5.
. . .
Loki looked down at his phone as he left the corner office several hours later, reading the text message and baring his teeth meaninglessly. Coulson was ahead of him, looking as tired and bedraggled as he felt. His own head felt like it was full of spreadsheets and Excel-based schedules, and now the irritation was coming back afresh. "Well, that was working out. But now I've got a Turkish diplomat that wants to shift their security appointment with me. Difficulty, their next open window is forty-five minutes after an appointment I've got with the Brussels team that I cannot move, and also there's the bit where, to even pull it off, I'd have to teleport without causing a scene."
"Kick it back to Mack. I think he's got a spare guy they can put on it."
"My tag is on all the damn forwards, they'll be looking for me specifically."
"We'll put a wig on the spare guy. We'll handle it." Coulson stopped before the elevator, waiting for it to open up. "Your brother's up on two."
Loki looked up from his phone, surprised. "What in Hel is he still doing here?"
"I had Daisy give him something to do while we figured out how to wiggle the schedule. I know you figured he'd wander off on the lightning fantastic while we did it, but we corralled him to save a step. Go talk to him." Loki was still staring down at him. "I don't care what you say to each other at first, but in my experience, if you just stay pissed off and he stays depressed and neither of you get to work on this immediately, everyone's gonna fester and you'll both just get madder and sadder. Same day action. I know you said it's alien to you. It really helps."
Loki rolled his eyes. "If you want to help, find me a cannon big enough to put an old king in."
"You know he's probably listening to you, right? He and Heimdall are probably sitting on a big, nasty, Asgardian couch eating Asgardian popcorn, getting husks in their teeth, and watching the family drama."
"That's really not how it works."
"Okay, probably not. But are you sure?"
The glower, set at a low simmer, said Loki wasn't, and also 'screw you for lodging the possibility in my head.'
Coulson grinned at him. "Daisy put him on the phone bank. They're usually getting the good calls right about now."
. . .
"Uhhh." Thor checked the printed routing list again, coming up empty on what to do and approaching the kind of bureaucratic desperation he typically tried his whole life to avoid. It was Loki's thing, and it struck him again with miserable force that he was most definitely trespassing in Loki's, well, realm.
He swiveled in the chair with the corded phone still pressed to his ear, looking for Miss Daisy. Daisy was on the far side of the room, talking to someone else with a giant cereal bowl cradled in their arms like a baby, and her back was to him. He swapped the phone to his other hand and felt around for something he could safely toss at her to get attention. Meanwhile, he fought for time to enable that rescue. His tone was conciliatory, genteel, and more than a little strained. "Madame. Madame?"
'Madame' was a rickety-sounding old woman who had just finished listening to a terribly exciting late night radio program, and the topic of the evening had struck a nerve inside her. Now she was looking for a target.
The voice in his ear continued to drone on angrily. He'd long since lost the thread of it.
"Madame, please. I'm looking for someone to connect you with, but I'm new here and I'm not quite sure of the procedure on, uh, ancient… astronauts." He shook his head, the next muttered to himself. "Least I'm fairly certain none of us were in that part of Arkansas around then."
The voice kicked up a few decibels in his ear, implying that the old woman on the other line had nothing wrong with her hearing. Thor's hand fumbled across a stapler, then immediately let it go. No, he'd wind up accidentally putting staples all across the far wall. He needed something harmless. Something lighter.
The voice in his ear became somehow even more peevish, and something about the tone made it clear the woman thought he, personally, some anonymous figure answering a phone in the guts of a brutalist underground facility, was at fault. "Sonny, I know you people at SHIELD are holding out on the world. We let you get away with this nonsense enough times, but my father served in the war and I can tell you… Well! We've known for a long time you people were holding back on something, and I want to speak to a supervisor and-"
With a thrill of victory, Thor fumbled across a rubber stress ball in a top drawer. Daisy could help him get this person off the damned line before he gave up and told her to take it up with the Kree and that he'd personally arrange the flight. Via Bifrost. No seatbelts or refunds.
He aimed for the girl, then calculated how much of his own strength to hold back.
