Chapter 24 - Taco Night

The person Leonard had accidentally proposed to turned to face him. It wasn't anyone he recognized; just an average looking middle aged man with thinning hair and an innocuous smile. "I'm guessing it was Doctor Banner who left this in the seat. I was cold, so I put it on."

Leonard felt Tony tense next to him, but for now, he didn't have the capacity to be concerned about it. "Where's Bruce?"

"Sorry, I tried to hold him here as long as I could." Fury took a sip of his coffee; to Leonard, he didn't sound sorry at all.

"How could you just let him leave?"

"When Bruce Banner decides he wants to leave, there's not a lot anyone can do to stop him if you don't want the building you're sitting in demolished."

"Sorry Doc, but I just need a moment here," Tony interrupted. He glared at Fury, then stabbed a finger in the direction of the man sitting across from him. "What the hell, man? You'd better tell me this is his twin. Or his clone. Or his doppelgänger from another dimension. Because if you tell me he's been alive this whole time—"

"He hasn't been," said Fury.

"Good. He'd better have been dead at least part of the time, because—wait, what the hell does that mean?"

"What does that mean, Sir?" asked the man in question.

Fury's expression remained a complete blank. "Nothing, Phil. You've been alive the whole time. You've just been in Tahiti."

"Tahiti is a magical place." Phil's smile returned, and he nodded as if reassured.

"What do you mean, he's been in Tahiti?" Tony demanded.

"It's a magical place," said Phil.

"Tahiti?" Tony repeated, his tone incredulous.

"Magical," said Phil, as if it were a word association exercise.

"Why does he keep saying that?"

"Because it's a magical place, Stark," Fury hissed through clenched teeth. "Now just shut up and sit down, you're attracting attention."

Leonard slid into the booth next to Phil, and Tony sat next to Fury. He kept staring at Phil, though occasionally, he would turn to Fury and his eyebrows would knit together. Ignoring him, Fury made a signal to the waitress, and without a word, she brought two more cups of coffee to the table.

Leonard knocked his back, not bothering to add cream or sugar. Then he slammed his cup back on the table. "So where did Bruce go?"

"Hell if I know," said Fury.

Tony had just poured half the contents of the saltshaker into his own coffee without looking at it. "What's Agent doing here?"

"Hell if I know," said Fury. "Phil, what are you doing here? I thought I told you to wait in the car."

"It was cold in the car," Phil told him.

"What was Phil doing in your car? Why isn't he, you know, in his grave? Which I swear I visited—then again, maybe I meant to visit it, but things got busy." Tony's eyes darted to the man in question. "Sorry, Phil."

"Not a problem." Phil smiled as he looked to each person at the table in turn.

Tony leaned towards Fury. "Is Phil a zombie now? I'm kind of getting zombie vibes from him."

Fury narrowed his eyes at him. "He isn't a zombie, Stark. He just has a little neurological damage. Experiencing severe blood loss can do that—anyway, you were looking for Bruce, remember?"

͡ i ͡ ( ⌐■-■ ) ͡ i ͡ Tahiti is a magical place

"The food I ordered is in the lobby," JARVIS announced. "I do hope you enjoy what I've selected."

Steve smiled indulgently at JARVIS's camera. "I'm sure that whatever it is, it will be fine."

"I'll go get it," Sif volunteered. "Loki, would you mind helping me?"

Loki couldn't believe she expected him to help her after what had happened earlier. Instead of dignifying the request with an answer, he glared at her.

"You can either help Sif bring the food up, or you can go to your room and go straight to bed without dinner," Steve told him.

Loki's mouth hung open for a moment before he gathered himself enough to protest. "You can't punish me when I haven't broken any rules!"

"One of the rules is that you're supposed to treat everyone else around here with respect. Ignoring someone and giving them dirty looks when they've made a reasonable request isn't respectful. Sif asked you nicely."

"It's fine," said Sif, capitulating for once.

"No, it isn't," Steve told her. "Loki, either help Sif bring the food up, or go to bed. Those are your choices."

Loki wanted to tell him that he had no reason to respect someone who had so thoroughly disrespected him earlier that day, but again he remembered his promise to Pepper. He also didn't want to go to bed when they might still receive news about Bruce. "Fine. I'll help bring the food up." It would be fine, Loki reasoned, so long as Sif didn't try to talk to him.

As soon as they were on the elevator, he felt Sif staring at him. "You're not supposed to stare at other people on elevators," he told her. "It's an unspoken rule of Midgardian society. If you do it to strangers, they will assume you to be a madwoman who has set explosives in the elevator shaft."

"Loki, I asked you to come with me because I wished to speak with you alone."

