The group's momentum had already been dampened once, by the downtown traffic. Now they had another enforced delay, as they stood waiting for the elevator.
"I wonder if there is a way to take souvenirs home from this universe," Thor mused, as they watched the numbers above the elevator doors count down.
"Why?" asked Steve. He wanted to forget this place as fast as possible. His ribs were going to hurt for days.
"Because I'm sure Jane and Darcy would very much enjoy seeing Chris Hemsworth in Ghostbusters," Thor explained.
Nat scoffed. "He can't have been in Ghostbusters. That movie's probably older than he is."
"No, there was a recent remake," Thor said.
"Really?" Nat looked interested now. She liked old movies.
"Oh, yes."
"Was it any good?"
"I don't know," said Thor. "I have not had an opportunity to watch it, but I know the original is one of the films they considered essential to my education in Earth's popular culture."
The floor numbers reached G with a ding, the elevator doors opened onto the mirrored interior, and there was Hayley Atwell.
Steve froze. He'd assumed – indeed, he'd hoped – he would never see her again. Once had been more than enough, he didn't think his strained emotions could take another encounter. But there she was, as astonished to see him as he was to see her.
"Chris?" she asked.
"Uh, hello," said Steve.
She reached for his face – it, too, had been banged up where he'd fallen on the stack of chairs, and he had a big scrape down his left cheek. "Are you all right?" Hayley asked. "What happened?"
Steve caught her wrist. He couldn't let this happen again. He could not get sucked into the fantasy, because it would only tear his heart out. A woman who looked like Peggy reaching tenderly for his cheek was the emotional equivalent of a black hole. "I can't talk right now," he said.
"Do you know the police are looking for you?" Hayley insisted. Natasha and Thor edged into the elevator on either side of her. Steve looked at them for help, but Nat just rolled her eyes. She still thought Steve ought to have learned from her example.
"Yes, I do," said Steve, "but we're kind of in the middle of something." He shuffled around her into the elevator.
Hayley turned around and stepped towards him, which allowed the doors to close. The elevator started going up. She glanced back, but then seemed to decide that wherever she'd been going, it could wait. "Who were those people you were fighting with?" she asked. "They were shooting at you, Chris! Actually shooting! They said it did actual structural damage to the building. What's going on?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Steve said.
"Probably not," she agreed, "but tell me anyway."
"I can't," said Steve. "I'd like to, but I can't." It was a real struggle. Peggy had never doubted anything he'd told her, and it was a heartbreak all over again to have to tell himself that Hayley would think he was insane.
They arrived at the top floor. There were only two suites on that floor, the Royal and the Presidential. Both had the doors closed and locked.
As usual, Natasha was on top of things – she pulled a metal pen with the Hyatt hotel logo on it out of her pocket, and took it apart to pull out a slim piece of metal. Using that, she began to pick the lock.
"Chris," Hayley said seriously, "if you guys are in some kind of trouble there are lots of people who can help you. You're only going to make it worse by doing whatever you're doing. I know it's hard for you to talk to people, but I can promise you that in the long run it'll be easier than whatever this is!"
Natasha opened the door a crack and put her eye up to it to look. Steve gave Hayley an awkward pat on the arm, and went to look for himself.
The door of the Royal Suite opened onto a short hallway with a bathroom on the left and a closet on the right. Nobody was visible, but Steve could hear distant, tinny voices, probably from a television set. Moving very slowly so that the hinges wouldn't creak, Natasha opened the door and the group crept forward. Nat herself walked as quietly as a cat. Steve could move silently as well when he wanted, although it was difficult when he was limping on a twisted ankle. Thor was surprisingly light on his feet, and Hayley brought up the rear, tiptoeing. Apparently as well as Peggy's eyes and smile, she had her counterpart's inability to keep her nose out of things.
The little hall opened onto a large room divided into sitting and dining areas. The former, on the left, had overstuffed couches, shiny wooden tables, and a huge wall-mounted television playing a news broadcast. The dining area, on the right, had a big oval table with six chairs, under a chandelier that appeared to be made out of shed deer antlers.
