Chapter Text
It didn’t take Jazz long to figure out that all her controls were dead, and only a moment longer for her and Sam to conclude that all the electronics in the Ops Center were out of commission.
“Must have been the EMP,” said Jazz.
“I thought we were shielded against stuff like that,” said Sam. “Against ectoradiation and everything.”
Jazz shrugged. “Apparently not everything. We’re a lot closer than anyone would expect to be, too.”
“That's true,” said Sam. “No one expects to be at ground zero with these kinds of things.”
“Plus the, um,” said Jazz, her voice breaking a little, “the shields. Who knows how radiation will act, refracted through all of that? It’s… it's probably worse, closer to…”
“The building's still standing,” said Sam. They’re fine. They’ve got to be fine.”
“Right,” said Jazz. “Right. We should go down to Mom and Dad, see what they’re doing, if there’s any way to fix things… Um, there should be some emergency flashlights…”
“Will those even work?”
“Uh, shorter circuits aren’t as vulnerable, and neither are things that are off,” said Jazz. “Handheld things should be fine, mostly. I think. And the further from the blast the better.”
“But the Fenton Phones?” Sam pulled hers out of her ear.
“I don’t know. We were managing the connections with the stuff here, so that might have done something. It could be that the spectral noise filters got overloaded. It could be that interacting with ectoplasm made it worse. It could be a lot of stuff. Ah! Here!” She threw a flashlight to Sam.
Sam flicked the flashlight on and frowned at the green beam. “Is this an anti-ghost flashlight?”
“I have no idea,” said Jazz. “Probably. You know how Mom and Dad are.”
“I guess Danny isn’t here to get his by it,” said Sam. “Lead the way?”
“Yeah, so—”
“HEY, JAZZYPANTS! WE’RE ALIVE!” Dad scooped Jazz up in a giant hug.
“Okay,” wheezed Jazz. “Yep. Okay. I guess we don’t have to go find you.”
“Jazz, oh my goodness,” said Mom, joining the hug. “Have you heard anything from your brother? Tucker?”
“No,” said Jazz, wriggling. “Our Fenton Phones are dead.”
“The spectral interference must have been too great,” said Mom. “But we were hoping it wouldn’t have affected everything.”
“We’ll just have to improve our shields next time!” declared Dad. “But we need to go find Danny, first!”
“Yeah,” said Sam. “So, can we fly, now, or what?”
Mom shook her head. “We’re going to have to go on foot. We had a few blasters that were off that should be effective against the aliens. Or any ghosts who decide--”
“Mom,” scolded Jazz. “They came to help us, remember?”
Mom sighed. “I know, sweetie. It’s just in case.”
“Let’s go!” shouted Dad, yanking open a hatch and jumping down.
Jazz took a blaster from her mother and followed him down.
.
(The monsters the Hulk had been fighting had all gone limp. He still made sure they wouldn’t be getting up, but it was obvious that the fight was over. Somehow.)
(He stomped down the street. There might be a fight that way, towards the tall tower. But, in the meantime, he began to calm down.)
.
“Is everyone okay in here?” called Steve, addressing the whole subway platform. It was illuminated only by emergency lighting and cell phone lights. He cupped his hands around his mouth and tried again. “Is everyone okay down here?”
The crowd quieted, this time.
“Alright, so, it looks like the fighting is mostly over,” he said. “But there’s a lot of structural damage, and there’s still a lot of alien stuff. So stay down here unless you have to leave, or if emergency responders come to get you. I have to go—” The crowd exploded into questions. “I have to go make sure that we really have won.”
.
“Hey! Arrow boy!”
Clint did not jump, and he did not sigh. He did not sigh at the nickname he’d been given by a bunch of high schoolers. If anyone had a right to give him a stupid nickname, it was probably them, after all.
(However, if he ever ran into certain agents from his training days… He might cherish the fact that they hadn’t come up with anything better than literal children.)
