She was pretty sure her nose was beginning to burn, but simply rubbed a little bit of ice from her drink on it to stop the heated feeling and resolved to ask Loki to heal it later.
The wind had picked up somewhat – especially given that the Ironman docking station was nearly at the top of the tower, but it was still just about warm enough to resist putting on a cardigan. The increased wind did mean that the pages of the book were somewhat unruly and the ruffles on her bikini top kept casting distracting shadows over the text. Not very large shadows, though, and for a moment she mused on how it would be nice for puberty to have another attempt at the whole boobs thing and go for something slightly less pathetic.
A bigger shadow obscured the book entirely for a moment and the teen glanced up irritably at the helicopter that buzzed overhead, having not heard it through the Broadway Hits blasting through her headphones. It was unmarked – not a traffic copter – and for a moment she thought it might be a journalist and wondered if she should cover up a little more than the bikini top and denim shorts.
It buzzed away into the distance and her interest left with it.
Physics was much more motivating.
The chapter was on a particularly fascinating area of quantum field theory and Evie settled back down to read through it, brushing wayward hair irritably back out of her eyes.
…Recall that in particle mechanics L depends on q and ˙q, but not ¨q. In field theory we similarly restrict to Lagrangians L depending on φ and φ˙, and not φ¨. In principle, there's nothing to stop L depending on φ, 2φ, 3φ, etc. However, with an eye to later Lorentz invariance, we will only consider Lagrangians depending on φ and not higher derivatives. Also we will not consider Lagrangians with explicit dependence on x µ; all such dependence only comes through φ and its derivatives…
Yeah, absolute gibberish to most people.
Evie was thoroughly absorbed.
And the shadow was back again.
The helicopter flew back around again, lower and directly over the tower. The teen sat up, her book flat on her lap as she frowned up at the aircraft, trying to work out what it was doing. Closer to it was too big to be a simple paparazzi hire, out on the hunt for good photos. It looked military grade – unmarked and with no visible registration.
The craft buzzed round in a low circle, before spinning on its axis about fifty feet away, the cockpit facing directly towards Evie on her sunbed.
The machine gun on the front raised and poised.
There was a moment of absolute frozen terror as the girl simply stared, struggling to take in what she was seeing.
Then there was a hail of bullets.
Evie screamed as the windows behind her exploded, curling into a tight ball – as if that could possibly help. The noise was deafening as the missiles rang off of paving slabs, metal railings and glass alike. She had brought her text book up in an instinctive movement and that was possibly responsible for why the shrapnel didn't hit her from the torso up.
However, none of the actual ammunitions hit as, in a blue blur, Jarvis had leapt out through the windows and dived infront of her, a physical shield.
"Run!" The AI took a chest full of bullets, but his plating was strong enough to hold out as he shielded the teen. A moment later another explosive round of gunfire echoed out as there was an answering retort from the weaponry stationed on top of Stark Tower and the helicopter wheeled away to avoid it. "Get out of here!"
She didn't. Couldn't.
The world was exploding around her and she was frozen.
A sudden and second hail of gunfire came from off to the side as men – in full Kevlar and combat gear, armed to the teeth – began landing, parachutes fluttering loose behind them. Jarvis whirled to face them, drawing his own guns from the holsters hung around his hips. Whilst he had refused to have weapons inbuilt that didn't mean he wasn't going to carry them externally at all times and so was ready and prepared to return the fire.
The sight of men on the ground – as it were – running across the balcony area towards her finally spurred Evie into action and she leapt up, sprinting for the shattered windows of the lounge.
Broken glass crunched under her bare feet but if there was pain she didn't feel it as adrenaline began pumping. She skidded as one of the armed men headed straight towards her, his gun raised whilst he reloaded it, eyes on her the entire time.
They wanted to kill her…
The thought was like liquid ice. A terror so deep and so primal that she hardly even realised what was happening – running on an instinctive automatic pilot that told every molecule in her to get away.
Her foot slipped.
The girl fell hard, hitting the ground in a spray of glass shards. There was a burst of pain in her elbow that she barely registered as she rolled onto her back, scrambling backwards as she stared at the man advancing on her. A chuckle from her left drew her attention momentarily to see another soldier, this one with his gun poised and ready, also drawing in on her. His weapon was loaded, but the dark amusement on his face said that he was intending to draw this out.
Jarvis was heavily outnumbered outside, six other men keeping him from running to Evie's defence. The suits he controlled were deployed, but up in the air, trying to take out the helicopters – the original now joined by two more – as they began firing on the lounge area again.
Weaponless, injured and terrified, Evie could do nothing more than continue to scramble backwards smearing blood everywhere as she did so.
The man was raising his gun, calling something to his companion as he did so.
They were going to kill her…
The single shot made her scream again, but the expected pain didn't happen and she opened instinctively closed eyes to see Loki towering over her, facing the two attackers. His golden armour was rapidly materialising and the bullet had fallen to the floor a crumpled little mess.
