#44

God of Drama, Loki silently repeated to himself. That really does have a nice ring to it, does it not? God of dramatic speeches, dramatic entrances, dramatic descents and even more dramatic ascents—yes, that title fits perfectly.

"So, what now?" Steve Rogers—the soldier, the commander, the leader—had struggled into a sitting position on the floor, the young scientist still by his side, and was looking up at him expectantly. "Are we going to call Nemesis now?"

Loki's lips parted in surprise. "Are you really asking me?"

"You're the person with power, knowledge and a plan, remember?" Tony Stark asked with a huge, lopsided grin. "You saved our asses, so you lead the way from here. Isn't that how it usually works?"

"Wait, let me rephrase this," Loki said and he felt his chest swell as if his body were a volcano preparing to erupt with pride and delight at his own greatness. "You just appointed me the leader of the Avengers for this quest, yes?"

"Don't overstep the mark, okay? Just tell us what we need to do to save our friends," the Widow said. "Please," she added softly, almost as an afterthought.

Loki held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Alright, first of all, I need food. Thor does too. We need lots of food. Sec—"

"As she said," the archer cut in, "don't overstep the mark. This is not your palace and we're not your servants."

"You are not," Loki agreed, drilling his red Jotun gaze into Barton and enjoying it immensely when the other man flinched, seemingly against his will. "But your souls will not go to Hel because of me and you did not even yet find it in yourself to thank me. None of you did, except for Stark—which, I suppose, is fine by me—but the least you can offer me in lieu of your gratitude is sustenance."

The young mortal scientist swallowed and looked deeply ashamed. "I am sorry. You have our thanks. And we will have a meal prepared for you." She pressed a few buttons on her watch and said something in a language that Loki had no time to translate with the Allspeak's magic.

The other Avengers too looked embarrassed and broke out into a cacophony of apologies and expressions of thanks that made Loki feel surprisingly uncomfortable. "Okay, that's enough. You are welcome," he hurried to say, then turned to Thor. "Second, before we do anything with that seventh stone, we need to figure out whether Nemesis was inside your head when you attacked Hela. Whether she controlled you before I …" He let his voice trail off.

"Yeah, what did you do?" asked Thor, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. "And why don't I remember?"

"I am afraid I used the Mind Stone to brainwash you into 'killing' me," Loki conceded quietly. "My apologies."

"You did what?" came from Barton, Thor, Rocket and Pepper in unison.

Thor's face was a mask of consternation. "I-is that why I don't remember?"

Loki gave a nod and silently cursed himself that he had revealed the truth with all of them present when he felt their distrust rising again.

"How did you," Thor stammered. "I mean, how did you … convince me to do it? I would never have tried to …"

"Brother issues, I suppose," Loki replied with a mirthless smile.

"I don't understand," said Thor.

Loki gave a sigh. "I know but it does not matter right now."

"It does to me," Thor insisted and he looked so pained that Loki felt his chest yawn open. "Did I really … kill you?"

"Yes," Loki said softly. "I know you don't understand and I will tell you everything later—I promise you that I will—but for now, it is more important if Nemesis was inside your head when you attacked Hela and what she said to you."

Thor only reluctantly let go of the previous topic. "What makes you think she was in my head at all?"

Loki raised an eyebrow at him. "Because you just went berserk, blindly attacked Hela and completely discarded the plan?"

"What plan?" Thor yelled, visibly flustered now. "I didn't even know what the plan was because you never told me!"

"Guys, please," the raccoon intervened, "don't lose your shit, okay?"

"Well, the plan was to rely on wits and intelligence, not on battle strength," Loki reminded him. "But I should have anticipated that you are not able to—"

"That's enough," Valkyrie silenced him. She still looked as pale and disheveled as she had when Loki had first opened his eyes but her voice was as forceful as ever. "Just focus, okay?"

