A slightly shorter chapter today, as the Avengers try to get their heads around what happened last time. But don't worry, we get back to battle soon! Loki's having far too much fun to just stop :)
Thanks for all the continued comments & kudos!
"And they left? Just like that?" Clint demanded, incredulous.
Tony shrugged. What else could he say? He hadn't exactly expected it to work either, but, after saying a polite goodbye to both him and Pepper, they had moved off around a corner and vanished into thin air as was Loki's wont.
"And why would they go to all the trouble of erecting a shield around the entire museum simply to talk with you, Stark?" Fury demanded.
"Hey, I just told you everything which happened, don't expect me to be able explain what they were thinking," Tony protested.
It wasn't until Loki and Karnilla had gone that he had discovered JARVIS had somehow been overridden or otherwise prevented from connecting with his phone. So, other than sending the initial warning, his AI had been prevented from doing anything else, such as recording their conversation. Which meant he had needed to reconstruct it from memory for both SHIELD and the Avengers' satisfaction.
"I do not like my brother's interest in your reactor of arc," Thor declared with a frown.
Yeah, no shit, that made two of them.
"If he were really after it, would he have left it alone?" Natasha inquired. "Wouldn't he simply have taken it?"
"Hey, I need it to survive!" Tony exclaimed.
"So? This is Loki we're talking about."
"I don't think he wants us dead."
"What? Have you lost your mind, Stark?" Clint demanded. "He only tries to kill us every other week."
"Please," Tony waved off in irritation. "If Loki truly wanted us dead, we'd already be dead. The guy can both turn himself invisible and teleport. Do you really think he couldn't simply pop in on anyone of us when we least expect it and just decapitate us where we stand?"
"Tony!" Steve protested.
"What? It's true and you know it."
"So what are you saying?" Hill asked.
"It's like I said to them, it's almost as if they're training us. Think of the last few fights we've had, Loki has focused on each one of us in turn, finding a weakness and exploiting it," Tony said.
"He's always tried to do that," Bruce replied, though he looked thoughtful.
"Not like this he hasn't," Tony argued. "Think about it, my armor, Natasha's widow bites, Cap's shield, Clint's arrows, the Hulk's distractibility and now Thor's hammer. And what have we done about it? Learned. Changed our tactics so the same attack can't be used against us again."
"He took apart your suit in midair!" Clint argued.
"Yep, just as I was close enough to a traffic light to grab it rather than falling to the ground."
"You think this planned?" Thor questioned.
"You're the one always telling us how smart your brother is. If he'd really wanted to kill me, why not wait until I was higher or away from anything I could potentially use to break my fall?" Tony retorted. "And why not break Clint's rappel line when he was a lot further off the ground? Or shock Natasha far harder? Or turn the Hulk on us rather than those buildings?"
"So he's toying with you," Fury interjected. "So what? It just proves he's a cat toying with the mouse before he tries to eat it."
"Oh, come on!" Tony objected. "That's what you're taking from this?"
"What else are you proposing, Stark?" Hill inquired. "You said training earlier."
"Training, preparing, I don't know, but Reindeer Games definitely has some kind of endgame in mind here and neither he nor Queenie denied it when I mentioned it. Instead Karnilla said I might not be quite so dumb after all."
"My brother does grow tired of his games easily unless there is a greater purpose behind them," Thor spoke up.
"So what do you think that is here?" Natasha asked.
"I do not know," Thor frowned. "But what friend Stark has said of Karnilla's involvement concerns me. Particularly if Loki felt her presence necessary enough he allowed us to capture him in order to be able to return to Ásgarðr to obtain payment for her services. He could not be entirely certain Father would not execute him for his crimes."
Both Bruce and Steve winced at those words and Tony knew exactly how they felt. He was not a big fan of capital punishments either, even for would-be world invaders. If you allowed it for one, then it always became far easier to justify doing it to others as well.
"What I don't like is the mention of sabotaging your arc reactor," Bruce mused. "You said they spoke of when it stuttered in the tower lobby?"
"Yeah," Tony confirmed, frowning as he thought back on it. "JARVIS, bring up the security footage from that fiasco."
They had already all watched it more times than they could count, as they tried to figure out what exactly had gone wrong other than a series of really badly timed coincidences. The screen which had been blank until now flickered to life and soon they were watching a view of the tower lobby as it had been that fateful day, just before the elevator had opened to spill most of the Avengers and Loki into said lobby. Only this time, rather than observing them and their actions, Tony focused on everyone else.
Loki and Karnilla had implied he had to look elsewhere for what had happened to him. Now, if his reactor hadn't stuttered due to what had happened in space, then there had to be another factor, which meant another actor. There were quite a few people in the lobby which was rather surprising given that they had only secured Loki shortly beforehand, but then he supposed SHIELD had always been efficient in showing up right after all of the action was taken care of.
With all of the damage the tower had sustained during the attack, only some of the floor level cameras had been operational. As a result, they had lost sight of the case containing the Tesseract when it had slid out of view back towards the elevator lobby. It had been an annoyance as it meant they'd never been able to tell what, precisely, had happened to it, but the Tesseract itself sliding back into view had made it mute on a lot of levels since it had allowed them to see Loki's escape. Which had led to all kinds of confusion in and of itself, for why would Loki use the Tesseract to escape only to return and attack Captain America? Especially since he had then not made off with the scepter which Cap had said had seemed to be his objective. Had they not had the footage of the two Captain Americas fighting and surviving the kind of fall they had, Tony would have suspected a different type of imposter, but a regular human simply couldn't survive that kind of fall and walk away seemingly unscratched.
