'It'll be all right,' Rogers cooed. He drew his arm around the woman's narrow shoulders and led her inside the quinjet.

Loki glanced back at the scowling soldiers. Whatever phone number Rogers had memorised, Coulson hadn't been on the other end of the line. The first two times the call went unanswered. On the third, the call went straight to Romanoff and here she was thirty minutes later, in a quinjet of her own. The craft's surface, still wet from some storm-system she had cut through on the way, glistened, refracting the beams of the soldiers' flashlights. Although Loki and Rogers had warned about its arrival, the first sight of the quinjet still sent the infantry into a flurry of shouting and they hurried to take up positions. A senior officer had to shout for everyone to stand down.

The military turned even more hostile when Romanoff declared that she would be taking the injured SHIELD agent with them. Loki wasn't familiar with the peculiarities of the local legal code nor with military procedures, so he couldn't follow the trail of the discussion about the agent's fate. Romanoff, on the other hand, had a good grasp of the complexities of military policy on detention of enemy combatants. More than enough to stump the soldiers eager to keep the SHIELD agent for their own questioning. Romanoff was gracious about it, but as she climbed inside the quinjet and swept past Loki, she allowed herself a self-satisfied smile.

'Care to be my co-pilot?' she asked him. Neither her tone nor her mannerisms gave any hint of the grim task she had just returned from.

Loki considered the question, then shook his head. 'You seem to have it covered.'

'Let me know if you change your mind.'

While Romanoff brought the quinjet into the air, Loki trudged over to the bench along the right-hand-side of the jet and took a seat, stretching out his legs. The leather of his boots was barely visible beneath the muddle of dirt, some kind of white dust and specks of blood.

Midgard in all its glory.

He flicked his fingers and gasped.

'Loki?' Rogers' head shot up.

'Just remembered I had a date scheduled for tomorrow. Quite a lovely lady; I hate to stand her up.' Loki replied briskly. Inwardly he berated himself. The last time he had tangled with the mind stone, he had been left unconscious and any attempt to use magic had him hissing with pain for days. He should have anticipated that today's abuse would inflict its own damage.

Rogers seemed unable to determine whether Loki was being disingenuous or not. His hands hovered over the first aid kit he had open across his knees. 'Is there no way you can get in touch? Let her know?'

'Maybe.' Some minute muscle moved in Rogers' face, but in that barely perceptible change the squeaky-clean persona of Captain America threatened to shatter. Loki swallowed. Uncertain of whether Rogers was about to spill some deep trauma of his upon Loki or if he expected Loki to start sharing the details about his fictitious date, Loki fumbled for a change of topic. His attention fell onto the woman curled up on the bench next to Rogers. 'What was your name again?'

She had told Rogers earlier, but Loki hadn't been listening.

'Tilly,' she mumbled, barely audible.

'Did the creature with the staff say anything?' Loki asked. 'To you or to anyone else?'

'I don't remember.'

Next to her, Rogers studied the various packages that had been stuffed inside the first aid box; a dressing now soaked up the blood from Tilly's head wound, but the rest of her was still in rough shape. 'It's ok if you can't remember, but if there is something, even something you're not sure about, you need to tell us.' He ripped open the plastic around a roll of bandages and motioned for Tilly to pull back her ripped left sleeve. 'It could be crucial information.'

'It's all so hazy,' she replied.

'How about you start from the beginning?'

Tilly drew her brows together and whimpered as the movement irritated some injury under her skin. 'We were all in the office. There'd been a mad rush in the morning after a directive came from HQ to update our security protocols, but by then we'd finished and we were just kind of goofing off, talking about Francesca's head-case of a mother-in-law. Then Director Fury burst in and demanded we scramble to deploy.'

'How did he get inside?'

'Were you warned that Fury was compromised?' Loki asked before Tilly had the chance to respond to Rogers' question. She shook her head.

