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Playground
Chapter 14: Newspapers and Magazines
"Is something wrong?" Tony asked when a nearly a minute had passed while Ollie stared intently at his bowl of oatmeal topped with strawberries and extra blueberries.
"Is it broken?" Ollie asked without looking up.
Tony squinted as he turned that one over in his head, but he was drawing a blank. He was used to his Pumpkin's version of kid-logic. Ollie's was apparently a little different. "Broken how?"
"The rainbow."
Hm. Did oatmeal on Asgard…nah. But…maybe? "How does that rain grain work on Asgard? Where's the rainbow?"
"Here."
Tony nodded. Not weird kid logic. Insufficiently imaginative grown-up logic. Ollie had sketched a finger in an arc above the bowl. As in, an actual miniature rainbow. "I thought you meant rainbow colors. Oatmeal doesn't make real rainbows."
"It's not a real rainbow. It's a magic rainbow."
"Oatmeal doesn't make magic rainbows, either. Sorry, kiddo."
"Oh."
The disappointment on the kid's face as he gave up on waiting for a rainbow to appear over his bowl was the tiniest bit crushing. At least he'd given the kid blueberries. "Hey, want some more blueberries?"
"Okay."
Tony got another bowl and put a dozen or so blueberries into it. Morgan liked to snack on them. Ollie stuck his spoon in, scooped up a few, and popped them in his mouth. Weird. Morgan would've stuck her fingers in. So would Morgan's mommy and daddy.
"How's the oatmeal?"
"Very good, thank you."
Tony recognized a rote answer when he heard it, but still, impressive in a four-year-old. Especially when the kid wasn't exactly eating with gusto, except for the plain blueberries. Ollie still sported a milk mustache when the cup went down, though. Maybe he should offer Lucky Charms. Except Ollie might be disappointed by the lack of a rainbow and a pot of gold, or maybe the general lack of elves and magical charms.
"How are you doing this morning, Ollie? Feeling okay? Even though you didn't sleep in your own bed?"
"I miss my bed. But the bed here is comfortable, too."
"I bet you miss your bed. I always miss my bed if I sleep somewhere else."
"Which house is your real house?" Ollie asked a couple of bites later.
"You mean this one or the one we were at yesterday?"
Ollie nodded.
Teachable moment! screeched through Tony's brain. If only he had any relevant teaching qualifications. But he could try. "They're both my real house. And they both have my real bed. Two different houses and two different beds, but they're both home, and I love them both." He had seven, actually – or eight? – but no need to confuse the matter. And the garden house and this place were the ones they split most of their time between these days.
"At my real house we live in the palace. But Mama and Papa said we aren't going to live in the palace on Midgard."
"Yeah, I heard the palace on Midgard is already all full. But that's okay. I'm sure you'll find a nice place to live. Someplace you and your mama and papa can also call home, where you'll have all kinds of fun."
Ollie continued eating, then looked up with more interest a minute or two later. "Do you want to play a game with me?"
"Sure, I'd love to play a game with you, if you're done with breakfast. Did you have a particular game in mind?"
"Magic Monkey," Ollie said, nodding more eagerly now.
"Magic Monkey…I don't think I know that one."
"It's not hard. I can teach you."
"Okay. Teach away, Mr…. what's your last name?"
"My last name?"
"Never mind. Tell me how to play." Tony sincerely hoped the "Magic" in "Magic Monkey" was like the "magic" in "magicJack," as in, no actual magic, or else he was in for a repeat of the "no rainbow over your oatmeal" sad-eyed kid episode.
"Oh, wait! I know an even better game! Do you want to see if I can make you turn blue?"
