Knock knock knock knock knock.
"Loki, are you awake?"
Loki hums in response. It's about the best answer he can give right now.
"I will take that as a 'yes,'" Thor says. "Will you open the door?"
Loki groans. Great, and now he has to say things. He opens his mouth, but before he can even get a word out, he gets a mouthful of cat fur. Why did Snowflake decide it was a good idea to lie down on his face? And why can't he find it in him to kick her off?
"You can open it," Loki mumbles, though he doesn't know how clear it is with a cat muffling his voice.
He can hear the door open, so it must have been clear enough. Snowflake lifts her head to look, then jumps off of him to see them — though not before Thor gets a laugh at his brother's expense.
Loki rolls over in bed and looks at the doorway. Thor is standing with his arms folded over his chest, an amused look on his face. Next to him is Steve, who's crouched down on the floor to pet the cat.
"You're alive," Loki remarks.
"We are," Thor agrees.
"And is the end of the world still slated for later this week?" Loki asks, as though he hadn't stuck around until he knew for sure that it wasn't.
Thor rolls his eyes. "The world is not going to end, Loki."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Loki says with exaggerated sympathy. "You'll do better next time."
Thor shakes his head to himself, exasperated. Loki just smiles. He loves annoying his brother. It's his greatest talent.
He readjusts his position in bed, finally forcing himself to sit up, though he'd be more than content to close his eyes and go back to sleep. "I assume you're here to tell me that you're back."
"Not only that," Thor says. "There are some people we'd like you to meet."
Loki briefly wonders who it is. Did Bucky come back with them? Did he finally accept the olive branch Loki's extended on Steve's behalf time and time again? It's about damn time.
"Can I come back to bed after?" Loki asks. Not that he needs permission, of course, but if they're going to give him a hard time about it, he's just going to stay here. He can say hello to Bucky later.
"Yeah, of course," Steve says. "We just want you to know who's moving in so you don't find them in the kitchen at two in the morning."
Loki cracks a smile at that. Moving in. Did he do it? Did he really get Bucky to move in? He hadn't even considered that a possibility when he asked for his help, but now...
He stands up, and the world begins to spin around him. Maybe he should have stood up a little slower. He blinks a few times, and when the world comes back into focus, he realizes he's getting some very strange looks from the others, which he promptly ignores.
As they walk through the halls, Loki asks, "What happened? Is Ultron gone?"
"Long gone," Steve says. "You don't have to worry about him."
"Good," Loki says. He's still in awe that the Avengers managed to defeat a robot powered by an Infinity Stone. On one hand, it is just a robot; it's only as smart as its creator. But at the same time, it's the Mind Stone. Nothing short of another Infinity Stone should hold a torch to its power. "Did anybody die in the process?"
"Nope," Steve says.
Loki sighs dramatically. "Well, there's always next time."
Thor rolls his eyes, and Steve just chuckles.
When they reach the common area, Loki skims its residents. They look awful. They're still covered in dirt and grime, dried blood decorating their clothing and matting their hair. He's not entirely sure if Clint is even awake; he's lying across Natasha's lap on the couch with his eyes closed. Natasha looks half-asleep, too, her head propped up on her hand as she looks over at them with her eyes partially closed. Bruce leans against the wall, his arms folded across his chest and his head ducked.
And then he sees them.
The Maximoffs, alive and in person.
Pietro seems largely unimpressed, but Wanda definitely takes notice of him. She squints her eyes, cocking her head slightly to the side. There's a small smile on her lips, borne of both confusion and intrigue.
"Well, isn't this interesting," Loki remarks, making a show of eyeing them up and down. He'd already known they were powerful, but right now, standing in front of them, he can feel the power radiating from them. It's fascinating. What he wouldn't do to learn more about that...
"It's you," Wanda says slowly. "You're..."
"Loki," he finishes for her. It's a far better end to that sentence than what she'd been thinking, he's sure. There's no reason to tell the others that they've met before, however unofficial it was. "And you are...? And please do not say Avengers; there are already too many of those."
Wanda tilts her head further, brows furrowing but her amused, intrigued smile never wavering.
"Wanda," she says. "Wanda Maximoff." She glances up at her brother, only for a moment before her gaze returns to Loki's face. "And my brother, Pietro."
Loki gives Pietro a nod in greeting, which Pietro returns with a small half-wave.
He realizes then that there's one more person in the room, standing at a distance from everyone else. It must be Bucky, he reasons, in that split second before he sees what lies in front of him.
It's not Bucky.
It's not even human.
It's some sort of android, yet another display of robotic intelligence, and, right in the center of its head, sits the Mind Stone.
