Chapter 3 - Too Long, Didn't Read

"This is your captain speaking—" came a tinny disembodied voice from the speaker at the front of the cabin. "Please remember to buckle your seat belts before takeoff, and remember, if you look out on the wing and see something that looks like a gremlin, it probably is a gremlin. That's just the kind of world we live in—"

"Stop screwing around, Clint," came Natasha's voice, more muffled but also reduced to something thin and metallic. Despite the poor quality of the sound system, the inside of the SI corporate jet looked more like a luxurious sitting room than the inside of a commercial air liner. A sofa and coffee table were bolted to the floor across from a sixty-inch flat screen television, which if anything seemed a little big for the space. There was even a dry bar, although it wasn't stocked with any alcohol at the moment.

Loki watched as Thor picked up the two ends of his seatbelt, looked at one and then the other as if they were the pieces of a puzzle, and then clicked them together. He hadn't ridden in this type of aircraft before; he'd been on the Quinjet plenty of times, but when the rest of them had flown out to Malibu during the summer on a jet similar to this one, Thor had flown himself there using Mjolnir. This time, since the distance had been somewhat greater, he'd decided to take the jet with them.

Bruce had already strapped himself into the seat across from them. "Loki, are you not putting yours on?"

"I shall put it on when we take off," Loki told him.

"We should be taking off in just a minute. Loki, are you okay? Does flying make you nervous? It's okay, flying makes a lot of people nervous—"

Loki felt annoyed suddenly. She was tired of everyone being so overprotective. "Maybe I just don't want to wear it."

Thor had the nerve to roll his eyes at her. "Sister, this is not a good time to be obstinate."

"Stay out of it, Thor."

Bruce unfastened his own seatbelt, stood, and for a moment, Loki froze, because she didn't know what he was about to do. But all he did was walk down the aisle, pop his head into the cockpit for a moment, and come back. "Loki, we're not taking off until you put your seatbelt on. It isn't an option."

Loki wanted to scream, but instead, she grit her teeth and kicked the seat in front of her.

"Sister, must you throw a tantrum now?"

Loki thought she had done a pretty good job of minimizing her reaction. "Shut up, Thor, or I shall stab you."

"You've nothing to stab me with."

"You know I'm nothing if not resourceful."

"True."

"Thor, can you let me talk to Loki alone for a minute?" Thor nodded as he unfastened his seatbelt. The jet wasn't that large, but he shuffled down the aisle to the back of the plane while Bruce sat down next to Loki. "If you don't tell me what's wrong, I won't know how to help."

At first, she thought she might be in trouble for threatening Thor, but Bruce seemed prepared to overlook that, or else he was ill-prepared to deal with two of her behavioral issues at once. Actually, it didn't sound like she was in trouble at all—Bruce was being understanding again, which only annoyed her more though she couldn't explain why.

"You are being overprotective again."

"I'm overprotective?"

"Yes. You have been ever since I died that time."

"I know Tony's gone a little too far a few times trying to make you wear his protective gear, but what have I done?"

"You vaccinated me for all those diseases." Loki knew it was the wrong example as soon as she'd said it. She already understood why the vaccinations had been reasonable.

"Loki, that doesn't make me overprotective. I know getting so many at once might have seemed excessive, but that's because normally, you're supposed to get most of those shots before you're old enough to remember getting them, and then the rest are spread out throughout your childhood."

"You also take my temperature a lot."

"Taking your temperature doesn't hurt you, and it only takes a couple of seconds with the aural thermometer. I'm sorry, but it does concern me that you weren't born with any antibodies that would protect you against the diseases we have here. If you have symptoms that indicate that you might be sick, I'm going to take your temperature."

"You've swabbed my throat as well," said Loki, not ready to admit that, maybe, she was being a little ridiculous. "Which isn't painful, I suppose, but it is uncomfortable."

"I've only swabbed your throat a couple of times, and both times, it was because you complained about your throat feeling sore. One of those times was the time you had strep." The other time, Loki had been faking because he wanted attention. Both of them knew that, but Bruce was kind enough not to bring it up.

Loki didn't have any further arguments, but she still didn't want to admit she had been wrong. "I'm not wearing my seatbelt. You can't make me."

"We're not taking off then."

"What would even happen if we took off and I wasn't wearing it?"

"I don't think anything would happen unless something went wrong during takeoff. But then you might be hurt. You might still be hurt if you were wearing it, but it would significantly reduce the chance."

"If I die because I didn't put my seatbelt on in an airplane, I am sure Hela will send me back."

"I'd rather we didn't test that theory. Besides, death might be the worst possible outcome, but it's not the only bad outcome. I'm guessing Hela wouldn't be able to help you if you ended up with brain damage or a spinal cord injury. She isn't the goddess of being paralyzed from the waist down."

