A/N: Wow, I've been totally blown away by the response to this! Thank you, guys! If you guessed Loki was the mystery prisoner, welp, you were right! I just have a thing for British guys named Tom, I guess, and I like them to be not dead.

Loki collapsed on the floor of the Commodore.

Maintaining a corporeal double of himself was exhausting, but on top of that, the Power Stone was somehow causing more of the effects of the strangulation to actually affect him. He struggled to keep the illusion up as Thanos finished strangling the double and threw the body to the ground.

Thor had gathered all those that could fight, but Loki had known they wouldn't be able to fend off Thanos themselves. Brunnhilde had taken the rest to the escape pods. Loki had doubled himself, and sent the double to fight while he released the pods along with the ship's trash and stores, hopefully concealing them from Thanos. And then he'd made a plan. And a backup plan.

He'd known what Thanos' end goal was, but he could not watch his brother's head get squeezed off.

Sentiment. He had it, buried deep. Very, very deep, but it was there. Not that he got any thanks for saving his brother's life.

Unfortunately, handing over the Tesseract had not curbed Thanos' lust for blood. Loki had been forced to intervene, with hidden knife and false promises. He'd known Thanos would be more likely to let Thor live if he died. Or if he thought he was dead.

He'd thought Thor would be less torn up about it. It wasn't the first time he'd "died", after all.

His brother sobbed, draped over his fake dead body, the weight strangely comforting. How long had it been since they'd exchanged a genuine hug?

How depressing that he was receiving it on his deathbed. Sort of.

Thor would be alright. He always was. Loki's last two 'deaths' had spurred him on, perhaps this one would do the same.

Loki didn't realized he'd been allowing too much of his double's sensory input in until purple light filled his senses, and he fell unconscious.

"Augh, Karen?" Peter groaned, picking himself up off the floor.

"Yes, Peter? How is your head?"

"Uh, it's alright, I guess," he said, trying to ignore the headache he had. He wasn't feeling dizzy, and the light wasn't bothering him, so he probably didn't have a concussion. The blue space cowboy-pirate had hit him in the stomach with whatever his space-weapon fired, though, and that hurt a lot more than his head at the moment.

The dude they'd thrown in was lying face-down in the middle of the cage, long black hair falling all around his head carelessly, and Peter cautiously moved toward him, crouching by his head. He was wearing a weird layered outfit of black and green leather, with some gold bits in there, too. Peter poked him. Nothing. Whatever they'd hit this guy with was worse than what he'd gotten.

Peter decided to flip him over. It was only polite, after all. He wouldn't like to wake up with his face mashed against the floor.

He turned out to be a LOT heavier than Peter thought he would be, but he finally managed to get him on his back.

"There, that's better, wait…" Peter looked at his face closely. "Karen, why does this guy look familiar?"

"That is Loki of Asgard, Thor's brother," Karen supplied helpfully.

"That's, uh, the guy that blew up Manhattan?" Peter asked nervously, hoping for a no.

"Yes," said Karen, at the same time as a smooth voice said, "I prefer 'destroyed large parts of'."

Peter gasped as he met the eyes of the very awake Loki.

"Sorry," he said, reflexively. Loki ignored him, and sat up, looking down at the cuffs that bound his arms. He cursed, at least, that's what it sounded like, in some alien language that Peter would have asked to teach him how to say if he wasn't scared of the dude at the moment.

Loki turned to him. "You are of Midgard?"

"Midgard?" Peter asked, confused.

"Midgard is the traditional Asgardian word for the planet Earth," Karen supplied helpfully.

"Oh! Yeah, yeah, Midgard," Peter said quickly. Loki looked intently at him for a moment.

"Has Thanos visited there yet?"

"Um, I dunno. What's he look like? There was a really huge guy and a weird looking skinny guy in a giant donut spaceship- "

"Stop," said Loki, and Peter fell silent. "That was Obsidian and Maw, Thanos' servants. Did they get the Time Stone?"