"Ummm. Oh." Oh indeed. Tony had wondered what was taking them so long to come downstairs. Loki had been telling Ollie some version of the Jotunheim story, and apparently the story had included visual aids. No wonder Loki had looked drained to the point of collapse when he'd followed Ollie into the kitchen. And no wonder he'd looked like he was having a Loki-version of a panic attack over Ollie wanting to "show" everyone…including Jane. Despite that little moment of hesitation at the airport over a bad memory, flying on planes like the one Thor had dragged him off of in mid-air didn't bother Loki. Unless they were Jotun planes, maybe. The guy did suffer from some kind of anxiety, though, never mind the snippy response to Tony's attempt to show some understanding over the plane. Tony doubted Loki recognized it; he wouldn't have recognized it in himself without JARVIS's no-nonsense voice filling him in.
"Can I?"
"You, uh, you made your papa turn blue this morning?"
"He said he didn't know if it would work but it did. I turned blue and he didn't get mad. He promised he wouldn't get mad and he didn't. And then I turned him blue."
"Right," Tony said, half his attention on Ollie's story and half on Loki's, the one in which Loki's first clue about who he was had come when a Jotun touched him, triggering a transformation into a dreaded Frost Giant. Ollie wouldn't have known about that, and wouldn't have assumed it, since Morgan had touched him and obviously hadn't turned blue. Which meant Loki had suggested they try it. Which was downright shocking. And, since Ollie hadn't come away from the experience scarred for life by Loki's reaction to it, it was also shockingly impressive.
"You might still have your hair. Papa still had his hair. But I didn't have any."
"Is that right? You know, Ollie, I don't think it would work on me. It worked on your papa by touch, right? After you turned blue? But Morgan touched you when you were blue and it didn't change her."
"Oh. I guess you're right. Papa said I could only turn him blue, because he was born on Jotunheim."
Sympathy-panic flashed through Tony. Either Loki hadn't gotten around to the whole huge hush-hush secret aspect of all this, or it had gone in one little ear and right out the other. As seconds ticked by and Ollie had no classic oops, I wasn't supposed to tell! reaction, Tony was ready to lay his bets on the former. A third option, that Loki had decided overnight that he was totally cool with the universe knowing his secret, didn't merit consideration.
"Did you know my papa was adopted, like Jack?"
"I did know that. I think not too many people know about it, though. Just special friends and family." Tony hoped he was doing Loki a favor, planting a little seed, and not sticking his foot in his mouth. "Who's Jack?"
"Jack Stack! He's in my book. Mama reads it to me sometimes. Jack has a dog. I want a dog, too, but Papa said no."
"And Jack was adopted, huh?" Convenient that Jane had been reading Ollie a book about a kid who was adopted. That Jane was one sneaky astrophysicist. A delayed image of Loki out walking a dog and bending over to clean up after it almost brought out a snicker, but he caught it in time.
"Yes. And my papa was, too. Papa didn't grow in Grandmother Frigga's belly like Uncle Thor did. His mama and papa chose him, out of all the little babies in all the realms."
Reindeer Games should have earned an Oscar for whatever performance he'd given, because Ollie sounded proud when he said it, and Loki didn't feel an ounce of pride in the particular circumstances of his "adoption." The guy had pulled it together a million times better than Tony had expected.
"That is pretty neat, Squirt. And I can see why they chose him, too. He's a good daddy, isn't he? A good papa."
Ollie nodded with that big Ollie-grin of his. Then he turned somber, and Tony glanced over toward the stairs in case maybe Loki might have slipped in to rescue him from whatever uncomfortable question might be coming that was better answered by the kid's dad. No such luck, unsurprisingly.
"Do you like my papa now, Mr. Stark?"
Tony could have melted on the spot. Not what he'd expected at all. "Tell you what. Don't tell him I said this, but yeah, I like him." There was only one answer he could give Ollie, and it should have been more surprising than it was that it was essentially true.
"Why can't I tell him?"
"Just teasing, you can tell him," Tony quickly amended. Ollie was hanging on his every word, and God forbid some distorted version of this get back to Loki and Tony find himself accused of telling Ollie to keep secrets from his dad.
"I'm glad you like him now. Maybe if Papa helps lots of people here, everybody will like him. He's really nice. Even when I break things and Mama gets mad sometimes, Papa still doesn't get mad. Papa never gets mad. Well…except when I…but he didn't get mad this time."