"So, Nemesis did not communicate with you?" Loki brought himself to ask his brother. "You did not feel her magic, did not feel her energy reach into your mind? The only time she ever talked to you was when she told you to free her earlier?"

"Yes." Thor nodded, vehemently at first, then more hesitantly. "I mean, I think so. I don't remember." He let out a frustrated sigh. "I guess I just wanted to hurt Hela for everything …" His voice trailed off but then gained force again when he looked at Valkyrie. "For everything she did to us. My anger got the better of me, I guess."

"Now that is an unheard-of incident," Loki mocked. He looked from Thor to Shuri. "Do you have a vibranium casing we can use to contain the power of the stone until we have decided how dangerous it is and what we are going to do with it?"

Shuri gave a nod and rose to her feet. When she went in search for a suitable vessel, Rogers finally rose to his feet too, swaying, and the Widow rushed to his side instantly, looping her arm around his waist.

"But we're freeing her, aren't we? That's what she told you to do, no?" Thor asked, his brows drawing together in confusion.

"Just to be clear, who is she?" asked Bruce. "That woman's counsel we're relying on here? That woman who is the wisest person in all of Asgard?"

"My mother," said Loki.

"You mean, like," asked Rocket, jerking his furry little head in Thor's direction.

Loki blew out an exasperated breath. There were times in his life when he would have loved to hurt the little creature for that remark but now the urge to stab a fork into his eyes passed away as quickly as it had come. "I mean, like, the Queen of Asgard. And she said to find Nemesis, not to free her. I suppose you will all agree that these two expressions do not exactly denote the same line of action."

"But who says that she is more reliable or trustworthy than your father?" Nebula asked with a quick glance at Valkyrie, who merely shrugged in response. "I wouldn't know. He married her after I left Asgard."

"We do," said Thor but his voice did not carry. "Our mother was the … she was …"

"She would never lie to us," Loki took over for him.

"Okay, first of all, that isn't true because she clearly lied to you about being adopted," the Widow began and Loki resented her for being right. "And second, if that was the case, why didn't she tell you what to do after you found Nemesis?"

"Because she was sure that I already knew the answer," Loki replied, aware of how outrageous this must sound to her kind.

"What, like some kind of Jedi-Yoda-Force mumbo jumbo?" Stark asked.

"I have no idea what you are talking about but if it involves spiritual connections, it might be," Loki replied. "In any event, I need to think and you need to rest, especially you." He looked at Rogers. Then he fixed Barton. "I know that every additional minute you have to spend with the knowledge of your loved ones residing inside the Soul World rips your heart further apart but we must not rush this. If we make another mistake by acting without thinking like my dear brother usually does, well, the consequences might be dire."

Thor and Barton both grumbled but, thankfully, they both remained silent. Loki fixed Shuri, then Stark. "And you should build that vibranium gauntlet, just in case."

Stark frowned. "In what case?"

"In case Nemesis turns out to be our enemy against all odds or in case I was wrong about Ragnarok or, I don't know, just in case." Loki drew a sharp breath. "Does that expression not mean the same thing to you as it does to me?"

"Wrong about Ragnarok?" Stark repeated. "But you said—"

"I know what I said," Loki interrupted him. When he locked eyes with the engineer, he felt something stir inside of him that he would have loved to see lying dormant forever. When Stark did not break eye contact, he was very grateful that his Jotun body was not subject to the burning heat of abashed arousal that would have plagued his Aesir body at this very moment. "It really is just in case, okay?"

"But what would we even do with a gauntlet if none of us can use it to snap?" Thor asked and the expression of confusion on his face was delightful.