The phone was very gently plucked from his hand. Thor froze, startled. "Terribly sorry. I'm the floor supervisor," came a drawling voice with just a hint of softly buffed gravel. "I see. I see. Well, I'll have one of my assistants take your concerns straight to the top. Can we send someone over to talk to you? Yes, ma'am. I've got a helicopter on standby right now. Yes, a black one. No, you don't think that's funny? I do."
Click.
"Oh my god, Loki." The sound of him abruptly hanging up got Daisy's attention away from her friend. Thor stayed where he was, silent, metaphorically sandwiched between the two agents, a slab of ham facing the deli slicer. "What did you do?"
"I handled a call." Loki sounded bored.
"What was her deal?"
"Ancient astronauts," managed Thor, still generally baffled with the whole thing. He looked up at the young woman.
"Oh." Daisy looked down at him, then at Loki. "Eh, forget it."
"She's not going to-"
Daisy patted Thor's shoulder. "Nah, dude. It's all good." She looked at the brothers again, clearly sensing a change in the wind. "I'm gonna go get coffee."
"You, uh, just went for coffee," said Thor.
Daisy looked into at her still-full mug, then back at him, chirping cheerfully. "Yup. Needs a warm-up. AC is real chilly up here."
The single bead of sweat on Thor's forehead determined that was a lie.
"Have fun, dudes!"
When she left, all that was left was the sound of a single squeaky wheel from the chair under Thor. It took what was either about ten seconds or fifty years before Thor looked up at Loki.
Loki was looking back at him with that deceptively mild, sedate expression that historically meant something else entirely, but Thor was never quite sure what that else was. The tone of voice was a perfect match. "I feel like we just did this."
"Don't necessarily have to do it again. Uh, I was just… helping with the… calls." Thor gestured vaguely at the desk in front of him, still not quite sure what to think of his time as a phone bank grunt.
"Seems like it was educational."
"Is the whole planet this damned weird when I'm not looking?"
"Yes. I'm not sure if it's peculiarly charming, or if I've adapted into a new kind of madness to deal with it." Loki splayed his hand on the surface of the desk, using it to prop himself in an awkward looking lean. Thor still couldn't read the truth of his expression. "I'm not apologizing."
"Loki, I don't need one." Thor sighed as the chair squeaked again. He rolled a few inches, circling lightly. "I knew it would be difficult to talk to you, considering."
"And you tried anyway." Still that mild, neutral tone. Gods, Thor hated that voice. It was obviously why he was using it. "Interesting."
"Anyway." Thor rolled the chair back towards the desk, wincing as the squeak hit a new high point. "I didn't mean to intrude. Miss Daisy explained a little of what's going on, and knowing that human politics can be, well, a bit complicated, I-"
"I've adjusted my schedule somewhat." The words came out flat enough to hit Thor like a brick. Loki wasn't looking at him any longer. "You'll have to deal with the fact that I'm going to be attached to my phone like an Arcturian prickle-boar, but I can travel in short bursts. Short, I emphasize. Humanly short. Daytripping, as Coulson put it." Loki sighed, heavy and put upon and deliberately dramatic. "When you came here, you implied you had some ideas on how to proceed further on your personal investigation?"
"Er, yes."
"And you were looking for help."
"I was, Loki, but-"
"It's fine." It mostly sounded like it was, the calm, flat brick of Loki's voice softening a bit. The wheel squeaked again. The AC continued to be nonexistent. "Does any of this end with drop-kicking Odin over a valley?"
Thor couldn't help sounding amused. This was the quickest the family strife had settled down. That was remarkable. Humans. Gods, he loved them. "I thought you two were generally making up."
"We are. It doesn't mean I am not going to feel the exhaustion to the marrow of my bones when I find out he's long-term ruined something else for everyone. Again." Loki straightened up. "That said, I still know a lovely old folks home. He quite liked playing gin rummy there, I was told. The nurses liked him. Life was simpler. Do it right, it'll be simpler for all of us this time."
Thor chuckled, the small awkward laugh of a man that knows he shouldn't laugh at that in any public setting but damned if he didn't sort of understand even if he didn't entirely approve.
"Get away from that stupid desk before that one idiot calls in about demon possessed guinea pigs again. We'll discuss this after I make a quick visit back downstairs."