"Sounds like you two had a good talk this morning."
"We had fun! I turned Papa blue."
"So I heard. Sorry about yesterday at the playground. You know, not being so nice to your papa at first. Sometimes when you haven't seen someone in a while, you aren't sure what to expect. But I'm really glad we ran into each other. And I'm even more glad Morgan and I met you. I had no idea Loki had such an amazing awesome kid."
"Amazing and awesome," Ollie repeated, giggling over the words.
"Yep."
"When is Morgan coming back?"
"In a little while." Morgan and Pepper were upstairs, actually, but letting Ollie keep thinking they were out granted his favorite ladies their one-on-one time while avoiding Sad-Eyed Kid Syndrome. "Want any more oatmeal? Or anything else?"
"No, thank you."
"Then why don't you teach me how to play Magic Monkey, and maybe if Morgan comes back before you go she can play, too, huh?"
"Okay!"
/
/
Outside, Loki walked.
He hadn't formed any particular opinions of Manhattan yet, other than being even more reluctant to be seen in public here than in the other places he and Jane had gone. No one seemed to pay him any attention, though. The streets were more crowded than he preferred, some more so than others, but the sense of anonymity was strong. Locals maintained a brisk pace, often talking into their phones or into the air, through a device attached to their ears. They looked ridiculous, but it kept their focus away from him.
Of course, clothed as one of them and with his hair neatly combed, he didn't look much like he had back then, either. From looking down on them from high above while clothed in Asgardian battle garb, to stalking their streets worrying about his marriage, his child, his own crippling insecurities, while wearing a sweater so soft that Jane loved to nuzzle her face into it when they weren't arguing.
Loki cast an ill-tempered glance around him. Unfortunately, no one looked the least bit interested in attacking him. A good fight would have been refreshing. Drawing his knives – exhilarating.
How had this become his life?
He stopped short. A man behind him bumped into him, called him a foul name, and kept on walking.
Quickly reviewing the streets he'd paid little conscious attention to, Loki changed course and retraced his steps back toward one of the quieter residential ones.
He had chosen this life, with eyes wide open. He liked this life. He loved this life. He and Jane – Jane especially – had taken risks for it, because they'd both wanted it. He could not think of his wife and son and contemplate having decided otherwise.
Jane felt the same. She had assured him of that last night. That she had no regrets. That she loved him as much as she ever had. And no matter what primal fears clawed through his brain, surely that wouldn't change when she saw what he looked like as a Frost Giant.
It was inevitable. How would Ollie feel if he continued to insist that they show Jane – and he would, of that Loki was certain – and Loki told him they could not because if his mama saw his papa looking like that she would be disgusted?
That Jane would never want to look at him again, much less touch him?
With Tony Stark, with random others, he could explain. It's personal. Private, he could say. But that would not exclude Jane. For a few seconds, he tried to imagine letting Erik see him looking like that. Perhaps the man would try to hide his instinctive disgust, while lamenting that Jane had ever laid eyes on him and had not seen him for what he truly was. Dealing with Erik might be easier, if the man would stop at least acting like he cared, like he wanted a relationship of some sort. Erik's inexplicable kindness toward him never failed to leave him backfooted and uncertain.
Perhaps the reaction wouldn't be disgust. Erik hadn't been raised to see a Frost Giant as the embodiment of the word monster. He hadn't even had the limited exposure to it Jane had experienced on Asgard. Perhaps it would instead be fear. Fear he could handle. He expected to be feared. But he also knew he was still him when he looked like them. Ollie still called him Papa. Still touched and poked and prodded with as little regard for decorum and basic hygiene as ever. He could convince the others, too, that he wasn't…bad. Not because of where he was born, at least.
He could not help who he was, how he was born. There was nothing intrinsically bad in it. He knew that now. Not looking down at Ollie lying beside him it was harder to remember and felt less obvious than in that moment when the storm clouds that had gathered over him parted and sunlight burst through. But it was true, because it was true of Ollie.