"Möðhy…"
He didn't even turn to look at her as his staff appeared in his hand.
"Run!"
This time she didn't need telling twice.
Scrambling to her feet the girl threw herself across the room, fighting her way across the wrecked furniture and broken glass. There was another sharp retort from the guns behind her and another man barrelled in through the shattered windows, Jarvis hot on his heels. He grabbed at her arm, missed and she dived at the bar.
Years of gymnastics lessons and pissing about on the gym equipment downstairs paid off. She was no good at technique, wasn't flexible and was uncoordinated, but at least knew how to leap the railing that sectioned off the tiered floor from the bar area and used the motion to throw herself up and over the counter-top.
Evie rolled across the polished bar-top, taking decanters and glasses with her as she fell off the other side, out of the line of sight of the intruders.
One of the men managed to follow, avoiding Loki just long enough as the furious trickster took out the others to follow the teenager up to the higher area of the room and rounded the bar, his weapon poised and sighted.
Evie was gone.
There was just long enough for a moment of confusion as to where the girl could have possibly disappeared to before Jarvis grabbed the man's head with both hands and twisted.
Loki had already taken out the other men in the room and had stalked outside to finish off the others. The Jarvis-controlled suits had made short work of the helicopters and had brought them down safely, killing all inside but avoiding civilian causalities down on the streets. Loki wasn't kind to any of the intruders left.
By the time both trickster and droid were done there was a body count of twenty five. The living room was destroyed – walls coming down, glass across every part of the floor and blood everywhere.
Loki's eyes were shining with madness, his spear and hands alike dripping red, none of which was his own. He turned on the droid in a manner that would have frightened a human.
"Where is Evelyn, Jarvis?!"
"The panic room below us, sir. There is an entrance through one of the cupboards in the bar. I would not suggest teleporting, you will startle her and she is in quite a state."
Loki's glare had 'you think?' written all over it.
The entrance down to the panic room was hidden under the bar in one of the large cupboards that looked like it should be full of glassware. Loki had to remove his armour to get through the low doorway that was masquerading as the back of the cupboard and into the tunnel-like corridor behind. It was obvious Evie had been down here; even in the dark it was possible to see the blood everywhere.
There was a thick metal door at the other end of the downward-sloping tunnel and the code for the numbered keypad was easy enough for the trickster to work out – Evie's birthday.
He had no idea what to expect of a Stark-designed panic room, but what was behind the door didn't surprise him since Tony planned for every eventuality.
The room itself was essentially a padded steel box – designed to protect anyone or thing inside should the tower come down. Similar in pattern to the containment cage for the Hulk it could withstand a freefall, a skyscraper coming down on top of it or a full air-borne strike and the sole purpose was protection.
The padding meant that a person inside would hopefully not be too badly injured from a large hit, and there were seatbelts placed across the walls just in case. It was not a room designed for comfort or to win any interior decorating awards. A few cupboards were bolted down in one corner – clear labels denoting that they held food packs, water, medical supplies and emergency lighting. There was also an entertainment system and a secure self of books.
However, Loki saw none of this.
Evie was curled up against the far wall, hugging her legs tight to her chest with one arm, and the other held awkwardly by her side. There was blood everywhere – streaked down her bare legs and arms, staining the bikini top and her ripped denim shorts. She was crying, huge wracking sobs that shook her whole body as she buried her head in her knees.
"Oh my little bird…"
She didn't move, didn't even acknowledge that Loki was there until he sat down beside her and pulled her into his arms. He had already removed his armour which meant the teen could press in close against the soft linen of his tunic, staining the emerald green brown with blood. Evie didn't let go of the tight grip she had around her knees, but leant into the protective hold Loki wrapped her up in, her face pressed into his chest.
"They…I didn't…They…"
"Shh…" Loki pressed a kiss to his daughter's hair, uncaring about the matted blood. "They're all gone. Jarvis and I have got rid of them all."
"D-d-dead…?"
"Dead. All of them."
"Good…" Evie was sobbing so hard it was almost hard to understand her.
"Where are you injured, little one?"
"I-I-I don't…don't e-e-e-even know…" The girl uncurled enough to look down at herself and took in the blood with wide eyes. "I…" The remaining colour began to rapidly leech from her face and she leant back into Loki again. "Feel sick…" She mumbled.
"Hold still, I'm going to take you up to your bedroom." The trickster hooked his arm under the girl's knees and scooped her up effortlessly, supporting her shoulders as she pressed into him. A moment later the room dissolved around them and Evie's own bedroom replaced it.
Loki sat down on the edge of the bed, his daughter curled up on his lap like a little child.
"Darling, I need you to sit up – I need to heal you."
Evie shook her head, her breath so caught in her throat that she couldn't even say the words to refuse. Her hands were fisted in Loki's tunic, clutching like a life-line.