"Just to speak with me, or would you like to physically assault me again?"

Sif didn't answer his question. "This conveyance takes forever to descend. Why must the Midgardians build such tall buildings?"

Loki rolled his eyes at her. "This building is no taller than the highest spires of the palace."

"But no one lives in the highest spires of the palace. What do these do?" Sif began to press all the buttons, while Loki watched in a mixture of amusement and silent horror. The elevator came to a stop on the seventy-eighth floor. Sif poked her head out of the elevator and looked around. When she realized they weren't in the lobby, she stepped back on.

The elevator doors closed. A moment later, they opened out onto the seventy-seventh floor. "Sif, how have you been here a week and not figured out how the elevator works? For the Norns' sake, I'm sure even Thor figured out what the buttons did the first time he rode it." He grabbed her arm and pulled her off the elevator. "Come on, we need to get on a different elevator, because this one is going to stop at every floor between here and the twenty-fourth now."

"I'm coming, Loki. There is no need for you to physically assault me."

Loki let go of her arm. "You think that's a joke, don't you? Or that I'm being overly dramatic."

"Perhaps just a bit. You were raised to be a warrior, just as Thor and I were."

"But I've never been oneand you know it. You always did your best to make sure everyone else knew it too." Loki strode towards the other elevator. When he reached it he hit the button eight times in a row, even though he knew that wouldn't make it come faster.

"Wait," Sif called after him. "I wanted to speak with you because I meant to apologize."

"Is that what this is?"

"I suppose I do find it difficult to believe that a little slap would be so traumatic for you."

"It wasn't. Personally, I think everyone else made too big a deal of that."

"Then why are you still so angry with me?"

Loki rounded on her. "Because you did it in front of Bruce. It's your fault he's missing now."

Sif's eyebrows knit together. "You're that upset over one mortal?"

"That mortal has been a better father to me than Odin ever was."

"But I thought you regarded Stark as a father."

"I can have more than one. And don't you dare point out again that neither of them will live more than a few more decades—I don't care, and I'm not going to think about it until it becomes immediately relevant."

Sif shook her head. "And here I thought your brother a fool for involving himself with that mortal woman of his."

"So did I. I didn't mean to get involved with these people, it just happened."

Before he could stop her, Sif reached out to ruffle her fingers through Loki's hair. She hadn't played with his hair in centuries; certainly not since Loki had cut hers. "It doesn't worry me so much that you've gotten involved with these mortals. What worries me is that in doing so, you've cut yourself off from Asgard, your immortal friends and family—"

Loki knocked her hand away. "I don't have any friends in Asgard and my only family there is Thor. Asgard cut me off a long time ago. Don't pretend that you're worried for me now."

"I'm not pretending. We were raised together. You're my younger sibling nearly so much as you're Thor's."

"If you're my sister, that makes you Thor's as well. You two used to date, remember?"

"It was for less than a full cycle of the moons, and we were hardly old enough for it to count as a romantic entanglement. Thor only worked up the courage to kiss me once, and all I could think was, 'Is that what everyone makes such a big fuss about?'"

That was exactly what Loki had thought of it whenever Sigyn had kissed him, though he had never been sure if it was because he didn't particularly enjoy kissing, or if it was only Sigyn's kisses that didn't do anything for him. Fandral had kissed him once and he hadn't liked it better, but the two of them truly had been children then.

The other Loki's he'd met back in the summer had seemed to be dating each other, or at least considering it. One of them had even teased the other about a kiss they had shared. Were those two different enough from him that they enjoyed kissing more than he did, or could it be that he just hadn't found the right person to kiss? Then again, perhaps all Loki's were Loki-sexual. If that was the case, he was destined to be alone unless he met up with yet another Loki from a different dimension, or else found a way to use magic to create a clone of himself solid enough to—

"Silver ingot for your thoughts?" asked Sif.

"Not for a ton of gold." The elevator doors opened, and Loki stepped inside. Sif followed; she reached towards the button panel, but Loki swatted her hand away and pressed the button for the lobby himself.

Sif stood with her eyes to the front this time. "I truly do care for you, you know. Even if you don't think of me as family, I like to think we were friends once."

Loki pressed himself into the side of the elevator, hoping to put as much distance as he could between them. It wasn't because he was still irked with her, though. He had thought that perhaps, that slap had undone the spell he had been under; after all, how could he love her after she had publicly degraded him? But he had only been fooling himself; if anything, his feelings for her had grown stronger since that afternoon.

Perhaps he was one of those people who got a thrill out of being publicly degraded. If so, it might explain quite a bit about his life decisions up to that point.

"Are you alright? You seem to be breathing rather heavily."