On the largest of the sitting area's couches were three people, arranged awkwardly with the hands behind their back and shackles on their ankles – two men and a woman. One of the men was Downey. The woman was the one he'd pointed out in the convention brochure: pretty and forty-ish, with long dark hair. The other man was a very tall, thin one with blond hair and a long nose. Silhouetted against the window as he was, Steve could almost see a resemblance between him and the Vision, though it was difficult to imagine the Vision with fair Caucasian skin instead of his normal red and green.
It was this man – he must be the Paul who'd been on the phone – who looked up first. He saw the four people in the hall and took a sudden breath in, which made Downey and the woman also look. They made eye contact with Steve and the others, then all three shifted as best they could to look towards the dining area. Plates and scraps on the table suggested that several people had recently eaten there, but the rest of the room was empty.
Natasha came closer to inspect their bonds. "Where is he?" she asked softly.
"A group of fans came up to see him," Downey whispered back. "He wined them and dined them and now he's taken them out on the balcony to talk." His eyes went to the sliding doors across from the dining table. The curtain was partly drawn, and the sun was on the other side of the building, so no shadows were cast on it. If voices could be heard through the glass, the television was drowning them out. They would have no warning when Loki came back in.
"He's gone nuts," said the dark-haired woman, who must have been Jennifer Connelly. "Just completely crazy. He thinks he actually is Loki and that there are aliens looking for him."
"I fear he speaks the truth," Thor told her. "We are here to apprehend him and return him – and ourselves – to our own universe."
"Oh, my god, I'm starting to believe it," groaned Downey. "Ten more minutes of this and I'll believe I'm really Tony Stark and just pull an Iron Man suit out of my ass. He can probably do that in the comics."
Natasha reached down between Downey and Connelly and into the interior of the couch. "It's a sofa bed," she said to Steve and Thor. "Their handcuffs are wound around the struts inside."
"If we weren't, we'd be long gone even if we had to hop," grumbled the blond man. It was the Vision's voice, but with a disgust behind it that Steve had never heard the android express.
"Where did Loki get all these bonds?" asked Thor.
"From one of the girls at the convention," said Downey. "She asked him if he had a use for them and he said yes. I'm gonna venture a guess that this wasn't the use she had in mind."
Natasha looked at the piece she'd taken out of her pen, then slipped it back in her pocket and instead snagged a small cheese knife off the dining table. "This will do," she announced, and knelt down in front of the sofa to start working on the handcuffs.
Steve and Thor didn't need to be told what their part in this revised plan was – without a word, they went to stand on either side of the patio doors. When they got close enough to see around the curtains, they found Loki on the balcony talking animatedly to three young women. The blonde was wearing a Loki costume of her own, complete with elaborate horned helmet. The brunette was in a loose green shirt, with a blue and white bandanna tied around her head. The redhead was in a white shirt with green raglan sleeves, with three options printed on it next to boxes as if in a survey: single, taken, and burdened with glorious purpose. The last option had its box checked.
There was no indication when they were planning on coming back inside. Natasha already had Connelly's hands freed, and Hayley had helped Connelly stand so that Nat could get the men detached from the sofa before undoing everyone's ankles. Hopefully she could free all three before Loki realized they were there.
Of course, they couldn't be that lucky. While Steve watched, Loki put one arm around the costumed woman and the other around the one in the bandanna, and the one in the raglan brought up the rear as they came back indoors. The patio door slid open.
As soon as Loki stepped inside, Steve and Thor pounced – they gabbed him by the arms and knocked him to the floor, and that much went very well. What they hadn't counted on was the reaction of the three women, all of whom leaped to Loki's defense as soon as they realized what was happening. The one in the costume started hitting Steve with her sceptre, ordering him to let go. The other two grabbed Thor by the shoulders and started trying to pull him off, the one in the raglan beating on his bicep with her fist.
In his own body in his own universe, this would have been a mere inconvenience to Steve and not even that to Thor – right now it was considerably more of a problem. The costume sceptre was made of wood and paint, but the girl kept landing blows on Steve's already bruised ribs, and every time she did, he involuntarily twitched. The girls attacking Thor were small and had only their bare hands, but there were two of them and they were determined, and one of them had an arm around his neck. He was having trouble breathing.
