Loki refuses to ask FRIDAY for help.
He doesn't care how long he spends wandering around helplessly in the compound. He refuses to ask FRIDAY for help. He'll walk the entire compound alone if that's what it takes, but he will never ask that AI for help. She's not JARIVS. She's never going to be JARVIS. He's not going to pretend otherwise.
Fortunately, after what feels like hours of walking (though in reality, it can't be much more than 20 minutes), he runs into Clint and Natasha. It's a rare moment when running into these two is considered fortunate, but Natasha and Clint have been suspiciously nice to him lately, so he's not overly concerned about anything going too horribly wrong.
Natasha smiles when she sees him, clearly a bit surprised, but not in a bad way. "Hey, you looking for something?"
"Is it that obvious?" Loki asks.
"Little bit," she says. "What're you looking for? Thor? Rogers? Ice cream?"
"Banner, actually," Loki says. He hasn't really gotten to talk to him yet. He'd like to think a conversation would go better without Wanda and Pietro present – and if it doesn't, they could always pivot their attention to his work. "I assume he's in his lab, though I'm not sure where that lab is."
"Oh, yeah, we can take you," Natasha offers. "It's not too far."
Help from Natasha and Clint is marginally better than help from FRIDAY, so he accepts the offer. It's easier than walking around the whole compound.
As they show him where to go, he makes a point of looking around, trying to at least kind of familiarize himself with the layout of the building. It's going to take more than a walk to the lab to really get to know the place, but it's a good start.
It's quiet at first, until Natasha asks, "How're you liking the compound so far?"
Loki shrugs awkwardly. "It's nice." It's more than nice, really, but he doesn't particularly want to ramble about it right now — not to them, at least. It's nice to no longer be public enemy number one, especially where Clint's concerned, but he wouldn't call them friends, either.
Natasha doesn't seem to get the memo, because she tries to keep the conversation going. "I'm sure the fresh air's nice."
"Mm," Loki hums. The fresh air is very nice. The fact that he hadn't been outside in years, on the other hand, is not nice. He'd go as far as to say it's embarrassing, and certainly not something he would like to talk about right now.
They lapse into silence again, and Natasha glances at Clint, who glances back at her. They don't say a word, but it feels like some sentiment was exchanged there somehow. A part of him finds it uncomfortable, but another part of him knows he and Thor have used the same kind of silent communication before, and it would be rather hypocritical to hold that against them.
Finally, they reach the lab. This is something Loki has been somewhat excited since he first heard there was a new lab here. He's been looking forward to seeing the layout and what kinds of equipment it has and all the different things he could research here. Midgardian science is fascinating to him, and he'll take any chance to see what kinds of inventions they've come up with to further their research.
He doesn't really get the chance to enjoy any of it. His gaze falls on Wanda almost immediately, and any semblance of excitement he'd had fades in an instant. He'd known there was a chance she would be here. He'd tried to prepare himself for it. It doesn't make him feel any better to see her lying in a recliner with electrodes covering her head. Not only is Bruce working with Wanda; he's working on her – and, in essence, still experimenting with the Mind Stone.
Maybe he should have just gone back to bed. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
Bruce had been showing Pietro something on his monitor, its screen turned away from the door and blocking Loki's own view of it, but when he realizes they're not alone, his attention shifts.
"Oh, hey!" he greets the god. "Are you here to check out what we've been up to?"
Loki hesitates, gaze flickering between Bruce's look of pride and the experimental mess that Wanda is right now. "I'm not sure that I want to know." Whatever it is, he's fairly sure he's not going to like it. It might be easier to walk away now before he learns something he can't unlearn.
"If it's any consolation," Tony pipes up from the corner of the room, "I had nothing to do with it this time."
Loki has to crane his neck to even see him. Sure enough, whatever it is he's doing seems completely Wanda-free. The hologram he's working with looks more interior design-based than anything to do with the Mind Stone or its puppets.
Clint cocks his head to the side. "What are you doing?"
"Mapping out the training room," Tony replies. "How many punching bags do you think we're gonna need to stop Rogers from breaking all of them?"
"A lot," Natasha answers.
Tony clicks his tongue. "You're not wrong."
Loki has no interest in whatever this 'training room' is. He's far more curious – and apprehensive – about whatever it is Bruce is working on. He walks up to the monitor, and Bruce swivels it around to show him.
He has absolutely no idea what he's looking at.
Fortunately, Bruce steps in. "Tony and I ran a lot of tests on the stone before the whole thing with Ultron happened," he explains. "Obviously, we don't have the stone here anymore 'cause Vision's with SHIELD now, but we have the data–"
"You can't still be researching the stone," Loki says, doing his best to keep his incredulity to a minimum. "The last time you did this, you created a robot intent on destroying the world." How could he possibly not see that the Mind Stone is intent on destruction?