"Isn't air travel supposed to be the safest form of travel? Aren't you more likely to get struck by lightning seven times than die in an airplane crash? Obviously, I've been struck by lightning quite a few hundred times more than that, but that's beside the point; it's an extremely safe mode of travel. Don't push your anxieties onto me, Bruce, I don't need anyone else's."

"I'm glad you aren't nervous about flying, but that isn't a reason for you not to wear your seatbelt. You just have to wear it during takeoff. The bigger thing is, if you can't cooperate when it comes to something like this, I'm not sure you should be going to Latveria at all. We aren't just going to your mother's wedding. We need to treat this like a mission, because we're going into dangerous enemy territory. I already had some reservations about letting you do this, but if you're going to have this much trouble every time someone tells you what to do—"

"What you're saying is that unless I can follow orders without questioning them, you don't think I should go." Loki hated the idea of following orders; it reminded her of all the times Odin had given them orders and expected them to follow those orders blindly.

"I understand that's difficult for you," said Bruce, "but I need to know that you'll do what we tell you to do so that we can keep you safe."

"I am capable of keeping myself safe," Loki argued.

"I know you aren't helpless," Bruce told her. "I'm pretty far from being helpless too, and neither is your brother, or Natasha, or Clint, or Tony. But when you're on a mission, everyone can't just go do their own thing. That's why on every mission, there's someone who takes the lead; usually that's Steve, but since he isn't here, Natasha is in charge."

"But you want me to take orders from all of you, not just Natasha."

"It's called a chain of command for a reason. If nothing else, it prevents us from having to stop and have a debate about what to do if we disagree."

"If that is the case, who is higher in the chain of command on this mission? You or Thor?"

Bruce winced apologetically. "Okay, so actually, I go on most missions as the Hulk, and I'm not sure he has the best understanding of the whole chain of command thing. But still, he usually does defer to the Captain or Tony, I think—"

"Even though Tony is clearly under you in the chain of command."

Bruce's eyebrows knit together as if he didn't know what Loki meant.

"Oh, come on Bruce. You know Clint was right." When Bruce continued to stare at him like he had no clue, Loki smiled back at him and made the gesture Clint had used the other night.

Bruce snorted. "First of all, the words 'Clint' and 'right' hardly ever belong in the same sentence."

"Is Tony directly under Steve in the chain of command, then?"

"I think so? Although," Bruce added hesitantly, "if Tony tried to give Natasha or Clint an order they disagreed with, they'd probably ignore him."

"And where does my brother fit into this 'chain of command?'" Loki couldn't imagine the Thor she had known her entire life taking orders from mortals willingly.

"I'm actually not too sure. Look, the dynamic is kind of complicated."

"And yet I am clearly at the bottom of this pecking order of yours, simply because you regard me as a child."

"I'm sorry if we haven't made that clear before now, but yes."

Loki wasn't used to Bruce being so direct. "That's it, then? You're not even going to pretend it's for any other reason?"

"I could tell you that it's because you haven't gone on a mission with us before, but I know you don't like it when people lie to you."

Loki did appreciate Bruce's honesty, but as far as she was concerned, this was her mother's wedding to stop, and the rest of them were the ones tagging along. "Maybe I'll just go by myself."

Bruce narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. "And how are you going to get there? As far as I know, you can't teleport."

Loki shrugged. "I could hijack a commercial airliner."

"I really hope you're joking, Loki."

"It's not that difficult."

"What do you mean, 'it's not that difficult?' Have you hijacked a plane before?"

Thor had apparently grown tired of waiting for Bruce to work things out with Loki. He moved from the seat he had taken in the back of the plane and crouched down in front of Loki so that he could look up at her instead of down. "Sister, please try to be reasonable. I will never again tell you to 'know your place,' because I understand now how those words hurt you. But could you try to accept that as young as you are, you do have the tendency to do things that are not altogether wise, and it would be better if at times you deferred to your elders? If it helps, on this mission I will be deferring to both Natasha and Bruce, who in relative terms are my elders as well. You should know that none here would force you to do anything you found truly objectionable. I do appreciate, Sister, that many of the issues you have with authority have arisen because both Odin and Mother have betrayed your trust."

Loki would have liked to tell Thor to bugger off again, but he was doing that thing where he said all the right things again. "Oh, very well. I shall put my seatbelt on."

"And do you promise to follow our lead when we get to Latveria?" asked Bruce.

Loki didn't want to make that promise, because even if she had the best intentions not to, there was a good chance she would end up disobeying. "I promise I'll behave," she said, attempting to sound as contrite as possible. She wouldn't promise how she'd behave, of course.

Bruce nodded. "Okay, good. Buckle up, and I'll go tell Clint we can take off." He lowered his voice. "Before we do take off, you're sure you don't need—"

"I'm not anxious about flying, Bruce."

