Two weeks later and a sense of normalcy had almost returned to the tower.
Tony, relieved to have been given a project to occupy his time has spent hours a day busy designing and perfecting the exact specifications needed to accommodate Loki's differing biology to assure the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents constantly checking up on him that the tracker would do its job, aided, begrudgingly, by Loki himself. He'd even been able to work with some Asgardian metal to ensure reliability.
Now, under the watchful eye of a bald agent Tony was sure he'd seen around before, who had introduced himself as "Agent Sitwell", the small tracker was injected under the skin of Loki's lower arm.
In an attempt to lighten his friend's mood, Tony elbowed Loki as Sitwell left the room.
"At Least Fury wasn't here to rub it in,yeah?"
Loki glared at the small lump in his arm, scratching hard enough that Tony could see pinpoints of blood welling up on Loki's skin
"Is there a reason the Director was not here?"
Shrugging, Tony whacked Loki's hand away from the tracker.
"Don't scratch. And... I don't know, he's a busy man, y'know. At least we get to have some fun with those Ravagers tomorrow, live a little, kick some ass."
"You have a strange definition of "living a little", Tony."
"Don't bullshit me, I know you've been waiting for this for weeks."
Tony saw Loki smirk though he sounded vaguely defensive when he spoke.
"I have not! Someone could get hurt. I may have bargained a "no killing" deal but I couldn't haggle "no maiming" out of them."
Arching an eyebrow, Tony responded quickly, eager to learn more about the group.
"Fun. So… what do these Ravager guys do usually? I mean, other than attack people for money."
Loki leapt to a standing position, rolling down his sleeve to cover the tracker while he talked.
"Just about anything. Heard whispers they did something big recently, something that got a lot of attention from a deal of powerful beings, made a statement. Which is wonderful timing for our stunt. Although I didn't hire the whole fleet, just a few ships. Wish I had been able to find out what they did, my contact simply would not tell me… I'll have to do some digging- oh, wait, I'm on too tight a leash now to do such a thing."
Unwilling to indulge Loki's obvious play at sympathy, Tony frowned without a trace of sympathy.
"Sorry pal, thems the rules now."
The agent, Sitwell, entered the room again, eyeing Loki with suspicion. He turned his back to the god, and, much to Tony's discomfort, took his arm in a tight grasp.
"Mr. Stark, thank you for doing this for us. It takes a load off our back, you know. And I must apologize but… there is another thing we would be wondering if you would help us with, a project that we could use your expertise with."
Still uncomfortable, Tony glanced over to Loki, looking for a way out of the situation, who raised his eyebrows unhelpfully.
"Uh… sure, just get Fury to brief me or something…"
Much to Tony's relief, Sitwell let go of his arm and smiled.
"Great, I'll have someone brief you shortly."
00000
It felt strange, knowing everyone would walk away from a mission.
The team lounged around on couches, decked out in their respective gear, save Bruce who had opted out to avoid unnecessary casualties.
Loki stared out at the city, tuning out the conversations going on around him, scratching absentmindedly at the tracker embedded in his arm. Something hit his face and brought him back to awareness. He glanced down at the crumpled paper ball that had stricken him then up to the culprit; Tony, helmet off, looking at him expectantly.
"No. Scratching."
Muttering a few choice words to himself, Loki turned away from Tony. Deigning instead to listen to Steve, who was repeating the guidelines of their deal with the Ravagers.
"No casualties, on either side, that includes civilians. Minimal structural damage. At least six ships coming. We can't totally disable said ships. They have to put up a convincing fight. They can't abduct any citizens or… ugh- or eat anyone… I can't believe we're working with the kind of people where that needs to be a rule."
Loki grinned at Steve's exasperation.
Just then an explosion from some distant place above them rattled the tower.
Tony leapt up, crying out.
"Awh, come on! Why is it always my stuff!?"
As glass and concrete fell past the windows, Steve gave their signal.
"Let's get out there! Loki, stop that rubble!"
Loki nodded and focused on the street below, appearing just in time to slow the debris. Glass clattered harmlessly to the street, concrete chunks gently touched the ground. Around him people cried out in shock, many ran for cover before he could order them to.
Large ships of differing colors hovered above the tower.
A loud voice cut above the city noise, sounding from the lead ship.
"Let's see what you got, jackasses!"
Seconds later the offending ship was engulfed in a hail of bullets as the Quinjet flew into view. The Ravager ships broke formation and Loki watched them spread throughout the city.
Closely pursuing one of them was Tony, who fired off what Loki assumed was a barrage of missiles, which exploded on impact. The ship turned sharply, facing off against Tony, who also came to an abrupt halt.