Sif's voice snapped him out of his reflections, but when he turned to look at her, a stranger thought occurred to him. What would happen if he stopped repressing his feelings? Was it at all possible that Sif might reciprocate them? He had a feeling he ought to know the answer to that, but it seemed that the spell had come to a head; all the walls he had attempted to construct around his heart had collapsed. With the weight of unwanted romantic feeling crashing down on him all at once, he found it difficult to follow any line of thought to its logical conclusion. Therefore, his only choice was to try something and see what happened. Loki closed the distance between himself and Sif in one step, grabbed her by the forearms, and dipped her backwards the way he had seen mortals do it in their romantic movies.

( #`⌂´))) (*o*;;)

The elevator doors opened, and Loki tumbled out, landing on his back on the floor. When he opened his eyes, three people stood looking down at them, none of whom were the delivery driver from the restaurant, though one of them held two large white paper sacks. "What in my daughter's realm are you three doing here?" Loki's demand had come out in a higher register than usual, but given the place Sif had hit him this time, that was to be expected.

"My princess." Fandral bowed to Loki, crossing a fist over his chest. "We arrived at the same time as the courier, so we accepted your food on your behalf. Hogun and I have even prevented Volstagg from eating it for you."

"Loki is first in line to the throne now," said Volstagg, eying one of the bags held by Hogun. "You should at least let me taste it before she eats it, to make sure it isn't poisoned."

Princess? She? As Loki sat up, he grabbed a handful of his own—her own chest to confirm what she had already suspected. It seemed that as a defense mechanism, Loki had automatically turned into her female form after Sif had kneed her—well, him in the groin. While the general area didn't feel good, it wasn't nearly as nauseatingly painful as it had been before.

She could have turned herself back, but she decided to just roll with it. Luckily, the sweatpants she had been wearing were loose fitting, and more than accommodated her now curvier hips, even if her surplus Stark Expo 2010 t-shirt was a little tight in places. "I'm going to say it again. Why are you three here?"

"The king sent us, of course." Fandral offered her his hand.

Loki made a point of ignoring it and pushed herself to her feet on her own. "Butwhy? Things have been bad enough with Sif here. I certainly do not require additional guards."

"Alas, we are not here to guard you, though I would love nothing more than to stay by the side of my princess. We are only here as messengers."

"And Thor couldn't trust one of you to deliver a message on your own, obviously."

"We are the Warriors Three, your highness. Where one of us goes, the other two follow."

They rode the elevator back up in silence. Loki found herself crammed into a corner, what with Volstagg taking up most of the space on his own. In the past, he might have made a snide comment about it, but remembering how it had felt when Thor had called her "chubby," she couldn't bring herself to do it. Volstagg had never seemed to care, but Loki wondered if in the past, she had hurt the man's feelings without realizing it.

She wasn't about to bring it up or try to apologize, though. After all, nothing good had come of his attempt to patch things up with Sif as of yet.

Pietro met them at the elevator a split second after the doors had opened. He didn't seem interested in the fact that they had brought three extra people with them. Instead, he zeroed in on the food bags held by Hogun and took them from him.

Steve, on the other hand, eyed the Warriors Three wearily. "Uh, Loki, Sif—who are your friends?"

"They aren't my friends," Loki corrected him. "They're Thor's."

"Not your friends, Loki?" Fandral seemed genuinely hurt, and Loki wondered if the man was actually deluded enough to think they were friends. "Come now, we were childhood sweethearts!"

Well, that answered that question. The man wasn't just deluded, he was completely out of his mind. "You have to be kidding. You kissed me and I turned you into a hedgehog."

"And still I am your devoted pet." As Fandral genuflected to her, he caught her arm.

Before he could kiss her hand, Loki pulled it away. "Don't be disgusting. You said you three were here bearing messages from my brother, did you not? I suggest you give them and leave."

"Better for them to hear the king's messages privately," warned Hogan, his expression passive as ever.

Loki rolled his eyes. Heimdall was sure to have seen everything that had happened today and told Thor about it. Likely, his message was a scolding. "Whatever Thor has to say to me, you can just come out with it. I doubt it will shock anyone here."

"In that case, your brother wanted us to remind you of your promise to be on your best behavior," said Volstagg. "He also said to inform you that if you purposefully put yourself in danger again, he will require your return to Asgard."

She had expected the first part, but the ultimatum made her angry. "That isn't fair. Tony said that no matter what I did, he would never send me away."

Fandral frowned at her. "You must be able to understand your brother's feelings on this. After all, you are his only heir, at least until he's produced another. Asgard can't afford for your life to be cut short senselessly."