“Fentons,” he said, by way of greeting. “Manson.”
He’d been on his way up, now that the storm had ended, and he couldn’t spot any more mobile enemies. Reestablishing communications once an area was relatively secure was a priority.
“Have you had any luck with your phone?” asked Maddie Fenton.
“You mean--?” He pointed at his ear. “No. Everything seems to be out.” Including the electronics for his arrowhead loader, which was decidedly inconvenient, although not as inconvenient as it would have been before the sandstorm.
“Do you think that’s why the aliens are down?” asked Sam. “The thing with electronics, I mean. They kind of had this biotech look going on. Like, maybe they were all cyborgs.”
“Maybe,” said Clint. “My hearing aid is working, though.” He pointed at his opposite ear, the one he didn’t have the Fenton Phone in.
“Huh,” said Jack. “Cool! But that’s small and non-ghostly, so there could be a few different factors there! Good news for people with pacemakers, though!”
Yeah. Clint didn’t even want to think about that. Better for electronics to get knocked out than for a nuke to actually hit, but as someone who did rely on small electronics for a disability, however small, thinking about how many people might have died just from that made him feel vaguely nauseated.
Not that imagining the number of outright deaths from the invasion was any better.
“Anywho!” said Jack. “We’re on our way up to ol’ Stark Tower! Got the Ops Center all locked up, so no spooks or ETs can get in!”
“Is that safe?” asked Clint. “The bomb was right there,” he clarified. The aliens and structural damage wasn’t something really avoidable under the present circumstances.
“We’ve got a Geiger counter!” said Jack, waving a box.
“It’s not on right now,” added Maddie. “It was getting annoying.”
“Mom,” said Jasmine, “seriously? What good is it if it isn’t on?”
“Well, it isn’t as if the number is going to change all that much while we’re in this building. It will make more sense to turn it on once we’re on street level and it actually matters.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Clint. “It was going off? As in, we’re getting irradiated right now?”
“Everyone is getting irradiated all the time,” said Jazz. “But that does sound like it’s more than usual.”
“It’s negligible,” said Maddie. “Considering. About what you’d expect from a commercial flight per hour.”
“Eh,” said Jack.
“Eh?” repeated Clint. That didn’t fill him with a huge amount of confidence.
“Come on,” said Sam, “astronauts get twenty times more than that and keep it up for days.”
“How do you know that?” asked Clint. “Just off the top of your head like that?”
“Benefit of being friends with Danny,” she said, walking past him.
“And to be honest,” said Maddie, “if you were near the Tesseract, you were probably experiencing astronaut levels of radiation.”
Clint sighed. “I knew that,” he said. “I was there when you talked to Dr. Selvig about it before Loki stole it.”
“Huh! I don’t remember you being there at all!”
Which was sort of the point.
“Are you coming with us or not, arrow boy?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming, I’m coming.” He had to check on Natasha, after all… and all the other idiots… and he still felt guilty over what had happened with Danny. Yeah. He was coming.
.
Bruce hated waking up in piles of rubble with no clothing. However, this particular rude wake up call was… not so bad. The city was, at least, still standing, and it looked like the aliens were all dead.
He got up and started walking towards Stark Tower.
.
In the end, it was Thor who found them first, launching up over the edge of the building and landing heavily. He was followed closely by a ghost Loki couldn’t name.
“Brother!” shouted Thor. He stopped several yards away. “Are you… well?”
“Well enough,” said Loki, not bothering to stand or even raise an arm in greeting. He was exhausted. And Thor was annoying to deal with.
“Whelp,” said the ghost.
“Skulker,” said Danny.
There was a history, there, Loki could tell. But he had neither the energy nor the will to delve into it.
“Was it mind control, then? Was it always?”
Loki laughed. “When I lured those jotnar into Asgard, you mean? When I sent the Destroyer after you?” He had encountered Thanos before, but he hadn’t been caught, then, hadn’t been changed or reshaped… or so he’d thought. “Who knows?” he settled on, finally.