A spray of bullets cut short Loki's spectating as a different ship beared down on him, flying low to the street and weaving around stopped cars with extreme accuracy. He grinned, summoning two light imitations of himself that took off running in opposite directions down nearby streets. He turned and began to run down the road, taking advantage of the ship's temporary uncertainty. The roar of the Ravager's ship grew closer and he slid on his knees, watching the ship pass over him harmlessly.
Leaping to his feet, Loki smirked as the ship pulled to a halt and turned to make another pass. He began a light jog as the ship revved its engines. With a quick glance to the rooftops above him he prepared himself as the Ravager began to speed up.
From above the Ravager his two light clones jumped from the rooftops. Still running, Loki watched the ship slow and swerve in an attempt to avoid his mirrors. Running up the hood of a car and leaping toward the ship, he dissipated the two doubles and landed lightly on the glass window of the craft.
The two man crew inside locked eyes with him for a moment and he winked at them as he passed. He grabbed onto one of the fins of the ship as it bucked to the side, ignoring how the colored metal dug into his hands. Summoning a fistful of ice, Loki lobbed it into the right engine of the ship, stalling out the rotor blade, forcing the ship to a skidding halt on the street below, clipping a few cars as it did.
Loki flipped off the ship and landed with a crunch of asphalt.
Out from the Ravager craft emerged her crew, one of which Loki recognized, with a small measure of shock, as their blue skinned leader. He spit on the ground, eyes skimming over the damaged rotor before pivoting to face Loki and whistling, the metal fin on his head began to glow.
Before Loki could move, something extremely fast flew from the waist of the Ravager leader and pierced him through the stomach. He doubled over in pain and surprise as he heard the Ravager's boots crunch towards him. Conjuring a knife, Loki swung it towards the leader's legs. The hole in Loki's stomach rendered his swing much weaker than intended and he managed to only partially cut through his opponent's boot.
The Ravager leader spoke in a raspy grumble as he kicked at Loki, landing a solid hit in the stomach.
"You don't mess with my ship like that, boy. I just got her all fixed up again."
Tasting blood in his mouth, Loki rolled away from his assailants kicks, ignoring his screaming wound, and hissed back at him.
"It was just ice… it'll be fine. Was the- the arrow really necessary?"
With a suspicious narrowed eye the Ravager responded, still going through the motions of their struggle but no longer landing any hits.
"If you say so, boy. And I told you, no one messes with Yondu's ship and doesn't pay for it. Even if you did give me that nice new bauble."
Before Loki could reply, thunder shook the sky and Thor landed next to him, swatting Yondu back towards his ship with a light hit from Mjolnir. Thor turned, with a look of concern, to look at Loki, staring at the bleeding wound in his midsection.
"Are you alright, brother?"
Grunting as he stood, Loki threw him a withering look.
"Oh I'm stunning… It should be fine it's already healing and he could have done much worse with that… thing. How many of them have we "scared off?""
"Only a few more left, I believe."
As if to prove him correct, another Ravager ship flew above their heads, pursued by the Quinjet.
Loki grimaced as he held a hand to his stomach in an attempt to stop the bleeding of his slowly healing wound.
"I'd say this is all turning out to be a rousing success."
Thor nodded and prepared to take off again but Loki stopped him, holding out a bloodied hand and pointing toward a nearby rooftop.
"Drop me off there."
An arched eyebrow from Thor annoyed Loki enough to warrant a curt justification.
"Oh, I'm sorry, normally I'd love to not need your help. However; the gaping hole in my stomach might disagree with that at the present moment. Must I do everything myself?"
Shrugging, Thor hooked an arm around him and took off.
After being set down, with some displeasure from his damaged gut, Loki watched Thor leap off the roof, intercepting a Ravager ship mid flight, throwing it off course and out of Loki's line of sight.
He turned to survey the rest of the city, picking out the three remaining "undefeated" ships. One being pursued by the Quinjet, the other bucked into view some distance away with Thor on top, and the last followed closely by Tony.
"Hmm…I wonder if the same trick would work twice…"
Still clutching his wound with one hand, he reasoned out the path of the ship, picking a far off rooftop to send a light copy to. He moved to lean against the roof access door, wincing as he twisted his body that was busy knitting itself back together.
As the ship approached, diving and dodging to avoid Tony's fire, Loki prepared his double. Though he couldn't see his double when it jumped, he saw the results. The Ravager ship slowed and swerved up, almost causing Tony to collide with it.
Taking advantage of the situation, Tony surrounded himself and the ship in a cloud of smoke and shrapnel. Moments later, Tony emerged from the smoke cloud, diving below Loki's eye level quickly after. The Ravager ship spiraled upwards, leaving trails of smoke as it fled the city.
