Summary:
Seriously, don't lie to the god of lies when Holly Potter's life is on the line. It will not end well for you.
Loki had disliked everything about Pierce from the moment he laid eyes on the man. He'd disliked his graying blonde hair, his stupid glasses and his well-tailored suit. All of it was awful. Granted Loki had felt that about everything and everyone that wasn't Holly after her kidnapping. He'd been snappish and rude to everyone aside from Hermione because that woman frightened him far too much. And really who would blame him for his foul mood? Holly had once again been put into danger and Loki had failed to protect her. She had been vulnerable and in so much pain. Loki should have foreseen this.
They all should have.
In their defense, their worry about Holly's transformation had blinded them to the danger they were in. All of them were focused on trying to prepare for whatever Holly would become. Hermione had pulled Tony, Bruce, Loki, Ron and even Thor into researching the books she'd gathered up for them. Clint and Natasha had been working on keeping everyone fed while Steve had switched off between monitoring them and helping Winter.
On top of all of this Loki had been led to believe that Hydra was a diminishing force in the world. That after the formation of SHIELD, Hydra had been chipped away at year after year. Yes, there were programs like the Red Room that had created Black Widows but those had been dismantled one by one. Hydra was supposedly weaker now than it had ever been. They had assumed that sending the Winter Soldier at them had been Hydra's last shot at being a threat. They had not expected Hydra to have the force, the resources, that they did.
The robots that had swarmed them. The explosion in the penthouse that would have killed Ron and his baby if Ron hadn't had insane reflexes. The EMP bomb that went off in the server room in the basement nearly killing Jarvis. The numerous agents. It had all been so surprising that they had been nearly paralyzed by it. When the dust had settled, they'd found the Winter Soldier severely injured and no Holly to be found.
And it had pissed Loki off.
It was still pissing him off in fact.
Despite this Loki was quite sure he hated Pierce solely because he was a liar and a piss poor one at that. How dare he lie to Loki's face and not even have the guts to not suck at it. That was just offensive. He found he despised the man for dangling Holly in front of them to try and push his agenda. Pierce was a slimy toad of a man and Loki wanted nothing more than to make his outside match his inside. If Holly could turn assassins into rats, then Loki could turn agents into toads.
The man had spoken at length to them about the benefits of Project Insight to the world, how they could use it to find Holly Potter and do so much more to prevent tragedies like this from happening in the future. He seemed entirely too full of himself, too sure that they would believe him. He didn't even bother trying not to look like he had a stick up his ass. Loki didn't care one way or another about Insight, but it reminded him of Hiemdall and that alone made him hate it too. To Loki's lack of surprise there was no one in the group of heroes that liked Pierce's ideas.
When the toad left, they immediately looked like they wanted to argue about it. Loki shushed them harshly and then waved his hand in a violent cutting downward motion. Ever single listening device in the room shorted out simultaneously except for Tony's phone which had Holly's protection on it. Once that was done Loki growled harshly.
"He was lying, and I intend to rip the truth out with his spine."
"Lying about what? Project Insight?" Steve asked. "Because I do not like the sound of that at all."
"Not that." Loki scoffed. "That was obviously a ploy to instate a fascist regime on the globe. Who cares? No. He was lying about Holly. She isn't in Russia."
The thing that most people forgot, that even Loki at times forgot, was that Loki was far from stupid. Sure, he wasn't all that intelligent when compared to someone like Hermione Granger-Weasley, but still he was not an idiot. For centuries he had been one of Asgard's top political experts, even if Odin preferred not to listen to Loki's advice. When he and Ralston had become heroes of earth Loki had thrown himself into the politics of the time.
Humans were terribly clever but that did not mean they were original. They had new names for things, new ways to frame the same actions. Generations grew and died so quickly that the humans of today would forget what their ancestors had already tried. Pierce was just the newest in a long line of idiots who were trying to find a way to exert control over humanity. Loki had seen it with the magic users he and Ralston had tried to protect, and he had seen it with the muggles of the same time.
So, Loki knew what Pierce was. He would care more about it if it affected him directly or if Holly wasn't currently missing.
"What?" Thor asked while the rest of the Avengers sputtered nonsensically. Loki rolled his eyes.
"The man was suggesting you allow him to send three floating islands into the sky so that he can monitor the entire planet for bad behavior." Loki said. "Obviously a fascist. Holly taught me that word, I quite like it. Speaking of, far more importantly, he's trying to mislead us on our hunt for Holly."
