She expected a videocall, maybe even one of those fancy hologram-based conferences Fury sometimes conveyed with important people, but no. Fury simply handed Loki a cellphone with the speaker turned on.
Loki held it up and eyed it with suspicion, as if it were going to blow up in his face any second.
"Press the big, green button," Fury instructed. Rogers, who was standing just a couple steps away with his arms crossed, grinned knowingly, perhaps proud that there was at least one person on the whole Helicarrier who was less familiar with twenty-first century technology than he was.
Loki pressed the big, green button.
There was a signal, but no one picked up and the connection dropped.
"Try again," Fury said, then turned to her and explained, confidentially into her ear, "The comms in the Quinjet Barton stole have been blocked. But one of the guys Barton swept had a cellphone on him, so we located it and traced the number once they popped on the radar."
That was shoddy, even as far as Fury's methods went, but it was a way to do it, and she wasn't going to question it. If it worked, that was.
The call dropped once more.
"Try again."
Loki rolled his eyes and tried again.
A couple of signals sounded, then someone finally picked the phone. There was a sound of an engine in the background and then, after a couple of seconds, a voice came. "Hello?"
It wasn't Clint.
"Put Barton on," Loki ordered without beating around the bush.
"Uhm, and who are you?"
"Put the Barton on before I make you regret you were ever born on this miserable planet," Loki said, his voice calm and collected, but dripping with a dark promise of unfathomable agony. Damn, he really knew how to make an impression.
"Oh, it's you," the man on the other side said, with a mix of surprise and apprehension in his voice. "Sure thing, boss."
"You didn't go with a 'master'?" she jeered, and Loki sent her an impressive glower.
The speaker rustled, airing sounds of the engines and muffled voices for a while.
"I'm here, boss," Clint said, and her heart lurched in her chest. He sounded fine, but there was something in his voice… Her fingers twitched and she yearned to reach for her knife and sink it through Loki's ribs and right into his heart, all the excuses be damned. "What do you require?"
There was a moment of tense silence.
"Stand down, Barton," Loki said finally, then let out a sigh.
"I don't understand…"
"I'm calling off the attack."
"Okay. I'll turn the plane around."
"No. Land on the Helicarrier, they will let you pass."
There was a brief pause, before Clint acknowledged the order. He had no other option, after all. "As you wish, boss."
Loki ended the call and handed the phone back to Fury.
Fury raised an eyebrow.
"You expected me to trick you," Loki said, matter-of-factly.
Fury shrugged, pulled a crumpled ten-dollar bill from his pocket, and handed it to Rogers without saying a word.
There was a swarm of agents on the deck the moment the Quinjet landed. Barton and Stokes – the other man who Loki singled out as being under the influence of the scepter – got tranquilizer darts into the napes of their necks, the moment they stepped out of the vehicle. The rest of the men was already neatly packaged inside, ready for arrest. There seemed to be some kind of scuffle on board after Loki's order and it looked like Loki's loyalists won.
It was only for the best, given the context and it saved SHIELD quite a bit of trouble.
As there was no need for them for the moment, Fury dismissed both Natasha and Loki from the bridge. He didn't tell her to keep a watch on him this time, but she understood it was implied, so she carried on with that duty, nonetheless, leading him to the cabin he was assigned.
He stepped inside and evaluated the room critically. "Can I have my cell back? At least it had a window."
"Well, this one has a door that opens from the inside, I'd say it's quite a bit of an upgrade just for that reason."
He clapped down on the cot. "Yet you ask me to stay here."
"And where do you want to go instead?"
He shrugged.
"Seriously, get some sleep. Fury will wake you up once Barton comes to."
"What do you need me there for?"
"We will have to verify if the mind-control thingy is really gone."
"And how do you intend to do that?"
She tilted her head. "Come on, you're smart, I can tell you are. I bet you can think of a way."
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Barton would not be pleased to see me after what I've done to his mind."
"Tough luck," she chortled, turned on her heel and left.
Stark returned four hours later, and Thor landed on the deck maybe five minutes after that.
"How did it go?" Natasha asked, entering the conference room that was serving as their headquarters slash debriefing room for now. Rogers, Banner, Stark and Thor were there already.
"Peachy," said Stark and rubbed his jaw. "Flash Gordon has a mean right swing."