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"Is it unusually warm in here?"

Loki looked up from her book and tilted her head to the side as she considered her brother. He had moved to a seat across the plane from her, and he looked a little pale, although it could have been the lighting in the plane. "The temperature feels fine to me. Feeling ill, brother?"

"Asgardians do not become ill," Thor scoffed, as he gripped the arms of his seat hard enough to turn his knuckles white. His head turned towards to look out window, and Loki decided she might as well return to her book.

A few moments later, Thor stood and began picking his way down the middle of the plane towards the exit, but Bruce managed to get in front of him. "Thor, what are you doing?"

"I cannot breathe in this tiny, enclosed space. You must let me out."

"You can't just open the door while we're in the sky. First of all, it ought to be physically impossible. There's about twenty-four thousand pounds of pressure on it. But even if you are that strong—"

"Is that a challenge, Banner?"

Bruce grimaced but went right along without acknowledging that. "Opening it will depressurize the cabin, then none of us will be able to breathe. Not to mention, we might be sucked out into the sky. You and I might be able to survive that, but you'll have killed your sister. Is that what you want?"

"Sometimes."

Loki couldn't help but smile at her brother's adrenaline-induced honesty. She knew she shouldn't be enjoying watching him have a panic attack, but she couldn't help taking satisfaction in the knowledge that she wasn't the only one capable of having one.

A loud crash echoed outside the plane, coupled with a flash of light. Another soon followed. As the plane jolted violently, Loki's amusement evaporated. "Brother, is that you? If it is, stop it."

"Thor, everything is fine," Bruce attempted to reassure him. "Or at least it was until you created this storm. You need to calm down—try taking a breath and holding it in."

Another lightning bolt rocked the jet, and Loki growled at her brother. "I swear, if you kill us all, I really am going to stab you. I've already identified a dozen objects inside this aircraft I could use, starting with the ice tongs from the dry bar."

Bruce gave her a withering look, or as much of a withering look as the gentle doctor could manage. "Loki, just go back to your book and let me handle this, please." The man had to be crazy, of course. There was no way she could go back to her book when the plane was being tossed around like a toy skiff in the middle of an angry sea.

"We seem to have hit an unexpected storm, folks," said Clint. "You might want to buckle your seat belts."

This time, Loki buckled her seatbelt without complaint and tightened it as much as she could. She closed her eyes and reminded herself that her lightheadedness and the butterflies in her stomach were only physical sensations, and that those kinds of sensations couldn't harm her. Besides, she really wasn't afraid of either being in the plane or her brother's lightening, so why was she even feeling them?

When Loki opened her eyes again, Bruce had coaxed Thor back into his seat, and the lightening seemed further in the distance.

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"This is your captain speaking. We're preparing for our descent, so please take your seats and buckle your seat belts. The time in Sokovia is three PM, the weather is partially cloudy, and—OH MY GOD, THERE'S A SNAKE ON THIS PLANE!"

"Clint, stop screwing around. We need to land the plane."

"I'm not kidding, Nat, something just slithered around my ankle!"

Bruce poked his head into the cockpit. "Loki, it's time to stop playing Snakes on a Plane. Please turn back into a person and sit in a seat so that you can put your seat belt back on before we land."

Loki slithered out of the cockpit and back into her humanoid form. She sat as she'd been instructed, clicking her seatbelt into place. She didn't want a repeat of their earlier argument, and after nine hours on the plane, she found herself eager to disembark. "Sorry Bruce, but I was becoming restless."

"It's alright, Loki. You don't have to ask for permission to shapeshift unless you're shapeshifting into something that might startle me, and that's just for Hulk-related safety reasons. I've spent some time hiding out in the rainforest, so snakes don't really bother me anymore."

"But I am allowed to startle Clint, correct?"

"Yeah, that's fine." Bruce might not have completely approved of Loki using her shapeshifting abilities to disturb Clint while he was trying to fly the plane, but he had obviously decided to choose his battles. It was also possible that he was simply exhausted, having spent the last four hours of the flight trying to convince Thor that they were fine, and that the plane was not 'running out of oxygen.'

Loki looked out her window and watched the tiny airfield below them growing larger. "Did Clint say we were landing in some place called Sokovia?"

"You did read Natasha's mission briefing, right? Latveria doesn't have any commercial airports. Also, foreign aircraft caught flying in Latverian airspace tend to be shot down, usually with some sort of intensified molecule projector or singularity disruptor. That means we're landing in Sokovia. Clint is going to stay with the plane, and the rest of us will go on to Latveria from there."

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"You shouldn't have packed so much," said Natasha as she watched Loki struggling to pull her oversized suitcase through the door that led from the tarmac into the airport. The Sokovian International Airport was nothing more than one large room with seating and a ticket counter. It looked more like a bus depot than a modern Midgardian airport.