So much for SHIELD understanding the gravity of the situation, Loki reflected bitterly. Likely the SHIELD higher-ups thought it embarrassing to admit to their cannon fodder that one of their senior leaders was now a zombie under control of an alien. It didn't take much imagination to figure out how to get inside a building if no one thought you were a threat. Fury could have approached one of the agents out on his lunch-break or something similar. A few friendly words were often enough to coax an unsuspecting person into a place where their screams would remain unheard and then it was a matter of a strong stomach and a bit of patience. And the sceptre in Ebony Maw's hand eliminated the need for the unpleasantness information extraction entailed.

In the periphery of Loki's vision he could see Romanoff glancing back at them, her attention more focused on the conversation between her passengers than on the controls in front of her. Perhaps it would have been prudent to wait until they were back on the ground and Romanoff could do the questioning; she would get more out of the girl than Loki or Rogers. But Loki needed to focus on something other than himself and Rogers too was plainly hungry for information.

Romanoff can sink her nails into the girl later.

'Did you do as Fury directed you to?' Loki asked.

'Yeah,' Tilly replied, her words barely audible. 'Most of us anyway. There was some rumour about the director that someone had overheard earlier and a couple of people hesitated. Fury and the strange man that was with him - he didn't look human -'

'Big nose? Carried a big sceptre? That's Ebony Maw.'

'Him, yes. He approached us and started touching us with the sceptre one by one. The others realised something wasn't right, but I didn't have the time to react. I think I was the third one he reached. And then it was like looking at the world through ten feet of river water. Everything was distant and distorted.'

Tilly continued speaking, but Loki had to turn away and focus on the soft hum of the engines instead. It didn't help much, merely taking him back to that fever dream of his failed invasion of Midgard. He had sat back then in these same quinjets, fighting to peer through the wall the mind stone had woven around his psyche. Only years later, after he had the chance to study the space and the reality stones up close, did he understand fully what had happened. The infinity stones were as distinct in their moods and behaviour as any living creatures. And the mind stone was unique in its malice. It wanted to devour everything within its reach; Loki was certain that the mind stone had inflicted as much damage on his mind as Thanos himself had.

Perhaps this was his mistake — he hadn't travelled far enough back. Loki had never found out how Thanos and Ebony Maw had come to possess the mind stone, but he got the sense that it wasn't a recent acquisition. It was impossible now to say how much of Thanos' mad plan and Ebony Maw's slavish devotion to his master had been twisted under the mind stone's influence.

'Oh God.' Tilly's sharp gasp wrenched Loki out of his musings. She buried her face in her hands. 'Oh God, no.'

Loki threw Rogers a questioning look, but the man looked as lost as Loki.

'Tilly, darling. What's wrong?' Rogers pressed in as gentle a tone as he could manage.

'Nathan. My boyfriend.' She brought her hands down and sniffled. Her silence lingered. Loki was about to prompt her again, when she continued. 'We've only been dating a year, but I think he was about to propose. I found a box with a ring hidden behind his cutlery drawer. He worked out the back in R&D, so he arrived late. Everything had gone to hell then. And I saw him, aiming for this Ebony whatever. I shot him. Didn't even think about it, just shot him four times in the chest.'

'You had no control over your actions,' Loki replied and Rogers echoed his words albeit with somewhat different phrasing.

Tilly didn't find comfort in that of course. And now that she had begun to speak, words poured forth with the force of a gale. It seemed she wanted Loki and Rogers to know every little thing there was to know about Nathan, but at the rate she was speaking and with the tears that soon began dripping down her cheeks, Loki could scarcely make out a third of what she said. He quietly excused himself and let Rogers deal with her. Loki had a feeling Rogers was a natural with weeping women.

Loki certainly wasn't, so he headed for the one woman who, in his estimation, would never allow herself so much as a single genuine tear in front of him, and climbed into the co-pilot's chair.

'Have we much further to go?' he asked.

Romanoff cocked her head. 'Why? The jet's a bit slower than what you're used to?'