“What are you going to do?” asked Danny. “You said something about bringing him back. What would happen then?”
“I would face justice for my crimes,” said Loki, interrupting whatever Thor was about to say. He said it better, anyway, and with the appropriate amount of sarcasm.
“You kind of did commit a lot of those,” observed Danny. Then he shrugged. “But, again, mind control. Kind of an ‘either both of us are guilty or neither of us is’ kind of deal.”
“You aren’t Asgardian,” said Thor, nonplussed.
“So?”
Thor shook his head and turned back to Loki. “Father would understand if we ex—”
“Because he’s so willing to listen to explanations, is he? He did not listen even to you.” He tilted his head back and let out the breath he’d taken in to yell at his brother some more. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over. It’s all over. Take me back, kill me, leave me to rot in some human prison, I don’t care.”
“Brother—”
Danny cleared his throat. “This is great and all, but no one else has woken up, and they definitely need some medical attention, so if one of you can get, like, a doctor or something… I would, but this week has been really tiring and all the sleep I’ve gotten is, like, ten seconds of unconscious.”
“You were unconscious for longer than that,” said Loki.
“Thanks, I didn’t ask.”
The ghost groaned. “Fine,” he said. “But next time, whelp, it’ll be your skin.”
“He says that every time.”
“Loki, if you would say something to defend yourself,” said Thor, “I would listen.”
“He totally was mind controlled,” said Danny. “I’m, like, a mind-control connoisseur, so I’d know.”
“On this planet?” asked Thor, with just a touch of skepticism. “With its technology?”
“It was ghost stuff,” said Danny. “Overshadowing, you know? But other stuff, too, like mind-vines and dream-helmets and body-swapping. I hate body-swapping, it’s the worst. Well, except for the emotion vampirism stuff. The main time I got mind controlled before this, it was a staff, too, though!”
“That one?” asked Loki, tilting his head towards the staff ‘Duulaman’ had carried.
“Nope. Completely different staff. I broke that one ages ago.”
“Oh, god,” groaned Selvig, having apparently dragged himself out of unconsciousness just in time to hear, “there’s another one?”
.
“Danny! Baby, you’re alive!”
“Uh,” Danny said, having startled halfway out of Frostbite’s grip. “Yep. I’m alive. As much as always.” He settled back down as his family and friends – and Barton, who Danny decided to count as more of a coworker – emerged from Stark’s penthouse. “Did you guys walk all the way from over there?” He nodded in the general direction he’d last seen the Ops Center in.
“We took the stairs, too,” said Sam, sidling up behind Maddie and Jack, who were barely restraining themselves from throwing themselves at Danny due to Frostbite radiating severe disapproval. “Since the elevators are all out, and did you know all the glass is gone where the sandstorm was? Like, everywhere. Even car windows and cell phones.
“Don’t remind me,” groaned Tucker, who was being checked over by not one but two yetis wearing medic symbols.
“What happened to you, anyway?” asked Sam.
“It’s, uh—The thing. With Duulaman. The thing that—You guys tell her.”
“He’s experiencing dissonance between his current life and his past life!” said one of the yeti doctors. “It is not terribly uncommon among persons who have reincarnated.”
“I hate this so much. I hate being alive.”
“No, you don’t,” said Danny.
“Ugh. My thoughts are ugh.”
“He’s fine,” said Danny. “Really.”
“Mhm,” said Jazz, who had a strong ‘I’m resisting the urge to psychoanalyze’ expression on her face. “And what about this guy?”
“I do have a name,” said Loki, from where he was still slumped against the former Tesseract housing.
“Mind control rule,” said Danny.
“This happens often enough you have a rule for it?” asked Selvig. Ever since he woke up, he’d been asking questions like that in a progressively more horrified tone. Danny thought he might need therapy, honestly.