He could do this.
He tried to picture it.
He could not do this.
His chest was tightening again, but this time he ducked behind a tree – he was still on a public street but a quiet one, and this was the only modicum of privacy he could manage – and pulled his phone from his pocket.
The call didn't go through, but a few seconds later, as he was about to try again, a message arrived. In a mtg. everything ok?
Yes, Loki sent back, but I really need to talk to you.
Just a sec.
Loki sighed with relief. Jane knew he wouldn't have interrupted, much less persisted, unless it was important.
"Hello?" Loki said, tone rising at the end as he heard Jane's voice, speaking to someone else.
"—stand that. Believe me, I do. But if you could just try to look at it from a different perspective…sorry, I've got to take this. Can I just…?"
"Right through there, Dr. Foster," Loki heard a muffled voice say, while someone else said, "Take your time."
The voices prickled along his nerves. Something about the second one, in particular. Perhaps it was the slight undercurrent of sarcasm and condescension.
"Hi," Jane said. "Sorry about that. What's going on? Did something happen with Ollie?"
"Ollie is fine. Having breakfast with Tony Stark if you can believe it. I'm sorry, Jane. I shouldn't have called. I didn't mean to create problems with your meeting. But if they're treating you poorly, tell me, and it will be my exquisite pleasure to make them regret it."
"No, no," Jane said with a nervous laugh. "It's fine. Just…negotiations. You know how it is. But I probably shouldn't be gone for long."
"Right," Loki agreed, though in fact he did not know how these meetings of Jane's worked, or how one went about getting a position of the sort Jane wanted. She hadn't told him much about it, and he hadn't asked many questions. His focus had been elsewhere, and his commitment to this move had not gone past the utilitarian surface. That needed to change. He would ask her all about it tonight. "Jane…I told Ollie. When I went to pick him up, he—"
"Wait, um…Loki, maybe now isn't the best time to—"
"What do you mean? Not the best time? But we agreed he needed to—"
"No, I mean, maybe it's not the best time to tell me about this. Things may not be, um, all that private here."
"I see," Loki said after a moment of silence. Someone might be eavesdropping? Jane wasn't trusted? He had wondered about that, raised it with Jane when he'd realized she was serious about moving back to Midgard. She had so thoroughly dismissed the idea that he'd forgotten the possibility that she might be tarred with the lingering distrust more properly aimed at him. "In that case," he began, running through what he'd already said and realizing that thankfully he hadn't revealed any vulnerabilities, "I'll be brief. That's all I really wanted to tell you. That I told Ollie."
"That's…that's…. Okay. How is he?"
He could tell she wanted to say more, but that she didn't fully trust the people around her not to be listening in. Whoever she was meeting with today, he hoped she would get a better offer elsewhere. "He's fine. It went very well, I think. Better than I had expected."
For a moment, he only heard her breathing. When she spoke, though, he could hear the smile in the words. "That's great. That's really good, Loki. How are you?"
"I am, ah…all right. Better, now that I hear your voice."
"I can't wait to hear all about it. We should do something special tonight. Dinner out?"
"Not just yet. We still have more things to discuss. Perhaps dinner delivered from somewhere other than room service?"
"Yes! Yes, we'll do that. Perfect. If I'm back early enough we can watch The Jungle Book. He'll like that."
"Good idea, love. I'd better let you get back to your meeting now. Thank you for calling. I love you."
"Okay. Love you, too."
Loki pocketed the phone and started back toward Tony's house, just a few blocks away now. Ending a phone call – not something he had an abundance of experience with yet – with an exchange of I love you's was an agreeable custom, one he would be sure to continue. He felt better, and yet….
And yet. "Take your time." The words grated against him. A single word could be imbued with countless inflections, countless flavors of meaning. The flavor of those three was clear. I'm an extremely busy man and I'm indulging you by agreeing to meet with you, and you're going to take a phone call? You do understand that my time is valuable, don't you? Far more valuable than yours. You go right ahead, take your phone call. I'll just be waiting here, reading a magazine. Nothing better to do, after all.