"Evelyn, let me see."
"No…"
Loki didn't push the issue. A quick scan had already told him that the girl's injuries weren't life threatening and they could afford a few more moments without medical aid. As it was, even in shock Evie was a sensible kid and a part of her knew that she needed help.
Finally she uncurled, slipping off of Loki's lap to sit beside him on the bed-covers.
"My arm hurts…" She whispered.
"Which one?"
"The…" The girl looked down. "Both. They both hurt."
Loki gently lifted up his daughter's right arm and the problem was immediately apparent as he did so. A spell whispered through the limb, finding each and every little cut and scrape but the major injury was very much drawing attention.
"You've broken your wrist."
Evie sniffled and nodded, obviously having guessed that. From her angle she couldn't actually see that the bone was poking out on one side but Loki could and he didn't want to draw her attention to it.
"Hold still." He gently wrapped both hands around the break – not applying pressure, but covering the area. "This won't hurt, but it will feel a little odd, okay?"
Evie nodded and looked away, unwilling to watch what would happen. It didn't hurt – Loki was right about that – but it tingled and itched and was entirely unpleasant. She sniffed miserably again, her face still wet with tears and smeared with blood. The healing process was extremely quick, but the girl couldn't say that she would want to go through it again.
"There – how does that feel?"
Evie wiggled her wrist gingerly and found that it moved again without pain. "Yeah, better, I guess…"
"Good." Loki smiled slightly at the understandably mulish reply. "Now, can I see the other one?"
To do so the girl tucked her legs up under her so that she was sat on her knees and twisted to face her mother, carefully holding out her other arm. Again, she didn't look to see what the damage was so it was up to Loki to find the main injury.
A large shard of glass, nearly a palm's width and all jagged edges had wedged itself into the joint of Evie's elbow – which certainly explained why she couldn't move the limb. The point had dug in between the bones, slicing through tendons and ligaments alike. It was unthinkable how painful it would have been were Evie not hopped up on adrenaline, and Loki added in a few numbing spells to the mix so that she didn't feel a thing when he carefully pulled the piece loose.
Technically just removing a foreign object like that was not the way to deal with such a wound, but Loki didn't bother with the human views on first aid when he could simply heal up the injury on the spot. It took longer than the broken arm – having to fix together the torn muscle and flesh.
"How bad is it…?"
"Well, I have seen worse, but usually on battle fields, if I am honest."
"It was a battle field…"
Loki glanced up for a brief moment, catching the way Evie's eyes brimmed over again. "I know, my dear. Your first battle is always the worst."
"I didn't expect…They just came out of no-where!"
"No one expected Hydra to be that audacious. The tower armaments are designed to take out long-range air-strikes. Evidently they were slow to respond to a threat that comes in so brazenly."
"You think?"
"Jarvis did his job, though."
Evie nodded shakily. "Yeah. Yeah, he did. He saved me." She glanced up at long last. "And you. You saved me too."
"It's rather in the parental job description."
The girl managed a tiny smile. "Thanks. And thanks for not sticking yourself in the firing line this time." She then pulled a face. "Well…you did, but you knew you were bullet proof, so that's okay."
"Glad you approved." Loki gently tapped her elbow. "There, I think that is all of the damage sorted. Can you try moving it and check please."
Evie glanced at the shard of windowpane that her mother had removed and grimaced. Her attempt at movement was very cautious and stilted and almost immediately she stopped trying to straighten it out.
"It still really hurts. And it's really stiff."
"Do you possess any adjectives other than 'really'?" Loki placed his hand back on his daughter's elbow to assess what hadn't healed.
"It's an adverb, actually."
"English is not actually my native language, you know."
A small smile finally appeared on Evie's face. "Bullshit; you're talking in Allspeak right now. You just don't know your grammar."
Loki raised an eyebrow. "Well, it sounds like you are feeling better then; you've got your cheek back." He released her arm again. "Alright, try that."
This time the movement was more natural and the girl nodded. "It feels better. More like I've just pulled it a bit."
"Considering a moment ago most medical professionals would have suggested amputation, a pulled muscle is not a bad result."
"Amputation?" Evie looked down at her arm again and an expression of horror returned. "Okay…thanks for not doing that…"
The trickster grinned. "Never mind, maybe next time." That drew a weak chuckle from the teen.
"Yeah, how about no." She picked at a scab on her cheek, and then pulled her hand away with a grimace, another tiny piece of glass held between her fingers. "Urgh, I'm covered in this!"
Loki observed the myriad of cuts, scrapes, embedded shards of glass and smeared blood that still covered his daughter. She was looking brighter now, less like she was going to faint or throw up, but still pale and shaky. Unsurprising really; fourteen year olds shouldn't have to deal with being the target of what were essentially three elite hit teams. Loki had certainly killed all of the men that Jarvis didn't take out, and he hadn't been nice about it either. The bloodstains on the ceiling and scattered organs might take some time to clean up.