Yet it hadn't seemed like Loki either. Not fighting the way he had, even Tony had been able to see that without Thor's input. Which meant they'd never been able to satisfactorily explain exactly what had happened that day, other than that Loki had escaped with the Tesseract shortly after being defeated.
"I still don't see anything, do any of you?" Clint asked. "It looks the same as it always has."
"Sir, I believe I may have something," JARVIS stated.
"You do?" Tony questioned.
"Yes. I have been working on enhancing the quality of the footage we have, as per your request, and running the video again has allowed me to pull out some audio we were not able to discern before."
"Isolate and play it."
"At once, Sir."
The footage jumped back and Tony could see himself lying on the ground as the others rushed around him. It was kinda eerie to watch as this time the clip was entirely soundless. At least it was at first, until a voice called out.
"Medic. You guys, some help."
Wait. Was that?
"That sounded like Tony," Steve stated.
"It does, Captain Rogers, and I have compared it to Sir's voice and found it to be a ninety-two percent match," JARVIS replied. "Which, given the distortion and artefacts on the footage, is quite high."
"Yeah, but Stark's lying on the ground barely breathing, how could it be his voice?" Hill demanded.
"Shit," Tony said, leaping to his feet so he could pace. "Queenie did say we had to look closer to home, before asking who would know how to sabotage my arc reactor better than me."
"Whoa, wait a minute, are you saying what I think you're saying?" Bruce questioned. "No, that's impossible!"
"Hardly, it's just not been invented yet. At least on Earth."
"What are you talking about?" Steve inquired.
"Time travel," Natasha responded, before looking from Tony to Bruce. "Right?"
"Yeah," Tony confirmed.
"Even supposing time travel were possible right now, why would you nearly kill yourself to get hold of the Tesseract?" Fury demanded.
"I've got nothing," Tony said after a moment of silence. "JARVIS, is there any possible way you can get an image of the speaker? A reflection off some shiny surface or so?"
"There may be something," JARVIS replied, just as Tony's phone buzzed.
A quick glance down revealed a message from his AI requesting permission to 'loan' the latest military image enhancing software. He gave a quick nod to JARVIS's nearest sensor.
"Thor, is time travel possible as far as you know?" Hill questioned.
"Nay, and 'tis strictly forbidden by joint decree of the Nine Realms," Thor replied, immediately. "The potential for chaos and destruction is far too great."
Tony could totally see that. All you had to do was think of all the possible paradoxes which could be created by the tiniest of actions, and it rapidly spiraled out into a colossal disaster just waiting to happen.
"Why am I not surprised Loki is somehow involved in all of this?" Clint muttered.
"Well, it would explain at least two things," Tony said.
"Oh?" Bruce inquired.
"Not only how or why my arc reactor malfunctioned, but also who Cap fought."
Bruce's eyes went wide. "You think that was actually Steve from the future."
"Wait, what?" Steve demanded. "What makes you think that?"
"Well it never made sense for Loki to use the Tesseract to escape, only to come back for the scepter which he then didn't take anyway," Tony explained. "But, if future me was in the lobby looking to get my hands on the Tesseract, then it would make sense that future you might also be about looking for the other great object of power."
"But the scepter was still there," Hill protested.
"To prevent a paradox," Bruce realized, catching on. "Of course."
"How about for those of us that don't speak science?" Fury demanded.
"If you go into the past and change things too much, it can create a paradox that collapses the time stream," Tony replied. "Like if I went back and killed Howard before I was born, then I never would have been around to kill him in the first place."
Clint moaned and dropped his head onto the table.
"So why not return the Tesseract too?" Natasha demanded.
"Because Loki made off with it, obviously," Tony responded. "Which means..."
"We're the new time stream," Bruce finished, before elaborating for the others. "If you go back in time and change things in such a way that it doesn't collapse the timeline, then you get a branching effect as things are no longer as they were."
"So, what, in the original timeline Loki didn't escape?" Hill checked.
"Most likely."
"Great, well done, Stark, you let the nutter go!" Clint hissed.
"Hey, we don't know what happened down there, but, if you recall, the Hulk was involved!" Tony protested, regretting it a moment later as Bruce winced.
Though they didn't have any footage of the event itself, the Hulk's voice had been loud enough to carry to the speakers that were still working. As had the screams from those who had fled before him.
"Sir, I have a somewhat distorted reflection," JARVIS spoke up. "But I believe it will be enough."
"On screen, J.," Tony ordered.
As soon as the image came up, Tony knew that, yeah, it was definitely more than enough.
Shit.
In doing my final edits for this chapter, I realized how many contractions I wasn't using. I think writing and editing Ásgarðrian Galdr for so long has made me start to write without them more!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and the Avengers' realization. It was quite confusing at times to remember that this is a post Endgame reality fic and not just a post Avengers one, and so to keep the details thereof straight!
Now, you might remember that, a few chapters ago, I shared a link to a preliminary sketch of some art for this fic. I'm really happy to say that Lilituism has now finished it and it can be seen over at AO3, it's chapter 20 of the piece called Gods, Mischief and Art. I really recommend you go look and let her know what you think, as it's awesome!