Chapter 26 - Projection

Loki stared at the ceiling as he reclined on the couch across from Doctor Samson. "It isn't as if I expected anything to be resolved. Clearly, Barton needs to hate me, the same way I need to hate the Other, or Thanos, or Odin."

"And why do you feel you need to hate them?" asked Doctor Samson.

"Why do you think? I've been psychologically tortured, threatened, neglected—"

"I'm not asking your reasons for hating them. I'm asking you why you feel you need to hate them."

"If I can't hold on to at least some of my hate for them, what would be left?"

Loki turned his head in time to see Doctor Samson look up from the pad he had been scribbling on. "Well, what would be left?"

"There would be nothing." Hadn't that been implied when he had asked, "what would be left?" "I would be nothing."

Samson twirled his pencil around in his fingers, but his carefully schooled expression didn't change. "Is that really how you feel? Because if so, that's worrying."

"That's all you have to say? It's 'worrying?' Sometimes I think you are completely worthless as a psychiatrist." Loki scrambled off the couch and stood hovering over the man's shoulder so he could see what he'd been writing. "Are you doing a Sudoku puzzle?"

"Yes, Loki, because this isn't a session. You just wandered into the common room, laid down on the couch, and started talking to me. But if you need to have a session, we can go up to my office. In fact, that might be a good idea, because now I'm thinking we should go through a few questionnaires for borderline personality disorder—"

"I'm not taking any more of your stupid questionnaires. What's the point anyway, when we both know I'll just lie on half the questions? Thanks to your idiotic questionnaires, we've already determined that I'm narcissistic, manipulative, and a compulsive liar."

"None of the questionnaires we've done could determine anything like that. So far we've only gone through questionnaires for anxiety, depression, and ADHD."

"See, compulsive liar. I'm already making things up."

"If you don't want to do the questionnaires, we don't have to. We can just talk."

"Isn't that what we're doing now?"

"I just thought you'd be more comfortable somewhere where we don't have to worry about JARVIS recording us or the others walking in."

"There's no way to have a private conversation anywhere in this building anyway," Loki pointed out. "Not when a spy might be crawling through the vents."

Samson arched an eyebrow at him.

"Agent Romanoff. She crawls around through this building's exceptionally roomy vents, which I'm not even certain are connected to the HVAC system, spying on people. I'm not lying, nor am I being paranoid. I know she listened in on our conversation with Clint. No one else seemed to notice, but I could hear her when she arrived, because unlike what your mortal 'action movies' would have you believe, it is impossible to move through a vent without making noise. Not to mention, someone in the vent giggled when Stark complained about feeling used."

Samson peered up at the oversized ceiling vents, as if noticing them for the first time. "Going back to Clint—I really don't think he hates you."

"If he doesn't, he is very good at pretending to hate me."

"Have you heard of a concept called 'psychological projection,' Loki?"

"How would I have?"

"At this point, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if you told me you knew Freud."

"He never talked about his work when we met up," Loki told Doctor Samson, allowing the edge of his lips to quirk upward, "but I'm not completely ignorant of his theories. Haven't most of them been discredited?"

Samson blinked at him, then shook his head. "See, I can never be sure what you know or what you don't know. Yes, a lot of Freud's theories are highly controversial and would be considered unscientific by today's standards. Many of his ideas have been generally discredited, like the idea of 'penis envy' as a psychosexual development stage in women. But not all of them, and a lot of the terminology he came up with is still in use today. Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which a person externalizes and shifts their own unwanted impulses, emotions, or traits onto others."

"Are you saying that I'm the one who hates Clint, but I have convinced myself that it is Clint that hates me, so that I do not have to feel guilty about hating him?"

"Actually, no. It's more that I think Clint's projecting a lot of what he dislikes about himself onto you."

"In other words, I've become the target for his self-loathing."

Samson nodded. "That's pretty much it. But now that we're on the subject of psychological projection, do you think that might be something you have a tendency to do?"