"Alright then; shall we start sorting all the rest of this mess out?" He asked gently. Evie sighed, picking out another piece of glass from her leg, then nodded shakily.
"Yeah, I guess we should."
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW
Tony turned up a few hours later, having pretty much burnt out the suit's thrusters to get there so quickly. He already knew the particulars since Jarvis had been keeping him updated, and needless to say he was pretty pissed off that Loki hadn't taken him too when the trickster had teleported back to the tower. However, he wasn't intending to come in and fight with his husband considering what had just happened.
He touched down on what was left of his landing pad, flicking the face plate in to take in the scale of the destruction around him in horror. Even Loki hadn't made this much of a mess of the area during the chitauri invasion.
The three downed helicopters were piled – literally, stacked like books – to the left of the suit docking pad and elsewhere various Jarvis-controlled suits were pottering around either putting out fires or hauling bodies inside and out of eye-sight of anyone likely to fly over. Tony spared a brief moment of concern that the media might film the carnage – before calmly trying to remind himself that there were multiple systems in place to block any recording devices, including smart phones. Obviously people would have seen something going down, but hopefully no-one would have enough footage to piece together what it was and they could clean it all up in a press conference.
"Sir, if you wish to remove the suit properly you will have to use the lab's scaffold." Jarvis walked out of the ruined lounge onto the balcony, glass crunching under his footsteps. He was riddled with bullet-holes, large sections of his blue exoskeleton blasted away to reveal delicate machinery underneath.
"You're meant to be bullet-proof."
"I am if they don't start firing armour-piercing bullets once they realise normal ones are not working." The droid looked down at himself. "I believe under the conditions this construct has been successful."
Tony didn't bother to comment further since he saw movement inside and a moment later Loki stepped out as well to greet him. The trickster had changed out of his bloodied clothes and looked somewhat out of place amongst the destruction in his shirt and cargos.
"Where's Evie? Is she alright?" Forgoing the hassle of taking the suit off properly, Tony hit the manual release catch and pulled the pieces off to leave them in an untidy pile.
"She's okay. Broken wrist and a huge shard of glass stuck through her elbow but I took care of those and the more minor cuts and scrapes. She was understandably shaken though – we're going to have to keep a close eye on her."
"Where is she?"
"Asleep. She wanted to rest and asked me to cast a sleep spell. Jarvis has a suit with her to stand guard."
Tony groaned and ran a hand down his face. "What the hell? How did this even happen? She's meant to be safe here! How did it get this far? What did they have to gain from killing her?!"
"Don't get hysterical; they were not intending to kill her." Loki held up a bullet that he'd picked up from the thousands lying around. "These were not intended to kill, but to tranquilize."
"What?!" Tony practically snatched it from him, scanning the ammo for proof of what his husband was saying. "Why the hell…? Kidnap?"
"I can only assume so."
The two men stood silent for a moment, Tony thinking through the facts at lightning speed and Loki simply waiting for him to speak again. The inventor was biting his tongue, waving the bullet listlessly in the air as he stared intently at nothing.
Finally he seemed to reach a coherent thought.
"Do we know why? Do they want her because she's my kid and the world's best hostage against the Avengers, or have they figured out she's your kid and want her for her potential?"
"I don't know."
"And if they know she's yours, how the hell did they find out?!"
"I don't know!"
"Jesus! What the hell?"
"Calm down!"
Tony turned on his heel and stalked into the building, broken glass crunching under his trainers. The pile of bodies was heaped up against the bar and he kicked one for good measure as he moved past. None of the corpses were in one piece.
"What do we do? What the fuck do we do?"
Loki stepped aside to let Jarvis past as the droid began sweeping up the broken glass. Rather than answering Tony's question he waved a hand and the glittering shards faded away into nothing.
"You could have done that earlier." Jarvis stated, sounding rather put out.
"I could have done." The trickster didn't sound like he had really heard the reproach.
"This is going to take some sorting out." Tony was pacing around by this point, kicking at feathers from the bust arm-chair. "Can you magic it clean by any chance?"
"No. I've told you before that healing spells are not my forte. I read up on them whilst we were still in Asgard, and thank Norns for that, but healing Evie was hard work. She had some nasty injuries, and a substantial number of smaller ones. I'm exhausted. I've done the glass; that's it for now."
"Fair enough. Jarvis, how damaged are you?"
The droid paused in his clean up and looked down at his exoskeleton. "Diagnostic scans show that the damage is superficial, and mostly just lends a certain aesthetic."
"You mean bullet holes make you look badass."
"And that, sir."
Tony ran a hand through his hair, flopping down onto what was left of one of the couches as the anger drained out of him. "Oh God, what are we going to do? After everything that's happened how is this fair?"
