The Avengers were instantly on alert, and Clint scooped up Allie and pulled her back before anyone else could move.
"Loki," Thor said, astonished. "I thought you were dead..."
"That's because you're an idiot," Loki said, somewhat cheerfully. He pointed to Allie. "The child has a better sense of deception than you do."
Thor's expression darkened. "When did you come back?" His eyes widened. "The Allfather-"
"Is still in Odinsleep," Loki said dismissively. "I took his place while you were busy with your Jane Foster."
"And Eir?" Thor demanded.
"She is tending to a sick family on the outskirts of the realm," Loki replied. "You were frantic, and I wanted to see why a youngling mortal was of such importance to you. I can see of course. She's very powerful."
Clint bristled and held Allie closer. "Stay away from her," he growled.
"Calm yourself," Loki said briskly. He held out his wrists. "Take me away, then," he told the Thunderer.
Thor tilted his head and looked at Loki closely. "Why did you help?" he asked.
"I could hardly take the form of Eir and not help, could I?" Loki asked.
Thor grumbled something under his breath and grabbed his adoptive brother. "We are returning to Asgard," he announced, and half-dragged half-frog-marched Loki up to the roof, where they promptly disappeared.
Bruce and Hank ran several thorough scans on Allie to make sure that she was actually back to full health, and to make sure that Loki hadn't done anything. She was fine, and to demonstrate it, she turned into a fluffy snowball puppy and cuddled with Clint until he was calm again.
A~A~A~A
Thor was back on Earth by the next day. "The Allfather is awake," he announced grimly, leaning against the wall, and rubbing his face with his hand. "He was not pleased with Loki's machinations, but he could not discount his actions in saving the realms from Malekith."
"So, what's the verdict?" Steve asked cautiously.
"He will live, but his powers will be removed," Thor said. "Loki is now a mortal, as fragile as anyone else."
"Good," Clint muttered. "I can punch him and it'll hurt."
Natasha grabbed his hand in comfort.
Thor gave them a look. "Loki has asked to be removed to Midgard."
A unanimous "NO!" from everyone including JARVIS.
"Why, he scared that one of your buddies is gonna drive a stake through his heart?" Tony asked.
"Frankly yes." Thor scrubbed at his face again. "I do not know if you noticed the color of his eyes."
Bruce frowned. "No. Why?"
"Since I have known him, his eyes are green," Thor said.
"Okay," Steve said, "and?"
"When he tried to take over the world, his eyes were blue."
Sam groaned. "No, no way man, you're trying to tell us he was also brainwashed?"
Thor sighed. "He doesn't want to admit it, but Odin made a healer read his mind and we discovered the truth. A being more powerful than Loki bent him to his will."
Steve had that Look on his face. "Is he going to behave?"
"He cannot do otherwise."
"Steve no," Clint said, aghast. "We can't bring him here. What about Allie? There is no way I'm letting that, that-" he took a deep breath, "him, near my child. No way."
"Clint-"
"No," Clint said firmly.
Natasha gave the others a look, and they filed out of the room quickly. She turned to Clint and put her hands on his cheeks. "Clint," she said softly.
"No," he said again, closing his eyes. "After all he did-"
"After all he made you do, is what you're thinking," she corrected gently.
He flinched away from her, and then stepped closer again, burying his face in her shoulder. "Nat, don't..."
"If you go by what you're saying, I wouldn't be here," she continued softly, "you wouldn't be here, Bucky wouldn't be here-"
"Nat, he's dangerous."
"Clint, we are two spysassins that adopted a child, who regularly plays with and gets her hair braided by other spysassins and gods and people who can transform into rage monsters." She made him look at her again. "If he's going to be mortal, and if we can get him to reform, wouldn't that be worth the effort to have him on our side?"
Clint groaned and dropped his head back into the warmth of her neck. "No," he grumbled.
"I'm not saying I like it, or that I trust him an inch, but it's the truth."
He was silent.
She kissed his temple and ran her fingers through his short hair. "How about this."
He lifted his head and eyed her suspiciously. "What?"
"If Allie's scared of him, then it's not happening. But if she's not, and he behaves, we'll deal. Nobody wants to do this but it will be worth it. And if he steps out of line just once, he's done." She held his gaze. "What do you think?"
Clint sighed. "Fine. But if he messes up I get to put an arrow through his eye."
"Deal."
