this takes place after The Dark World
Loki is cold.
He didn't think he could get cold.
Honestly, he's not even sure he is cold. Maybe he just thinks he's cold. Maybe it's just the constant drizzling rain making him feel cold. He supposes that would make it a problem easily solved by finding a house, but he wouldn't even know where to start with that. It's not as though he could get a job. He tried that months ago, when he first landed in Midgard. He doesn't legally exist — and, more importantly, he's too recognizable as the monster who tore up New York City to warrant a second chance from anybody.
Which is why he's just sitting here.
On a bench.
In the rain.
For hours.
And hours.
And hours.
As long as he doesn't fall asleep, he's fairly certain it's legal. No one's going to yell at him for sitting on a bench. That's what benches are made for. No one's going to know how long he's been here, anyway. It's a quiet town, much different than New York, but no one tends to pay him any mind.
It's nearing Christmas time, it seems. He's not sure what the date is; he'd guess mid-December of 2013, but he hasn't caught sight of a newspaper or a TV in what he's guessing must be at least a few weeks. He suspects he won't know that Christmas has passed until he returns to the grocery store to steal a meal and the music has changed from the repetitive Midgardian holiday tunes to its usual upbeat pop.
He finds himself wondering if Yule has begun. What are they doing up in Asgard without him? Do they even care that he's not there? This will be the second Yule in three years that they think him dead; the year between, he spent the holiday in the dungeon, visited only by his mother. Now that she's dead, does anyone miss him? Does anyone care that he supposedly died to save their beloved Prince Thor?
Loki closes his eyes and lets his head fall backwards. The rain drips down on his face, and he shivers at the feeling. Still, he doesn't move. He has nowhere else to be. He has nothing he'd rather do. Why not just sit here all alone in the rain?
"Holy shit."
Loki opens his eyes and looks around. It only takes a few seconds to find where that voice came from. In front of him, a mere ten feet or so away, stands Clint Barton.
The infamous Hawkeye.
Staring right at him.
If Clint had been waiting for some sort of confirmation that this really is Loki, the look on the god's face must have provided it. His eyes widen, and he fights the urge to just run; to leave this town behind and find a new one to make a miserable home in.
Clint closes the distance between them, stopping right in front of the bench and towering over the god in a way that makes him much too uncomfortable. "What the hell are—"
"Please don't tell Thor," Loki interrupts, rushing through his words.
Clint scoffs. "What?"
"Don't tell Thor that I'm alive," Loki says again. "Please."
"Yeah, no, I won't," Clint says, which almost sounds reassuring until he continues, "I'm going to tell Fury that you're still alive, and he'll tell Thor and everyone else that needs to know."
"You can't do that," Loki says.
"Yeah, no, I think I really can."
"Please," Loki says, almost begging now. "I do not want to hurt you. I've brought enough terror to this world as it is. But my freedom is all I have, and I will kill you to protect it if I must."
Clint crosses his arms, jutting out his jaw as he looks down at the god. Loki looks back at him, but every few seconds, he has to look away, to recover his composure. Finally, after a few moments of silence, Clint asks, "What are you waiting for?"
Loki furrows his brows. "I beg your pardon?"
"You're soaked; you must've been out here for hours," Clint says. "What are you waiting for?"
Loki shakes his head helplessly. "For the rain to end, I suppose." He's not sure he expects that to happen any time soon, though. It's been day after day of gloomy weather, each day colder and wetter than the last. It's absolutely miserable, but he's grown accustomed to it by now.
"Why?" Clint asks. "When the rain ends, what happens then?"
Loki gives a small shrug. "I become less cold?" Is that a reasonable answer? He's not really expecting anything to happen. He just wants the rain to end.
Clint raises an eyebrow skeptically. Loki does the same, though his is more a show of confusion. What does he want?
"What are you doing here, Loki?" Clint asks.
"Absolutely nothing," Loki says. "I've done nothing for months, and I'll continue to do nothing for years to come."
Clint scoffs. "Yeah, right," he says. "What, were you looking for me? My family? What do you want?"
Loki cocks his head to the side. "Your family?" he repeats. That's a weird question. Of course he's not looking for them. Why would he...? He furrows his brows. "Where am I?"
"What do you mean, 'where are you?'"
"Missouri?" Loki guesses. "Is that what worries you? Am I near your family? Because I can leave—"
"You're not going anywhere," Clint says. He pulls his phone out of his back pocket. It flies right into Loki's hand.
"Who are you calling?" Loki asks.
"Give it back."
"Who are you calling?" Loki repeats. "Not one of the Avengers, I hope. That won't work out well for either of us."
"Give me my phone back."
"Why?" Loki asks. "So that you can tell your friends that you've found me? That I've risen from the grave yet again?"