"No one ever said that life is fair."
"Well it should be! Come on! You're a God! Do God things! Make this okay!"
"And turn water into wine? Feed the five thousand? I am a God purely because human minds classified me as such, and the God of Mischief at that. What, precisely, do you expect me to be able to do?"
"I don't know!" Tony buried his head in his hands. "Turn all of Hydra's water supplies into slime? Or change their bullets to confetti? What do Norse mischief God's do as revenge?"
"Blood eagle would be a favourite." Loki muttered.
"I thought that was a myth."
"The Vikings never really did it much if at all, but on Asgard it was quite popular at one time." The trickster slumped down next to his husband, his usually excellent posture long gone. "I do not know what we're going to do." He felt Tony's head tip against his shoulder and glanced sideways at his husband. "We will think of something."
"It's getting to the point where I'm very tired of having to think of something."
"What exactly do you want me to say, Tony?"
"Just…I don't know! Just something. Make me believe this can all be alright."
Loki didn't reply, but pressed a kiss to the man's hair instead. After a moment Tony shifted and moved around so that he was leaning against his husband and Loki's arm automatically curled around his shoulders.
"How long did you say Birdy would be out for?"
"Quite a while, it was a potent spell."
"We should get the bodies out of here before she wakes up. She's going to be in enough of a state as it is. How many were there?"
"Three helicopter crews – I counted twenty five bodies. They must have known that she was defended even if the Avengers were out of the building."
"Twenty five men for a fourteen year old. They weren't expecting it to be easy then. Lends credence to the idea that Hydra knows she's yours."
"Why would Hydra even know I'm back on the planet?"
Tony shrugged. "Files? Maybe Fury wrote something down somewhere – a journal or something. Or maybe they don't know, and were being careful in case she'd been trained in arms or something." He shook his head. "Oh God, I don't know. I just don't know."
"Come on." Loki nudged him. "Let's at least get the bodies out of the way. I assume we can send them down to the garages or your laboratories?"
"There's a furnace that usually deals with the waste produced in the tower. We can chuck them in there." Tony heaved himself up to his feet, with some help from his husband. "Jarvis, bring up something we can cart this lot off in."
The droid was back outside, so it was the more usual voice in the walls that answered an affirmative. In the meantime Stark steeled himself to start looking through the remains of the intruders for anything that could tell them something useful. He was not a squeamish man, but there was not a single body still in one piece and that took a strong stomach.
"Do you wish me to do that?" Loki asked quietly.
"I'm fine. You can help if you want. We're looking for identification or anything useful." Tony was already going through the first set of pockets, trying to ignore the fact that the body had no head. "Specially made weaponry, electronics maybe or –"
"Or this?" Loki was kneeling over a body at the bottom of the heap, holding up a smart phone.
"Or that! Gimme!" Tony practically snatched it out of his lover's hands. The phone was password protected, but that was hardly a challenge for someone like Stark, and it didn't take him more than a few moments to break into it. There was very little on the device – evidently it had been used only for calls and messages and there was no data to be seen – however, calls and messages were enough since it gave them a number. Only one number, apparently the owner of the phone only used it to contact one person, presumably the person in charge of the operation.
Loki continued patting down the corpse that the phone had been found on. "Nothing else. A few tattoos, but nothing to tell us anything useful."
"What are the tattoos of?"
"Some sort of mascot. It says Brooklyn?"
Tony smiled grimly. "Got to love a sports fan. Well, that at least gives me an accent to pitch." He coughed and cleared his throat, then directed the phone to call the single contact. Loki's eyes widened in alarm when he saw what the man was doing.
"What are you -?"
"Shh." Stark pressed the speaker option, so the ringing tone could be heard clearly. "Jarvis, trace this call."
"On it, sir."
"Tony-"
Loki's protest was cut short as with a sudden click the call was picked up at the other end of the line. Both men stared in absolute silence at the small handset as a breath could be heard on the other end, before;
"Is it done?"
Tony slowly lifted the phone up to his mouth, trying to fix a Brooklyn accent in his mind. He saw Loki opening his mouth, about to say something and shook his head hurriedly to silence his husband. After a moment he found the courage to reply to the question. "Yeah, we've got the girl." It didn't exactly sound like a native of Brooklyn and there was a long pause, in which he closed his eyes with a grimace – expecting to be called out on the terrible attempt at the accent – before he received a reply.
"Excellent." A pause. "I do not hear the helicopter, where are you?"
The man couldn't audibly sigh with relief but his shoulders slumped in the visual version. Apparently he had been better than he'd thought. Loki was now looking at him like he'd grown a second head. "The helicopters were downed, the tower was protected. We're on street level, out of sight." Tony found his confidence perking up as the story began to flow a little easier. "We can't make the original drop-site. Where do you want us to take her?"