Her eyes dashed to Thor, who turned away with a look that screamed "guilty" on his face.
"What happened?"
"Just a small misunderstanding," Stark said dismissively. "Courtesy of the magic glowstick from space."
"I'm sorry, friend Stark," Thor said, "for attacking you. And for destroying your home."
Stark waved his hand. "I didn't like those windows anyway."
"Okay, I feel like I'm missing some crucial information here. Why the hell were you in New York? You were supposed to go to the SHIELD compound upstate."
"I told them," Fury said, stepping into the room. "Or rather, I told Stark because Thor fried his communicator with his lighting powers again."
"Mhm," Stark hummed. "I turned around and Hercules decided that meant I'm being influenced by the scepter – that I had to carry because it interfered with his awesome hammer swings, by the way – and, well, things happened, and my penthouse needs a serious remodel now."
"You're mixing up two mythologies, Tony. That's unkosher," Bruce murmured, looking up from the tablet in his hand. He turned to Fury, tapping his fingers on the table nervously. "Since the Tesseract got secured without my help after all, can you give me a lift to the closest uninhabited area, Director?"
Fury didn't answer. He wanted Banner around, that much was obvious, whether for his brains or for his other set of assets.
"You got the cube?" she asked.
"Yeah. Loki's intel checked out. I found Selvig on the roof of my tower, yelling at the clouds. And setting up quite a crafty field generator. He got kind of prickly when I got close, so I had to knock him out. Did you know that it fixes the mind-control thing?"
"Yes," she said, in unison with Fury.
"Where is it?"
"I left it at the tower, in case Thor's little brother got overcame with the need to steal it again." He turned to Fury. "You can send your guys to pick it up later. If I never see it again, it would be too soon."
"I will take it out of your hands, friend Stark," Thor said. "We've dallied on this realm long enough and caused enough trouble. It's time for me and my brother to return home."
He got up. "If you'd be so kind to direct me to Loki's current whereabouts…"
"Here's the thing," Fury said. "Loki's not coming with you."
Thor's brows furrowed. "I took you for an honorable man, Nicolas Fury. We had an agreement."
"Well, it seems to be off, I'm afraid. Loki stays on Earth."
"By whose word?!" Thor yelled and smashed his fists on the table. A couple of water bottles in the middle got knocked over and the glasses clinked.
Fury turned around, completely unimpressed by the outburst, then clicked the remote in his hand. A screen on the wall came to life and a video played, neatly timed to show just Loki's request and not what came before and what followed. The frame was clipped to leave his chained hands out of the picture, too.
"He is misguided. He will come to his senses," Thor said, not quite yelling anymore, but still not entirely calm either. "He cannot remain on Midgard."
"And why is that?" Stark asked, picking his nails with his access card. It still said "external consultant" on it.
Thor glowered. "I've been tasked with returning him to Asgard by the All-Father," he declared, "and I will not fail my duty!"
"Yes, about that," Fury said and clicked the remote again.
"I'm not a huge proponent of the Aesir flavor of justice," Loki's image said from the screen.
"Would be so kind and explain to us mortals what exactly that amounts to?"
Thor sighed and sat back in his chair, his cape flowing down to the ground. "The justice is decided by the All-Father and the All-Father alone."
"Any guesses?"
"Loki caused a lot of grief back home and on your world both," Thor said carefully. "The All-Father would want to set an example for those who might try it again, and the punishment for traitors is death. Yet I still hold hope in my heart that sentence could be lessened, for the sake of Loki's long-standing loyalty."
"Lessened how?"
"Exchanged for imprisonment, perchance? I assure you; he will be properly disciplined for his crimes against you."
"This is not what I'm asking, is it?" Fury said, his voice level. "How long of an imprisonment are we talking about?"
Thor frowned. "Those jailed under such grave charges could never be allowed to walk under the sky as free men."
"Don't you guys live for thousands of years?" Rogers asked.
"We do."
Rogers stared back at Thor, taken aback.
Natasha groaned and ran her hand through her hair. Loki's words made a whole lot more sense now. Death or millennia of Asgardian dungeons – that were his options once Thor took him back home. No parole, no redemption, no more opportunities. No wonder he would rather take his chances with the Earth's justice system.
"What about the whole coercion thing? Shouldn't that be counted as a mitigating circumstance?" Stark asked.