"How is the fact that one of the top men in SHIELD a fascist more important?" Clint demanded.
"Holly is what matters. Besides the man won't succeed. Even if he gets his stupid islands up and kills everyone who disagrees with him it's not like the rest of humanity is going to roll over and take it. No, he'll have far too many revolts on his hands until he's either forced to eradicate his entire species or die himself. It's inevitable." Loki explained. "Take it from someone who knows."
"We have to stop him." Thor declared. "It's our job."
"Our job should be finding Holly."
"Loki." Ron said gently. "Ask yourself, do you think Holly would want you to focus on her or on stopping Pierce if he is as bad as you believe?"
Loki opened his mouth to say that Holly would want them to rescue her, but he knew that would be a bald-faced lie. Next, he wanted to say that it didn't matter what Holly wanted, she had the self-preservation of a lemming anyway. But...he imagined her face if he revealed he'd let a fascist plot like this go uncontested.
Loki, you know what the right thing is. Ralston whispered in his ear. My descendant is going to be fine.
Damn.
"Alright fine. Let's murder Pierce and then go find Holly."
"We cannot just murder one of my most trusted colleagues because you think you're an expert in global politics." Fury growled.
"Why not? It would save us all time."
"We have to do research, ensure that Pierce is dirty." Natasha said. "Then we stop Insight and find Holly."
Loki scoffed but didn't argue. That was what Holly would want him to do. She would want them to be smart, to protect innocent people, and trust her to protect herself. He hated that he had to do what Holly wanted. What Holly wanted was stupid. Especially since she was the one who'd gotten kidnapped. Even though she had been under a sleeping spell so she could hardly be blamed.
Still.
They began to carefully plan out how they were going to go about their reconnaissance. Loki's idea of kidnapping Pierce, tying him to a chair, and threatening him until he spilled his guts was voted down quite quickly which Loki thought was unfair. No one was interested in his truth spell idea either. Something about 'what if he's innocent Loki' or 'you can't torture everyone you don't like Loki'.
Nag. Nag. Nag.
Loki wasn't wrong about this. He had been lying about there being clues of Holly location being in Russia. Either the man knew where Holly actually was, or he had no clue and was willing to use their desperation to his advantage. Frankly Loki didn't care which one was the case. He was a liar either way and Loki needed to know the truth, soon. The only person on his side was Winter who was deeply suspicious of Pierce for reasons he refused, or could not, vocalize.
Loki decided he liked Winter the best after the man agreed that beating Pierce until he squeaked was a reasonable solution.
Still two against the rest of the group wasn't enough. Thankfully Loki's skills were going to be put to use. While Ron, Hermione, Tony and Jarvis continued to work on tracking Holly's location, Loki, Natasha, and Clint would go undercover to sniff out Pierce's true motivations. Bruce and Winter were on stand-by, ready to jump into action as needed and acting as a guard for Fury. There were after all suspicions that if Pierce was dirty, he'd try to remove Fury from the picture. Steve's job was to run interference with any SHIELD agents to keep suspicion off their backs.
And so, they got to work. Loki easily shifted himself into a nondescript human in a shield uniform and insinuated himself into SHIELD. He used magic to create a pass that would get him through security much to Fury's displeasure. It was laughable to see the man realize how much Loki was actually capable of. From there it was easy enough to work in tandem with the other two shield agents to download files about Project Insight.
Loki would later, many years from now, look back and be grateful that they decided to do the 'right' thing. He would have no way of knowing what would have happened if he had dedicated himself to finding Holly instead of protecting earth against Pierce's plan. In another world, a world where he and Holly had never met, Hydra's actions would have resulted in Fury's near death, the destruction of SHIELD, and the three heli-carriers would have crashed into the earth resulting in thousands of deaths.
In that world of course Loki wouldn't have cared about that. But now Loki had something of an affection for the Avengers and Holly had reignited his love for earth, the love he had gained with Ralston four centuries before. In this world, Loki would be glad (eventually) that Hydra was stopped here and now instead of sometime in the future.
Not that he would ever admit that out loud or anything.