"You could snap, silly," Loki replied and drew a little bit too much pleasure from his brother's reaction of shock and disbelief. "You are a God, Thor. If you cannot use all of the Infinity Stones at once if you were to set your mind on it, then who could? I mean, you could not have earlier, that is true. You lacked focus and mental strength. You did not even suggest you could do it because you weren't even in a condition to summon the Bifrost, or else you would have come looking for me while I was away in Norway." Loki smiled at Thor, whose teeth guiltily pulled at this lower lip, and jabbed a finger into his chest. "You needed to find your confidence again." He jabbed again, accentuating every noun. "Your strength. Your optimism. Your faith. Your sense of purpose. Now that you have all of that back, you can do anything."

Thor's lips were standing open as he processed this and he looked almost desperate when he finally spoke. "Why are you always telling lies and half-truths?"

Loki frowned at him. "If that is all you want to take from this, fine, I omitted this detail—and no, omissions are not merely lies by another name—in order to protect you. From yourself. You would have tried to use Stark's and Shuri's gauntlet to make up for your mistake without even thinking about what it takes to wield all six stones. And if you had, you might have killed yourself and everyone else in the process, making the same mistake you made with Hela. What you needed was to have her out of the picture before you could focus on anything else."

"He really is looking out for you," Valkyrie said in genuine astonishment and, despite the fact that the distrust still implicit in that statement nagged at him, Loki was glad to see that she was slowly recovering from the shock written all over her face when had had awoken.

"I am." Loki chuckled. "But is it not funny—well, tragic rather, if you think about it—how he keeps taking everything I say at face value even though he knows that I am almost always lying?"

Valkyrie snorted.

"Yeah, maybe I am in need of another title, too," Thor snapped but his offended tone was merely an act. "Thor, God of Gullibility. How does that sound?"

"Very much like you," Loki said softly, surprised that he felt both at home in this foreign land amidst people who probably still distrusted him and utterly at peace. Of course, someone had to ruin that peace and, of course, it had to be Barton. He felt his inner defenses rise up again and, before the archer could do anything more than harrumph to redirect their attention, Loki snapped his fingers and the other man's lips moved voicelessly. "I know," said Loki, transforming his voice into Barton's. "You lying scum have no right to enjoy these moments with your brother as long as my family remains trapped in the Soul World." Loki changed his voice back to his own. "Yes, you have made that abundantly clear."

Barton's mouth opened but no sound came out. "Just stop with the shenanigans, okay?" Romanoff chided him. "You're not exactly making yourself popular."

"I have no desire to make myself popular," Loki retorted in a soft growl even though that was not true by any means. "I merely wish to wipe out the red from my ledger."

The Widow narrowed her eyes at him in response to the shared memory and Loki released Barton from the simple spell. "We will rescue them," Loki snapped. "Just give us a few more hours, if that is not too much to ask."

"It's not," said Bruce.

"Your meal is ready," said Shuri as she approached Thor with a silver vibranium ball that opened with a soft hiss at her touch. Thor placed the seventh stone inside and the ball closed again. Shuri turned it in her hands and then focused Stark. "You go eat. I will try to fix Steve's arm in the meantime. Bring some food for him when you return and then we can start with the gauntlet."

Loki pulled the scorched Infinity Gauntlet out of the pocket dimension and handed it to the warrior woman whose name he had forgotten. "For reference," he said and, then, he turned away. "But whatever you do, do not try to remove the Soul Stone."

The food served in the Royal Palace of Wakanda was nowhere near as atrocious as the so-called junk food the mortals had consumed in the Avengers compound and the dining room, which they were being led to by who Loki guessed were servants, looked nowhere near as earthly as the compound. It housed a great round table with a white tablecloth, upon which plates filled with cheese, fruits, fish, meats, pastries and many more delicacies had been placed around a flower arrangement prior to their arrival. The setting sun was pouring warm orange light into the room through giant windows, lending the room a truly palatial atmosphere.