A~A~A~A
Loki's arrival on Earth was much more auspicious. All the Avengers were armed, and Allie was on a secure level being guarded by JARVIS.
"I come in peace," was the first thing Loki said, holding up his hands.
Narrowed eyes met his words, and Tony slapped a metal bracelet on his wrist. "You better."
Loki tugged at the bracelet and scowled. "What is this?"
"A tracking device," Tony replied. "Take it off and you get a nasty electric shock. Try and do something stupid and you get knocked out. And then get dumped off a cliff."
"There's nothing to do on this stupid planet, anyway," Loki muttered, giving his elder brother a sulky look.
Tony patted him on the shoulder with quite a bit of force. "If you behave for the next hundred years maybe we'll give you a small third-world country to dictate over. How's that?"
Loki scowled murderously and a poof of fine misty frost startled Tony away from him.
"Hey!" Bucky protested, pointing at the dissipating frost, "that is not mortal."
"He's a mortal Jotun," Thor replied tiredly, "not a mortal human. Therefore, he does retain a limited ability to create and manipulate frost and ice, shapeshift between his Jotun and human forms, and-"
"I'm smarter than you, mortal or not," Loki sneered.
"And from his education on Asgard he is very clever," Thor admitted.
"We've arranged quarters for you on Thor's floor," Steve said to Loki, as they piled into the elevator. "You can leave that floor if there's two Avengers with you at all times. If you come up with something useful to do, we'll make arrangements."
Loki nodded. "Fine." He was shown to his quarters, grudgingly admitted they were adequate, and refused the offer of food.
They left him there, and adjourned to the common room. "So," Sam said, after a second, "who's going to tell Coulson?"
A~A~A~A
It was four days before Allie even saw Loki, and then only because she went looking for Steve, and found Steve and Sam guarding Loki. Loki was on YouTube of all places, watching video game bloggers play Minecraft.
"Steeb," Allie said cheerfully, jumping into Steve's lap and hugging him.
"Hi baby, how was school?"
She shrugged. "Normal. Hi Sam."
"Hey, kiddo."
She turned to the trickster. "Hi Loki."
He raised an imperious eyebrow at her. "Hello. Come out of hiding, have we?"
She frowned at him, confused. "Were you hiding? Dat's not a good spot, I can see you."
"No, you were hiding."
"No, I wasn't."
"Well then where have you been these past four days?"
"At school," she replied.
"School," he repeated, and closed the laptop. "Tell me child. What does your world's education consist of?"
She frowned at him again. "You're confusing," she declared, and turned into a puppy.
"That's it?" Loki asked the small beagle. "You're just going to ignore me?"
Allie buried her head in Steve's stomach and wagged her tail lazily as he smoothed the fur over her back.
"Conversation's over, man," Sam said, highly amused.
Loki went back to watching Minecraft videos. "Where does one acquire redstone on this planet?" he asked.
Steve sighed.
A~A~A~A
"Why are you white?" Allie asked.
Tony groaned from behind her. "I am not going to say the Mean Girls reference that we're all thinking. I'm not."
Allie ignored him and all the other Avengers sitting at the dining room table and kept staring at Loki, her little face intense with concentration.
"What kind of question is that?" Loki asked, exasperated. "I haven't been exposed to harmful UV radiation to make my skin increase its melanin production. There. Go away."
"No," Allie said, tugging at the hem of his dark grey t-shirt. "Why do you look like Thor, if you're a snow man?"
"Frost Giant," Loki corrected harshly.
"Dat. Aren't you s'pose to be blue, or crystal-y, or something?"
Loki frowned at her. "I keep this form because it pleases me to do so."
"What do you really really look like for really reals?"
"A monster," Loki hissed, nearly nose to nose with her.
She stared back at him. "Do the rules apply to you?" she asked, her voice quite serious.
He pulled back and blinked. "What?"
"Do the rules apply to you?" she asked.
"Well, yes," he said, holding up his wrist where the tracker sat.
"And in Asgard, you'd've followed de rules?" she asked. "If you was king?"
"Yes."
"And if the bad man came again you wouldn't break de rules to be on his side?"
Loki shuddered, remembering that feeling of being pulled out and unmade, and shook his head. "No."
She smiled. "Den you're not a monster, no matter what you look like. You were just a bad guy for a while. But now you can be good. Like Bucky."
He just stared at her for a while.
Everyone else in the room just stared, too.
She continued to look at Loki expectantly. "So what do you look like?"
