26. Stand-off

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His grip on her loosened, his hand against her back guiding her towards the floor as she reluctantly unhooked her legs and slid down his body to stand on her own two feet again. She wasn't ready to leave the quiet of this moment, the eye of the storm, she'd give almost anything for a week to sit undisturbed in the middle of her bed while she made sense of things. Even by her standards, there was a lot happening at once. Not to mention a lot of emotional baggage to sort.

She gave him a weak smile, her knees jittery and her hands wanting to tangle in her hair. His face would have seemed tranquil if not for the hunted look in his eyes.

Darcy's distinctive, uncompromising rap on the side of the trailer broke them out of their long mutual hesitation and reminded Jane sharply that stopping for a breather wasn't a realistic option just now. She winced apologetically at Loki and turned to head out the door.

"Heeey, Jane," Darcy greeted with painfully exaggerated casualness, her eyes bugged out with mock surprise, "I don't know what it is, but here I am thinking you might not have listened to me." She flapped her arms descriptively at Thor, her lips pressed together so hard that her chin wrinkled. "I asked you for one simple favour, Brainiac, and I said please. I said 'please don't do anything too Jane until I get there', and what do you do? You do possibly the Janest thing that… holy shit they're multiplying."

Loki was behind her on the steps, mostly hidden inside the trailer, but it was still pretty apparent he was not dressed for planet Earth. Jane jumped sheepishly, having forgotten she was boxing him in once the Darcy floodgates opened. She stepped aside and held her breath while he made his entrance. He had to stoop to fit through the small door frame and he took the opportunity of his already bent head to slip his helmet on, pushing it into place as he straightened up. Standing to his full height as his boots hit the sand, he tossed his cape so it fell correctly and the hem flared gracefully behind him.

Jane was torn behind rolling her eyes and an overflowing well of fondness. His little performance was a mirror in which she saw herself trying on glasses she didn't need and power suits she didn't like before going in to teach her first class or beg for a grant in front of some soulless committee. She didn't begrudge him his misguided attempts to reassemble what he could of his personal armour. Metaphorically, that is, although the literal armour did seem to be part of it. Besides, it didn't come off unimpressive no matter how silly it objectively was.

"What is- who…?" Darcy gaped at him. "Wait, oh my God! Luke?!"

Jane had already told her a hurried and abbreviated version of the truth on the phone. She'd swear blind she did. Looking at Darcy with slight concern, uncertain which of them she was more concerned for, she said slowly, "This is Loki."

Darcy blew through her lips scoffingly at Jane's bemused expression. "I mean: hello, I know that. I mean, I figured, but I wasn't really prepared."

Loki adjusted his posture, not peering down his nose at them so much any more. "Are you disappointed, Miss Lewis?"

"Oh, no way. Yeah, it's definitely wild. Big excitement, thrill a minute. Question: so like, you and Thor, do you have these little tiffs often where you almost blow up a town? Is that like a Tuesday for you guys? Because maybe you shouldn't hang out with Jane in that case, she makes me fear for my safety enough without help."

He smirked at her, tilting his head so the sun gleamed on the helmet's shiny, lethal looking horns. "Oh, Miss Lewis, what has happened to your spirit of adventure? You accused me of leading a boring life when we visited your city."

Darcy was struck momentarily speechless, a vanishingly rare phenomenon, and her fish mouthed, gob smacked look threatened to send Jane into hysterics. She recovered quickly. "Right. In my defence- who stays in when they're in Vegas?"

"Surely my brother and I are more interesting than gambling." He leaned down closer to her level, his tone conspiratorial, "You have been presented with essentially the embodiment of intergalactic politics."

Thor, who had been watching all of this with an implacable frown, decided he had had enough. "Loki, I don't know what you angle towards, but I will tolerate none of your games. I apologise for my brother, Darcy."

"Ah, you see!" Loki unfurled his fingers grandly, indicating Thor. "Diplomacy. He learns it at last. I attended to my lessons in statecraft, Miss Lewis, think of the paper you could write."

"Loki," Jane murmured warningly, knowing he could do this all day and totally would given the chance. She wasn't even mad at him, she wanted to avoid dealing with the nuclear fallout scattered all over their lives just as much as he did, but someone had to be an adult.

He raised an eyebrow at her. It seemed to ask what she had expected him to do in this situation.