"I cannot think of an instance in which I have done so," Loki told Doctor Samson. Most of his problems actually were the fault of others, so how could he possibly be externalizing them?

φ（．．） _(: 」∠)_

Doctor Samson had left, probably so that he could complete his Sudoku puzzle in peace elsewhere. Feeling lethargic, Loki had once again taken up his position on the couch.

"Hey, Loki. How's it going today? I'm about to make a smoothie." Loki looked up to see Tony digging through a pile of kitchen appliances and tangled cords that had been stowed in one of the lower cabinets in the kitchen. He wondered if something had happened to the blender in Tony's lab. He knew about the pile of broken small appliances in the corner—apparently his robotic lab assistants were rather clumsy. "You want one? I can actually make an okay smoothie, all you have to do is take a bunch of stuff and throw it in a blender with ice."

Why was Tony always so considerate of him? He had even become oddly protective, making Barton promise not to accost Loki again, going so far as to bribe him with something extremely valuable and rare. He wasn't the only one; Bruce also seemed to have grown rather protective. Along with Pepper, he had convinced the Sorcerer Supreme to turn him back into a mortal humanoid, which was at least one step up from being stuck as a pangolin. And while he supposed Doctor Samson was only doing the job he'd been paid to do, he did seem to genuinely care for his wellbeing.

Chivalry was supposedly a thing of the past on Midgard, but Loki wondered if things would be different if he had his male form back. Not that he truly suspected any of them of harboring sexual feelings for "Lady Loki." He was inclined to believe that if anything, she might be the object of some highly misguided paternal feelings. After all, for mortals those three had all gone rather late in life without creating any offspring. Poor Bruce wasn't capable of having any, apparently. On the other hand, how many times had a maiden looked for a father figure in an older man, only to find out too late that his feelings for her weren't at all paternal in nature? Not that Loki was looking for a father. Thanos could speak in fatherly tones all he wished, but Loki hadn't fallen for that either.

"Loki, did you want that smoothie or not? Your stomach isn't feeling bad again, is it?"

If the Internet was to be believed, he ought to be particularly weary of Tony Stark, as much as he had expressed concern about Clint's or her own behavior being somehow sexually inappropriate. Perhaps Tony had been "projecting." "My stomach is fine," said Loki. "If I want a smoothie I'll make it myself. Right now, I think I'm going to seek out Agent Romanoff."

"Suit yourself." Stark pulled a bunch of limp looking kale out of the refrigerator and sniffed it.

"You'll find Mistress—I mean, Agent Romanoff in the training room on the level below this one," JARVIS advised him.

******Tony's Green Smoothie*********

**********( ° ෴ ° )_Ṻ************

- stuff, some of it should be green

- a bunch of ice

- blender that Dum-E hasn't broken yet

Put the stuff in the blender, along with the

ice. Turn on the blender.

Clean up mess from first attempt.

Try again. This time, put the lid on the

blender before turning it on.

'**********************************

"You really want to train with me this time?" Loki had caught Natasha just as she had come out of the shower room wearing leggings and a sports top. She carried her tennis shoes in one hand, and sat down on one of the weightlifting benches to put them on.

"Yes, I'll take it seriously," Loki promised. "I've begun to realize how vulnerable I am in this form."

"You don't have to be. Even against a larger, stronger opponent, you just have to learn how to use an attacker's strength and size against them. But surely, you've fought opponents larger than yourself. Thor told us about some of the, um—wildlife you guys have in Asgard."

Loki snorted. "I'm not my brother. I don't go around challenging bilgesnipes to single combat, and I have always relied greatly on my magic."

"I've seen you fight Thor with just a knife and you held your own pretty well."

"A knife I pulled out of thin air in the middle of the fight." Loki had actually pulled it from her dimensional storage, but that was just semantics.

"You can't rely on tricks like that anymore, but there are other kinds of tricks, as I think you know. Steve told us you can do card tricks. And I'd really like to know how you put that spider in Clint's bowl the other night, if that was you."

