Chapter Nineteen

Even after the shower Arianna felt a little off, but she slipped a robe on and got in bed anyway. Loki, also in a robe, soon followed. Neither of them really slept, but they did doze off and on.

At least they did until a soft knocking came from the door to the room.

Arianna groaned and pulled the pillow over her head until she realized the person knocking was probably Pepper.

Loki chuckled. "I'll get it."

"Thank you," she said, voice muffled from under the pillow.

She removed the pillow once Loki was up. She watched him go to the door and look out the peephole.

"It's Miss Potts."

Arianna sat up, though she stayed under the covers, as Pepper came in. Pepper had obviously already taken a room at the hotel, for she had obviously showered and was dressed for the day. She was carrying two plastic bags with her, which she placed at the foot of the bed.

"These are some of your things. I grabbed whatever clothes I could. I couldn't find your phone."

"That's okay. I can get another one."

Pepper breathed in deeply and let it out slowly.

"I have to say something, and I need you both to listen."

Loki sat down on the bed, near Arianna.

"The cleanup crew has been going through the rubble and there has been no sign of Tony. They're going to search the water because he did fall in. There's no way he didn't. The whole back of the house and part of the garage fell in."

"So he – he drowned?"

That was a terrible way to die, not that there were many good ways to die. Anyone would have been terrified, but Arianna knew Tony must have been extremely so. She had read the file he'd given her on him as a way for him making it up to her for sneaking around her own files.

Before he had become Iron Man, Tony Stark made weapons and sold them to the military. His company, unbeknownst to him, had also been selling their weapons to other countries. He'd only found that out when he and the convoy he'd been in was attacked – attacked by people using his own weapons.

Tony had been taken hostage in Afghanistan. The people that had taken him had tortured him when he'd refused to build them what they wanted – some type of explosive – and one of the methods they'd used had been holding his head under water, sometimes long enough for him to pass out. He'd known they weren't going to kill him that way, not when he hadn't done what they wanted, but still – not being able to breathe without taking in water, holding your breath so long your body and mind tricked itself into thinking it was dying . . .

Tony being pulled under and not being able to get back to the surface must have been horrifying.

"That's what everyone's thinking." Pepper fixed her gaze on them. "That's what I was thinking. But I was wrong."

Arianna shook her head. "What d'you mean?"

"I found one of his Iron Man mask plates."

"Okay . . ."

"Tony left a message on it. He's . . . he's alive."

"What? How?"

"I don't know. The suit, probably. But look, the point is that no one else knows he's alive and it needs to stay that way."

"Where is he?"

"He didn't say, just that he was going after the Mandarin. Right now he has the element of surprise because the Mandarin doesn't know he's alive."

Arianna almost couldn't believe what she was hearing. Why hadn't Tony just let them know he was okay after the last helicopter left and before the emergency crews and media hounds showed up? It would have saved them a bunch of grief.

"Does he know who the Mandarin is?" Loki asked. "He wasn't certain before."

"He didn't say that either. He just said he had to find the guy." Pepper shook her head. "We have a bigger problem."

"Bigger than the Mandarin?" Arianna asked.

"Someone showed up at the mansion looking for Tony. She claims she's a scientist and that her boss is working for the Mandarin."

Arianna looked from Pepper to Loki and back again as she processed Pepper's words.

"Who is this person?"

"Someone Tony knew at some point, so she claims. Her name is Maya, and she's waiting in my hotel room."

Loki and Arianna got dressed quickly once Pepper left. They were planning on going to her room once they were ready because they both wanted to meet this Maya. Loki was automatically suspicious that someone connected to the Mandarin had showed up so directly after them having been attacked by the man – or group, whichever.

Once Pepper had gone, both Loki and Arianna were able to process what they had just learned.

It had been about fifteen hours since the attack first happened, which meant that the last fifteen hours had been a roller coaster of emotion – mostly the highs and lows of grief for Arianna and trying to keep up with those highs and lows for Loki.

It wasn't that Loki hadn't felt grief for Tony. Aside from Arianna, Loki felt most connected to Tony; he enjoyed the man's sarcasm most of the time and truly admired his brain. But he'd needed to put aside his own feelings so he could be there for Arianna the way she needed him to be.

As it was, Arianna seemed to be having trouble believing that Tony was actually alive, that he had survived the fall into the water. She probably wouldn't really believe it until she saw him again.