"Jane did mention you guys are super important alien royalty. Honestly, it made total sense for you, Luke." Darcy hugged herself, pulling on her lip with her teeth absent mindedly. Something occurred to her and she waved her hand. "No offence, Thor."

Thor's brow furrowed and Loki managed a real laugh, grinning at Darcy like he couldn't be more pleased with her.

"Shut up," Jane whispered to him before he could say anything. He flashed her a tiny mock pout.

"All right," Darcy went on, shoving her glasses up with her knuckle and trying to look stern, "so back to me yelling at Jane."

Jane scratched at her hairline, her face screwing up. "Sorry? I mean, I'm sorry I didn't wait for you, Darcy, I wanted you to be here, especially because..."

Darcy glanced around suddenly, interrupting, "Wait, where's Erik?"

"Yeah, about that. I wanted you to be here for the test, but I really wasn't ready to deal with yet another person trying to stop me right when I was about fulfil my life's work. I wasn't going to let anything else screw it up."

Darcy frowned. "Okay, boss, I am on your side and everything, but that sounded a little more dangerous mad scientist than I'm comfortable with."

"What has happened to Erik Selvig?" Thor cut in, his eyes darting between the two women like he couldn't decide who he should be rooting for.

Loki leaned back on one heel, the carefully insouciant stance he affected belied by his left hand fidgeting with the edge of his cape. "Jane banished him from the laboratory and our efforts on the bridge."

Thor blinked at his brother, then turned to Jane incredulously.

She shrugged. "He betrayed us, he went to SHIELD behind my back so they could lock up my research and throw away the key. Probably with me in there with it, too, and he knew that was more than a passing chance. Who knows what he thought they would do to Loki."

"I can't say I'm super surprised he ended up doing that, but..." Darcy was saying.

"He must have had cause!" Thor exclaimed desperately, "Erik Selvig would not be disloyal to you, Jane."

Jane sighed. How was this the most pressing thing for them to talk about? "Well, he was. Professionally disloyal. So I cut professional ties."

"He believed he was acting for what was right," Loki said pointedly, his gaze intent on Thor, "for the greater good."

"It was not about protecting me," Jane added firmly, wanting that made totally clear. She knew Loki wasn't implying that it was- he understood the argument perfectly from both sides- but Thor was developing a second hand hangdog expression she didn't like at all. "He thought he had to protect New Mexico from me. Because apparently he thinks I don't know what I'm doing."

"Okay, but..." Darcy paused to regroup, closing her eyes for a moment. "Okay, I need coffee and I need to hear the whole story start to finish. And I need to be sitting down, and you guys, Norse Chippendales, you need to be in the chorus explaining your crap too."

Jane exchanged a long-suffering look with Loki.

Thor said, "What are Chippendales?"

.,.,.,.,.,.,..,.,.

Thor's version of events and explanation of their background dovetailed nearly perfectly with Loki's right up until his banishment to Earth. This was where important information started to be third hand (Jane hated third hand information, her preference was first, second in a pinch, but third was an extra layer of interpretation over someone's interpretation and that sat poorly with her as something to base major judgement calls on). It was also where things started getting hairy, in regards to keeping the conversation civil and non-shouty.

This, her second Weird Conference in the Lab, looked even more goofy than the first. She and Darcy, petite humans dressed like college vagrants (and you knew Darcy was worried when she reached Jane's level of 'dressed in the dark from an unsorted pile of laundry' aesthetic), were sitting next to each other on the vinyl sofa. Thor and Loki, huge alien warriors in full royal regalia, each dwarfed one of the mismatched seventies office chairs at opposite ends of the room. The slight air they gave off of adults sitting on kiddie furniture did nothing to mitigate the absurdity of the scene.

"You should have swallowed your ego- doubtless difficult as it is to swallow what is so comically bloated- and left in peace when I gave us the chance! Father would have forgiven you in an instant as he always does, if only you hadn't started a war and-"

"I!" Thor bellowed, "Who brought Jotuns into Asgard? Who said nothing as I was banished?"

Loki's throat bobbed, the bluster going out of him. Jane could see the guilt written across his features and wondered if it was as obvious to his brother as it was to her.

"I shoulder the blame for my actions," Thor said, pounding his breastplate with his fist for emphasis, "they were my own and the punishment I reaped for them was justly mine to bear, but it was not I alone who made this bed of thorns. It was not I alone who was reckless and wanton."