"No?" Peter honestly wasn't sure. He'd just jumped in and started fighting the bad guys. "The skinny guy took some dude with him to his ship, but Mr. Stark, uh, Ironman, I mean, he was following them."

"Yes, I know who Anthony Stark is," Loki murmured. "There is still time, then."

"Oh, okay, that's great," Peter said, not really sure anything actually was great at the moment.

"What is your name?" Loki demanded.

"Peter, um, I'm the Spiderman." He tried to look as confident as possible with a giant, painful bruise forming on his abdomen as he could. Loki seemed amused, but addressed him seriously.

"Very well, little spider. What do you say we get out of here?"

"We?"

"Do you wish to stay here?" Loki responded, with a derisive look around the room.

"No, I don't, of course not. I just thought, aren't you the bad guy?" His voice trailed off.

Loki barked a laugh that only sounded slightly insane. "It's entirely relative," he said casually. "Now, what exactly can you do, little Spider? These restraints stifle me."

Peter wasn't exactly comforted by the answer, but Loki seemed like his only way out at this point. He didn't see any other offers on the table, at least. And the space cowboy-pirates didn't speak english.

"I'm not little," he protested. That was the second time he'd called him that.

Loki looked at him derisively, "I have met spiders far bigger than you."

"Really? That's… fun?" Peter said, only able to picture the giant acromantula from Harry Potter, and they weren't his idea of fun.

"They can be bargained with," Loki said cryptically, although Peter heard him mutter something about Thor under his breath.

"I can shoot webs," Peter supplied, "and, uh, I stick to walls, basically, anything a spider does?"

Loki responded with a quiet hmm, contemplating the cuffs on his arms. Peter kept talking, nervously.

"The suit's new, though, hey, Karen, do I still have Droney?"

Loki's head whipped up to look at him so fast, Peter was concerned for his neck.

"Karen? There is someone else with you?" He addressed Peter incredulously.

"No, no. It's my suit, it has an AI, it's, uh, like a computer? Karen, can you project your voice?"

"Yes, Peter," Karen said, at a volume that Loki could hear. "You do still have a reconnaissance drone. You also have these."

Four giant, metallic spider-legs sprang out of Peter's back. He swayed backwards for a moment before regaining his balance.

"Woah, so awesome!" Peter exclaimed, running his hand over one of the legs. Loki did not appear to be impressed. It was really reminding Peter of MJ. That was weird. If the two of them met, though, that would be hilarious. MJ would probably just shrug and go back to the book of the day.

Peter shook his head. MJ was on Earth, and he was… definitely not, but working on it.

"You think maybe Taser-webs would work on those magic glowy cuffs?"

"What are 'Taser-webs'," Loki asked suspiciously.

"They're like, electric? They zap things."

Loki seemed to consider it for a moment, then held out his arms with a nod. Peter threw several webs at the middle section of the cuffs, careful to avoid contact with any skin.

"Activate Taser-webs, Karen," Peter said, and the AI complied immediately, the webs around the cuffs lighting up briefly as currents ran through them. Loki jerked as well, the electricity from the Taser-webs transmitting through the metal. The cuffs didn't release, but the weird glowy-ness disappeared.

"Sorry, I guess that didn't help all that much-" Peter started, but Loki was twisting his hands, green glowy tendrils emanating from them, and the cuffs promptly fell off.

"That's so cool! Are you like a wizard or something?"

"Or something," Loki agreed, with a genuine smile. "It's called seidr." Peter watched in fascination as Loki created a double of himself outside the bars, and it walked over to the panel that would open the door to their cage. He had about a million questions about magic, but they should probably wait until they weren't stuck on a space cowboy-pirate ship.

"Wait, do we have a plan? We're in the middle of space! You do have a spaceship somewhere, right?" Peter asked as he tried to figure out how to retract his Spider-Legs. He stumbled a little as the legs snapped into place onto his back.

"I always have a plan," smirked Loki.

The cage door clicked open.