'Only a tad,' Loki replied. He shifted in the chair, trying to find the optimal position and idly fiddled with the seatbelt buckle.

For all of Rogers' efforts to calm Tilly down, her agitated words and intermittent sniffling still dominated the quinjet. Romanov was clearly listening-in on their conversation — a spy always hungered for information. Loki, on the other hand, did his best to tune out the sound. The woman had the misfortune to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. She knew little and remembered even less.

Minutes stretched into what felt like hours. Loki rested his head against the cool glass of the quinjet's window and stared at the black nothing below them. He guessed they had left the continental United States by now and were somewhere over water. Earlier on they had flown over endless lines of lit highways and spider-webs of towns lit up to ward off the night's darkness. Now, there was nothing, not even Migdard's sole moon to keep them company.

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He had to wonder how much further Romanoff intended to take them. The flight to San Francisco had been long. The one right after Loki had stolen the Tesseract had been longer still, but this one felt longer again. Probably the longest Loki had ever spent inside one of these jets.

The flight to Stuttgart was mercifully brief. Loki lifted his head off the glass. Was that why Barton chose Stuttgart over San Francisco? We were already nearby? Barton had worked in Europe before; it's not inconceivable he'd have a safe house there that Fury didn't know about.

'If you're getting fatigued,' Loki said, turning to Romanoff, 'just say the word. I can take the controls for a while.'

Romanoff smiled — the kind of smile that would have left many a man hot and bothered. 'Thank you for the offer, but there's no need. We're nearly there.'

'Where's "there" exactly?'

'A SHIELD operational base.' Romanoff exhaled tiredly. 'I know what you are thinking. Agent Hill has given her personal assurance that our destination is secure and there won't be a repeat of what happened in California.'

Loki surmised that Romanoff didn't fully trust that promise, although he couldn't be sure whether the doubt was due to her understanding of the calibre of their adversaries or some personal enmity with Agent Hill. Loki himself never thought much of her. She had always trailed behind Fury and chuckled entirely too eagerly at the man's attempts to make himself sound intelligent.

'Actually, here we are.' Romanoff guided the quinjet's nose downward and towards a distant cluster of lights that had just come into view.

Loki bit down on his lip in an effort to keep himself under control as the quinjet sped towards their destination and it became clear that it wasn't an island they were about to land on. No, they were heading for SHIELD's pride and joy — the helicarrier USS Gibraltar.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

----------------------------------------

'I'm still unclear on what I saw,' Thor hissed into Loki's ear. They had all done their best to get cleaned up before they gathered here and Thor no longer looked like he had crawled through a mud pit, but the conference room's garish artificial lights came down at the exact right angle to highlight the newly acquired dings in his armour. 'Was the Maw attempting to bring your mind under control and you resisted him? Is that why it looked different than with the Midgardians? Or was it something else?'

All too cognizant of the way everyone else in the room attempted to listen in on the conversation without looking like they were doing so, Loki turned in his swivel chair until he could look at his brother directly. 'I managed to fool the Titan back in the Sanctuary and gain his trust. The Maw wanted to know how I managed to do so. He wasn't gentle about it.'

'So there's a way to resist the sceptre?' Agent Hill asked.

'If the prodding is shallow and brief, but it's not a skill a Midgardian could learn,' Loki replied.

Hill's eyes hardened, but she didn't get a chance to question Loki further. Coulson and Stark finally strode into the room, nearly a quarter of an hour late. Both of them looked about as healthy as Loki felt. Coulson's left arm was in a sling, while Stark had acquired a mild limp and a dark welt spread down from his right eye-socket almost to his jawline. Loki raised an eyebrow — Stark's blossoming welt neatly matched the maroon-coloured felt panels that had been erected across the walls to improve the acoustics in the conference room.