Satisfied and more than slightly fatigued, Loki let himself fall to a sitting position. Closing his eyes, he let himself settle into a meditative like state, ignoring the distant explosions and gunshots and focusing on his wound.
Through his meditative haze he vaguely heard a voice call his name.
"Loki! Loki!"
A rough slap to the face jolted him to consciousness. Jumping up, he reflexively lashed out, conjuring a dagger in a split second. Metal scraped across metal and shouts ensued.
"You tried to stab me!"
The familiarity of the voice flung Loki out of his fear response and he got his bearings as he looked around.
The Avengers stood before him, Tony, helmet off, looked offended, clearly the receiver of the dagger's swipe.
Loki's surprise skipped relief and turned quickly to annoyance.
"It's not as if you couldn't expect me to react to a slap to the face. Was that really necessary?"
Tony, still looking put out, didn't respond, instead busying himself by inspecting the scuffed paint where the dagger had struck his shoulder. His silence left Steve to speak, shaking his head slightly as he did, a tired but soft smile on his face.
"You left a pretty nasty looking bloodstain on that wall. Someone had to make sure you were still in the land of the living."
"Surely you could see me breathing?"
Steve's grin widened guiltily and Loki stood up in a huff as he shot them all a venomous glare.
"Alright then, if you all are done acting like children; have the Ravagers left?"
The general consensus was that the Ravagers had taken off after each of their ships had been damaged externally. Last to leave was a ship that matched the description of Yondu's, who had apparently gotten off a few potshots on the Quinjet and tower just before he had disappeared.
"Everything considered, I think we pulled it off pretty well. Looks like they kept their end of the bargain, we'll know for sure once S.H.I.E.L.D. ensures there were no civilian injuries. If this does for us what you think it will, Loki, we may be the most secure I think I've ever seen the Earth since- too long."
Steve concluded, a strange silence fell among the group as they contemplated the idea.
00000
New projects and interests quieted the tower as people came and went, travelling constantly. Some days Loki could walk through the tower aimlessly, empty of all living beings save for himself.
A streak of relative peace on a scale needing their full attention had left them, as a team, with a sense of security and more than enough free time. The peace loosened the rigid training schedule they had all set for themselves, there were days Loki never looked up from a book or project, save to fetch a glass of water from his sink. On the occasion that enough of them were in the same place at the same time; they would talk late into the night. But for the most part Loki's days grew silent.
Even Thor, his most common company, left occasionally on extended forays, often to Asgard and beyond. Thor's logic stemmed as the work being a sort of apology for Loki's stealing of the Tesseract and his covering it up. Every time Thor would leave he would inquire if Loki wished to accompany him, but Loki never accepted.
The tiny tracker in Loki's arm was an ever present force in his life. It influenced all his decisions and grounded him. While Steve, Natasha, and Clint were off doing other work for S.H.I.E.L.D., and Tony was building the facility to house the gems, and Bruce was holding conferences and speaking at universities about his research, Loki was stationary. He knew he was being monitored, his movements watched constantly by some insidious agent on the receiving end of the tracker's data. Should he visit any of his old stomping grounds they would be compromised. The one thing he felt he could do to preserve the last vestiges of his many secrets was to ignore them.
Sleet fell past his windows as Loki set down one of the many security briefings Natasha sent him on a regular basis. He arched his back and stood. From his view high above the streets, the city seemed as foreign and distant as it ever had.
There was an itch in the recesses of his mind, the two gems that had yet to be moved. Shoving away the thoughts, he massaged his arm, glancing down at the deep purple bruise that had developed around the tracker. Mimicking Tony's voice bitterly, Loki pressed down harder on the bruise.
"No touching… Pshh…"
Before he could stew in his own bitterness a buzzing noise rang out and Jarvis interrupted his musings.
"Sir, I have received a message from Mr. Stark. He wishes to inform you that he will be returning tonight for a short period of time and that, in his words, "I managed to steal Steve and Nat from D.C. for the night. So get some dinner ready, you hermit." Those were his exact words, sir. If you are not willing to cook I could order-"
"No, no it is fine, that gives me something to do. Thank you, Jarvis."
Against his more resentful inclinations, Loki felt glad for the company he would soon have. He swept out of the room, contemplating what he would make and attempting to remember when he had last eaten.
AN: This final chapter has been sitting finished on my phone for weeks im terrible at time management. So, this story comes to a close and it may not be all that hard to guess where the next will go with certain references in this last chapter. When I do start writing that, though, it might be a while. Adapting my favorite marvel movie into this universe is not something im undertaking lightly. When I do that I'm going to give it my all. Leave comments if you want, its much appreciated for my motivation levels.