"You may remind Thor that if I do die senselessly, my daughter, who happens to be the goddess of death, has pledged to send me back."

Fandral's eyebrows drifted upwards, and Volstagg shook his head as he leaned in towards him, whispering conspiratorially. "Thank the Norns that Odin's madness skipped over Thor."

"I'm not related to Odin by blood," Loki reminded him. "If my 'madness' has any root in genetics, I would have inherited it from Laufey or whichever Jotunn whore birthed me."

The Warriors Three all looked uncomfortable at the mention of Loki's biological parents, and for a moment, she considered changing into her Jotunn form in order to disturb them more. She had never willingly taken that form before, but she was certain she could do it if she put her mind to it.

"Language," Steve chided. "Loki, why don't you come eat? In Midgard, we have a saying: 'Don't shoot the messenger.'"

"If I had my knives, I'd stab them instead," Loki said under her breath.

Steve had heard her, and he obviously couldn't take a joke. "Loki, come sit down at the table now or you can go straight to bed. If you make any more threats, you will go to bed early."

Again, only the promise she had made Pepper kept her from pushing Steve to see if he was serious. Feeling sapped of all energy, she sat down at the table and put her head down on it.

"Sit up straight at the table, please."

Loki wanted to ask Steve to please remove the stick that had become lodged up his posterior, but she didn't think that was likely to put him in a better mood. Instead, she made the mistake ofsitting up.

"My goodness," said Volstagg. "I must say I'm impressed. You seem to have our princess trained."

"I am not an animal to be trained." Loki pushed her chair away from the table. "Now that I think of it, I'm not that hungry, and I would rather go to bed than endure anymore of this."

"No Loki, sit back down." This time, there was an edge of exhaustion in Steve's voice that almost made Loki feel sorry for him—almost being the operative word. "No one is leaving this table until they've eaten at least one portion of whatever it is that JARVIS ordered for us. JARVIS, what did you order, by the way?"

"Tacos, Captain Rogers."

"Okay, everyone has to eat at least one taco, then."

Pietro had already begun digging the food out of the bag. The tacos were wrapped in paper. He peeled the paper on one back, and then sniffed it suspiciously. "What kind of tacos are these?"

"They are fried cricket tacos, Master Pietro. I thought trying something new might be interesting. Crickets are a good source of protein, Omega 3 fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, and fiber."

Loki grinned, delighted by the look of horror that had crossed Steve's face. She took her place at the table again, feeling much better than she had all afternoon. "They do say you can find anything in New York."

Steve had taken a taco as well, and had begun to peel back the paper but had stopped. "Alright, I know what I just said—"

"You can't go back on it now," Loki told him. "You know how badly children such as us need consistency. Besides, Pietro and Wanda are already eating them." Actually, Pietro had already eaten three, because he was a bottomless pit who didn't taste food anyway. Wanda had only taken a small bite of hers, but taken one she had.

"How do you like them, Miss Wanda?" asked JARVIS, his excitement palpable.

"They aren't like anything else I've ever had." Clearly, Wanda wished to avoid hurting JARVIS's feelings, which probably accounted for her decision to try it in the first place.

Loki had to wonder what was going on between those two sometimes. She grabbed a cricket taco, unwrapped it, and took a large bite without any hesitation; after all, she was nothing if not well traveled, and it didn't seem stranger to her than any of the other cuisine she had tried. The crickets were nutty and a little smoky; overall the dish reminder her a little of something she tried in Vanaheim once.

Steve still stared wearily at the taco in front of him as if he expected it to start chirping. Loki had just been about to ask him what was wrong when Zora, who had just put her book aside and had taken a taco for herself, beat her to the punch. "Aren't you going to eat?" she asked. "You said that no one is leaving this table until they've eaten at least one taco. Shouldn't any rules you make apply to you as well?"

Steve smiled at her thinly and nodded. Loki watched with interest as he winced and bit into the taco. After chewing it thoughtfully, he opened his eyes. "Actually, it's not that bad. Kind of reminds me of cashew chicken." However, he still didn't look entirely happy about the prospect of eating the entire thing, which warmed the cockles of Loki's crooked little heart.

Sif and the Warriors Three had all taken spots around the table and dug in as well. "Tastes like something we all ate on Vanaheim one time," commented Fandral.

"Kodoku moths," said Hogun, who was being uncharacteristically chatty that evening.

"Ah yes, that's what I was thinking this tasted like." Loki crammed the rest of her taco in her mouth, then took another from the bag in the middle of the table.

Steve took another labored bite and made a choking noise. "I think I need some water."

Loki jumped up. "You stay there, and I'll go get it—since you're still not allowed to leave the table until you've finished at least one entire taco."