Loki swallowed hard, pace slowing. Then it picked back up. Then he broke into a run.
"Let me know if real power wants a magazine."
/
/
Magic Monkey, it turned out, did not involve magic. It did, however, involve lots of climbing on things, hanging off of things, and jumping on things, and Tony strongly suspected Ollie wasn't allowed to play this game indoors and figured Tony didn't know it. He also suspected Ollie had made the whole "game" up on the spot. Luckily, the kid was easily distracted by the novelty of Upside-Down Monkey, wherein he held Ollie by his ankles and let little Loki, Jr., "walk" on his hands all over the place.
They were just starting to try the stairs — and Tony's back just giving the first twinge — when he happened to glance down the stairwell and find a pair of cold, hard eyes staring up at him from the floor below.
The change in Loki's demeanor – the unblinking eyes, the stillness, the lack of a smile or any hint of the warmth that was always there when Ollie was in view – sent a chill down Tony's spine.
Something had happened.
"Okay, I think I need a break from Upside-Down Monkey."
"No! It's not breaktime. We didn't go on the stairs yet!"
"I know. Sorry, sport," Tony said, hoisting Ollie up, shifting him around to right-side-up, and cringing over calling the kid sport like some old geezer. It wasn't his fault. Loki's death glare was a little distracting.
While Tony looked down at Loki, searching for some hint as to what was going on, Ollie bent over and started trying to push himself up into a handstand. On the stairs.
For a few seconds, at least, Loki faded into the background. "Not a good place for that," Tony said as he picked the kid up and hauled him back into the kitchen. A Loki's-kid thing, an Ollie thing, an Asgardian thing, a boy thing? Even his daredevil Munchkin didn't try to do handstands on the stairs.
"Pleeease, Mr. Stark, can we keep playing Upside-Down Monkey?"
"Ummm, maybe la—ah!"
"Papa! We're playing Upside-Down Monkey! Will you play with me? I want to go on the stairs but Mr. Stark doesn't want to play anymore."
While Ollie begged for Loki to pick up where Tony had left off, Tony focused on a few deep breaths. All the blueberries in North America weren't going to protect his heart from having turned around to come face to face with Loki, who'd slipped up the stairs like some devious man-sized mouse. By the time Ollie fell silent, Tony was wishing they were outdoors, where at least the grass was thick and soft, instead of in his house, where marble stairs were at his back. If Loki threw him here like he had there, he wasn't going to have a few sore spots – he was going to have broken bones. Maybe a broken neck.
Of course, unlike before, Ollie was literally between the two of them, still in Tony's arms. In the next instant, he was out of them, and into Loki's. Problem solved? If Loki was suddenly freaked out about his kid, and not about Tony per se, then maybe so.
"Hey, Loki. What's up?" Tony asked, smiling carefully as Ollie wrapped his arms around Loki's neck in an oblivious hug.
"There was no newspaper."
"No?" Was that the problem? Loki may not have gotten it in the moment, but surely the guy had put two and two together as soon as his head cleared. "Oh. That's right. My bad. I guess I forgot. I cancelled that subscription about…ten years ago? Maybe fifteen? I travel a lot. Online subscription's easier."
"Papa, please? I'll teach you how. It's easy."
"Not right now, Ollie. Were you trying to get me to leave?"
"What?" Tony said, glancing at Ollie's face all screwed up in confusion. "I thought you might need a moment, a little fresh air, such as it is. If you mean anything else, no."
Loki just stared back at him, less the death glare from before, more like a scientist examining a particularly nasty virus in a petri dish.
"Do we maybe need to talk about something here? Because I can make that happen."
"I think that would be a good idea."
"Okay then. Hey, little squirt, guess what?"
"What?"
"I think I just heard Ms. Potts upstairs, Morgan's mom. And guess what that means?"
"Morgan's home?" Ollie asked, happy-kid squirming starting up.