Coulson took the seat at the head of the table, while Stark took the other end, pushing his chair back enough so he could put his feet on the table. Thankfully, the conference room table was long enough to accommodate twice their party and Loki didn't have to smell Stark's feet. The rest of those present were slumped into chairs along the table's wider sides. Hill, looking perturbed by Stark's behaviour, sat to Coulson's right. Rogers was to his left and had occupied himself with some papers bound within a tan-coloured folder. Romanoff sat impassive between Rogers and Loki. And Thor simply ignored the three unoccupied chairs down from Agent Hill, preferring to pace back and forth with his fingers clenched around Mjolnir's handle.

'Not a win all around, I take it,' Rogers said as he flipped shut the folder in front of him. 'Where did you lose track of them?'

'And where were you, Rogers?' Stark replied. 'Got stuck figuring out how to use a toaster?'

'Toasters were invented in the Nineteenth Century,' Romanoff responded dryly.

Stark, never one to let another person have the last line in a conversation, was about to share another of his insufferable quips with the world, when Coulson cut in. 'Let's not digress too far. I believe we have a lot to go over. Captain Rogers, how about we start with your report?'

Rogers was quick to deliver an informative and succinct account of his perspective on the day. Having been by him for most of the debacle, Rogers' report held no revelations for Loki, save the realisation that the man only looked fully comfortable when he slipped back into his military persona. How long ago had Rogers been pulled out of the ice? Loki would have wagered it couldn't have been more than a month or two.

Stark jumped in after that. This made sense — he had been the first on the scene in San Francisco, but Loki suspected he simply didn't want to be outdone by Rogers. Stark spoke in clipped sentences, not bothering to hide his irritation nor to filter the irrelevant asides that peppered his speech. Nevertheless, he got out what they needed from him. He had held off the attackers in San Francisco, then pursued Fury's helicopter south almost into Mexican territory until the helicopter finally came down onto a busy shopping centre. Another clash ensued until Ebony Maw managed to disable Stark's suit.

Thor and Coulson confirmed Stark's story. Thor had pursued them a bit further, but lost track of the Maw and his accomplices somewhere in the crowded city. The news left Hill muttering angrily under her breath. As it turned out, ever since Ebony Maw had taken Nick Fury, she had been mopping up the resulting security spill. Now she had a public relations disaster in California to handle as well.

'Loki?' Coulson said when the rest of the gathered fell silent. 'You haven't said much so far.'

He shrugged. 'You've already covered all relevant ground between you.'

'Is that so?' Thor asked. 'Why was Ebony Maw insisting that you had to be taken alive?' Sometime during Stark's grandstanding, he had ceased his mindless roaming and came up to stand at the edge of the table, his hands resting on the back of unoccupied chairs. His eyes blazed with fury, but then he must have seen something in Loki's face because his expression softened. 'Would you rather talk about it one-on-one?'

'I would, but it's rather late for that now.'

'Whatever you have to say won't leave this room,' Hill assured him.

Has she been listening at all? The sceptre will take everything you have.

Loki drew his fingers across the tabletop. It wasn't real wood, only a half-hearted imitation. For all the dark grains and knots he could see running across the table, he needed only to slide his fingers across the surface to feel its unnatural smoothness. He sighed. 'He used the mind stone on me, not in an attempt to control my mind as with others, but specifically to pilfer through its contents. In my memories he found something he shouldn't have.'

'What did he see?' Stark demanded. He had slid his feet off the table and nudged his chair closer. 'How dangerous is it?'

'Very.'

Thor frowned. 'Loki, what precisely are you talking about?'

'It's information we don't want the Maw or his master to know. I don't think it'd be prudent for me to share with you anything more than that; information is safest when it's compartmentalised.'

'I'm not sure I follow,' Romanoff said. 'If he already saw what he wasn't meant to, what are you trying to protect.'

It all seemed too difficult right then. Loki was almost glad Coulson had chosen to meet in the bowels of the helicarrier where there were no windows to be found, because his thoughts kept drifting back to the beckoning cold waves of the Atlantic. He needed only to walk out onto the helicarrier's deck and toss himself over the edge. If the fall didn't kill him, he would drown sooner or later.