Natasha and Hayley ran in to help. Hayley dragged the costumed girl off Steve and held on to her, while Natasha took on both the others at the same time and had them pinned to the floor in seconds. Steve and Thor pulled Loki to his feet, Steve rather clumsily on his bad ankle, and held him there.
Big man in a suit of armor, Steve had once said to Stark. Take that away, what are you? Without the armor, Stark was no hero – but here was Steve without the serum, and he wasn't much, either. He couldn't even take a teenage girl in a ridiculous costume, let alone an alien warrior!
Loki had noticed, too. "So these are Earth's mightiest heroes!" he sneered. "Nearly felled by three children!"
"So this is Earth's would-be conqueror," Thor shot back, "basking in the adulation of those same children, hiding behind somebody else's face!"
"I told you I would find a world to rule!" Loki replied, proud. "This one suits me fine! I already have followers, do I not?" He looked at the girls – Hayley still had one, and Natasha was hanging on to the other two. "Do I not?" he repeated.
"Yeah!" the fans chorused.
"Bettany delivered my conditions," Loki added, "and they have not changed. Call off the Chi'Tauri and leave me be, and these posturing thespians will come to no harm. Persist in opposing me, and I shall turn them all into goats and have them pull my chariot!"
"The Chi'Tauri are not here of our doing," said Thor. "I would not set them upon my worst enemy, let alone my own brother."
"Your brother you threw in prison without a second thought?" asked Loki.
"I swear on the ashes of our mother," Thor said. "I did not call upon Thanos or his creatures."
For a moment Loki looked honestly surprised, but then he scowled. "How would they know how to find me here, if not for you? They ought to seek me in our world, and find another wearing my flesh."
"Is that why you came here?" asked Steve, giving Loki a shake. "So they'd take him and leave you?"
"Of course not!" said Loki. "It may not look it, but this world contains all we ever wanted! All any of us ever wanted!"
"Really," said Thor flatly. He was not convinced. Neither, for that matter, were Steve or Natasha. Steve did wonder what Downey, Connolly, and Bettany might think of this statement, but didn't dare take his eyes off Loki to find out.
"Oh, yes," said Loki. "Do you really need me to explain? Look around you! I am surrounded by people who would lay down their lives for me! Widow," he looked at Natasha. "I saw all your secrets on SHIELD's flying fortress. You have many regrets, among them your inability to breed. Here you are in a world where you have never killed anyone, able to have as many spawn as you like! Captain," he turned to Steve. "Is that not the woman you lost to time?" He nodded towards Hayley. "Here she is, yours for the taking! And you, brother." He locked eyes with Thor. "You could live a lifetime with your mortal love, and not have to grieve for millennia once her brief time runs out."
"No, I could not," said Thor firmly. "I have read of Natalie Portman, and I watched one of her films on the flight from Australia. She has Jane's face, but not her heart, and I would not be with her for her face alone. Nor would I divide Elsa Hemsworth and her children forever from their husband and father."
"If you take us back," said Steve, "we'll protect you from the Chi'Tauri. We can do that there." He would probably have to make peace with Stark, which might mean apologizing for his apology letter. Steve would just have to deal with that. "We can't do it here, and you know it, and Tom Hiddleston doesn't deserve whatever it is they'd do to him if they thought he was you."
"I am a god!" said Loki. "If not in body, then in the minds of these young women!" He nodded at the two Natasha was holding on to.
"Yeah!" the girls chorused again.
"You do not give me orders," Loki went on, "and if there is a deal to be struck then I shall dictate the terms!"
Thor's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You don't know how to go back, do you?"
"Of course I do!" said Loki, affronted. "Do you doubt my power?"
"We doubt your honesty," said Natasha, but she wasn't looking at Loki anymore – she was looking at something beyond him. Steve had his back to whatever it was, and was wondering if he could risk taking a look for himself, when he heard Downey shout.
"Stan!" he said. "Thank god – a sane person!"
Then Steve did turn to look, and found that yet another individual had just entered the room. This was an elderly man with steel-gray hair and a mustache, wearing aviator sunglasses and a green sweater over a white collared shirt. He was staring at the three actors still partially chained to the sofa, but then followed their eyes to the small crowd gathered around Loki. He couldn't have any idea what he'd just walked in on, but it probably looked bad.