They walked in relative silence through the hotel hallway until they reached Pepper's room, where Arianna knocked softly on the door.

Pepper let them in the two bed hotel room. Whom Loki assumed was this Maya Pepper had told them about was sitting on one of the beds. She had long brown hair, brown eyes, and appeared to be in her mid-thirties in Midgardian years.

"Guys, this is Maya Hansen,' Pepper said. "Maya, this is Arianna Grace and –"

"Aren't you the guy who led the attack on Manhattan?" Maya asked, her eyes on Loki.

"I am," Loki said, allowing his voice to become softer and slightly menacing.

Pepper and Arianna knew that he'd been under Thanos's control; Maya and the general population had no clue. Maybe they could use that to their advantage in this situation.

Maya looked at Pepper. "Am I exchanging one terrorist for another? I thought you were the good guys."

"Good is a relative term," Loki said.

Both Pepper and Arianna were giving him looks full of confusion; he was just glad he wasn't giving him looks of distrust.

"Tell me more about your boss and this . . . other terrorist. Why are you working for him?"

"I didn't know I was until recently."

"What made you realize?" Arianna asked.

"The explosions. When I found out they couldn't find a bomb casing for any of them."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Pepper seemed to know the story already, but she was allowing the back-and-forth questions and answers for now.

"Because it's my fault those explosions ever happened in the first place."

"You don't strike me as the type to go around blowing things up," Loki said.

"I'm not," Maya admitted. "But the man I work for is."

"And who do you work for?" Arianna asked.

"A man named Aldrich Killian." It was Pepper who answered. "who apparently works for the Mandarin."

"Are we supposed to know who this Killian person is?"

"He's the owner of a think tank called Advanced Idea Mechanics," Maya supplied. "He bought my research and experimented with it. When he realized it could be weaponized, he sold it to the military."

"Funnily enough, he came to my office a few days ago," Pepper said. "He wanted Stark Industries to buy into his think tank. Because the research he showed me could be weaponized I had to turn him down."

"What were you researching?" Arianna asked Maya.

"I . . . created a serum called Extremis. It was supposed to be something that could help advance the medical field by years – decades even. One shot of Extremis and it could heal anything. I'm talking paralysis, cancer, amputation."

"Are you saying your serum would help people grow back lost limbs?" Loki asked. "Impossible."

There was no way a Midgardian had invented a way to regrow limbs. Even Asgard wasn't that advanced in healing techniques and they were light years beyond the capabilities of Midgard.

"It worked well enough when I tested it on plants," Maya said. "I grew them and watered them with the serum. You could rip a leaf off and a new one would replace it almost immediately. There was just a small problem."

They all waited for her to tell them exactly what the problem was.

"Whenever the plant felt threatened, it would explode."

"It would explode?" Arianna asked. "How does a plant explode?"

"The serum changed the DNA somehow."

"And what's causing the explosions now?" Loki asked, voice taking on a darker tone because he was fairly certain he already knew the answer.

"Once Killian bought my research, he went straight to human testing. He ran into the same problem. Whenever the test subjects felt any intense emotions, they would run hot and . . . if they couldn't regulate . . ."

"They became human bombs?" Arianna asked, disgust apparent in her voice. "That's what you meant about it being weaponized."

"I never wanted it to be used that way."

"Well, it is."

"The Mandarin attacks," Loki said. "Are they actual attacks? Or accidents?"

"They're caused by people who can't regulate. The Mandarin takes credit for them to cause panic, keep people afraid."

"You know who the Mandarin is?"

"I have no idea who he is, but he works out of Miami. Killian takes trips out there all the time to make sure things are running smoothly."

Arianna began to fidget beside him, switching her weight from one foot to the other as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"How do we know if we can trust you?" Arianna asked. Then to Pepper, "Is there a way we can check to see if her story checks out?"

"I've already made a few calls. I'm waiting for a response back."

"Until then, is it wise to keep her here?" Loki asked.

Pepper shrugged. "If she really is an informant, really is trying to help, then she'd be in danger anywhere else."

"And you're okay with her staying here? With you?"

"If she is who she says she is, then she won't be a problem."

"Then we need to talk," Arianna said. "In private."

They left Maya in Pepper's room and went back to their own room.

Once inside, Arianna immediately said, "I don't trust her."

"Nor do I," Loki concurred.