"No, of course not," Bruce says quickly. "No, I've been running some tests on the twins and comparing the results to what we know about the stone."
Loki nods slowly. "Okay...?"
"I can't find any sign that the stone's still a part of them," Bruce says.
Loki stares at him. "Really," he deadpans. "None at all."
"I'm serious," Bruce insists. "I've double-checked – I've triple-checked everything. I was gonna try to figure out if it could be removed, but as far as I can tell, there's nothing to remove."
"Uh-huh." Loki cocks an eyebrow. "And the fact that the boy could reach the old Avengers Tower before you could even leave the room, that doesn't concern you?"
"As far as I can tell, that's not the stone's doing," Bruce tells him. "Not directly, at least. It may have changed something or unlocked something in them, but their powers have pretty natural origins – you know; as natural as they can."
"Meaning?"
"There's no trace of the stone when they use their powers," Bruce says. "None that I can find, anyway. With him, there's an alteration in the physiology of his endocrine system. With Wanda, it's more neurologic; I'm finding neurotransmitters the scientific community's never even heard of."
"And that means what?" Loki asks again. "I fail to see whatever point it is that you're trying to make."
"My point is that they're not drawing on the stone's powers," Bruce says. "You don't trust them because that stone's a part of them, right? 'Cause, from what I can tell, it's no more a part of them than it is a part of you."
Loki glances at the twins skeptically. Pietro's just leaning on a table, his face largely emotionless, but Wanda seems far more invested. She's propped herself up on her elbows so she can see him, and beneath the dozen or so electrodes attached to her head, he can see a look of what almost seems to be... hope. She wants him to learn to trust her.
He won't.
"I don't believe it," Loki tells the scientist.
"Why not?" Bruce asks. It sounds like a genuine question, like he thinks he could change his mind if he just knew how, but he's wrong.
"You cannot prove the absence of something," Loki says. "You may have run the wrong tests. You may have run the tests wrong. The fact that you've found no scientific evidence of it doesn't negate the very obvious evidence that no human can do what they can. Their powers were born of the Mind Stone. On that, I'm sure we can agree. If they still have their powers–"
"But I don't think they're drawing on the stone to use them," Bruce insists. "I think it changed them, physically. I mean, the stone killed a lot of HYDRA's first volunteers, so the fact that they even survived makes me think they were, like, genetically predispositioned to handle it."
Loki purses his lips. That still doesn't feel right, but he can't put his finger on why it wouldn't be, other than his own intrinsic distrust of both the twins and the Mind Stone.
From his own little workspace on the other side of the room, Tony adds, "I mean, it would explain why the only two people it happened to are related – genetics."
Loki glances between the two scientists thoughtfully. They could be right. They could also be dead wrong – or even a middle ground: the twins could have a genetic predisposition to holding the Mind Stone's power. He's not sure he's convinced that the stone caused some harmless alteration in their bodies. Just considering what the Mind Stone is, he has to think it's something far more sinister.
More importantly, though, is that the strongest people in the room right now are probably Clint and Natasha – ordinary, non-superpowered humans. Everybody in the lab, the twins excluded, are just ordinary people. Pietro may be a problem – it's hard to say; he hasn't had a physical altercation with the speedster before – but Wanda...
Well, she'll be under his thumb before she could even think to stop him.
"May I see your work?" Loki asks.
"Yeah, 'course," Bruce says, gesturing for Loki to come closer. The genuine smile on his face almost makes Loki feel bad about what he's about to do.
Loki walks up to him, gaze glued pointedly to the screen Bruce is showing him, until he's within arms' reach; then his focus shifts. He grabs Wanda's head, fingers positioned carelessly over the electrodes stuck to her skin, and closes his eyes. He can hear the chaos his actions bring around him, but his attention is focused on the little witch in his grasp.
He believes in the sciences, but there is nothing he trusts more than his own magic.
He squeezes herself into her mind, left shockingly defenseless for a witch who specializes in infiltrating others' thoughts. He skips over everything that's happened recently. He knows all that he needs to about what's happened since she arrived. It's what happened before she got involved in this mess that he really wants to see.
It's dark in here.
Even the glow of her magic can't change that.
Between her fingers, a ball of scarlet light shines, gently illuminating the dull concrete walls that surround her. The darkened silhouette on the floor catches his eye, and it lets out a low groan as the light hits it. It rolls slightly, and only then can Loki make out any of its features.
It's just Pietro, half-asleep on the concrete floor with a thin, torn-up blanket over him. He's younger here than he is in the real world, but his face is just as recognizable, as is the irritable look he wears.