"You could help me, you know. You hardly brought any luggage at all." All Natasha had brought was a small carry-on bag. Loki couldn't imagine how she had everything she needed to attend a wedding in it. Where was her dress? Bruce hadn't brought much either, again, just a suit bag and a small carry-on. Thor didn't appear to have any luggage at all, though he carried Mjolnir in the form of an umbrella. Loki had to wonder if he was planning on attending the wedding in the t-shirt and jeans he was wearing or if at some point, he had learned enough magic to be able to use dimensional storage and hadn't told her.

"Sorry, but the Avengers have a strict you-packed-it, you-carry-it policy," said Natasha, shifting her carry-on to her opposite shoulder. "The reason I didn't bring much with me is that I didn't want to carry it."

"I'm not an Avenger, though."

"You're not a princess anymore either, so you're going to have to figure out how to carry your own luggage."

Once she got it inside the door, Loki let her suitcase fall to the ground and sat down on it. Thor stopped beside her and arched an eyebrow at her; he seemed to have made a full recovery from his nervous breakdown now that they'd disembarked the plane. "Sister, are you going to throw a tantrum again? We are in public this time."

"I am not throwing a tantrum; I just need to catch my breath. Being mortal is extremely tiring." She batted her eyelashes up at him. "Thor, you're not carrying anything. I fear I cannot take another step while so encumbered—" Thor nodded as he bent down. Then Loki's world turned upside down, as her brother threw her over his shoulder like a bag of flour. "You oaf—I meant to ask if you would carry my suitcase, not me! Put me down this instant. As you pointed out before, we are in public."

"You said that you feared you could not take another step, Sister."

"You're not this stupid, Thor, and acting this way is not as cute as you think."

"Will you two stop messing around? I hate to point this out, but we're not on vacation," said Natasha. "We need to make it to the Latverian border before sunset, and then we've got a long night-hike through the mountains ahead of us."

"We're hiking through the mountains? There's no way I can carry that suitcase through the mountains!"

"Good point, Loki. You should probably pull out what you really need and put the rest back on the plane."

Thor put Loki back on her feet, and she turned to Natasha. "Why didn't tell me this before?"

"I gave you a mission briefing, Loki."

Mission briefing? Oh, right. Natasha had handed her a stack of papers the morning before. Loki had taken one look at them and decided she didn't have time for it. "Too long, didn't read."

Loki thought she saw a vein actually pop out of Natasha's forehead. "First, ten pages is short for a mission briefing. Second, I spent a hell of a lot longer compiling it than it would have taken you to read it. You could have at least scanned it. I've seen you speed read the newspaper in less than twenty minutes."

"Untrue. I always skip over the classifieds and the sports section," Loki argued. "Besides, you can't just hand me a mission briefing and expect me to read it. As it has been pointed out, I am a child and inherently irresponsible."

"I was under the impression you didn't like being treated like a child."

Loki didn't want to pick a fight with the woman. For one thing, she still felt a little guilty for having bit her. She couldn't remember doing it, but she had noticed the set of teeth marks on the inside of Natasha's forearm, which had only started to fade. At least she hadn't bit her hard enough to break through skin, nor had she turned into a wolf and bitten it off. She decided to chalk up their breakdown in communication to Natasha being an exceedingly strange person who expected everyone to read her mind, or at least her long-winded mission briefings. "Very well; I suppose that whose fault it is I didn't know is a moot point anyway. What do you suggest I take?"

"You need your dress, your shoes, your make-up, and really, that's it. Bring your toothbrush if you have to. Anything else you need you can get while we're there. I'm sure they at least have drug stores in Latveria. But if you have any prescription medications, bring those—"

"What makes you think I'm on any medication?" Loki demanded.

Natasha held her hands up defensively. "It isn't any of my business if you are or you aren't. I'm just saying to bring it if you have it. I have mine."

Loki crouched by her suitcase and unzipped it. She pulled out her makeup kit, which already contained her toothbrush and the mouth guard she wore at night to keep her from grinding her teeth while she slept. She put it in her carry-on bag, along with a pair of panties and a matching bra; she was damned if she was going anywhere without at least one clean set of underthings. She took the books from her carry-on bag and put them in her suitcase.

She knew that Bruce had her emergency anti-anxiety pills, and that if she needed one, he would give it to her. She wondered what kind of medication Natasha was on, but knew it wasn't any of her business, any more than it was Natasha's business what medication Loki was on. She had begun to understand that if she wanted others to respect her privacy, she needed to afford others the same courtesy.

...φ(ｰ￣*)

Author's Note:

Despite the title of this chapter, this is probably going to be the shortest chapter in this fic.