Slowly, distrustfully, he allowed his form to shift. His skin darkened to blue, his eyes shifted to red, and he looked at Allie silently, waiting for judgement.
She was staring at him. "That's so cool," she whispered, reaching out to touch his arm. He was cold. "You're literally cool," she whispered. "The blue's so prettyy..." She stepped back, and then shifted to reflect it. Her skin turned a deep blue, her eyes turned red, and her hair shimmered to a glossy black, her clothing reforming around her as a regal little robe in satiny silver. "What do you think?" she asked, giving a twirl, and looking back at Loki with a smile.
He shifted back into his human form and cleared his throat roughly. "You're too small," he said, his voice husky with that-which-is-not-emotion. "Frost Giants, they're never that small."
"You were," Thor said softly. "As a babe, you fit within mother's arms."
Loki looked at this little girl who smiled at him without judgement, and asked in a slightly broken voice, "Allie, may I hug you?"
She jumped into his lap and let him hug her, leaning against his thin chest. She turned back into her regular human form, and wound her thin arms around his neck. "You're gonna be okay," she said calmly. "You just need a mission to make you remember de good stuff." She craned her head to look at the shocked Avengers. "He needs a mission," she stated.
"You heard the lady," Bucky said, giving the others an incredulous look. "We need to find him a mission to save the world."
A~A~A~A
"I found him," Natasha said triumphantly, to the air. She looked up from the computer. "Clint!" she hollered.
Clint stalked into the living room. "What's up?"
"JARVIS and I have been working on tracing anyone who could have infected Allie with the virus," Natasha said, "and we've found him." She threw up on screen security footage of the school day before Allie got sick. There was an SI employee in the school room. He carefully withdrew a vial of clear fluid and poured it onto Allie's desk and chair, and then departed.
"Who is it?" Clint asked, his eyes glinting with rage.
"Eric Morsten, Biochem R&D."
"J, tell the others we're going hunting. Make sure Allie stays with one of them."
"Yes sir."
The two enraged parents stalked down to the Biochem R&D and collared Eric Morsten, and brought him directly to a detention room. "Speak," Natasha ordered, as Clint threw him none-too-gently into the chair.
"Hey, what-"
"Don't. Play. Games," Natasha said, her voice low and threatening. This was full Black Widow, protecting her young.
Morsten blanched and tugged at his collar. "It wasn't meant to be lethal," he said.
Clint drew a blade from his boot and began to twirl it absently. "So it was just meant to be debilitating."
"Yes, no, I mean- it was just supposed to be a test." He cringed away from the twirling knife. "I'm working on gene typing. I got interested in the X-gene, and, the Legacy virus since it was designed for that, so, I tried to copy the targeting system but I didn't know if it would work, so I set it to the X-gene to test it out. And the only test subject I knew was the little girl, so-"
"So you gave her the superflu," Natasha said savagely.
"She wasn't supposed to get it that strong! She should have had antibodies in her system from the last time she got the flu or the cold! It wasn't supposed to be that bad! I don't know what went wrong."
"What went wrong is that Allie has never been sick, until some idiot SPECIFICALLY TARGETED HER WITH THE FLU and forgot to make a CURE!" Natasha yelled, a stiletto knife in her hand dangerously close to his throat. "She almost DIED."
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I didn't know! Please don't kill me."
Natasha glared at him. Clint's glowering from the corner didn't help either.
"I'm sorry, I just wanted to test it..."
The door slammed open and a powerful figure in a t-shirt and jeans strode into the room, grabbing Morsten and pressing him against the wall. "Needless to say, you're under arrest for like twenty different things and you're never going to see the light of day again," Steve Rogers said, his tone cold steel as he glared. "You should be glad I came in when I did." He hauled him out, giving Natasha and Clint a moment to compose themselves before following him.
"For the record, we're doing stupidity tests for all personnel, effective immediately," Tony said flatly. "JARVIS, get on it right way. Call Pepper." He looked at Clint and Natasha. "This won't happen again."
Clint nodded in thanks.
The two of them went upstairs and found Sam, Bucky, and Allie babysitting Loki. They were showing him the wonderful world of television. Currently they were watching NCIS.
"These plots are so predictable," Loki was saying.
"That's not why you watch dem, silly," Allie said wisely, "you watch 'em for the funnies." She reached up and smacked Loki upside the head. "Gibbs slap!" she said cheerfully.
Clint laughed until he almost cried.