“Well, yeah,” said Danny. “Hello? Any ghost here could overshadow you.”
“Not to mention guys like Undergrowth or Ember,” added Sam.
“Ooh, yeah, I forgot about the music-based mind control, earlier, thanks.
Jazz sighed. “The rule is just that you can’t hold a grudge for things people do under mind control.”
“What!” said Barton. “Then what do you keep calling me arrow boy for?”
“Oh,” said Jazz, breezily, “that’s for being involved in outing my brother to our parents.”
“Although,” said Maddie, “we really should have known beforehand. And who are you?”
This last was directed at Frostbite, and Danny sighed. He sighed again when he noticed the distinct shape of Pandora getting closer. “Okay, I guess I should do introductions.”
.
Tony (he insisted that they all call him Tony, something about life threatening situations) put down the tool he was using on the Iron Man helmet in his lap (not one he’d been using before, but one that had been sitting a back room in the penthouse) clapped his hands together. “Okay, looks like we’re all here and all introduced! Question is, what do we do with that stuff, and what do we do with him?” He gestured at the scepters in Danny’s lap, the Tesseract (still lying on the ground – Captain America had freaked when Black Widow went to pick it up), and Loki. “Especially since SHIELD turned out to be run by Nazis—”
Danny jerked and almost dropped the scepters. “It’s what?”
“That’s an exaggeration,” said Black Widow.
“Fine, fine, it’s riddled with Nazis—”
“Why are there Nazis? Aren’t they anti-Nazi?”
“They are,” said Black Widow, “but—”
“Oh my gosh,” said Sam. “You can’t call a place full of Nazis anti-Nazi. It just isn’t true. Maybe they were supposed to be, but they aren’t anymore. Get over it. Also, they’re the ones who shot that nuke at us.”
“Uh,” said Danny. “Then why are we okay with, like, that?” he pointed at the hovering shape of the SHIELD helicarrier.
Tucker cleared his throat. “They aren’t all Nazis. I think.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It’s my understanding,” said Jazz loudly, “that SHIELD was infiltrated by HYDRA shortly after World War Two ended. It’s currently unclear how many people in SHIELD are actually in HYDRA, pretending to be SHIELD.”
“But it’s a lot!” said Tucker. “A whole lot! And the GIW are in on it!”
“Oh, jeez,” said Danny. “No wonder you didn’t follow that part of my plan.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I was going to suggest that we dump it all on them, but yikes. Yikes.”
“Thor,” said Captain America, “I got the impression earlier that your people were familiar with this kind of… thing?”
“Yes,” said Thor. “Certain principles of its operation are not dissimilar to that of the Bifrost.”
“You wouldn’t mind taking it with you?”
“Not at all!”
“Great,” he said, sitting down for the first time since he’d gotten to the roof. “Because I’d really like to get that thing off my planet.”
“Wow,” said Tony, “that sounds personal. Is it personal? Not just, you know, professional?”
“Stark.”
“Okay, okay, I’m backing off. I’ll, uh, whip up something to carry that in, then? I don’t suppose you know any of those principles of operation, huh, Thor? Buddy?”
“It is not my, ah, area of expertise, but I will certainly do my best to assist.”
“I’ll need your help, too, Bruce.”
“Sure,” said Dr. Banner. “Can’t be too hard, if they managed it in the forties.”
“Fentons?”
“At this point,” said Mom, “I think our time might be better spent dealing with the ectoradiation. No, ah, offense.”
“None taken,” said Frostbite, kindly.
“Frostbite can take my staff,” said Tucker.
“Are you sure?” asked Danny. “You did some really cool stuff with it before, you know. The pyramids, and the sphinx, and the lightning thing—”
“I think that was me, actually,” said Thor, raising a finger.
“I mean, you probably contributed,” allowed Danny, cheerfully.