Well, this was novel. Loki had never had a fighting instructor give her leave to use tricks before, instead of scolding her for it. But then, Romanoff obviously hadn't been told yet that her magic was returning. That meant Clint and Steve probably didn't know either, which was likely for the best. "Just a little sleight of hand, like what I did with the cards," Loki lied. The most convenient sorts of lies were the kind where you let people believe what they already believed.

Natasha nodded as she laced up her shoes. "Maybe you can't pull a knife out of thin air anymore, but with a little misdirection you can make it look like you can. To be honest, that's how I thought you did it the first time I saw it. You really didn't use magic much during the invasion. I didn't even realize you could until Thor told us."

"It was difficult to use magic with my mind so clouded," Loki said, trying to retroactively come up with an explanation for her own behavior. "And the forces magic relies on aren't as strong here as they are in Asgard. It's more difficult to draw from." Loki still hadn't quite figured out where the Ancient One had been drawing their power from, but she had begun to suspect something nefarious.

"Well, you can't use it at all now, right?"

"No, of course not," Loki told her, but now she couldn't be certain Natasha wasn't toying with her. Natasha nodded towards the mat that covered half the training room floor, and Loki followed her out to the middle of it, a little surprised that the woman meant to begin training her right away.

"Alright, Loki. I'm going to try to grab you. Don't let me."

A witty retort had been right on the tip of Loki's tongue when the smaller woman crashed into her middle and flung her over her shoulder like a sack of flour. Realizing too late that she ought to have been preparing a physical defense instead of a verbal one, she scrambled to get hold of something. But before she could figure out her next move, Natasha fell backwards causing Loki to go sprawling on her own back, the air knocked out of her lungs. "Are you attempting to kill me? Can't we start a little easier than this?"

"We're on the mat, Loki, or I wouldn't have done that. Besides, you aren't actually a beginner. You just need to remember all the training you've already had, and figure out how to apply it to the body you're currently in."

Loki remembered what Bruce had told her about valid teaching methods. "I think you're vastly overestimating the amount of training I've had in unarmed combat," she ground out between heavy breaths. Not only had Loki never fought seriously as a woman before, she had little experience fighting women. Sif had been the exception, but Loki had never won against Sif without using magic, or as Sif referred to it, "cheating." Before Loki could push herself up Natasha jumped on top of her, pinning her shoulders to the mat. "Oh, come on, at least give me a minute—"

"You said you would take this seriously," Natasha reminded her. "Try to roll me so that you're on top."

Again, Loki found herself trying to think of something witty to say, some sort of innuendo perhaps. Natasha took the opportunity to knee her in the groin, and Loki yelped. It hadn't felt quite as bad as it would have in her other form, but it still didn't feel great. "Loki, you're hesitating too much. You're not going to hurt me, if that's the problem."

"It isn't," Loki snapped. She pushed back and this time managed to roll Natasha off her quite easily. But then, she had a feeling Natasha might have let her roll her, which kind of pissed her off. She crashed her skull into Natasha's, figuring that if groin hits were on the table, anything went.

That was when the Black Widow began fighting seriously. She kicked Loki in the stomach and launched her into the air. After Loki had landed, Natasha threw herself on top of her again, slamming her shoulder into Loki's chest. Loki's head hit the floor with a smack, this time missing the mat, and for a moment she thought she saw little cartoon birds in the air, like the cat in the cartoon she had come across while flipping through the channels. (The mouse it had been chasing had hit it in the head with a hammer—apparently humans thought such things humorous, which made Loki worry for their race all over again.)

"Whoa, whoa, time out!" someone called. A few seconds later, Steve's face swam into her vision.

Another second later, Clint hovered over her as well. "Oh, shit. Natasha, this isn't the Red Room, you can't just—"

"I know that, Clint. I wasn't trying to hurt her, it was just an accident," said Natasha, kneeling at Loki's side. "Although honestly, I could have deflected that kick when I was six. Damn. JARVIS, get Bruce. Tell him Loki might have a head or spinal injury. Don't try to move her, Steve." Steve, who had apparently wanted to pick her up and move her back onto the mat, backed off.