"I tried!" Loki interrupted urgently, the words practically bursting out of him. "I never meant for us to leave Asgard, to risk our lives, I never thought to see you banished. I tried to tell him, but Father..."

Thor watched his brother closely, his eyes flinty as he weighed whether he felt inclined to believe him. Something flashed across his face. "Yes, I do remember you speaking to him."

"He was too angry. He thought I would try to..."

"As if you ever dared test your silver tongue on Father." Thor shook his head, a sad, wistful cast to his mouth. He grunted to himself, rallying to attempt a feeble joke which was tinged with bitterness, "You knew the Allfather was not so brash and gullible as I."

Loki twitched his lips to the side, his gaze on the floor. "You're not gullible, brother. You're honest."

Jane wanted to say something to his credit then, to remind him that he was astonishingly emotionally honest even if his relationship to the letter of the truth was strained, but she was sure he didn't see that as a good thing any more than his ability to dissemble and sweet talk was considered a good thing on his home planet.

"You did often talk me out of trouble with Mother," Thor said, maybe offering an olive branch.

Loki rolled his eyes. "Mother is no one's fool. She enjoys being charmed and being lenient, we gave her tremendous opportunity for both."

Thor looked knowing, then his mood suddenly soured. "You told me she forbade my return and now you let her think you dead. That is quite the charm you've wound up."

A red flush of anger bloomed on Loki's cheeks and brow, but his words were cold, "All the better for her if it were so."

"There again!" Thor roared, making to stand.

"Whoa there, dude!" Darcy threw herself across the couch to grab Thor's shoulder and settle him back down. He shied away from her restraining hand instinctively, but then allowed it, subsiding into his chair. "Everybody stay cool," she went on carefully, surveying every face in turn for signs of mutiny, "lots more story to get through and no one's starting a sword fight until I hear the end."

Jane sent Loki as stern a look as she could manage under the circumstances. His bottomless self-loathing was as frustrating for her as it was for Thor, and it was hard to keep the angry helplessness she felt out of her expression.

He grimaced at her and raked his hand through his hair, his helmet having been tossed aside when they came in. "I couldn't risk your homecoming, brother," he said, sticking to the relatively safer topic of his terrible lies in the SHIELD facility. He explained his position something like he'd explained it to Jane, but he meticulously avoided any indication of fear in a way he hadn't before. Now it was about law and honour and the good of Asgard. His terror and jealousy and satisfaction he left out. Finally, he added, "I did not wish to fight you."

"If that is true, that wish was short-lived," Thor said impatiently. "The moment I returned-"

"Because you returned! Because I couldn't prevent it. Use your brain."

"I have, and my eyes, also. I was not worthy when Father banished me, how did you expect to become so by matching me for folly?"

Pale as a sheet and his grip on the steel arm of his chair slowly crushing the metal out of shape, Loki was speechless.

"You knew instinctively the virtue of discretion all those years of our childhood, I look back and see yours was often the wise counsel I badly needed. How could you yourself forget it?" Thor sounded very tired and genuinely puzzled. It was the first time he could ask and hope for an answer, but Jane could tell it was far from the first time he'd thought about the question.

"Where did it ever get me, Thor?" Loki demanded. "What did I ever have to show for it? Shipped off as a child to learn useful but embarrassing arts in long exile, assigned tutors to be taught the tedious details of agriculture and negotiation and bureaucracy and everything else your time was too precious for, your natural greatness without need of, all to sit invisible in your shadow and spend eternity as a silent minder. Resented and ignored. I am not your valet!"

"Loki-"

"I wanted sonship and it was and is what I can never have, and he should have told me what I was so I would have known I didn't deserve it! It was cruelty to let me believe it was within my grasp to earn!" His voice broke and he sat rigid, panting for breath.

Jane reached over and pried his fingers off the ruined chair arm, turning his hand over and wrapping both of hers around it. "You don't earn a father. Every kid deserves a family."

He dashed a tear off his chin, looking supremely pissed that his body was betraying him when he wanted so badly not to care any more. "Monsters don't, Jane Foster."

Thor shivered and Jane snapped her head around to stare at him with naked reproach. She didn't know who she was most exasperated with.

"To be honest, they don't sound that different than any other people."