It took Loki some hours to get into the places he needed, to even find any clues. Hours during which only his worry for Holly and Ralston's ghostly voice could keep him company. He was deep deep in the heart of SHIELD, surrounded by humans who he did not know and who were trained to have a trigger finger and a less than healthy sense of paranoia. He had given himself a face that was so ubiquitous that any human who saw it would think that they had seen it before. With a helpful dash of magic to throw off suspicion it had helped him get by beneath the radar.
Yet with every step he took he knew he increased his chances of being caught, of alerting their enemies what they were doing. It had been Tony who had suggested that Hydra was more widespread than they had thought. Only SHIELD and the Avengers could have known some of the things Hydra used to attack the Tower, who was to say that Hydra had not infiltrated the organization that had formed the Avengers in the first place? Tony's idea had unnerved the two loyal SHIELD agents, which was why Loki had been sent into SHIELD alone.
Who around him was Hydra? Who was SHIELD? Who were both? Had any of these agents helped on the attack of Avengers Tower? Had any of them been the ones to take Holly? Loki had to keep himself from glaring at them from the corner of his eyes as he carefully tapped at a keyboard trying to find what it was that he wanted. He did not know this tech as well as he should, it was both high tech (compared to the earth he knew from Ralston's time) and primitive (compared to Asgard) to him.
Eventually he found it.
Or rather he found him.
As part of Loki's reintroduction to the tower after Holly had declared him mentally well enough to leave his hospital room, he'd met with Jarvis. He hadn't liked Jarvis at all, but Holly had sternly told him that Jarvis was her friend and that he had to be polite to the artificial intelligence. He and Jarvis had had exactly one conversation about his code and if it was at similar to Hogwart's warding system. At the time Loki had said that they were far too different, but he knew better now.
So, when he found a thread of coding that looking strangely like Jarvis' he moved forward, following the trail of crumbs (hadn't Stark called them 'cookies' at one point?) the thing he was following left behind. Eventually after using a healthy dose of 'emotion-free' magic to convince a few firewalls that really, they wanted to let him in, he found it. An entire intelligence, not like Jarvis or Hogwarts, but an intelligence, nonetheless. It lacked the fluidity and the vastness of Jarvis and it had no magic to speak of.
"And who might you be?" Loki asked.
A name was not forthcoming.
But that was fine, Loki was persistent when he wanted to be. And in this situation, he most certainly wanted to be. Carefully he picked and pocked and even stabbed a little at the intelligence until he forced its secrets into the open. He stared hard at the information and then carefully removed the phone that Stark had thrust into his hands.
Does the name Zola mean anything?
Armin Zola? He was a hydra scientist back before I got frozen. Steve messaged back to the group text. Why?
Apparently, he downloaded his brain and SHIELD has him in their servers. What you humans will do for immortality is fascinating.
Loki would be lying if he said he didn't enjoy the chaos that formed from that reveal. It took time to bend what remained of Zola to his will but eventually he convinced the intelligence that he was a friend, a trusted confidant, perhaps even a lover. His magic convinced the intelligence that it saw everything it had ever desired in Loki, everything it missed from having corporality. He weaved around himself lies like expertly spun silk, creating a façade so tempting it would make a siren green with envy. Pierce could never even compete. His lie was so complete that Zola began to sing for him.
Zola bragged to him, desperate to impress him, telling him all that he had done in the name of Hydra, all that he was willing to do. He revealed the depravity of his own mind and what horrors his genius had created. He was so proud, so smug, of it all. He confided to Loki, using a tone that only the most beloved would use on another, that he knew he would never be caught, that Hydra would have its victory. Project Insight was ready, the ships were built, and soon they would fly. Zola had seen head after head of Hydra cut off and had spent his immortality ensuring three more grew in their place each time.
And Loki listened. He empathized, he praised. Oh, how brilliant you are Zola, how loyal, how dedicated. Surely there has been no other man like you before. Loki knew the frailty of genius and he had no problem playing that weakness like a lute. And when Loki had his information, he soothed Zola back into slumber with promises of a world enslaved. The lies fell from his tongue and from his fingers like honey and gold, sweet and wealthy and oh so impossible to ignore.
Sometimes I forget how good at that you are.
Loki smirked and mentally reminded Ralston that when Ralston had been alive Loki hadn't felt the need to use these skills. Perhaps it was bad that he'd accepted Ralston's voice, that he no longer pretended that he didn't want it there. But Loki didn't care if it was bad or if the voice was fake. Not anymore.