ヾ(*ﾟ-ﾟ)┌θ)ﾟﾛﾟ)ﾉ!

What seemed like an eternity later but might have only been a few minutes, Bruce arrived. He shined a small flashlight into her eyes and asked her to try moving her fingers and toes. After finishing his examination, he declared that while Loki didn't seem to have taken damage to her neck or spinal cord, she did have a rather large bump where her head hit the floor.

He had a few choice words for Natasha about the difference between sparring and street brawling, which the others, including Doctor Samson, seemed to back him up on. Samson had arrived with Bruce. Perhaps they'd been together when JARVIS alerted Doctor Banner; the two men did spend a lot of time together. Loki was having difficulty following the others' discussion, but he did pick up on the part where Samson informed Natasha that "if I can do something, other people should be able to" was a type of psychological projection.

"I'm worried you might have a concussion," Bruce told Loki. "We should go up to medical to do some scans. Steve, can you carry her? Just be careful."

What happened after that was a bit of a blur, but she remembered Steve carrying her to the elevator, cradled against his chest. That had been kind of nice, and Loki hadn't been in any condition to object anyway. Then she remembered Bruce telling her to stay still, although it seemed he wasn't actually in the room with her but speaking to her through one of JARVIS's speakers. The machine they had placed her on started moving, and—

Bruce was back in the room with her, telling her that it was alright, to just breathe in and out slowly, and no, she didn't have to get back in the scary, nausea inducing, void-flashback triggering machine (those might not have been his exact words). They could just monitor her for the next twenty-four hours.

He gave Loki Ibuprofen (which must have been something of a cure-all for humans, they took it for everything), and told her she needed to rest, which meant no electronics and no reading. Someone would stay with her, waking her up every hour or so if she fell asleep.

That was how Loki found herself convalescing on the common room couch once again. Bruce, who had taken the first turn watching over her, sat in the chair that Doctor Samson had sat in earlier. She was feeling more or less coherent at this point, and the throbbing in her head had mostly subsided. "Well, this sucks," Loki announced, using what she had decided was her new favorite Midgardian phrase. "Can't I at least watch television?"

"You need to avoid stimulation, or it will just take you longer to heal if you do have a concussion."

"I feel fine," Loki argued.

"We're not taking any chances, Loki. You hit your head pretty hard, and I couldn't even get a scan. Which is fine, I'm not blaming you for having a panic attack."

"Why do you care anyway?"

Bruce closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out through his nose. "I feel like we've been over this, repeatedly."

"Do you want to have sex with me?"

Bruce's eyes popped open. "Wait, what?"

"I said, do you want to—"

"Loki, what city are we in?"

What kind of question was that? "Don't you remember, Doctor Banner?"

"Just answer the question."

Loki rolled her eyes. "New York."

Bruce nodded. "Good. What's the square root of sixteen?"

"Four, the last time I checked. You should ask something more difficult, I am quite capable of doing equations much more complex than that—"

"What's your brother's name?"

"Now that, Doctor Banner, is a trick question, as I have no brother."

"The person you spent most of your life thinking was your brother."

"Thor."

"Okay, good. Just checking. Now what was that you asked me?"

"I asked if you wanted to have sex with me."

"Yeah, that's what I thought, and the answer is a definite no."

"Am I that hideous, then?"

"That's not the problem. Why are you propositioning me all of the sudden?"

"I'm not propositioning you, I am asking you if all the kindness you've shown me is because you want sex."

"What? No, of course not—why would you think that?"

"Are you certain?"

"I think we've already talked about why it's inappropriate for me to even talk about sex with you."

"Because you're an old man?"

"I'm not—" Bruce began to protest, but then just sighed.

"What about Tony?" Loki asked.

