Prince of earth

Chapter 22

Loki sat with his head leaning against his fist, his elbow propped up on the arm of the chair he was sitting in while he listened to his whole team berate him for giving Rain a dagger.

"Loki are you even paying attention?" Loki zoned back in just in time to hear Coulson accuse him of not paying attention.

"What? Yes, of course" Loki lied.

"Really? What did he just say?" May asked accusingly. Loki rolled his eyes and sat up straight.

"I don't know, probably something like 'Loki you shouldn't have done that'" Loki said with clear exasperation in his tone.

"Loki this is serious" Coulson said "you put yourself in danger and you-" Loki interrupted with an exaggerated sigh as he rolled his head back.

"I know, I know. I could've  been hurt, I could've  been killed, it was foolish to give her a weapon, SHIELD doesn't trade lives, et cetera et cetera. Can we be done now?" He asked.

"Not until you take this seriously. You don't seem to see the problem with what happened" Mack interjected, to which Loki shrugged.

"You're right, I don't. I don't see what the big deal is, but honestly I don't have to. If you don't want me to repeat that tactic then I won't, it doesn't matter"

Everyone looked at Loki with bewilderment
"How can you not see the problem? You put your life on the line for information, does that seem like a fair trade to you?" Mack challenged.

"For me, yes." Loki said "it's my life, if I want to trade it for coordinates then that should be my business. It's not like I dragged Fitz in there and let her cut him up, I only traded myself. I didn't put anyone in danger, I could've taken the dagger at any point with just a thought, and I got the information we needed" Loki's argued back.

"maybe things are different on Asgard, but here at SHIELD-" Loki once again interrupted Coulson mid-sentence.

"Well I'm not used to working with SHIELD!" He yelled in a bit of an outburst that startled both  Fitz and Simmons.

"Look I'm sorry I'm not the perfect SHIELD agent. Im sorry i used my powers against Mack, and I'm sorry I didn't follow your precious protocol. Though in my defense it's not like any of you actually bothered to fill me in on the protocol, so this whole ordeal feels a little bit unjustified" he said a only a little bit more calmly.

"Did you really have to be told not to give prisoners knives and let them hurt you? Was that how you did things on Asgard?"
May challenged.

"Yes" Loki said definitively, and suddenly there was a silence in the room. No one was expecting that response. "On Asgard the idea was the keep as many people safe as possible, sometimes that meant letting yourself get roughed up a bit, so yes, I have let prisoners do me harm in exchange for cooperation. And every time I did I was praised for it" Loki argued vehemently. There was a silence in the room again for a moment before Mack spoke up again.

"Well then Whoever told you to put yourself in harms way in order to gain information didn't care about you very much, but we do. We don't want you getting hurt, and if that means taking the long way to find what we need then fine. Our priorities are people first, tactics second. No amount of information is worth more than a life"

Loki was quiet for a moment and then shook his head, not understanding how Mack could be saying this.

"Your entire world in the balance and you fight for the safety of one man? You care that much about what happens to me?" Loki criticized, but Mack just looked between Coulson and May like Loki was crazy.