"The doctor's house. You remember the address?" The voice didn't seem to expect a response as the mystery man continued straight on. "Take her there, and keep her sedated; we don't want any unexpected surprises if she's inherited Asgardian powers. And don't let the doctor make a start until I've had a chance to talk to her – I have some questions before we begin to find out just what a human-Asgardian hybrid looks like on the inside."
…What…?
"You fucking bastard!" Stark broke character as the implications of what had just been said hit him. Beside him Loki had gone pale.
"What-? You're not Davis! Who is this?!"
"I'm Tony Stark you fucktard! And just to make it perfectly clear, every single one of your goons has been killed."
"Well…" There was concern there, for a brief moment, but it passed so quickly it was hardly noticeable. "That is unfortunate. I presume than that your daughter is safe and sound then. Unfortunate indeed."
Tony was gripping the handset so tightly it was surprising that the screen hadn't cracked. "Why do I get the feeling it would be more unfortunate if your little plan had succeeded?" He snarled. "What you just talked about was fucking vivisection!"
"Oh but of course, Mr Stark. After all, it's not like the little bitch is human, is it? I don't believe the UN's human rights committee have a policy regarding aliens." The man on the other end of the phone laughed, a cold, cruel sound. "And it's not like her mother's alive to protect her now."
"Her mother?"
"Please, Mr Stark. We know. Fury was an arrogant imbecile and thought we wouldn't find the files he'd hidden in the Triskelion. I can understand why he may have kept a journal – the old goat was getting on in years and his memory was certainly not what it should have been – but he should have destroyed it when he had a chance." The Hydra operative was evidently enjoying this far more than he should have been. "We know your brat is the offspring of the Asgardian known as Loki, and we also know that the Chitauri have killed Loki. You against the world, Mr Stark. Do you think you can hold us off forever?"
Tony stared down at the receiver in his hand. "I don't need to hold you off. I'm going to fucking annihilate you. Me and my little hybrid, we're gonna kill the whole fucking lot of you!"
"Hydra, Mr Stark. Cut off one head and three more shall grow."
"Yeah, until someone thinks to come along and butcher the body instead of aiming at the head." He cut the connection, killing the conversation dead. "And we've just traced your location, you stupid bastard." He added at the now-silent phone.
Loki reached out to remove the device from his husband's shaking hand.
"Tony…"
"We've got the location; although they must have realised that. We should –"
"We should do nothing." Loki said firmly. That seemed to shake Tony out of his dazed stupor somewhat.
"Huh? Nothing?! Didn't you hear what he said?! They wanted to-"
"And what good would it be if we left to go chasing after shadows when, as you just said, they probably know we have tracked them? The tower is currently strategically weak and the last thing we should do is leave again whilst there is a mouldering pile of Hydra corpses on your living room floor."
Stark glanced at said pile of corpses. Loki was exaggerating slightly – they had hardly had time to cool, let alone go mouldy – but they were certainly leaking random bodily fluids everywhere. Even so, he could hardly just sit there and let the bastards get away with it but it seemed that once again his husband could read his mind.
"There is nothing we can do, Tony. We protected Evie the best we could – she is safe and relatively unscathed and we killed the people who did it. You can guarantee that the moment we turned up at whatever hide-out they'd been using, they would already be long gone."
There was an affected cough from behind them, Jarvis subtly trying to get their attention. "Actually, sir, the location I tracked was moving throughout the conversation – which suggests the person you spoke with was in a vehicle of some kind. I could trace the position of said vehicle throughout the call, but never managed to find what it was. Usually I would hack local CCTV to identify the car, but they were in an area that is not monitored. By now they could be anywhere in a ten mile radius of where the call took place."
"So in other words we lost them. So that was bloody pointless then! We've learnt nothing!"
"We have learnt a great deal." Loki corrected. He placed the mobile down on the counter as Tony walked away from him and back to the pile of bodies. "And we have at least one phone, maybe more if we look through the rest, and it may have some more information. It could at least let us know if Hydra have set up a new computer data-base since we know Jarvis has locked them out of Shield's."
"If's and buts. Nothing concrete!"
"Well I can tell you what is concrete, Stark!" The trickster's voice had raised, which normally would have alerted Tony to the fact that he was growing annoyed. As it was even the use of his surname didn't really get the man's attention as it should have. Loki realised this and stormed forwards to grab his husband's arm, swinging the man round to face him again. "I can tell you what is concrete." He repeated. "We now know that whilst we have been scurrying around blowing up the odd base here or there, they have been planning a full-scale offensive on this tower. We know they have significant man and fire power. We know that they know exactly who Evie is and her parentage. And we also know that they think I am dead and have no idea that I am now a part of this team."
"And what good is that?"
"Having the element of surprise is never a bad thing."
Tony spun round again to kick the nearest body. "But we should be doing something! They can't be allowed to get away with this! We need to…I don't know, do something!"