"Nope, I don't want to sleep with him either. Not my type. Don't get me wrong, I like brainy brunettes, but I'm not that into facial hair."

"Well, that's rather shallow of you, Doctor Banner, but you know that's not what I meant."

"Tony is with Pepper."

"That's not an answer to my question, Bruce, and you know it."

"Loki, the thing you should have figured out about Tony by now is that he's generous with everyone, and he doesn't expect anything in return. He's certainly not expecting sexual favors from anyone. I know how the press makes him out, but that's really not him, at least not since I've known him."

"But isn't it all men, really?"

"No. That's a really cynical way to see the world, Loki."

"Perhaps, or perhaps the way you see it is naive. Are you certain Tony doesn't want anything in return for his generosity?"

Bruce took a moment to answer this time. "Maybe, but what Tony wants—there's nothing wrong with it. It's just the same thing everyone wants."

"And what is it that everyone wants? You have to remember, Bruce, I'm not normal. I have very little idea of how normal people think."

"You're probably a lot more normal than you think."

"Now you're just being insulting."

Bruce shook his head. "Everyone has the same basic needs, Loki. Beyond the basic physiological needs, things like food and shelter, there's the need for safety and security. When those needs are met, the next thing people look for is other people—love, companionship, the feeling of belonging to a group."

"I don't need other people."

"If that's true, maybe it's because your more basic needs haven't been met. Loki, do you feel safe here?"

Oddly, Loki did feel safer than she had in a long time, but she wasn't about to admit that. "Should I? In the space of a week, I've been infected by rabid microorganisms, transformed into wildlife against my will, and injured by someone who supposedly 'isn't my enemy anymore.'"

"You know that what happened today was an accident, right? We've been trying our best to keep you safe."

"Well, that's worrying. I shudder to think what might become of me if you ever stop trying."

"I'm sorry you've been having such a tough time. But this is the kind of stuff us mortals have to deal with—I mean, not normally in such a short amount of time, and not so much the getting turned into animals thing—"

"Just wait until I've got my magic back. It might just become a more common occurrence around here. Think the Black Widow might enjoy being an actual spider for a while?"

"I hope you're joking about that. Natasha didn't mean to hurt you, and I want you to promise me that you're not going to try to get even with her."

Loki wanted to snap at him, tell him that she'd do what she wanted, but she remembered something Doctor Samson told her about slowing down and thinking instead of lashing out. Why did she want to snap at Bruce, anyway? Wasn't he being reasonable? He was likely correct that Natasha hadn't meant to hurt her—the woman just didn't know how to hold back. But that Bruce thought so little of her—that was what hurt, even if it was her own fault for showing just how vindictive she could be in the past.

And now she was taking too long to answer. Bruce probably thought she was plotting. What had Doctor Samson advised her to do? Right, she was to say how she felt, doing her best not to make it into an accusation. "I'm hurt that you think so little of me," she said.

"Loki, you're the one that just said something about turning her into a spider."

"It was a joke." Well, mostly.

"Okay, good. Wait—you care what I think of you? Because I thought you didn't need other people."

Loki shut her eyes so she wouldn't have to see Banner's smug expression. "Doctor Banner, I think I ought to rest now, as you said."

(- o – ) zzZヾ('-')('-')('-')

With nothing better to do, Loki had drifted off to sleep. Unfortunately, Bruce had been serious about waking her up every hour or so. After the second time, she had moved to her room and changed into her night clothes, but that hadn't stopped them from coming to disturb her, each time asking her stupid questions like what her name was, or whose tower they were in (actually, it was Stark who had asked that, and Loki wasn't sure if he was checking for confusion or if he had taken exception to being shouted at to get out of her room). After the fourth or fifth time it happened, Loki had been ready to physically attack the next person who disturbed her, but she wouldn't have actually bit that person if it hadn't turned out to be Thor. Exactly when had he gotten back to Midgard? She hadn't wasted time wondering why, though.

"Loki, what are you doing? You are a princess—or a prince, if that is what you are feeling you are today—not a beast!"