ི•̮•̮ ི _|_
/_\\ \_ /

Hulk hadn't left any size thirty-eight footprints leading away from the diner. As soon as he had admitted to himself that they had no leads, Tony had called Pepper to let her know she could turn around. Then he and Leonard had gotten into Fury's car; after all, giving them a ride back was the least the guy could do after he let Bruce get away from him.

When Tony had tried to start up a round of "Ninety-Nine Bottles," Fury had pulled a gun on him. Phil, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, turned on the radio. Thanks to the wonders of satellite radio, he managed to find a radio station that played nothing but reggae music. Tony saw Fury's hands clench on the steering wheel, but he didn't make Phil turn it off, even when he started singing along without knowing any of the lyrics. Eventually, Phil had fallen asleep, and with a sigh of relief, Fury had switched the radio off.

As they drove on in silence, Tony realized that the best thing he could be doing with his time until they got to New York was to follow Phil's example, so he took out his wallet and fished around in it until he found a sleeping pill. He was about to put it in his mouth when Leonard grabbed his wrist. "What is that?"

"Sleeping pill," Tony answered honestly. "I have a prescription for it," he added, which was technically true even if the prescription had expired long ago.

Leonard let go of him and held out his hand. Reluctantly, Tony dropped the pill into it.

As they passed a streetlight, Leonard held it up to examine it. "Tony, this is triazolam. I didn't prescribe this, and I wouldn't have prescribed it for anyone with a history of addiction."

"I have a prescription for it," Tony repeated.

"Not from me you don't. Are you saying your primary care physician prescribed this?"

"Primary care physician, shady guy in a back alley with a stolen prescription pad, potato-potahto."

Leonard probably got that he was joking, but judging by the look on his face, he didn't think it was funny. "I'm confiscating this. What else do you have in your wallet, by the way?"

Tony shook the contents of his emergency pharmacy out into Leonard's hand. "Look, it's mostly old stuff that's been in there for two or three years, okay? I've been meaning to get rid of it."

Leonard took out his phone and used it as a flashlight. "Tony, there are both barbiturates and opioids in here. And can you explain to me why you have amphetamine?"

"It's not like I take them all together—I mean, took. I swear I haven't taken any of that stuff in months." He wasn't lying. There was no way he was going to abuse prescription drugs when they had kids living with them.

Leonard rolled down his window and threw all of the pills Tony had handed him out onto the middle of the highway, other than the sleeping pills Tony had been about to take. Those, he popped into his own mouth and swallowed dry.

"Hey Doc, did you just—"

"My stupid boyfriend just disappeared from the face of the Earth and there's nothing I can do about it," Leonard snapped.

Tony settled back in his seat. "Yeah, alright."

\_(￣￢￣ヾ) - Hey kids, the author here. Please don't abuse prescription drugs. Also make sure to dispose of your old prescription drugs properly, i.e., not by throwing them out the window of a moving vehicle.

Bruce wished he had taken Natasha's advice to start working out more. He had been able to hitchhike most of the way, but the final few miles to General Ross's residence, he'd had to go on foot. Now that he was there, he found himself on the wrong side of the fifteen-foot-high chain link fence that surrounded the property. If he had thought to bring a pair of wire cutters with him, he could have gone through it, but since he didn't, he couldn't see any other way but to go over it. At least there wasn't barbed wire at the top, and he was ninety-nine percent certain the fence wasn't electrified.

He was more than a little winded by the time he got to the top of the fence, and a quick look at his watch let him know that his heart rate was at one fifty. He got one leg over the top, and then another, when he heard footsteps coming near him. He looked down at his watch to see that his heart rate had climbed to one fifty-five. He took a deep breath to steady himself.

A flashlight shone in his eyes, and he covered them with one hand, continuing to grasp the fence with the other.

"Banner, what the hell are you doing on my fence?"

When Bruce's eyes adjusted to the light, he looked down and saw Ross himself, wearing a robe and slippers and looking no less intimidating than he did in full military uniform.

"I'm here to turn myself in to you," Bruce told him.

"In that case, why didn't you just go to the gate and use the intercom?"

Somehow, it hadn't occurred to Bruce that it wasn't necessary to break in when his intention was to be caught. Maybe it was because he hadn't slept since his transformation, or maybe it was because, as someone had told him once, being a genius didn't necessarily mean you had any common sense. (Had that been Leonard or Betty? Or maybe Pepper had said it in reference to Tony.)

"Just stay where you are."

Bruce obeyed the general's order, out of fear that he was about to fall more than anything else. Falling would be bad, and not because he would be hurt. After all, the other guy never let him get hurt.