"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm gonna do," Clint says. "I'm not just—"
Loki squeezes the phone in his hand, and its fractured pieces fall to the ground.
Clint scoffs. "Hey!"
"Ordinarily, I would not mind a small group of humans knowing of my presence," Loki says. "I do not fear that you'll ruin my plans because I have no plans. But with my brother frequenting the Earth, I have to be more cautious, so, again, I give you two options: you can either leave me be, we can go our separate ways, and agree to pretend this never happened, or I can kill you — and I would greatly prefer the first option."
"And you're just, what, gonna take my word for it if I say I'm not going to tell anyone?" Clint asks skeptically.
"Yes," Loki says, "I am, because otherwise I'd have to kill you regardless, and I don't want to do that."
Clint scoffs. "Oh, yeah, now you're worried about killing people. Didn't matter when you brainwashed me into helping you do it, but now that it's just you, now you care."
Loki sighs. That's a fair point. He can't deny it; he can't skirt around it. So he does the next best thing. "I'm sorry," he says quietly. "I would give anything to take back all the pain and the terror I brought you and your people. With the benefit of hindsight, I realize there were numerous paths I could have taken that I'd never thought of; ways to minimize the damage."
"You know what a good way to 'minimize the damage' would have been?" Clint asks sarcastically. "Not stealing the Tesseract."
"I know," Loki says. "But it was never that simple. I tried to say 'no,' but there were beings much more powerful than myself at the helm. Even a god cannot fight the power of an Infinity Stone."
"Wait, wait, hold on," Clint says, confused. "Who was at the helm? What, the Chitauri?"
Loki shakes his head. "Their leader was a much more willing participant, but no, they were no more in charge than I was."
Clint stares at him blankly. "Okay, can we just — can we start this over? What the hell happened? From the beginning, because these little hints are not helping."
Loki takes a deep breath. He's never told anyone about this before. Nobody's ever asked; nobody would have cared. There's never been a reason to relive that year in the cold abyss of space until now. He's not sure he's ready. He's certainly not ready to form a comprehensive story, but he can do his best.
"I allowed myself to fall from the Bifrost because I'd thought it would kill me," Loki says. "Instead, I found myself alone in space — a dangerous place; the universe is much less civil outside the Nine Realms. Somewhere along the way, I met this Titan, hellbent on collecting all six Infinity Stones. He wanted my help to retrieve the Tesseract, and, in exchange, I could have your planet. I refused.
"I learned the hard way that one does not refuse a Titan's demands. When his words proved ineffective, he..." He swallows hard. "He found more persuasive methods."
"Meaning...?" Clint prompts.
Loki gives a minute shake of his head. He can't talk about that. He won't even try. "You can draw your own conclusions. I suspect they won't be far from my truth."
Clint eyes him skeptically. "You know, for a guy who supposedly didn't want to take over the world, you really looked like you wanted to take over the world."
"At the time, I did," Loki says. "His scepter works as well on a god as it does on a human."
Clint's expression softens at that. "They used the scepter on you, too?"
Loki nods. "That scepter and the stone it holds are more powerful than words can say," he says. "I'd already put up a fight. He was not letting it go without assurance that he would receive it back in the end."
Clint just looks at him for a few moments, taking all of this in. "So you never wanted any of that," he says slowly. "It was never your choice."
Loki shakes his head. "Unfortunately not," he says. "So you understand, then, that I am not a threat to your world. I am here because it is the only place I feel I can safely hide, both from Asgard and regions beyond, and, as such, there is no reason to tell anyone of my presence." He tries to shove down the hope bubbling up in his chest. He doesn't expect this to work. Not only is Clint an Avenger; he's a friend of Thor's. Expecting him to pretend he never saw Loki is too much to wish for, but it won't stop him from trying.
Clint nods slowly. "Okay, let's say, hypothetically, that I did just forget to mention that we ran into each other. What're you gonna do if we leave you alone?"
"Exactly as I am doing now," Loki says.
Clint raises an eyebrow skeptically.
"There is nothing else I can do," Loki says. "As long as I remain within the Nine Realms, my moves are subject to surveillance by Asgard's gatekeeper, Heimdall. If he has yet to inform the Allfather that I live, he is already skirting around the edges of treason. I suspect that the moment I step out of line, Thor will return to drag me back to the dungeons, and I have suffered through that enough."
"Uh, no, I don't think..." Clint frowns. "When Thor came back to Earth, he told us you were Asgard's hero. I'm pretty sure he'd be more likely to give you a hug than slap a pair of handcuffs on you."
Loki rolls his eyes. "His opinions on me change with how useful he finds me. If he thinks me a hero, it would be because in saving him, I pretended it killed me. He's memorialized the thought of me, but I know the reality of our relationship far better than he does, and I know it would fall apart the moment he realized I live on."