Every pair of eyes was on Darcy. Thor's mouth was hanging open and Loki seemed in danger of passing out from a catastrophic spike in his blood pressure.

Darcy shrugged. "Yeah, warlike vertical collectivist society with a supreme overlord and expansionist ambitions- like, it's not very original, is it? Seems their king wanted to avoid pointless fighting right up until he saw his chance to get revenge on the rival overlord who neutered his kingdom and shamed him as a warrior. Pretty standard human behaviour, really. Maybe I should say 'humanoid'."

"Darcy Lewis," Thor began, his voice strangled.

"No, no, no, my bro," she cut him off, tapping the side of her head with her index finger, "Political Science major. And I actually paid a lot of attention in my classes. According to your tattle tale little brother, I'm way ahead of you on sociological analysis."

Loki laughed until he choked, threading his fingers through Jane's and squeezing her hand gently in apparent approval of her fantastically entertaining intern. She didn't know how to feel, so she squeezed back and watched him dazedly.

"You laugh, but I'm top of my class." Darcy hesitated. "Well, I'm top ten, but that's still really good when you consider everything I've got going on."

"As was Thor," Loki said, smirking, "but as there were fewer than ten of us all told, the achievement is not eminently notable."

"Enough!" Thor thumped his armrest. "Enough diversion, brother, enough games. Charges pile at your feet and I would have answers to them, I would have more than flippancy and fits of temper."

Loki more hissed than scoffed in response, his scorn palpable. "Yes, let us read off the roll of my misdeeds, let us pretend it were so simple. Did I lie that the throne came to me by law and supposed birthright? Correctly and uprightly?"

"No," Thor grunted, clearly very suspicious of where this was headed, "Mother agrees. In that one particular, you spoke only the truth."

"So it follows that when 'our' esteemed friends disobeyed both mine and Odin's explicit command in an attempt to bring you home and launch a coup d'etat, they were traitors to two kings."

"Coup d'etat! They acted..." Thor ranted indignantly, then faltered, actually thinking it over.

Loki seized on the hesitation in ugly triumph, "They acted on nothing. They knew nothing but that Loki was king and they did not like it. Death would be only just, but I did not try to kill them. Our friends. The Destroyer would have reduced them to ash if I had willed it so."

"It sure looked like there was an effort being made," Jane said, darkness dripping from her tone.

Loki met her eyes, his own a bit wild, and licked his lips hesitantly. "I intended destruction-"

"You got that!"

He leaned toward her. "I said to it 'destroy', not 'kill', no humans were killed."

"Thor was kinda killed," Darcy interjected before Jane could.

"With his true strength-"

"You knew I was stripped of my strength. No one better."

"I did not think you were a mortal!"

"Now who plays the fool, Loki?"

He shot forward in his chair, his voice vicious, "As if you took greater care when you arrived on this world, as if you didn't scatter humans like nine pins even without your power. As if you didn't take every advantage!"

Jane huffed in anger. "'I know you are but what am I'? Really, Loki? Over totalling most of a high street and putting dozens of innocent people in harm's way?"

He worried his thumb, staring down at his hands in nervous misery.

"He is not wrong," Thor said unhappily, "I was proud."

"Aristocrats' malady."

"Yes, thank-you, Darcy," Jane snapped, in no mood for political philosophy.

Loki glanced up at her through his eyelashes, his head still down. His words were barely above a whisper, halting and addressed to her alone, "I am sorry for it, Jane Foster. Mortals were unimportant, I thought nothing of them. I thought very little of you."

She held her breath when he finally lifted his head, his mournful gaze locking with hers.

"An error which I shall never repeat."

Darcy made a noise in her throat, but Jane barely registered it. His eyes were as wide as the sea and she drifted there in their stormy blue.

"So perhaps we have both been humbled," Thor broke the silence. He sounded sceptical.

Loki sighed heavily, resignedly.

"Is humbled really the right word for him?" Jane's stupid mouth blabbered aloud before her brain got a chance to veto.

But Loki spoke at the same time, "At last I know my place, brother," and she was almost glad he was still shit stirring because at least no one was going to confront her over the deeply unwanted contradiction which had just leaked out of her face. Not that she didn't stand by it, but she and tact weren't complete strangers.

Thor tossed his head in annoyance. "You never have and I begin to think you never will."

"Hey now," Darcy objected, sensing fighting words.