“Maybe the things were cool, but I can’t handle that. Thing. I can’t be trusted with it. I went full megalomaniac. I was going to conquer New York. The whole east coast. America. The world. Egypt. Especially Egypt. So, I want that power far, far away from me and my poor decision-making skills.”
“You realize,” said Loki, “that power is part of you?”
Tucker sat up, despite the protests of his doctors. “What?”
“Perhaps the skill with which you wielded it belonged to your past life, and the magnitude of it to the staff, but nothing Duulaman accomplished is beyond your ability to learn. It would be unimaginable, in fact, that you had not already begun to learn, simply from your experiences these past days.”
“Aw, man,” said Tucker, face crumpled into something complicated. “Frostbite, you’ll still take it, right?”
“Of course! We’ll keep it safe for you, as we do with all the artifacts we defend.”
“Then… Pandora, will you take this other staff? I feel like it’s more up your alley.”
“Uh,” said Tony. “One second. I kind of feel like we should keep at least one superpowerful space weapon on Earth. Just saying.”
Danny made a face at him. “And you want to keep the mind control one? The most easily abused?”
“Well,” said Loki, “I wouldn’t say it was easy to—”
“Hush, you,” said Pandora. “Stark. I have experience sealing away forces of evil. But even if I did not, there is no reason for a ghost to want that thing.”
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t work on ghosts,” said Danny.
“It worked on you.”
“Yeah, when I was human. As soon as I went ghost, it couldn’t control me anymore.”
“And we have much more efficient ways of controlling people, I’m sorry to say,” said Pandora. “It would be safe, out of the hands of your enemy, and it would not be a temptation.”
“Nuclear deterrents and mutually assured destruction aren’t really things that have worked,” muttered Dr. Banner.
Tony threw up his hands. “Fine! But the guy with the space army after us is still out there, the ‘protect the planet’ guys are secretly evil, and you guys aren’t sticking around, are you?” He waved at Pandora and Frostbite.
“No,” said Frostbite. “We do have our own people to look after. But I think you are not as bereft of resources as you believe.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Yes,” said Loki, suspiciously, “do enlighten us.”
“Maybe it means you’re supposed to keep the band together,” said Danny. “No Loki Ono.”
“Stop that.”
“I’d say make me but… You can’t!”
“Yeah, about that,” said Black Widow. “I’ll have my hands full with the HYDRA problem.”
“Same,” said Barton. “We’re not leaving Fury to deal with that.”
“What, do you think I don’t care about the HYDRA problem?”
“I think you care mostly about yourself, but sure.”
“Hey,” said Tucker, “he did put himself between me and an exploding shield thingy, so…”
“Okay,” muttered Danny to himself. “Clearly, this band doesn’t need to be broken up.”
“Does that really surprise you?” asked Sam.
“No, not really.”
The Iron Man helmet made a loud blaaaaaaat noise, followed by an awful lot of static. “-ark, Rogers, Banner, Foley, Manson, Fentons, do any of you read this?” said… Danny frowned, trying to remember her name. “Repeat: Barton, Romanov—”
“Hey, Agent Hill!” said Tony. “Just got a radio up and running after you guys sent us that wonderful gift. You know, the one that was going to kill us all. Anyway, how are you? Old one-eye and Agent Coulson doing alright with the whole situation?”
“Coulson is dead.”
“What?” said Tony. “He’s—How?”
“He was killed by HYDRA agents while trying to keep the plane with the missile from taking off.”
“Oh,” said Tony, blankly. “He—Oh.”
“What we found with Foley’s backdoor is this: Every level of SHIELD is compromised. Everything that SHIELD touches is compromised. We’re handling things here on the helicarrier, but it’s going to be a different story everywhere else.”
“What can we do to help?” asked Captain America.
“Get the situation in the city under control and go to ground if you can. That’s not going to work for Stark, but the rest of you—”
“It isn’t going to work for us, either,” interrupted Danny. “I can’t leave Amity Park undefended.”