. . .
Mack didn't often get to hang with people in his own general height range at SHIELD. It was one of the odder reasons he never minded being on a job with Loki. Fewer neck kinks, same exhaustion at the creaky old 'how's the weather up there' jokes, and the guy was always solid backup when things got hot.
Bringing Thor in made him feel the rarest of emotions: vaguely intimidated. But only vaguely. Still wearing a handful of denim items that had been the fashion rage in '84, and looking a bit awkward next to his adopted brother, Thor seemed perfectly willing to seem like a generic, if heroically massive, dude for a few minutes. He leaned against a far wall, quiet, watching Loki work.
"So you've got Martens on the Turkish thing?" Loki curled a piece of paper by way of turning a page. The pen in his other hand scratched across that next page.
"Yeah, Coulson's signing it out. If they give us guff at the hand-off, I'll kick it to him. He just texted me to say he's getting ready to put the screws on Talbot to give us some more manpower on this, too. Said something about how this is why he builds up patience with the guy. Gives him currency when it matters."
"Having to look at that haircut would be painful enough to warrant some wriggle, I'd think." Another pen scratch, another dotted line. "In any case, better he deal with Talbot than I."
"Yeah, some of your, uh, past talks with Director Mace have already passed into legend." Mack paused for a moment of silence. In the end, he'd liked Mace a surprising amount. The man had tried his best with what he had. Nothing about how the Framework had gone down, what scars it left behind, was fair. "So, where you guys jaunting off to first? Anyplace cool?"
"I don't know," said Loki. "I just threw myself at this fairly blindly, which is the tradition in our family." His voice raised to carry over his shoulder. "Where are we going?"
"Alfheim."
Loki froze, his mental DVR stuck on a very visible pause. Mack watched the blankness fill his eyes before he shook it off again. "Alfheim?" He turned to look at Thor, the pen hanging loose in his hand. "I haven't been there since mage training for a few decades at one of the academies, and I don't think you've ever been."
Thor shrugged with his arms crossed. "Their scholars keep duplicates of certain of our more important texts, among other storages."
"So they do…" Loki glanced at Mack as if he had any sort of input he could add to this.
Mack looked back, doing his best to telepathically get across that he was already half mentally jettisoned out of this conversation due to his own complete lack of usefulness. Half. It was still pretty interesting to rubberneck it.
"They supposedly have a copy of Asgard's genealogies. One I can actually access without going through Odin."
"Oh my gods, you wanted me along to help with library work." Loki frowned. Mack took a reasonable guess that he was reassessing why he sounded affronted. "All right, fair."
That left another question. "What's in Alfheim? Small furry dudes that eat cats?"
Both men looked at Mack, blank.
"Okay, real old reference. Kinda surprised they haven't rebooted it yet. Anyway. Asgard's got human-style godpeople, Jotunheim's giants, what's Alfheim?"
"Elves," said Loki, with a slight undertone of distaste.
Thor furrowed his brow. "I always thought you liked them well enough, Loki."
"Most people there are fine. The bureaucracy is shit, the academies are nothing but bureaucracy now, and while they made the correct choice allowing the Tuatha and the Oberonese refugees there during the Midgardian Fey Sundering a few centuries ago, Oberon himself has apparently just been an absolute pain in the ass to everyone. It's no surprise his wife left him." Loki shook his head. "You missed Odin's screaming fit four hundred and seventy-three years ago, didn't you?"
"Er." Thor cleared his throat. "You know they all tend to run together after a point."
"Yeah, an Oberonese emissary was trying to make a power play behind Queen Aelsa's back." Loki sounded tired. "Not a rare thing in Alfheim. It's been a tradition for millennia. This one went just great for Oberon. He got out of prison last century. The realms' leaders are all on tenterhooks for his next stupid stunt. They're overdue."
"Um."
On the bright side, Thor looked as lost as Mack felt. He tried to cut in. "So is any of that going to cause a problem for you two?"
"We'll find out." Loki shut the folder he'd been finalizing his signatures in. "One thing's for certain, I expect I won't be seeing any less paperwork on this leg of the trip."