"I don't know," Pepper said. "Yes, her research, her invention was weaponized and sold to the military, but Tony used to sell to the military too. In fact, he used to deal exclusively in weapons. Look at him now."

"That's true." Tony had even been called 'The Merchant of Death' because of all the weapons he'd created and sold. "But don't you think it's weird? Her just suddenly showing up?"

"She says she knew Tony years back. He listened to her talk about her research, even suggested ways to fix the imbalance."

"Yeah, but why wait until now?" Arianna shook her head. "If she knew her serum was being weaponized and could cause all these . . . explosions . . . why wait to come to Tony for help? This Mandarin thing is recent, but Tony's been Iron Man for years and he could have helped her even before that."

"Yet she waited until Stark threatened the man on national television and only appeared after he was targeted and presumed dead."

Arianna looked at Loki and realized the hardness and coldness that had taken him over when talking to Maya had disappeared. She was glad. He'd reminded her of the man she'd encountered when she first met him, only not as crazy, and she hadn't liked that at all.

It was good he was back to being the Loki she had gotten used to, and they seemed to be thinking the same thing: Something was fishy with Maya and her sudden appearance.

"Something else struck me as odd," Loki said. "She said that the Mandarin is operating out of Miami, and that this Killian takes trips there to make sure everything is running smoothly."

"I noticed that, too. But if the Mandarin is the one in charge, why is Killian the one running interference unless he's the one who's really in charge?"

Loki sent her a small grin. "My thoughts precisely. Maya said these explosions are accidents, something the Mandarin is taking credit for but not directly causing. It's all for show."

"I still think it's bigger than that. If . . . if the military did buy Maya's serum and if people really are becoming bombs, then the government has to know. They're covering it up – or at least whatever department that's responsible for this is."

Arianna turned her attention to Pepper then.

"If I were you, I would get a different hotel room, but if you do stay with her then be careful."

Pepper left, telling them they should order room service rather than try to go out to get something to eat, so Arianna ordered lunch for her and Loki – nothing extravagant, just soup and sandwiches – and they relaxed on the bed to wait for their food to arrive. They were laying side-by-side facing each other.

"I've said it before, but you are very clever," Loki said. "You and I seemed to have caught the same slip-ups in Maya's story."

"Yeah . . . it just didn't make sense." She sighed. "Another thing that didn't make sense was the way you were acting in there. It reminded me of when I first met you."

"I didn't mean to frighten you. That wasn't my intention. But she saw me as a threat, and I thought it best to keep it that way."

"Oh. Good. And I wasn't frightened, only confused. I wasn't expecting it."

"I didn't make you think I was tricking you?"

"No." She shook her head, smiling slightly. "If anything, you were tricking her."

"Hm." He returned her smile. "Most people would call you a fool for trusting me."

She looked up at him, put a hand over his chest.

"Most people don't understand that you need to feel trusted. You usually put on the face people expect to see. Maya saw the man that led the attack on New York, so that is what you became."

"Very astute."

"I'm still trying to figure out what you think I see you as."

He grasped her hand in his, brought it to his lips, and kissed her palm. It caused her breath to stutter.

'I think you see me as . . . me. Therefore, I can be myself."

She nodded. "So far you being yourself has worked out well."

He smiled widely and genuinely, causing her to laugh at his open expression. He laughed softly along with her.

"I'm glad you're feeling better."

"I have reason to feel better."

"True enough. Yesterday was difficult and exhausting."

"It was." She quickly became serious again, and squeezed his hand. "Thank you for . . . being there. I was . . . I was a mess and you were – you were great. So thank you for helping."

He used his free hand to tilt her head up, thumb and fingers gently holding her by the chin. Their eyes met and held each other. Her breath caught in her throat again.

"Always," he said, looking at her softly but intensely. His gaze traveled to her lips and back to her eyes. "May I?"

Instead of answering out loud, Arianna just leaned her head back more and moved forward. Loki met her halfway and her response was immediate. There was the usual shot of desire she got from kissing Loki – and only from Loki, it seemed – but there was also warmth that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the . . . the mutual fondness they had for each other.

The kiss didn't last long and there was hardly any heat behind it, but it was still nice. It still provided the closeness they both seemed to want at the moment.

They didn't let each other go, even when the kiss ended. Loki brought her closer, kissed her head, and repeated himself.

"Always."