"Tony! Just stop for a moment!" Loki did shout this time, which brought his husband to a sudden stand-still. "Just…Just stop thinking like a hero and let yourself think like a parent for a moment! For Norns sake put it all to one side and just concentrate on the fact that these people nearly succeeded in kidnapping our daughter and that is fucking terrifying!"
As a rule the trickster didn't swear, so it was even more jarring to hear him do so.
"Shut it out, keep all of this Avengers crap out of it right now and focus on the fact that we have a traumatised fourteen year old. Vengeance can wait." The words were harsh, but Loki's hand was gentle on Tony's shoulder. "I know you are no good at dealing with the emotional side of a problem, and I know I am no good at it either but here and now that's exactly what we need to do."
Tony shook him off and stalked back over to the broken sofa. "Easier said than done." He threw himself back down and waved a hand at the ruined room. "Your magic Duracell batteries powered up yet?"
"No." The trickster sat back down next to him, accepting the arm that snaked itself around his waist. "We will need to clean this up manually."
Tony dropped his head onto his husband's shoulder with a wry chuckle. "Can that wait for, say, ten minutes?"
"Will ten be enough?"
"For a complete and utter emotional break down? Yeah, should be fine."
"Alright then."
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW
The rest of the motley crew took another hour or so to turn up – the quinjet flying much slower than usual with a full cargo. It wasn't like it was even built to carry cargo to begin with.
Jarvis had managed to haul all of the bodies out of the main room by that point and Tony had searched through them all. They had both left Loki to do the actual tidying up – since it mostly meant some major restructuring to the room. Some weight-bearing walls and pillars had been damaged and needed urgent repair which would either mean getting the builders in or – Tony's first choice – making Loki do it. The trickster was able to at least make the room safe again, and remove some of the worst aesthetic damage, but refused to fix things like the furniture that Tony could either do himself in his workshop or could buy a replacement for.
The rest of the group had been informed by Jarvis about what had happened, and Pepper was summoned from her other office across town (Tony made sure all biologicals were well out of sight before she got there). Once again they found themselves sitting in the home-cinema on the squashy armchairs, discussing a personal attack on the tower.
No one missed the irony that the last time they had had such a meeting it was because Loki had just been snatched out from under their noses by the chitauri. Life seemed to like circles.
The meeting took them a surprisingly short amount of time, all things considered. After all – the security systems had worked, although Tony wanted to fine-tune how sensitive they were to close range attacks, and they knew Hydra's motives. Stark had found little else of use or value on the bodies and Hawkeye had detoured to the area Jarvis had traced on the call, but found nothing. Dead ends all round really.
One thing Tony had thought to do was at least take finger-prints and DNA from all of the deceased intruders so Jarvis was slogging through the federal data banks trying to find matches. They weren't too hopeful, since Hydra weren't complete imbeciles, but there was always a chance some of the goons had been hired guns and were on a database somewhere.
The raid on the Hydra base very much took a back seat to begin with – for Tony and Loki it seemed like it had been a million years ago that they had been looking at that chitauri tech. It said a lot about his current state of mind that Loki had entirely lost interest in the chitauri speeder they had recovered. Tony on the other hand was a ball of nervous energy – despite being denied caffeine – and the little cry he'd had earlier (classified) hadn't helped to take the edge off the emotional bubble inside of him. He needed to get into the lab and start doing something before he exploded.
It was Rhodey who recognised the warning signs and finally let the inventor leave, Bruce hot on his heels.
"Are you not going to follow them?" Thor managed to sound sarcastic as he glanced at his brother.
"I don't have to trail my husband around, you know. He can look after himself." Loki rose to his feet. "Now if that is all, I'm going to get some air."
"Actually it's not all…" Steve's complaint was addressed to thin air as the trickster simply vanished. "For goodness sake! He can't keep doing that!"
Thor groaned and levered himself out of his chair. "I will go and find him."
"He could be anywhere."
"He's on the roof. When he's upset, he's always on the roof."
"Fine. Go and have a talk or something and see if you can get him to come back down here. Tony's too tightly wound up right now – but we need one of them here to fully sort out what to do about all this."
Thor was in the doorway by this point, but paused to glance back at the super soldier with a small frown. "And you don't think Loki is in a bad state too? Believe me, he is just as wound up as Tony; he has just had a few hundred thousand years more to perfect hiding it."
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW
As Thor predicted, Loki was right at the very top of the tower, sat on the ledge that ran around the roof-space.
"So now you are the one following people around?" The trickster didn't even turn around, although Thor knew that he hadn't made a sound. Loki was rather too good at knowing when people were behind him.
"I wanted to keep you company – you usually get too involved in your own misery if left alone when upset."
"What's that meant to mean?!" Loki snapped, finally turning his head to glance at his brother with a scowl.
