more avengers fic (that I am not writing)
Dec. 9th, 2012 12:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardFollow-up to this. (I am not writing this! It does not have a plot! It does not exist! Or something.)
For lack of any better ideas, and since none of the cells at SHIELD are equipped to hold Loki despite their best intentions (and significant effort), they take Loki back to Avengers Tower with them. Well, that, and the fact that in theory Loki’s a friendly, but even if he isn’t, the safest place for him to be is with the rest of them. Pepper, whom Natasha silently contends is probably a minor saint, takes Loki’s arrival in stride and tells them upon arrival that a guest room has been prepared on the top floor. The top floor is where Thor’s suite is, which Loki appears to realize, if the wince he makes is any indication. It’s a tactically sound strategy; Thor’s the only one of them who has a chance to contain Loki if he decides to get frisky.
Loki seems to realize this as well, looking around the wide, airy guest room with his hands tucked into the pockets of his perfectly tailored suit. “Naturally,” he remarks, “none of my things are here.”
Tony raises his eyebrows. “You can borrow a toothbrush.”
Loki snorts. “Dental hygiene was hardly what I was referring to.”
“I am sure that Tony can acquire replacements for your possessions, brother,” Thor says eagerly. “For the time being, at least.”
“I’m not Amazon!” Tony protests.
Loki hasn’t even looked at Thor since he’d realized that Thor – their Thor – wasn’t actually his brother. Instead he crosses the room to the sleek glass table against one wall and picks up the phone, looking at it thoughtfully. They all lean forward, hands falling towards their weapons, as if Loki’s going to dial 1-800-APOCALYPSE. He raises an eyebrow at them.
“I’m just ordering pizza,” he says mildly. “I’m sure Mr. Stark can cover the bill, since I don’t suppose that my credit card will work here.”
“Your – credit card?” Natasha says before she can stop herself.
Loki raises his eyebrows, his voice with that deceptive mildness that Natasha hates. “What?” he says. “Doesn’t SHIELD pay Thor a salary? How shameful.”
“This is just too weird,” Clint says, turning away. “I’m outta here.”
“Very well, I won’t have them add eggplant,” Loki says, and that really is too weird, because Loki of all people shouldn’t know Clint’s favorite pizza topping.
Tony shakes his head. “Just – stay here and try not to be the ultimate evil,” he says, and they all – even Thor, who pauses and stares hopefully at Loki while Loki places his pizza order and studiously ignores him – retreat into the hallway. JARVIS locks the door without even having to be told, though Natasha doesn’t think that’s exactly going to stop Loki for more than, oh, half a second.
“So Loki’s here,” Tony says, not for the first time that day. “Well, a Loki. Not the Loki. Is it weirder that he’s here or that there’s a universe out there where he’s an Avenger?”
“A universe where Loki’s an Avenger and Thor’s a supervillain?” Steve says.
Thor makes a small, tight motion with his mouth. “It is – believable,” he admits, sounding reluctant.
All of them look at him. Thor won’t look at them straight on, either, which isn’t encouraging.
“Christ,” Tony says.
They tromp down to the kitchen, where Bruce meets them. “Hey, so,” he says. “Pepper and I ordered some pizza. I figured we deserved it.”
“You and Loki,” Tony says, which makes Bruce stare at him.
“Loki –”
“– also ordered pizza, yeah. Who knew, right?”
“Well, that’s…wrong,” Bruce says.
Thor makes an indistinct gesture and slumps into a kitchen chair, thumping Mjolnir down onto the table. Bruce makes a pained “no weapons on the table!” expression, but under the circumstances refrains from actually saying as much.
Steve sits down beside him, while Natasha goes to the freezer to get the vodka and pour shots for everyone. “So Loki’s an Avenger,” he says again.
“Drink up,” Natasha says, sliding the glasses out across the table with a flick of her wrists.
They do, not quite in unison, and Natasha passes the bottle off to Tony when he makes grabby hands at it. Nice as it sounds, she doesn’t take the second offered shot; Tony is the only one who does.
“This is probably the question that should have been asked before we brought him home,” Bruce says, “but are we sure that he’s not actually, uh, our Loki?”