Loki growled at him in response. If she could have, she would have turned herself into a wolf, just to prove to him that she could be a beast if she wished.

Thor's scowl slackened, and he blinked at her. "Oh my—that's adorable," he said, nonsensically.

Loki unclenched her teeth from around her brother's forearm so that she could speak. "What do you mean, 'adorable?'"

"Your ears," Thor said, still not making any sense. "And your, um—tail."

"Tail?" Loki looked down at herself. She was as she had been before, the exception being the bushy black tail poking out from the bottom of her sleep shirt. She reached up to feel the tips of her pointy wolf ears.

"Loki, could it be that your magic is starting to come back?"

"Just a bit. I was thinking about turning myself into a wolf, but I certainly didn't mean to become this—amalgamation." Dear Norns, she'd accidentally turned herself into a wolf-girl. How embarrassing.

"You used to do something like that when you were very small," Thor remembered, his expression fond. "Before you could control your shifts."

Loki couldn't remember that, but then, the difference in their ages was enough for Thor to remember a few things she didn't. She growled low in her throat, annoyed with herself more than anything or anyone else. She had just made the same mistake she'd made plenty of times before—inadvertently cutting off her own nose in an attempt to spite Thor—and as with her transformation into a mortal, she wasn't confident in her ability to undo it at all.

"I used to pretend you were my puppy," Thor reminisced, not seeming to catch on to how upset Loki had become. "I used to throw a ball, and you'd go get it—"

"I am certainly not going to play fetch with you now, Thor!"

"No, of course not. Are you alright? Doctor Banner told me how you bumped your head, and that he and the others have been taking turns checking on you. He said we were to tell him if you seemed confused or irritable—you certainly do seem irritable."

"Because I'm constantly being woken up, and now I've turned myself into some sort of wolf-person!"

"Can you not turn yourself back?"

"No more than I can turn myself back into an immortal, Thor."

"Oh," said Thor. "I'm sorry, Loki, but this is your own fault, now isn't it? This is almost the exact same thing that happened before."

"I am well aware that I keep making the same mistakes, Thor, you do not need to rub my nose in it!" Loki regretted the wording as soon as it came out of her mouth.

Thor smirked, but at least he was smart enough not to crack another joke about it. "I apologize. I am going to get Doctor Banner just in case this irritability is due to your injury."

"Even if it is, he'll probably just give me more pain medication."

"Perhaps that's what you need, sister," Thor said, patting her head affectionately and turning to go, "—that and the swift application of my boot to your skinny, tailed posterior." Thor probably hadn't meant for her to hear the second part of his statement, as it had been grumbled under his breath when he had already been halfway down the hall, but Loki's wolf ears picked up everything. She would have called him out on it, but at that moment she felt a lot like kicking herself.

╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭

Author's Note:

I saw Black Widow over the weekend, and let me just say that it made me happy when someone (briefly, if you blinked you might have missed it) crawled through an oversized, conveniently located, exceptionally clean air vent.

Also, I made the chicken paprikash from chapter 21 again last night and attempted to follow the recipe as I had written it. It said to put the onions in twice and didn't say when to put the tomatoes in. Anyway, that's been fixed now ^_^;;

I'm writing a sequel to this story, which I'm hoping to start posting as soon as September. There's enough left of this to make it to the end of July, which means I'd just be taking off about a month to get as much of the rough draft as possible finished. Hopefully I'm not being overly ambitious, but it really didn't take me that long to write the rough draft for this story. I actually think I'm confident enough to write a story as it's being posted now, but in the interest of posting at regular intervals, it is really nice to just have to rewrite, edit and post.

I'm also planning on posting a bonus one-shot between this story and the next one, which will have characters from the Loki Disney+ series. Originally it was going to be chapter 32, but since not everyone has seen the series yet, I thought it would be best to keep it separate. It also won't matter if you've read it before you read the sequel, because it's going to be a completely self-contained side story.