"He could withstand if he were strong enough," Thor said, his gaze on the clouds beyond the window. "No honorable man should choose his own life over the lives of others, and I grieve that my brother was so weak. So, no, it bears no significance, whether it could be proven or not."
Stark rested his elbow on the table and pressed his fingers to his eyes. "Well, He-man, that's not how we do things here on Earth."
"Loki is of Asgard and not of Midgard," Thor protested.
"People move from place to place all the time," Natasha pointed out. "For a multitude of reasons. And escaping unfair prosecution is a big one, I'd say."
"You dare call the All-Father unjust?!" Thor roared getting up again. "How dare you speak against…"
"Sit down, Point Break," Stark sighed and waved his hand. "No one is calling the big daddy anything."
Well, she kind of was saying just that, but she didn't feel all that inclined to argue.
Thor didn't sit down. "I will take my brother back home and I won't let any mortal stand in my way!"
"I feel like you're forgetting something important," Bruce said quietly. "Or someone, rather."
Thor turned to him, his cape whipping around. "Who do you mean?"
"Loki, maybe? I'd say he should have at least a chance to say something about that, right?"
The wrinkle on Thor's forehead deepened as he stared around the room in utter confusion. "Loki brought war to your world!"
"So did you, technically speaking," Natasha supplied. "The first thing you did was attack us. You almost killed Rogers. I don't see you eagerly lining up for your due punishment for that."
He gaped at her, lost for words momentarily.
"Can we talk like civilized people now?" Fury asked.
Thor clapped down with a sigh.
Fury muttered an order into his earpiece. It was too low for Natasha to get the words, but she knew what it was anyway.
Five minutes passed in uncomfortable silence, before the door opened and Loki walked in. His hair was in disarray and the shadows under his eyes looked a bit less prominent, so he indeed went to sleep after she told him to, and Fury's summon woke him up.
He had an access card on a lanyard around his neck. He needed one to pass the security to the restricted part of the ship and it looked like Fury gave up with providing him babysitters at this point. It said, "external consultant", like Stark's.
"Brother!" Thor welcomed him with a grin, which quickly faded as Thor took in his attire.
"Thor," Loki acknowledged, a lot less enthusiastically, then sat down at the opposite side of the table, between Natasha and Rogers, and folded his hands in his lap.
"What is this madness, Loki? You think you can escape justice by hiding amongst the mortals?"
"I don't intend to escape anything, Thor."
"Then why don't you come back home?"
"It's not my home. You know that, as well as I do."
"Loki…"
"No, Thor. I'm done being Odin's scapegoat. I'm done with bowing my head and accepting every punishment he thinks up for me. I'm done with being silenced and left in the dark. If he wants my head, he will have to come and take it himself, because I'm done with following his rules and answering every call."
"Our Father can be harsh and firm in his judgments, but he was always fair!"
"To you."
"Loki, please."
Loki rolled his eyes. "My life is already forsaken. Thanos will come to claim his dues. I won't be waiting for it, sitting in some cave with my lips sewn shut. Or whatever other creative sentence the All-Father will come up with this time."
A horrified gasp escaped Rogers' throat. Thor didn't seem to notice. "You know what you did to earn it!"
Loki sighed and rubbed his eyes. "It matters not, now. So, no, Thor. I won't go with you. And if you tried to take me now against my will, you'd be breaching the peace between Midgard and Asgard."
"How so? This is a family matter!"
"Not exactly," Fury interjected. "We have this institution called 'political asylum' and Loki applied for one. His presence here is protected by the laws of the United States. This is the country we are in right now, in case you needed a reminder."
Fury loved to be two steps ahead of everyone else in the room and she was rarely happier that he was than now.
"I…" Thor started and scratched his chin. "Uhm."
Loki smiled. "Take the Tesseract back to Asgard and lock it in the vault. Make sure it's protected." He looked up at Fury. "Would that be all, Director?"
Fury nodded and Loki got up and left.
Thor's gaze trailed after him until the door closed. "I should be going then," he said.
"That would be wise, yes. My people will take you back to the tower."
Thor got up and bowed his head slightly. "It's been a pleasure to meet you," he muttered in a tone that put a lot of question to the sincerity of the statement, wrapped his cape around himself and vacated the room.
"So, uhm, guys?" Stark said after a moment of silence. "Did we just adopt an alien supervillain?"