“Then you’ll have to make your own decisions. Don’t try to contact anyone from SHIELD, and if anyone from SHIELD contacts you, be cautious. Don’t blindly trust it if Fury or I contact you, for that matter. We have technologies under development that make the Mission Impossible masks look tame. Barton, Romanov, consider any safehouses or contacts known to SHIELD to be burned.”
“Roger that,” said Black Widow.
“That’s… expected,” said Barton. “If not great.”
“We’ll try to send updates through Stark, if he stays in public view, but we can’t make any guarantees. Fury says, ‘Don’t die, and… good work, Avengers.’”
The connection dissolved back into static.
“Okay!” said Stark, rubbing his eyes not-at-all subtly. “Looks like you’re all getting new identities for Christmas.” He looked at Sam. “Hanukkah?”
“My family doesn’t really do presents. And I’m not running.”
“Wait,” said Valerie. “You can do that?”
“Sure. I’m rich. I can do whatever I want. Mostly.” This declaration was accompanied by more unsubtle eye-rubbing.
“And HYDRA isn’t a joke,” said Black Widow. “Torture, murder, human experimentation. It’s all on the table, if they catch you.”
“If they catch me,” said Sam. “Trust me, once we’re all back in Amity Park, we’ll have one hell of a home field advantage. And I think Coulson was the only one besides you guys and Fury who knew Valerie even existed.”
“That’s accurate,” said Valerie. “I think.”
“Mom, Dad?” said Jazz. “What do you think? You’ve been quiet.”
“We can’t leave the portal,” said Mom, after a moment. “The rest of our research we could move.” Her eyes tracked over to the rooftop the Ops Center sat on. “But not the portal.”
Danny relaxed a little more. Obviously, he could deal with being hunted by evil superspies (see: the past week) even without access to his full powerset. Coping with his parents trying to put them in DIY witness protection would be significantly harder.
“Okay. New identities for, like, half of us. And I have tons of properties through shell—”
“SHIELD knows about those,” said Black Widow.
“Aren’t you cheerful. Anyway, any requests about names? Backstories? You don’t want to give me too much creative control, I’ll turn you into a traveling circus or something. Wouldn’t be able to resist.”
“I wouldn’t mind being back in the circus,” said Barton.
“Didn’t they kick you out for shooting someone?” asked Black Widow.
“Yes, they did.”
“Hey, uh,” said Dr. Banner, “I hate to be the one to say this, but aren’t we forgetting someone?” He pointed awkwardly at Loki.
Tony shrugged. “Isn’t he just going back with Thor?”
“No,” said Thor.
“No?” repeated Loki, incredulous. “What do you mean no?”
“I’d like to know the reasoning behind that as well,” said Black Widow. “We can’t trust any governments here to hold him with HYDRA’s involvement.”
“And why should he be held at all?”
“What,” said Loki, flatly.
“Have we not determined that he is innocent, at least in this matter? That he was put under a geas, just as Phantom was? That he even fought it, as Phantom did? And we have agreed, most emphatically, that Phantom is innocent.”
“I—” started Loki, half-smiling. “You—” The expression slid into something closer to bewilderment. “You cannot be serious, brother. Did Odin not send you here to drag me back to Asgard like a recalcitrant child?”
“He did,” said Thor, “and yet… What you said about Father and… listening… is not untrue. He was wroth, when I left, and only Mother’s words stayed his temper.”
Captain America let out a sigh. “I guess we’re the closest thing to a jury he’s likely to get. Danny, are you sure he was mind controlled?”
“As sure as I can get without overshadowing him myself and poking around,” said Danny, shrugging. “Do you want me to--?”
“No.”
“If I may offer my medical opinion,” said Frostbite, “I would concur with the Great One’s thoughts. Mister Loki does exhibit many of the symptoms expected of victims of prolonged control.”
Loki pushed himself up. “What are you doing? What about justice? What about punishment and vengeance?”