"Er, sorry," the man said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the entrance to the suit. "Wrong room. The door was open, and I…"
"Stan!" said Connelly, "call the cops or something, they've all gone nuts!"
"They think they're superheroes from another universe!" added Bettany.
"I'm worried it's contagious!" Downey agreed.
The man named Stan blinked a couple of times, then his face lit up as if understanding had just dawned. "Oh, I see!" he said. "We're doing Visit to a Strange Planet, are we?"
Nobody replied, because nobody had any idea what he was talking about – except for Hayley Atwell, who said, "you mean the fanfiction?"
"Yes, exactly," said Stan. "Transporter accident. Sticks Kirk, Spock, and Bones in the real world while Shatner and Nimoy and what's-his-name are all on the Enterprise." He rubbed his hands together. "All right, then, what's the situation? I'll see what I can do."
Steve looked at Natasha, to see if she knew what was going on. She clearly did not.
"Loki has brought us all to this universe using a piece of forgotten technology," Thor said. "One that was abandoned centuries ago because it had such potential for doing evil. Somehow the Chi'Tauri have followed him here, and he blames us for their presence."
Stan shook his head. "Oh, no, no, no," he said. "Thor wouldn't do that."
"That's what I told him!" Thor agreed.
"Come on, Loki!" Stan went up and patted Loki's cheek, like a grandfather. "You didn't think Thanos would fall for a little old trick like that, did you?"
Loki opened his mouth as if to argue, but then he visibly wilted. "It was not my intention to give him this actor," he admitted. "I had thought another of me, almost identical but not quite, would satisfy his thirst for vengeance…"
"Another of you wouldn't have let you do this to him, and you know it," Stan clucked. "You brought this on yourself. Thanos left you alone as long as you were in prison because he figured you were already suffering. Then you escaped, and now he thinks he's got to teach you a lesson for failing him."
"I hardly chose to fail!" said Loki. "It should be them he wishes to punish!" He glared first at Thor, then at Steve.
"He'll get to them in good time," Stan said. "Right now it's you he's after, and out of everywhere on Earth you might have been, how do you think he knew you were at a convention in Canada?"
That was a good question, and it was one Steve hadn't thought of yet. 'The Earth' was a lot of ground, and the Chi'Tauri and their master didn't seem like they'd go around checking convention pamphlets to see where their target would be. Somebody would have had to tell them, and the only people Steve could think of who were in the other universe right now and had that information were…
"Our alternates?" he asked, horrified.
"Seems logical," Stan agreed. "Now, you have a problem, don't you, Loki? You owe Tom Hiddleston an apology, but you're gonna have a hard time getting to him, seeing as there aren't any infinity stones in this universe."
That was something none of them had been ready to hear. Steve had assumed that finding the tesseract would be key to going back, even if they had to go to this world's version of Asgard for it. Loki stood there staring at Stan as if the old man had just told him the sky was orange and the grass purple, and Thor immediately protested.
"What?" the god of thunder asked. "How can that be? The Infinity Stones are part of the very fabric of the cosmos! When Jane lectured at Harvard last, she used mathematics to show that there could be no universe without them!"
"Not in your universe," said Stan. "This one's different. Don't worry, you're a smart bunch." He looked around at the superheroes and nodded approvingly. "I'm sure you'll work something else. You've got Tony Stark!" He gestured to the couch.
"No, they don't!" protested Downey.
Stan was surprised. "They don't?"
"No!" said Downey. "I'm just Robert Downey Junior!"
"Oh." Stan shrugged. "Well, close enough. Any more questions?"
Had they asked him any questions? As far as Steve could remember, this guy had just walked in and started telling them what was going on, despite having no background for it himself. "Who are you?" Steve asked.
"I'm Stan Lee!" the man replied with a grin. "Don't worry about it, just trust that I know everything. I'll see you again, I'm sure. Now, I have to run. I'm having dinner with a local rodeo queen tonight." And with that, he turned and puttered out.
"Stan!" Bettany, Connelly, and Downey all shouted in unison.