"Yep. Why don't we go up and—. Or we could get them to come down here, that works, too." Loki's eyes had shifted over and down to what had to be the front door; clearly the guy didn't want to let the door out of his sight. Tony could roll with that. "FRIDAY, would you ask Pepper to come pick up Ollie to join the tea party?"
"Tea party?" Ollie said over FRIDAY's acknowledgement. "Can Papa come, too?"
"I think this particular tea party is just for moms and kids."
"Oh. Is there juice, too? I don't really like tea. Or Coke? I like Coke! Or root beer? I like that one, too."
"I bet you do. I'm not sure what all they've got up there, but I'll let Morgan tell you all about tea parties, okay?"
"Okay," Ollie said, attention shifting as rapid footsteps sounded on the stairs.
Like Loki keeping the front door narrowly in view, Tony resisted the instinct to turn toward his daughter and instead kept his eyes on Loki. Whatever was going on, he could probably straighten it out once Loki had a chance to tell him what had gotten underneath that tough skin. It had to be more than Loki getting struck by paranoia over some sinister motive behind Tony sending him out for a newspaper whose non-actual-existence Tony had thought was crystal clear from the start. If Tony had been trying to get rid of Loki, he wouldn't have said something so transparently untrue, and Loki was easily smart enough to know that.
Still, once Ollie was no longer clinging to Loki, all bets were off. In less than twenty-four hours, Tony had gained a much better understanding of Loki than he'd ever had – or wanted to have – before. That didn't mean he knew everything, or that Loki was predictable. The guy had definitely been mentally unstable before.
"Hi, Ollie! You came to my house! Do you want to come to my tea party?"
Ollie didn't react to that, and when Tony finally glanced down, he saw what Morgan was wearing and knew why. It wasn't the frilly pink princess dress from yesterday that she was back in. It was the light-up sneakers with Elsa's face on them.
"How do your shoes do that?"
"Like this?" his little pumpkin asked, putting on a little light show for Ollie by jumping up and down on the step she stood on beside him.
"How do they do that?"
"There's a vibration sensor and a batteries and LEDs. Daddy, can we cut one open and show Ollie?"
"We'll add that to the list of things to do another time. Hey, and here's Ms. Potts," Tony said, making some quick introductions. "Sorry," he mouthed afterward.
"It's fine. We were just having a little play party, Ollie. We'd love for you to join us."
Ollie agreeably slid out of Loki's arms – Loki slightly less agreeably let him – and hurried to Morgan's side.
"What about my old shoes that we cut up? Where are they?"
"Sorry, Pumpkin. They're at the garden house."
The kids continued up, Pepper following, Ollie showing considerably more interest in what they'd found in the sole of Morgan's shoe than the typical four-year-old. Of course, Morgan was also a lot more interested in it than the typical four-year-old, as far as Tony knew. She'd proudly trotted out those shoes a couple of months ago at a group play date and was hurt when the other kids' interest was fleeting at best.
"So. What's eating at you, Rudolph?" As disagreeable as whatever was going on with Loki might be, it had to be better than remembering that look on his Angel's face.
"What is your relationship with Nick Fury?"
Tony's brow went up. Not that he'd had any guesses what this was about, but if he had, ol' Nick wouldn't have made the list. "'Relationship' seems a little much. He does his thing, I do mine. I would say I run into him at the company picnic, but I'm not part of the company. Never really was, but I'm more or less retired now, anyway. I tinker here and there. I could keep going, or you could interrupt to tell me why you brought up the head of The Organization Formerly Known as SHIELD. They're calling it TOFKAS for short. Doesn't have the same ring as SHIELD, but they—"
"Does he have your allegiance?"
"Ummm…no? As in 'I pledge allegiance to the flag,' no. If he had a flat tire, I'd probably help him change it. Probably."
After another moment of dissecting Tony from the inside out, Loki reached into his pocket and held out his phone. "I need you to trace this call and tell me the location it originated from. I know you have the ability to do such things."