Danny squinted at him. “Do you, like, want to get punished, or…?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Loki, wobbling as he looked down his nose at Danny. “A child like you wouldn’t understand.”
“So, we’re agreed then? We’re just going to let him loose to go do… whatever?” Tony didn’t seem particularly pleased about that, but then, this wasn’t a particularly pleasant situation.
“Tips on the guy with the space army might be appreciated,” said Barton. “Just a thought.”
“Or, ooh!” said Danny. “You could come back to Amity Park with us and teach Tucker magic.” He waggled his fingers.
“Absolutely not,” said Loki. “I am leaving.” He turned to walk away and immediately tripped over the Tesseract.
“Maybe you should wait until you’re not drunk to do that,” suggested Danny.
“I really need to make a container for that,” said Tony, standing up and disappearing into the penthouse. “And don’t go until I can get you a phone or something! I need to pick your brain about aliens!”
“Oh, yeah,” said Danny. “You guys definitely owe me facts about aliens. I can’t believe I was abducted by an alien and got, like, zero space facts out of it. That’s criminal.”
“It kind of is,” agreed Sam.
“If that’s criminal,” said Valerie, “what about my ghost facts? Like, you know, the fact that you’re a ghost.”
“It is something we’d like clarification on, too, sweetie,” said Maddie.
“Ah,” said Danny. He wondered if he could escape this conversation by phasing through the roof. Maybe he’d even be nice and take Loki with him.
“I think I’ve been pretty understanding,” continued Valerie, “putting off my questions, but if you’re all going to go on a tangent about space, well, I think my questions are pretty important, too! Especially since it looks like I’m not going to get paid for this after all!”
Tony wandered back out onto the roof. “So, I was going to offer you guys a drink, but, shockingly, alcohol is generally stored in glass, so I was thinking, once the doctors get everyone patched up, we could go out for-- Why do I suddenly feel like I walked in on the season finale of a soap opera?”
“Danny and Valerie used to date,” explained Jazz.
“She’s also worried about not getting paid,” added Sam, rolling her eyes.
“Hey, people have to live,” said Tucker. “Not everyone can be rich.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Tony. “Of course you’re getting paid. I’ll pay you. It’s like, volunteer firefighters get paid, right? But I’m way cooler than the government, so you’ll actually get a living wage. Also, is he just going to keep lying on the floor like that, or what?”
“I believe he may have fallen asleep,” said Thor, bemused.
Danny leaned forward to get a better look. That wasn’t a terrible conclusion, but… Danny could see the slight shimmer around the edges that gave away an illusion. It was kind of a jerk move on Loki’s part, but Danny couldn’t scrounge up the energy to blame him.
Should he say something?
Nah. But it did give him an idea.
“Well,” said Danny, laughing a little, “neither of us have slept for days. Did I mention that before? Speaking of which… maybe I’ll take a nap, too…” He leaned back and closed his eyes.
The anti-nap protest was hilarious, but he didn’t hear much of it. He was too busy napping.
.
“So, where do you think Loki is?” asked Valerie as they finally drove back into Amity Park.
It had taken a while to get the Ops Center off that roof, even with the help of superpowers, and longer still to get a hold of a semi-truck that could haul it back home, even with the help of Tony Stark’s wallet. The less said about wannabe supervillain road pirates and attempted assassinations at rest stops the better.
The first few days on the road, the conversation had been firmly of the ‘interrogating Danny’ variety, with short digressions into ‘interrogating Jazz,’ ‘interrogating Sam,’ and ‘interrogating Tucker.’ But there were only so many things to say before they got to stuff they really, really didn’t want to talk about while trapped with each other in a mobile metal box hundreds of miles from home. After reaching that point, there had been a brief period of ‘interrogating Valerie,’ but that didn’t go over very well, so the rest of the time had been spent speculating about the evil space army that was possibly coming for Earth (depressing), and what Loki was doing (slightly less depressing).