The door closed. There was a moment of silence.
"That was weird," said Natasha, her poker face so perfect that Steve couldn't tell if she were trying to make a joke out of the understatement or not.
"I knew it!" said Thor. "I knew you didn't know how to get back!"
"Oh, do shut up!" Loki groused. "Just because we cannot return he way we came doesn't mean we cannot return at all! I know many roads between the worlds."
"Then why have you not used them yet?" asked Thor.
"Because I do not wish to!" Loki insisted. "I told you, I like this world. I was furious at first, when I realized that your foolish destruction of the rune stone had shunted us all off to this nowhere instead of to a universe where I am a ruler of worlds, but it improved with keeping. I can live in peace here, surrounded by my adoring minions."
"Ah, I see," said Thor. "You wish to do theatre without father telling you how un-warrior-like it is."
Loki glared at him. "That, too."
"Well, you cannot still want to stay here, now that you know Thanos has already found you," Thor pointed out. "Do you want him to capture you in this mortal state? Your suffering may be briefer in this body, but I think you will feel it more keenly."
"You simply take the man at his word?" Loki asked. "Who is this Stan Lee, to tell us what the mad titan will and will not do?"
"No, no," said Downey from the sofa. "Stan knows. Don't… don't any of you think he looks maybe a little familiar, huh?"
Steve frowned, thinking about it. "One of the generals I shook hands with during the war kind of looked like him," he offered. "With the mustache and all."
"No, no, he was one of the gentlemen from the veteran's association, whom you brought to Stark's party the day Ultron was created," said Thor.
"Never mind," said Natasha. "The point is that we've got to get out of this universe, whether Loki likes it or not. We couldn't even handle four Chi'Tauri, we're definitely not going to be able to stop a full invasion if it comes to that."
"Um," said Bettany. "Not to interrupt or anything, but can somebody please finish untying us? It's been hours and I'm about to wet myself."
That wasn't a phrase Steve would ever have expected to hear spoken in the Vision's voice.
"Right, sorry," said Nat. She looked at the two young women she was still holding on to. "Do you two promise to behave?" she asked.
"Yes," they said.
Nat gave them a gentle shake. "Promise," she said. "Because after that conversation I think you know who you're talking to." This was a warning.
"Yes, Ma'am," they repeated, in unison.
Nat let go of them and went to retrieve the cheese knife she'd been using to open the handcuffs. "Sorry, I'll be quick," she promised, and got to work on the remaining bonds. "This is much easier when I can see what I'm doing instead of feeling around inside a sofa."
The third girl, the one in the Loki costume, looked at her own captor in a sort of awe. "Are you really Agent Carter?" she asked eagerly.
"Oh, no," Hayley told her. "I'm afraid I'm just Hayley Atwell."
"Oh," said the girl, disappointed. Hayley let go of her.
"Are you two oafs going to take your hands off me?" Loki asked Steve and Thor.
"We don't trust you that much," Steve replied. "You'll vanish somewhere and we'll never find you again."
"Actually," Thor took a step back and held up his hands, signifying that Loki was free to go, "we observed earlier that if Loki could have left this universe already, he would have. If he could vanish, he wouldn't need us to let go of him before he could do so. It appears that magic, or at least Loki's magic, does not work in this reality either. Am I right?"
Loki glared at him. "Fine," he said. "Humiliate me yet again – yes. Thanks to your clumsiness, we are all stranded here with no way home, powerless against those extraterrestrial vermin. I hope you're proud of yourself, Thor."
"Then we'll just have to find a way that doesn't rely on magic," said Natasha practically. "Or figure out what magic is around here. Maybe somebody who knows this universe can help." She undid the bonds on Bettany's feet, and moved on to Connelly.
"Fuck that," Bettany declared. "It's not going to be me."
That wasn't something Steve ever expected to hear the Vision say, either.
Natasha freed Connelly, too, and Bettany helped her up and swung her coat around her shoulders.
"We want no part of this," he said. "Let's go home, Jen. Go home and take a long vacation."
"Maybe Johnny will let us borrow his island," Connelly agreed.
"Good luck with the aliens!" Bettany added, and both of them hurried out the door.