Thor paid her no mind, pressing on, "Your place was at my side, in our family, on the dais. Your place was brother, son and prince, never anything less. I never thought you less."

"You spoilt, ignorant child," Loki said, cool and detached, like a judge passing sentence. "The web of indulgent favouritism frays for three short days and now you think yourself temperate and wise. Now you know forbearance and compassion, your sufferings have made you magnanimous, equal to any man. What could I have suffered which would compare? Ridiculous. And this is an extremity of bald faced lie even I would shy from. When you told me to keep to my place, you knew what it was and it was no saccharine dribble the likes of which you've just-"

Jane went for his hand again, missed, and grabbed at his knee.

He shook her off. "I am son to no one! I was a tool he hoarded for the same purpose he collected every other treasure in his vault, and that's how he treated me. That's how you always treated me! You knew, you sensed, and you were right. No need for more flowery fictions, we're all terribly impressed with your generosity!"

"I took you for granted, brother," Thor said slowly, the strain of holding on to his temper blatant in his pinched expression, "but it was mere arrogance, mere thoughtlessness. I considered my esteem beyond question. I have not always been as I ought, it is true, but I never looked on you as other than my greatest friend, my most trusted ally. There could be no doubt, it did not need to be spoken."

Loki let his head fall into his hand, his fingers white where they pressed hard against his temples, his shoulders hunched.

"Yes it did," Jane said for him when it was clear he wouldn't bother. And maybe if it had been said a long time ago, he might actually have believed it.

Thor's focus shifted to her, his posture becoming awkward and tense as he considered her. "What was it to which Erik Selvig could not consent?"

Alarm bells went off in her head. "Trying the bridge."

"That is all?"

"Well..." She twisted a bit of hair around her finger, praying she could navigate this minefield without loss of life. "Not really. It was kind of cumulative. He didn't understand how it was going to work at all, anything we were doing, he didn't believe in it."

Thor's features were stoic, but there were worlds of pain in his eyes.

"I… I tried to keep him up to speed, but he was being so obstinate and panicky about..."

"Yes?"

Loki flopped bonelessly in his chair, letting himself slide down until his chin was practically on his chest, his hands dangling over the arms. "Just say it, Thor. Come to the point. It was me he couldn't abide with more than anything else. He never trusted me for a moment, and I think hated me."

"He doesn't hate you," Jane said automatically, and was sure it was true in spite of Erik's mistrust and anger.

Thor rested his hands on his knees, looking ready to launch himself up at a moment's notice. His heavy gaze swept over Loki's insolent, provocative sprawl disapprovingly. "Did you hope to drive him away sooner?"

"He didn't get a vote!" Jane protested, furious.

"You are an appalling strategist, brother," Loki drawled, tut tutting as if Thor were a naughty child. "It's remarkable you managed to ingratiate yourself with Jane's work in the first place, but of course that was about what you knew, wasn't it? And sacred hospitality, always; a kindness neither of us has ever appreciated as it warrants. I don't pretend my being here is anything different. But you do, you underestimate Jane Foster with such insulting severity in your quest to paint me black for her that even she may not forgive it.

"I don't need your brushes, Thor, I am blacker than pitch and none of it is hidden from her. You make the same mistake that Erik Selvig did if you assume she does not know her own mind. Isn't that so, Jane? For such a long time I thought I was ruthlessly exploiting your curiosity, but you knew me well. Perhaps from the first moment."

Jane's mouth went dry, tension twisting up her muscles as she waited breathlessly for what else he might say, what line he might go over. He could see some things so clearly, he had so much preternaturally penetrating insight, a completely scary ability to look right through her, and yet for how right he was about this, he was so wrong about so many more important things.

"If I had decided to do it, brother, schemed with her as my Queen of the board against you, I should have failed utterly. That you don't know that... I am sorry, Jane. I would have wished better for your sake." He stood up and bowed over her hand. "I will leave you now to finish the tale as you see fit, I am weary of talk. Fear not, Thor, I shan't escape. I give you my word I will return, but I've been remiss in monitoring the activities of your delightful human friends in SHIELD."

The three of them watched him stalk out the glass doors into the blinding sunset, scooping up his helmet as he went by.

"Right. This shit is intense. Jane, your turn to talk again. Blow me away."

Thor settled his chin on his fist, gazing gloomily into the desert. "Yes, Jane Foster, I am also most keen to hear."