Once Zola was asleep and Loki was able to fully disentangle himself from the computer system he fell back into his chair. What Zola had revealed was frightening. That Hydra had been a part of SHIELD from its genesis was dangerous. What missions had SHIELD gone through with that had been motivated by Hydra? What crimes had been covered up? Where had they taken Holly?
Loki sent a message off to the group chat, warning them to trust no one in SHIELD. SHIELD was compromised. Hydra was behind Project Insight and would be using it to kill millions.
Of course, the moment he sent that things started to go wrong very very quickly.
Loki didn't know it, but the messages weren't secure. When Loki had sent the message about Zola, Pierce had begun his final preparations. The man was apparently not as stupid as Loki had assumed, he had seen that the Avengers hadn't been swayed. In the day Loki had spent infiltrating SHIELD, Pierce had been busy. Since he had Holly, he didn't fear the force of the rest of the Avengers. The moment he sent that final message, Pierce reacted. The game was up, and the Avengers were now a threat to Hydra's security. SHIELD would fall today, and Hydra would rise from its ashes.
All at once attacks on the Avengers began simultaneously. Guns were fired on Winter, Fury, and Bruce. Agents swarmed Clint and Natasha. More robots burst into the room Hermione was researching in with Tony and Ron. Steve was trapped in an elevator with agents who tried to subdue him. Someone attempted to hit Thor with a tesseract based weapon that was designed to vaporize anyone it hit. Only Loki, disguised as deeply was he was, was safe from the immediate assault.
It was Jarvis who let Loki know what was happening, rapidly sending him messages of locations and attacks. Loki stared at the ever-growing list of misfortunes with slightly widened eyes.
Just like old times, right?
Not currently helpful Ralston.
Loki took in a deep breath and let the Yggdrasil take him away. As he did so the spells hiding his identity failed and he arrived by Tony and the other's sides in full armor. Immediately he conjured three knives and sent them directly into the processors of the robots that were converging on Stark.
"Loki!"
"Stark. Get to work, you need to keep Project Insight from taking off. Attack it with whatever means you have."
"What about Holly?"
"She'll be along." Loki said. "I hope."
"Knowing her?" Ron said after blasting one of the robots, with his sleeping infant attached to his chest with a tight sling. Ron and Hermione had both refused to part with the child and so had put her in a specially warded sling to protect her from danger. They had then traded off holding her as they worked. "Definitely."
"We're good here Loki." Hermione said. "We'll guard Tony while he works."
"Avoid Zola if you can, he's entrenched in SHIELD's system if he catches you, he'll do everything he can to shut you out."
"Jarvis can take that old man." Tony declared.
"I'm on my way to Romanoff and Barton." Loki said. "Tell Jarvis if you need help."
The world exploded into chaos the moment Loki arrived at Barton's side. Loki lost himself in the fighting. Teleport, stab, blast. All of it melding together into a symphony of noise and pain. Agents were fighting against one another, a civil war of epic proportions. It was impossible to tell whose side an agent was on until they pointed their gun at you. It took time to thin the crowds of Hydra agents, once it was done though Loki, Clint, and Natasha made their way towards Fury, Winter, and Bruce.
They met up with a slightly winded Steve on the way, who exited from an elevator filled with unconscious agents. In the distance they heard Thor roar and call down a blast of lightning.
"That can't be good." Loki decided. "I best check on him."
"We'll be fine here. We'll secure Fury and make our way back to Tony and the others."
"If his hacking fails, we have to destroy the ships before they take off."
"Bruce could probably take care of the smashing."
Loki laughed at that and let the Yggdrasil drag him to his brother. He found Thor fighting with his hammer against a few agents with terribly large glowing guns. His brother hard a severe burn on his arm.
"Thor!"
"Loki! Something's wrong with Mjolnir! She keeps fighting me."
"What?" Sure, enough the hammer jerked violently in Thor's grip. One of the Agents fired again, and Loki cast a powerful shield to block it.
Loki's eyes widened as he stared at hammer.
"Thor. Let Mjolnir go."
"What?"
"Someone else is summoning her."
"But who...Holly."
A moment later the hammer was flying from Thor's loose grip towards a destination unknown. Loki watched it blast through a wall, taking out one of the guns on its way with a sigh of relief.
Holly was alive.
"Brother." Thor said. "Do you want to go after it?"
"And leave you here defenseless?" Loki teased. "No let's fight them together, Holly will be on her way soon enough."
The grin of Thor's face was blinding.