For some reason, they all look at Thor, who’s playing with his Empire State Building souvenir shot glass. It looks absurdly tiny in his big hands. “I am certain that he is not our foe,” he says, when he realizes that he’s being stared at it. “And he does not –” He swallows. “He seems more like the brother I knew before his madness, than the brother I know now.”
“Which means –” Tony prods.
Thor blinks at him. “He was a good man and a fell warrior. There was no one that I would rather have had at my side in battle.” His voice goes low. “I did not realize how used I was to his presence until he was gone.”
Steve rubs his hand over his jaw, his eyes gone soft with understanding.
“Yeah, but come on,” Tony says, because he doesn’t know when to shut up. “An Avenger, really? And like Thor could ever be a supervillain.”
“Aren’t you one mental break away from being a supervillain, Stark?” Clint says, leaning back in his chair and putting one foot on the edge of Natasha’s. She looks at it, but doesn’t push him away, watching him spin his bow between his hands.
“Hey!” Tony protests.
“So what do we do with him?” Bruce asks practically. “I mean, if he is an Avenger, he’s not just going to be content to sit back and wait in the wings when the next crisis rolls around, is he?”
They stare at him. He looks uncomfortable. “I mean, none of us would, right?” he goes on. “Even in another universe?”
“You think he’s – what?” Clint says. “You think he’s going to want to help out? Loki? I mean, even if he’s – good – you really think he’s going to just help out?”
“Wouldn’t you?” says Natasha, as the only one here who might have some kind of idea what Loki’s going through. Not that their situations are at all similar, and even though SHIELD has a protocol for this kind of thing, she doesn’t really hope that she ends up in Loki’s shoes.
Clint makes a horrible face, reaches for the bottle of vodka, and pours himself a second shot. He drains it in one gulp.
“Even if he wants to, we can’t exactly have a supervillain – even if he isn’t one – running around in the field,” Steve says practically. “The media will have a field day.”
“And that jackass Loki – our Loki – will probably show up too,” Stark says.
Thor looks like he’s going to say something, then thinks better of it and stares at his empty shot glass instead, spinning it on the rim.
“Pizza’s here,” Pepper says, coming in with a teetering stack of boxes. “There’s also one for a Mr. Odinson –”
“That’s mine,” Loki says, appearing in front of the refrigerator without even a shimmer of green light as warning. Natasha has a gun cleared of its holster and pointed at him before she has time to think about it. Clint has his sidearm out too.
Tony puts a hand over his arc reactor. “Don’t do that!” he says. “I’m going to put a bell on you.”
Loki glares at him. “You can try,” he says, intercepting Pepper and taking his pizza box off the top of the stack.
“Brother, will you join us for our meal?” Thor says nobly, as Pepper puts the pizza down on the table.
“No,” Loki says and vanishes, taking his pizza with him.
*
Since this Loki is, in theory, an ally and not enemy, they don’t take him back to SHIELD to be interrogated and debriefed. Instead Natasha and Coulson sit down with him in one of the Tower’s numerous unused rooms – one of the ones with an observation window that Loki makes immediately, through which the rest of the team is undoubtedly watching.
“Coffee?” Coulson offers, pouring himself and Natasha cups.
Loki stretches his long legs out. He’s, disconcertingly, in jeans and an emerald green silk shirt. Natasha can count on one hand the number of times she’s seen their Loki in normal clothes; usually he shows up in all his caped and horned glory, complete with an aura of general crazy that’s lacking from this Loki.
“No, thank you,” he says, every inch the gracious prince that Thor can be.
“Anything else?” Coulson says, setting his mug down and waiting expectantly by the bar cart they’d rolled in.
“Tea would be nice,” Loki says, raising one dark eyebrow. “I presume you only have the bags, aside from Agent Romanov’s personal stash.”
Well, that’s just disturbing.
“Don’t worry, Agent,” he says, turning to her. “I won’t trouble you to raid it. The Darjeeling will be fine, Agent Coulson. Two sugars, just a splash of milk.”
Coulson doesn’t show a flicker of emotion, but he makes Loki’s tea and hands it to him before sliding into the seat next to Natasha. She drinks her coffee (black, like her soul, as Clint says) while she listens to the quiet click of Loki’s spoon as he stirs his tea around. “So, Mister – Odinson, is it?” he begins.
“That’s my name,” Loki says, with a hint of amusement. “I presume that my counterpart doesn’t call himself that.”