Thor shrugged, gesturing around at the area they were in. "Well, forgive me if I am wrong, but isn't this where you set up the portal to let the chitarui through to Earth? A situation that would never have occurred if I had simply bothered to find out why you were so upset."
"I rather think the situation was more complicated than that, Thor." Loki looked back out across the city-scape, but there was the shadow of a smile across his lips. "But at least you learnt from the experience."
"Did you?" Thor swung himself up onto the ledge next to his brother, sitting facing the opposite direction to Loki so that they were almost face to face. "It is all very well me realising that I need to listen every now and then; but that only works if you are willing to talk. Actually talk; not just what you think I want to hear, because I have grown wise to that one by now. Tell me what you're feeling, what's going on in that head of yours?"
Loki shrugged, sweeping his hair back out of the way as the wind tried to blind him with it. "Feelings. Always with the feelings. That's such a…a human thing to talk about."
"Actually, after spending enough time here I have learnt it is such a female thing to talk about, but nevertheless we are somehow here attempting to have this conversation. I almost brought ice-cream."
"Ice-cream?!"
Thor grinned sheepishly. "It is what people do in films when they need to discuss feelings. Apparently it makes one feel better."
"Huh…Remind me to get some for Evie."
"How is she?"
"Still asleep. I used a very potent sleep spell – her body needed rest and her mind needed time. Hopefully when she wakes up she will have had enough of both to be able to start looking at what happened objectively."
Thor nodded. Loki had done the same for their friends from time to time if they had had a particularly harrowing adventure. There was a reason there were so many adages about the healing powers of a good night's sleep.
"And you? Evie is asleep, Tony is on a lab binge, what about you?"
"I'm fine."
"Bullshit."
Loki looked surprised, then smiled. "Nicely said. I don't believe I have ever heard you use a human swear word."
"I like that one. It says exactly what one thinks of the situation." Thor nudged his brother gently with his shoulder. "So. Talk. How are you feeling? Really feeling."
The trickster immediately looked away again, kicking his heels against the wall so that flakes of plaster fell away and blew off into the distance. "How do you think? They tried to hurt my daughter. I'm furious. I'm more than furious, but I can't think of a better word. Livid? Incandescent? Anything like that. I want them all dead!" He watched a flock of birds swoop past underneath them, waiting for a reply. When Thor didn't say anything and the silence began to stretch he felt compelled to fill it. "I never thought I could detest a group of humans so much – I usually reserve such feelings for entire races, but I want to send Hydra the same way as the chitauri!"
Thor nodded in understanding. "I think we can all say we hate Hydra. But it's not just hatred, is it? I mean, I know that Tony and yourself had been hoping to settle down and have a quiet life, and that ideal has already been destroyed, so I know that you're upset about that."
"Upset. You keep using that word as if it could possibly explain the depth of a whole myriad of emotions." Loki said quietly. "Yes, I'm 'upset' that we aren't living the American Dream, but there is so so much more to it than that."
"I'm listening."
Thor's shoulder was against his brother's again, but this time stayed there as a support for the younger God to lean against, which Loki did. After a few moments, the trickster began to talk again; very softly.
He explained the whole episode again, but rather than the report he had given to the Avengers earlier this was the uncensored version - how he felt, what had been going through his mind, what it was like to see his little girl in that sort of situation.
Thor knew better than to interrupt, and certainly knew better than to comment on the hot tears that began to trace silver tracks down his brother's cheeks.
"I was…I just felt…I felt scared, Thor. No, terrified. I thought I was going to lose her at any moment! That child is my life, and I thought they were going to kill her." Loki brushed his hair out of the way again with a shaking hand. "And then Tony spoke to them and it was even worse and they were…they wanted to…they meant to…vivisection!"
"Loki…" Thor wrapped an arm around his brother's shoulders, pulling the younger God into a tight hug. Vivisection was a sickening thing under any circumstances, but Loki had survived it himself and knew just how truly horrific it was from personal experience. To have Evie in any way associated with the appalling torture was terrifying.
"They can't ever be allowed near her!" His words were partly muffled in Thor's shoulder, but still just about audible. "They can never do that! I would…I would rather kill her myself than let that happen to her…"
Thor only just caught the whispered admission, and tightened his hold as Loki sobbed against him. "We will never let them get hold of her. Today was too close for comfort, and it will never happen again. Never, I swear, brother. Any one of us would die for her."
"I know…"
"It's going to be alright, Loki." Thor felt his brother's arms finally looping around his waist in return and pressed his cheek against the dark hair under his chin. "It's going to be alright, everything's going to be alright…"
It had been a very long time since he had last felt this much like the elder brother. Loki usually had a way of making him feel like an idiot, and that he was inferior, but for the first time in possibly thousands of years Thor found himself being a proper big brother again. Younger sibling in his arms, rocking him slightly, whispering the mantra over and over.
"It's going to be alright. We're going to make this alright…"
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