"Must you do this every night?" he mumbles.
The light between her fingers dims. "I'm sorry," she whispers.
"No, you're not."
Pietro rolls away and covers his face with his blanket without another word.
Wanda sighs and lies down as well, and Loki can feel the cold concrete against her skin. A thin, tattered blanket floats on top of her, and she closes her eyes. "Goodnight, Pietro."
Pietro just groans in response.
Loki scowls. That's not what he wants to see. He needs to go back further.
She's seated on the floor in front of the TV, her hands clasped eagerly in her lap as she looks up at the screen. It's a much smaller television than Loki's ever seen before, and it only displays its images in black and white, but the warmth he can feel inside her says she doesn't mind that.
She laughs at something on the screen, then glances over her shoulder at the two people seated on the couch behind her — her parents, he assumes, which would make the boy beside her a very young Pietro.
Right here in this moment, everything feels... nice. Quiet. She doesn't have her powers yet. He's gone too far back.
Her parents are dead, he happens to recall — doubtlessly a very painful, traumatic moment for her. He could remind her. He could dig through her mind until he finds the very moment they died and force her to live it again. It would only be fair, with what she did to him.
But he doesn't know how long he has until the others manage to tear him away from Wanda, and he doesn't want to waste whatever time he's got.
So he spares her the trip down trauma lane — a luxury he wasn't given — and instead searches for what he's really looking for: answers.
It's cold in here.
That's perhaps the first thing he notices – not the crowd of people; not the gloomy gray walls that surround them. It's the cold that he notices first. She feels it differently than he does. This must be how normal people feel temperature – people not built for freezing weather the way he is.
Wanda pulls her sweater closer, hugging it against her body. She's shivering under the thin fabric, not only from the cold, but from fear, too. Wherever she is, whatever she's about to do, it scares her.
Pietro puts an arm around her waist, and when she looks up at him, he gives her a small smile of encouragement. "We will be alright," he says quietly.
"I know," she says. She doesn't believe it.
"We are going to save our country," he reminds her. "Soon, nobody will lose their family and their home again."
She sighs and rests her head against his chest, and he wraps his arms around her. Loki isn't sure if the warmth she feels is from his body or his love.
Across the room, the door opens, revealing a man with a clipboard held in front of him. He looks down at it, then out at the dozens of people in front of him. "Wanda Django Maximoff."
The fear she feels grows tenfold, and even the gentle kiss Pietro presses to the top of her head does nothing to quell it.
"You'll be alright," he whispers. "I'll see you soon."
Reluctantly, she forces herself to step away from him, and she spares him one last wary glance before she walks away.
Loki skips through the next minute or two, until finally, he sees it: the Mind Stone.
This is what he's been looking for.
She's alone in the room, just herself and the stone. The fear she'd felt only minutes earlier fades as she watches it. There's an instant connection, strong but subtle, and if Loki hadn't been trained in the arts for centuries, even he may not have noticed. Her body, her spirit, her mind; she's ready.
It's as though time stops in that moment. Even as the Mind Stone floats toward her, the world around her is frozen. She reaches out to it, slowly, carefully, until her fingers brush against it...
And its casing shatters, leaving behind only the yellow glow of its true form. Its power erupts through the room, nearly blowing her away, but she fights against it, struggling to remain where she stands. As she gazes into its glare, she sees... a figure. The silhouette of a woman floats within, arms spread, basking in her power.
Then Wanda blinks.
And it's gone.
She's only conscious for the briefest moment as the light fades, but it's enough. He can feel every piece of her, inside and out. He can feel her power, a power that hadn't been there even a minute earlier.
But it's not the Mind Stone.
He sees that now. As the light of the universe shone on her face, there was a shift in her body's equilibrium, a shift in her being – brought on by the Mind Stone, yes, but it's more than that. It's her. Her power comes from deep within her; from her very essence.
She's a product of the Mind Stone, but she's not the Mind Stone. And that changes a lot.
Loki lets her go and takes a few steps away. That was... it was a lot. He doesn't know what he'd expected to see, but it wasn't that. It wasn't to learn that he'd been wrong all along.
Wanda gasps and hugs her arms around herself, trembling in her seat. In an instant, Pietro is by her side, wrapping his arms around her in a tight hug.
"Are you alright?" Pietro asks quietly.
Wanda nods silently. She's lying.
Loki narrows his eyes, watching the twins for a moment; then, he looks to Bruce, who's moved quite a ways away from him in the last two minutes. "You may be right."
Bruce cocks his head to the side. "What–"
Loki just turns and walks out of the lab. He'll have his quality time with Bruce later. Right now, he's pretty damn sure he's not welcome here.