“He’s been quite vocal about the subject,” Coulson says.
“I see,” Loki says, and blows on his tea. “You may call me Loki, unless you find that that disturbs you for personal reasons.”
Coulson doesn’t blink. Natasha used to think that Coulson never blinked, and she and Clint used to have a bet on when he’d do it during any given op. He’d won, more often than not.
“All right, Loki,” he says. “What can you tell me about New Mexico?”
Loki’s eyes sharpen, without that deceptive mildness that Natasha had seen earlier. “New Mexico is where my brother fell to Earth when my father cast him out, two of your years ago. Mjolnir fell not far from where he did; SHIELD has a facility there now, built around the hammer.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“On occasion. My father likes me to check on Mjolnir. See if my brother has come to his senses and returned for it with the capability to lift it. Thor comes. He can’t, yet.”
“Can’t what?” Natasha asks.
Loki’s gaze moves to her. “Lift the hammer,” he says. “I’m sure you are aware that it has a worthiness clause, Agent Romanov. Perhaps you’ve even tried to lift it yourself and failed.” His gaze slides aside and he takes a sip of his tea. “My father is convinced that his banishment didn’t break my brother completely. One day – perhaps tomorrow, perhaps centuries from now – Thor will recover from his madness and once again be able to take up Mjolnir and his rightful place in Asgard. Until then, my parents have to settle for me. Which is a bit awkward, as technically I’m banished as well, but there have to be exceptions made for unusual cases.”
“Why were you banished?” Coulson asks.
“A small matter,” Loki says. “It is irrelevant. Don’t look so glum, Agent Romanov, it’s only for a century or two – unless of course I manage to bring Thor back into the loving embrace of Asgard and righteousness and, oh, hugging kittens.”
Natasha raises her eyebrows. “So where is Thor now? Your Thor?”
“In our own universe and thus none of your concern,” Loki says, his mouth tightening. “For which you ought to consider yourself lucky.”
“Does the name ‘the Destroyer’ mean anything to you?” Coulson asks.
“One of Asgard’s cruder weapons. My brother managed to gain access to it last year and transport it to Earth, where it breached the New Mexico facility in an attempt to regain Mjolnir. It failed.”
“Huh,” Coulson says, writing something down on his legal pad.
“I presume that’s not what occurred in this universe,” Loki says blandly.
“No.”
Loki quirks an eyebrow, waiting, but Coulson doesn’t elucidate and Natasha doesn’t step in. “Tell us about the Chitauri,” she says instead.
Loki’s mouth goes tight. “You already seem to be familiar with them. I doubt that any of the regrettably little information I have on them will illuminate the situation further.”
Coulson smiles, bland and polite. “Humor us.”
Loki taps his fingers on his mug, clearly considering the matter. “Oh, very well,” he says abruptly. “There are many beings in the universe, far more than your puny mortal minds can begin to comprehend. Far more than even Asgard is aware of. The Chitauri were one such. When my brother was exiled to Earth, they approached him. Even stripped of his powers, any Asgardian is a force to be reckoned with, and my brother yet had his godhood. He was weak from the banishment, angry at me, at the All-Father – ripe for the plucking. They offered him rule over Asgard and Midgard both in exchange for the Tesseract, and gave him new powers.” He shrugs. “He came to Earth to retrieve it, using the Tesseract to bring a Chitauri army with him. They were repulsed, Thor was imprisoned in Asgard, and the Chitauri freed him again.” His mouth tightens. “I do not know what they want with him now that the Tesseract is out of his reach.”
“Interesting,” Coulson says. “The Chitauri approached Thor on Earth, you say?”
“I wasn’t there,” Loki says sharply. “If I had been, perhaps we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Coulson looks like he’s about to reply, but at that point the emergency alert goes off on their phones. “Go for Coulson,” he says, cupping his hand to his ear as he and Natasha both rise.
“It’s New Mexico,” Hill says over the comms. “Iron Man and Thor are inbound. The jet will be arriving at the Tower momentarily. Under no circumstances is our guest to join you.”
“Understood, ma’am,” Steve says.
Coulson turns back to Loki, who had stood up when the alert had gone off. “I’m afraid you’ll have to remain here,” he says, smiling politely. “Please do not leave the Tower.”
“You may need my assistance,” Loki says, his green eyes cool and calculating.