“Defrauding Las Vegas,” said Danny, without hesitation. He didn’t think that’s what he’d actually be doing, but it was definitely the funniest possible option.
“Does he even know what Las Vegas is?” asked Tucker, curiously. “I mean, he’s only been on Earth for, what, a week and a half, and you guys spent a bunch of that time in Europe, right?”
Danny shrugged, not taking his eyes off the window, drinking in the sight of his haunt. “I’m sure he’ll figure it out.”
.
“Tony, what are you doing?” asked Pepper, walking up behind him and setting a glass of wine down on the table next to him. Well. ‘Glass.’ Glass goods were at a bit of a premium in New York at the moment, and Tony’s main wealth flex after supplying Barton, Natasha, Steve, and Bruce with new IDs had been getting the Amity Parkers on their way back home. The wine itself was from a box.
“Redesigning a few floors,” said Tony. “If we’re keeping the band together, we need a place to hang out, record, you know the drill.”
“I thought you hated the boy band metaphor.”
Tony shrugged. “It’s grown on me. Should I put all the kids on one floor, or should I separate them out?”
“I thought you hated that they were involved,” said Pepper, raising her eyebrows.
“I do,” said Tony, “But do you think I can stop them? I can’t even stop me.”
“Here, let me see.” She scanned the blueprint, then frowned. “Is that a floor for Loki?”
“Kind of figure the guy might show back up, once he’s done defrauding Las Vegas or whatever.”
“Defrauding Las Vegas, really?”
“Hey, it’s what I’d do,” said Tony. “Minus, you know, the fraud part. Counting cards is an art.”
Pepper laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “Well, if you’re going to put Clint here, can I suggest…?”
.
“I hate to say it,” said Steve, casually concussing another HYDRA agent, “but I don’t think I’m really cut out for covert operations.”
“No, no,” said Natasha, “you’re doing great.”
“Yeah!” said Clint, nocking another arrow. “You’re perfect bait! All of these guys hate you so much, it’s funny.”
Fury, who was also on comms, if not on location, sighed. His agents didn’t use to be so talkative during missions. He blamed this on Stark.
.
As a point in fact, Loki did not know what Las Vegas was, and he wasn’t there, defrauding it or otherwise.
He was in the kitchen of the apartment Tony had bought for Bruce, going through his refrigerator.
“What,” said Bruce, willing the green tint out of his skin, “are you doing here?”
“As your friends so kindly pointed out to me, I am a free man. I go where I will.”
“Yeah, freedom generally doesn’t include breaking and entering.”
“More’s the pity.” He closed the refrigerator and leaned against the counter. His eyes were sharp. “I looked into you, you know. I meant to use you as a weapon, a way to peel apart your allies. To turn your other nature against yourself.”
“That’s… nice,” said Bruce, tensing just a little.
“How do you keep it at bay? All that… anger?”
“What do you care?”
Loki looked away. “My grip on Danny’s mind was the thing of a moment. When it broke, it broke cleanly.” His fingers traced over the handles in Bruce’s knife block before coming to rest flat against the countertop again. “The same cannot be said for me.”
Bruce realized, then, what Loki was asking him. “Oh boy. Yeah. Let’s head over to the living room. We can talk.”
.
.
.
.
.
.
Loki was not, and never had been, a good man.
He wasn’t doing this because he cared, or because he felt guilty. The purpose of his visit here was only to satisfy his curiosity. To, perhaps, explore the secrets of this world as he had once explored those of Asgard. That was all.
After all, he had no duty to Danny Fenton, nor any particular affection. They’d only known each other for a few short days, and it had been months since then. So, it gave him no comfort, no ease, to see him walking down the street, smiling. It was no thrill, to see him pause, turn, and smile at Loki, despite the disguise he wore.
Loki had never been a particularly honest man, either.
But what was life, without its little lies?