He can feel his heart stop.
The Mind Stone.
It is wearing the Mind Stone.
Loki balls his hands into fists by his side, but he forces himself not to step out of line. Not again; not if he wants to live much longer. One more slip-up, one more unthinking attempt on somebody's life, and he'd be shocked if Asgard didn't step in — and he knows what Odin would do to him if given the chancd.
But he can't fake any sort of levity in his voice, so the Avengers know exactly how he feels when he huffs and says, "You never learn, do you?"
"It's okay," Steve says, like that means anything in the face of a power like this.
"I have a very hard time believing that," Loki says, never taking his eyes off of the robot.
"I had a vision," Thor explains. "About the gem. We could not defeat Ultron alone, but—"
"You cannot be serious," Loki interrupts, incredulous. "I warn you about the Stone, and it means nothing. Some witch plays with your mind, and you take her word for gospel?"
"Loki—"
"Enough so that you recreated the exact thing that started this entire problem!" Loki practically yells.
Thor just sighs and looks at Steve, and Steve shakes his head, a silent signal that he's not going to finish this conversation for him. They must know this was wrong if neither of them are prepared to defend it. The best thing they can do now is tear this thing apart and take the Stone far, far away.
Then the robot, the Vision, speaks, his tone obnoxiously calm for Loki's taste. "You think I'm Ultron," he says. "I'm not. I'm—"
"JARVIS." Loki's brows knit together in confusion. That's JARVIS's voice. Is he...?
"I'm not JARVIS, either," Vision says. "I'm something new, something different."
Any hope Loki may have felt in that split-second is dashed. He may have been willing to believe in the Mind Stone if JARVIS was controlling it. He would have trusted JARVIS, certainly more than anyone or anything else in this world. But if this thing isn't him, then it needs to be destroyed.
"Calm down, brother," Thor says. (Loki would say he's doing a marvelous job of staying calm.) "You can trust him. He can wield Mjolnir."
"As can the kitchen table," Loki says. "Your Vision is not alive. That means nothing."
Vision looks at him curiously. "Why do you assume the worst of me?"
"Because he's afraid," Wanda says.
Everybody looks over at her, but her gaze is glued to Loki, her head cocked slightly to the side as she studies him. She takes a step toward him, and Loki finds himself taking a step back. This is... uncomfortable.
"You know more than you say," Wanda says slowly. "About the gem."
"I've made no secret of the fact that I know about this gem," he says cautiously. He'd say he's made it very clear that he understands it far more than anyone here could ever hope to.
"But you are not telling them everything." She takes another slow step toward him. "What are you hiding?"
Loki glances around the room uncomfortably. Everybody's watching them. Of course they are; what could be more interesting than this? He's barely spoken a dozen words to this girl and she's already mere seconds from revealing the darkest moments of his life.
"What are you?" Loki asks. He hopes his distrust is more apparent than the fear he's trying so hard to hide. "You look human, but I assume that's not fully the case."
"I'm human."
"What else?"
She smiles, an almost sinister going to her eye — or maybe it's just him; maybe he wants to think it's there. Maybe he wants to dislike her, and his subconscious is tricking him into thinking he has a reason to.
She glances at the Vision, at the Mind Stone in his head, and, to answer his question, she says simply, "The gem."
Loki freezes.
No.
No way.
There is no fucking way.
Loki looks over at his brother. "This is a joke," he says. "Tell me this is a joke."
Thor shakes his head. "No—"
Loki groans, almost a growl, and the fists he holds grow tighter, nails digging into the palms of his hands. He can't believe these people. He cannot believe them. They've seen the power of the Mind Stone. They nearly lost two of their own to it — and they damn well may have if Loki wasn't around to save Clint and Bucky wasn't there to save Natasha. And now they've decided to live not only with the Stone, but with two products of its powers — two products of its powers that they'd been fighting against mere days ago?
In lieu of the very choice words he has for them, he turns around and storms away.
"Where are you going?" Steve asks.
"Far away," Loki says. "Before the 'violent monster' you all think I am makes a reappearance."
Thor sighs. "Brother—"
"Loki, we don't—" Steve begins.
As soon as Loki's out of their sight, he teleports back to his room, cutting off the rest of their lies.
Loki sits down on his bed, careful not to crush the cat already lying there, and buries his head in his hands. Well, isn't this just great?
And the worst part is that there's nothing he can do. He's trapped in here with them. He's trapped in here with it. He is stuck in this building with the Mind Stone, and that brings about a sense of terror he's only known once before.
He's not ready to face this again.