“We’ve managed all right so far,” Natasha says, pulling the door open. “But thanks for the offer.”
*
For lack of any better ideas, and since none of the cells at SHIELD are equipped to hold Loki despite their best intentions (and significant effort), they take Loki back to Avengers Tower with them. Well, that, and the fact that in theory Loki’s a friendly, but even if he isn’t, the safest place for him to be is with the rest of them. Pepper, whom Natasha silently contends is probably a minor saint, takes Loki’s arrival in stride and tells them upon arrival that a guest room has been prepared on the top floor. The top floor is where Thor’s suite is, which Loki appears to realize, if the wince he makes is any indication. It’s a tactically sound strategy; Thor’s the only one of them who has a chance to contain Loki if he decides to get frisky.
Loki seems to realize this as well, looking around the wide, airy guest room with his hands tucked into the pockets of his perfectly tailored suit. “Naturally,” he remarks, “none of my things are here.”
Tony raises his eyebrows. “You can borrow a toothbrush.”
Loki snorts. “Dental hygiene was hardly what I was referring to.”
“I am sure that Tony can acquire replacements for your possessions, brother,” Thor says eagerly. “For the time being, at least.”
“I’m not Amazon!” Tony protests.
Loki hasn’t even looked at Thor since he’d realized that Thor – their Thor – wasn’t actually his brother. Instead he crosses the room to the sleek glass table against one wall and picks up the phone, looking at it thoughtfully. They all lean forward, hands falling towards their weapons, as if Loki’s going to dial 1-800-APOCALYPSE. He raises an eyebrow at them.
“I’m just ordering pizza,” he says mildly. “I’m sure Mr. Stark can cover the bill, since I don’t suppose that my credit card will work here.”
“Your – credit card?” Natasha says before she can stop herself.
Loki raises his eyebrows, his voice with that deceptive mildness that Natasha hates. “What?” he says. “Doesn’t SHIELD pay Thor a salary? How shameful.”
“This is just too weird,” Clint says, turning away. “I’m outta here.”
“Very well, I won’t have them add eggplant,” Loki says, and that really is too weird, because Loki of all people shouldn’t know Clint’s favorite pizza topping.
Tony shakes his head. “Just – stay here and try not to be the ultimate evil,” he says, and they all – even Thor, who pauses and stares hopefully at Loki while Loki places his pizza order and studiously ignores him – retreat into the hallway. JARVIS locks the door without even having to be told, though Natasha doesn’t think that’s exactly going to stop Loki for more than, oh, half a second.
“So Loki’s here,” Tony says, not for the first time that day. “Well, a Loki. Not the Loki. Is it weirder that he’s here or that there’s a universe out there where he’s an Avenger?”
“A universe where Loki’s an Avenger and Thor’s a supervillain?” Steve says.
Thor makes a small, tight motion with his mouth. “It is – believable,” he admits, sounding reluctant.
All of them look at him. Thor won’t look at them straight on, either, which isn’t encouraging.
“Christ,” Tony says.
They tromp down to the kitchen, where Bruce meets them. “Hey, so,” he says. “Pepper and I ordered some pizza. I figured we deserved it.”
“You and Loki,” Tony says, which makes Bruce stare at him.
“Loki –”
“– also ordered pizza, yeah. Who knew, right?”
“Well, that’s…wrong,” Bruce says.
Thor makes an indistinct gesture and slumps into a kitchen chair, thumping Mjolnir down onto the table. Bruce makes a pained “no weapons on the table!” expression, but under the circumstances refrains from actually saying as much.
Steve sits down beside him, while Natasha goes to the freezer to get the vodka and pour shots for everyone. “So Loki’s an Avenger,” he says again.
“Drink up,” Natasha says, sliding the glasses out across the table with a flick of her wrists.
They do, not quite in unison, and Natasha passes the bottle off to Tony when he makes grabby hands at it. Nice as it sounds, she doesn’t take the second offered shot; Tony is the only one who does.
“This is probably the question that should have been asked before we brought him home,” Bruce says, “but are we sure that he’s not actually, uh, our Loki?”
For some reason, they all look at Thor, who’s playing with his Empire State Building souvenir shot glass. It looks absurdly tiny in his big hands. “I am certain that he is not our foe,” he says, when he realizes that he’s being stared at it. “And he does not –” He swallows. “He seems more like the brother I knew before his madness, than the brother I know now.”