Clint lets out a low whistle. "You guys have a really messed up relationship."
"Believe me," Loki deadpans, "you do not know the half of it."
"I can't even imagine," Clint says. Changing the subject back to where it was supposed to be, he asks, "So if I leave you here, what are you going to do?"
"I've told you: I will do nothing," Loki says. He can't do anything. Heimdall's not once acknowledged that he's alive, but his mere existence is a threat to Loki's freedom.
"No, I mean what are you going to do?" Clint asks. "Not, you know, who are you going to kill? What are you going to do? In general. What do you do here?"
Loki shakes his head, giving a small, awkward shrug. "Nothing. I do my best to stay out of the way. I am far more concerned with staying alive and out of Asgard's grasp than I am with enjoying myself."
Clint nods slowly. "Okay, well, where do you live? Do you have a job? How do you get groceries? How does this work?"
"You have severely over-complicated this," Loki tells him. "I have no home; I have no job; I have no groceries. My greatest crime over these last few months is stealing food – which I would hardly consider a crime; every time I enter the store, there must be dozens of these bags." He conjures a half-eaten bag of chocolate chip cookies from the grocery store bakery. He holds the bag towards Clint. "Cookie?"
Clint stares at him. "You don't have a house?"
Loki scoffs and lowers his cookies. "Yes, because there is no shortage of humans who would have no issue with me living among them," he says sarcastically. "Of course I don't, but after so long traversing through space, I can hardly say I mind. It has been a long time since I last lived in a palace; the streets of Midgard are far more comfortable than the places I've been of late."
Clint frowns. "When was the last time you had a real meal?"
Loki hesitates, then slowly lifts his bag of cookies up again. Are cookies a real meal? Are they a snack? He has no idea. They don't have cookies in Asgard – though if they come from the bakery, he must assume they're a snack. Most baked goods are, at least in Asgard. Midgard is likely the same way.
"Loki, you can't live on cookies," Clint deadpans.
"I beg to differ," Loki says. "They are easy to steal, easy to transport, and do not go bad as quickly as, say, a container of fruit. They are the ideal meal."
"But they're not food," Clint says. "They're junk."
Loki scoffs. "They are not junk. They are delicious!"
"Yeah, but they're junk," Clint says. "They're, like, 90 percent sugar. There's no substance."
Loki returns the cookies to his personal pocket dimension to conjure again later. He crosses his arms over his chest. "While I am thrilled that you have the luxury of choosing your food for its nutrition values, I have far more pressing matters to worry about with my diet."
Clint sighs. "When was the last time you ate something that wasn't room temperature?"
Loki fights the urge to roll his eyes. "I do not keep a running tab of the temperature of the food I eat," he says. "Though given that it is much colder outside than 'room temperature,' I supposed the answer would be the cookies I ate this morning."
Clint actually does roll his eyes at that. "You ever had spaghetti?"
Loki furrows his brows. "I beg your pardon?"
"Spaghetti," Clint repeats. "Noodles. Pasta." He looks at the god expectantly, but Loki's expression is completely blank. "Look, my wife's making dinner in about..." He pulls his phone out of his pocket briefly to check the time. "About an hour. You want to come with?"
Loki stares at him, his mouth falling open ever so slightly. What?
"I'm trusting you to play nice with my kids," Clint tells him. "My wife can handle whatever you throw at her, but you gotta leave my kids alone, alright? Or I will tell Thor you're here."
It takes Loki a few moments of stunned silence to finally formulate a response. "Why?" he asks cautiously. "This sounds to me a big risk with very little to gain."
Clint shrugs. "I wanna hear more about this Titan guy and his scepter, and you sound like you could use a real meal for once. Sounds like a win-win situation to me."
Loki nods slowly, thinking that over. "I supposed I would like a real meal," he admits. "But if you expect me to bare my soul in return, I'm afraid you'll be rather disappointed. There are many stories of my time in his Sanctuary that I will take to my grave."
"You don't have to tell me everything," Clint assures him. "I'm not asking for a biography. I just want to see who you really are, when you're not mind-controlled by a mad Titan into taking over the world."
"Why?" Loki asks, acutely aware of the fact that he asked the same question mere moments ago. He must sound like a broken record.
"Because," Clint says, "you don't meet a whole lot of people who have been mind controlled into helping take over the world. I think it might be cathartic – for both of us."
Loki offers him a small smile. "I feel as though I should refuse, but this is kindness I have not been shown in a very long time. I think I will accept your invitation."
Clint grins. "Great," he says. He gestures for Loki to stand up and follow him. "Laura's gonna kill me if I come back with a known terrorist and don't get Parmesan cheese, so you up for a trip to the grocery store first?"
Loki pushes himself to his feet. "After you."