Tony took the phone, just holding it. "How exactly do you know I have the ability to do such things?"
Loki didn't answer, but Tony had a guess.
"Been catching up on Midgardian TV?"
Loki still didn't answer, but gave a little huff of impatience. "I need you to do this. Please."
That please had come at a cost. It didn't show much, but enough for Tony to recognize it.
"Okay," Tony said, thumbing the phone on and opening it to the call log. "I might be able to do that. Okay, I can probably do that, but it's not necessarily as easy as just handing me the phone. They simplify—. Wait, Jane? The last call was from Jane? Is she in trouble? Because you really should have led with that. You don't have any encryption on your phone at all? FRIDAY, hop on board this phone and run the last call through every standing program I have that might be even remotely relevant. And Loki, I need you to tell me what's going on."
"Jane and I were texting. When she—"
"FRIDAY, run the texts from Jane, too."
"When she called, I heard a voice in the background. I didn't recognize it immediately, but it was your Director Fury."
"Not my director. I'm my own director. Just to be clear."
"I don't think she even knows him. And I know she doesn't know…about him."
"That's why you went all sociopath glare on me? You thought I was in cahoots with Fury to get you out of the house for some complicated conspiracy-theory reason? To separate you from Jane and Ollie? Ah. Got it. If you need me to deny that I will, but I hope you don't."
"I'm confident you would not endanger Ollie. I'm less confident when it comes to me. But my concern is not for myself or, at this point, for Ollie."
"You think Jane's in danger? From Nick? Listen, 'trust' and 'Nick Fury' don't belong in the same sentence, but he wouldn't hurt Jane. He hasn't sold that much of his soul."
"While I bided my time in his specially-built cage, he realized that he lacked the means to effectively threaten me. So he went to my brother, to try to convince him to torture me into submission."
Tony cringed; that was low, even for Nick. So an alien army was on its way to attack the planet, and Loki was supposedly leading that army and planning to set himself up as a planetary dictator. Distressing situation, sure. Still, the guy's own brother? Besides, Tony didn't have much sympathy for torture, having been on the receiving end of it himself.
He took a deep breath and stepped down onto the landing, Loki making way for him to get past. No sense going there. "I'm guessing Thor nixed that idea," he said, continuing over to the kitchen bar where he took a seat.
Loki followed him over. "My brother is a sentimental fool. With a conscience. He wouldn't have done it no matter how loudly I insisted he wasn't my brother. He wouldn't have done it if I was a stranger. Thor warned me about him when we returned here to defeat Thanos."
"Okay, I get your point. You're worried Nick could try to use Jane against you somehow."
"I have no idea how she wound up with him. If she knows who he is. I want to get her out of there."
"You don't want to try to call or text her again? If you call, I should be able to trace that easily, unless they're using countermeasures. Even then I stand a good shot."
"She was fine when I spoke to her. I don't want to be the cause of that changing. Jane is supposedly in a professional meeting. Calling her again would look highly suspicious. Even the initial contact may have made them suspect I knew who she was with."
"Any sense at all from the conversation that she was under duress, or nervous about something?"
"None. Except that she warned me not to speak openly. She thought someone might be eavesdropping."
"But she thought she was in a run-of-the-mill meeting trying to get some kind of research appointment."
"As far as I know."
"It's probably easier to track Fury instead of the call. I have contacts I can reach out to…though that might also raise suspicions. But if we can find out where Next Gen SHIELD is doing business in New York…. They stay out of the public eye, but they're not completely off the grid. And they must be in a more or less typical office setting if Jane wasn't uneasy about it. FRIDAY? Cross-reference property purchases and rental records with all known and suspected SHIELD personnel and SHIELD shell companies. Check—"
Tony paused to fish out his own phone, ringing from his back pocket. "Huh." 212. That was it. 212, then blank space where the rest of the numbers should have followed.
"What?" Loki asked, stepping closer to peer down at the other phone.
"Manhattan area code. And nothing else. Does Fury know you're here?"