“Which means –” Tony prods.
Thor blinks at him. “He was a good man and a fell warrior. There was no one that I would rather have had at my side in battle.” His voice goes low. “I did not realize how used I was to his presence until he was gone.”
Steve rubs his hand over his jaw, his eyes gone soft with understanding.
“Yeah, but come on,” Tony says, because he doesn’t know when to shut up. “An Avenger, really? And like Thor could ever be a supervillain.”
“Aren’t you one mental break away from being a supervillain, Stark?” Clint says, leaning back in his chair and putting one foot on the edge of Natasha’s. She looks at it, but doesn’t push him away, watching him spin his bow between his hands.
“Hey!” Tony protests.
“So what do we do with him?” Bruce asks practically. “I mean, if he is an Avenger, he’s not just going to be content to sit back and wait in the wings when the next crisis rolls around, is he?”
They stare at him. He looks uncomfortable. “I mean, none of us would, right?” he goes on. “Even in another universe?”
“You think he’s – what?” Clint says. “You think he’s going to want to help out? Loki? I mean, even if he’s – good – you really think he’s going to just help out?”
“Wouldn’t you?” says Natasha, as the only one here who might have some kind of idea what Loki’s going through. Not that their situations are at all similar, and even though SHIELD has a protocol for this kind of thing, she doesn’t really hope that she ends up in Loki’s shoes.
Clint makes a horrible face, reaches for the bottle of vodka, and pours himself a second shot. He drains it in one gulp.
“Even if he wants to, we can’t exactly have a supervillain – even if he isn’t one – running around in the field,” Steve says practically. “The media will have a field day.”
“And that jackass Loki – our Loki – will probably show up too,” Stark says.
Thor looks like he’s going to say something, then thinks better of it and stares at his empty shot glass instead, spinning it on the rim.
“Pizza’s here,” Pepper says, coming in with a teetering stack of boxes. “There’s also one for a Mr. Odinson –”
“That’s mine,” Loki says, appearing in front of the refrigerator without even a shimmer of green light as warning. Natasha has a gun cleared of its holster and pointed at him before she has time to think about it. Clint has his sidearm out too.
Tony puts a hand over his arc reactor. “Don’t do that!” he says. “I’m going to put a bell on you.”
Loki glares at him. “You can try,” he says, intercepting Pepper and taking his pizza box off the top of the stack.
“Brother, will you join us for our meal?” Thor says nobly, as Pepper puts the pizza down on the table.
“No,” Loki says and vanishes, taking his pizza with him.
*
Since this Loki is, in theory, an ally and not enemy, they don’t take him back to SHIELD to be interrogated and debriefed. Instead Natasha and Coulson sit down with him in one of the Tower’s numerous unused rooms – one of the ones with an observation window that Loki makes immediately, through which the rest of the team is undoubtedly watching.
“Coffee?” Coulson offers, pouring himself and Natasha cups.
Loki stretches his long legs out. He’s, disconcertingly, in jeans and an emerald green silk shirt. Natasha can count on one hand the number of times she’s seen their Loki in normal clothes; usually he shows up in all his caped and horned glory, complete with an aura of general crazy that’s lacking from this Loki.
“No, thank you,” he says, every inch the gracious prince that Thor can be.
“Anything else?” Coulson says, setting his mug down and waiting expectantly by the bar cart they’d rolled in.
“Tea would be nice,” Loki says, raising one dark eyebrow. “I presume you only have the bags, aside from Agent Romanov’s personal stash.”
Well, that’s just disturbing.
“Don’t worry, Agent,” he says, turning to her. “I won’t trouble you to raid it. The Darjeeling will be fine, Agent Coulson. Two sugars, just a splash of milk.”
Coulson doesn’t show a flicker of emotion, but he makes Loki’s tea and hands it to him before sliding into the seat next to Natasha. She drinks her coffee (black, like her soul, as Clint says) while she listens to the quiet click of Loki’s spoon as he stirs his tea around. “So, Mister – Odinson, is it?” he begins.
“That’s my name,” Loki says, with a hint of amusement. “I presume that my counterpart doesn’t call himself that.”
“He’s been quite vocal about the subject,” Coulson says.