Loki shapeshifted into his Asgardian form in order to be able to ingest the food as he slid onto a chair and, without warning, a wave of sadness washed over him. He reached for a plate of fish but, suddenly, the idea of sitting down at a dinner table with Tony Stark, Valkyrie, Thor and Rocket—who was either very hungry or very unwilling to let them out of his raccoon sight—seemed so absurd that he wanted to disappear. The food was exquisite and still he hardly tasted it. Wine was poured and Loki greedily inhaled it, but he hardly tasted that either. He watched Tony Stark over the rim of his glass, watched how the engineer too gobbled down the wine as if his life depended on it and how he held the glass towards the base of the stem between his iron-gloved thumb and forefinger, the armor around his hand concealing the damage the Soul Stone had inflicted upon it. When the other man caught his gaze, Loki quickly averted his and this time he did feel a hot rush of embarrassment shooting up his neck and cheeks.

Loki knew that he had done right by the Avengers, by his brother, his mother, maybe even by Odin, but still he silently cursed himself for the moment that had led to this one of him being served as a guest in another ruler's abode. He saw himself placing the crown of Surtur into the Eternal Flame and setting the whole of Asgard on fire. Thanks to him and Thor, their entire palace, their entire home, was gone now. The golden pillars, the dining room tables, the royal kitchen, the ornaments in the tremendous hallways, the decorated windows, the atrium—all of it was gone.

Thor remained blissfully oblivious and unbothered as he apparently tried his hardest to live up to the stories that humans had told each other about the God of Thunder and his insatiable appetite throughout the years while Loki grew increasingly restless. He sipped on his wine, leaving the food untouched and waiting for his subconscious to reveal the one thought, the one memory, that his mother wanted him to remember.

"Is that what you call 'needing lots of food'?" Stark asked him with his mouth full. "You hardly touched anything."

"I am thinking," Loki replied.

Stark raised his eyebrows. "About what?"

"The palace that we lost," Loki answered truthfully and was surprised how easy it was to admit to what he would have previously considered a sign of weakness.

"You should see their library," Thor told him around mouthful of roast. "I mean, it's not as impressive as the one that you spent all your time in growing up but I am sure you'd still like it."

Loki's lips opened as the image of the library of the Realm Eternal and its unmeasurable treasures of age-old wisdom flashed before his mind's eye. Thanks to him and Thor, all this wisdom was now gone as well. Thanks to him, every book Frigga had sent him during his imprisonment in the dungeons was now reduced to ashes floating through the universe and every information about Nemesis that might have been in Asgardian possession at one point was lost to them forever. Then, finally, his subconscious stirred and presented him with a memory of his younger self, lying on the cot in his cell deep beneath the palace of Asgard, his skin tinged with the yellow light of the Seiᵭr engulfing the dungeons, leafing through a book bearing the title The Schooling of Agamotto.

Loki stood up so abruptly that his chair clattered to the floor beneath him.

"What?" asked Thor.

"Thank you, brother. You gave me just what I needed." Loki emptied his glass of wine and placed it on the table. "I need to go."

"What, now?" asked Stark.

"Where to?" asked Valkyrie.

"I need to find Wong," said Loki and then he fled the room, ignoring whatever it was that the others were shouting after him.

Notes:
-Allspeak is the ability by Asgardians and other deities to speak and be understood by all other races throughout the Nine Realms. This ability also plays a role in many books remotely following Norse mythology (and even the original myths), even though it isn't excplicity referred to as Allspeak there (at least not in the one's I've read).
-The 'volcano erupting with pride' was inspired by a line in Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which I am currently reading. It is the 10th Anniversary issue, p. 53, and it says there 'as if he were a lanky, bearded, drunken volcano preparing to erupt with delight at his own brilliance'. A line too good not to use, in my opinion.
-And please, be patient with me, lol. This turned out much longer than I have anticipated—what a surprise—so Nemesis will have to wait until next time. I sincerely apologize and wish you all a very HAPPY NEW YEAR :) May 2020 bless you all in ways you have never even imagined. Thanks for the support and for reviewing, favoriting or following this story and, yes, enough with the sentiment. I hope to see y'all soon!