“I see,” Loki says, and blows on his tea. “You may call me Loki, unless you find that that disturbs you for personal reasons.”
Coulson doesn’t blink. Natasha used to think that Coulson never blinked, and she and Clint used to have a bet on when he’d do it during any given op. He’d won, more often than not.
“All right, Loki,” he says. “What can you tell me about New Mexico?”
Loki’s eyes sharpen, without that deceptive mildness that Natasha had seen earlier. “New Mexico is where my brother fell to Earth when my father cast him out, two of your years ago. Mjolnir fell not far from where he did; SHIELD has a facility there now, built around the hammer.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“On occasion. My father likes me to check on Mjolnir. See if my brother has come to his senses and returned for it with the capability to lift it. Thor comes. He can’t, yet.”
“Can’t what?” Natasha asks.
Loki’s gaze moves to her. “Lift the hammer,” he says. “I’m sure you are aware that it has a worthiness clause, Agent Romanov. Perhaps you’ve even tried to lift it yourself and failed.” His gaze slides aside and he takes a sip of his tea. “My father is convinced that his banishment didn’t break my brother completely. One day – perhaps tomorrow, perhaps centuries from now – Thor will recover from his madness and once again be able to take up Mjolnir and his rightful place in Asgard. Until then, my parents have to settle for me. Which is a bit awkward, as technically I’m banished as well, but there have to be exceptions made for unusual cases.”
“Why were you banished?” Coulson asks.
“A small matter,” Loki says. “It is irrelevant. Don’t look so glum, Agent Romanov, it’s only for a century or two – unless of course I manage to bring Thor back into the loving embrace of Asgard and righteousness and, oh, hugging kittens.”
Natasha raises her eyebrows. “So where is Thor now? Your Thor?”
“In our own universe and thus none of your concern,” Loki says, his mouth tightening. “For which you ought to consider yourself lucky.”
“Does the name ‘the Destroyer’ mean anything to you?” Coulson asks.
“One of Asgard’s cruder weapons. My brother managed to gain access to it last year and transport it to Earth, where it breached the New Mexico facility in an attempt to regain Mjolnir. It failed.”
“Huh,” Coulson says, writing something down on his legal pad.
“I presume that’s not what occurred in this universe,” Loki says blandly.
“No.”
Loki quirks an eyebrow, waiting, but Coulson doesn’t elucidate and Natasha doesn’t step in. “Tell us about the Chitauri,” she says instead.
Loki’s mouth goes tight. “You already seem to be familiar with them. I doubt that any of the regrettably little information I have on them will illuminate the situation further.”
Coulson smiles, bland and polite. “Humor us.”
Loki taps his fingers on his mug, clearly considering the matter. “Oh, very well,” he says abruptly. “There are many beings in the universe, far more than your puny mortal minds can begin to comprehend. Far more than even Asgard is aware of. The Chitauri were one such. When my brother was exiled to Earth, they approached him. Even stripped of his powers, any Asgardian is a force to be reckoned with, and my brother yet had his godhood. He was weak from the banishment, angry at me, at the All-Father – ripe for the plucking. They offered him rule over Asgard and Midgard both in exchange for the Tesseract, and gave him new powers.” He shrugs. “He came to Earth to retrieve it, using the Tesseract to bring a Chitauri army with him. They were repulsed, Thor was imprisoned in Asgard, and the Chitauri freed him again.” His mouth tightens. “I do not know what they want with him now that the Tesseract is out of his reach.”
“Interesting,” Coulson says. “The Chitauri approached Thor on Earth, you say?”
“I wasn’t there,” Loki says sharply. “If I had been, perhaps we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Coulson looks like he’s about to reply, but at that point the emergency alert goes off on their phones. “Go for Coulson,” he says, cupping his hand to his ear as he and Natasha both rise.
“It’s New Mexico,” Hill says over the comms. “Iron Man and Thor are inbound. The jet will be arriving at the Tower momentarily. Under no circumstances is our guest to join you.”
“Understood, ma’am,” Steve says.
Coulson turns back to Loki, who had stood up when the alert had gone off. “I’m afraid you’ll have to remain here,” he says, smiling politely. “Please do not leave the Tower.”
“You may need my assistance,” Loki says, his green eyes cool and calculating.
“We’ve managed all right so far,” Natasha says, pulling the door open. “But thanks for the offer.”
*