Loki clenched his eyes shut momentarily and forced in a few calming breaths. The mind stone had broken something within; he wasn't thinking straight. Or perhaps it was just fear. Brunnhilde had told him time and time again that he couldn't think rationally when it came to Thanos.

Him, yes. Remember how well it turned out the last time you decide to fling yourself into an abyss?

The rest of the table still waited on him to answer Romanoff's question and by their expressions, it was clear they were unimpressed by his previous response. Loki exhaled slowly. 'I think he only saw snippets. Enough to know it's important, but it would be largely nonsensical without context.'

'Is it enough to influence his plans?' Coulson asked. His phone buzzed, but after glancing at the screen, he slid it back into his pocket.

Hill's voice swallowed everyone else's responses, 'How can we hope to answer that question if we don't know what he saw?'

In actual fact, Hill wasn't entirely correct. This wasn't about what Ebony Maw saw inside Loki's head, but what he thought he had seen. How much had he grasped at the time and how much would he remember subsequently. Loki had to question whether the Maw would be cognizant of the colours of the stones nestled inside Thanos' gauntlet. Would he wonder why the power stone, rather than the mind or the space stone, were the first Thanos acquired? Loki had the uncomfortable suspicion that first and foremost Ebony Maw would focus on Thanos' words in the last memory: there are two more stones on Earth. Ironically, this wasn't actually the case here and now. Back on the Statesman, Thanos had been referring to the time and the mind stones, the latter of which was already in Ebony Maw's possession.

'Fine, I will tell you this much,' Loki said. 'Ebony Maw is under the impression there are other artefacts on this planet that his master would want.' He waved away Coulson's attempt to throw in a follow-up question and continued, 'In regards to his plans. If you are searching for something, you don't want to take the risk of losing the item in the chaos of war or of accidentally killing someone who knows crucial information. But that's what I would do, I cannot vouch for Ebony Maw's trail of thought in his decision-making.'

'Then we need to cover all bases,' Rogers said. 'Do we have a list of their next possible targets?'

Romanoff shook her head. 'No, we need to narrow their options. We need to distract him from his invasion plans and have him chasing ghosts.'

'So we wave a McGuffin in front of their eyes, then snatch it away?' Stark said. He jerked forward in the chair. 'I can get behind that.'

Sure, let's play with the time stone like it's a petty trinket.

'Offer them me,' Loki said, surprising himself by the confident tone to his words. He ignored Thor and Rogers, who immediately rejected his proposal. 'Ebony Maw, Gamora, Tyr, Thanos - their hatred for me is the one thing that binds all of them together. Now the Maw also knows that the contents of my mind are highly valuable. I'm not bait they'll be able to resist.'

Thor drew himself to his full height. 'Loki, what you suggest is ridiculous. Tyr won't be satisfied until he wrenches your still-beating heart out of your chest. From what I gather of the woman, she won't —'

'But the Maw needs me alive! He will control them.'

Until he decides I've outlived my usefulness.

'And when he no longer needs you alive?' Thor asked.

Loki ran his hand through his hair and forced a smile. 'I know you, Thor. You won't let it get that far.' Thor's next words died in his throat and by the time he recomposed himself, Loki spoke over him anyway. 'It's an unpleasant scenario, I know, but I am the only sure way to draw them away from their current plans.'

'We do stand on firmer ground if we make them come to us instead of wasting time trying to guess where they might strike next.' Romanoff said. An uncomfortable tension had already infested the room, now Romanoff's words left everyone determined to avoid looking anyone else in the eye. She waited a few moments, but received no reply, so she went on, 'If this is the plan we're going with, the right choice of location is critical.'

'Not the helicarrier,' Loki replied. 'How many hundreds of people are needed to keep this thing in the air? Enough people have died already.'

Rogers leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. 'Loki, we appreciate your offer, but there's no need to turn yourself into a sacrificial lamb.'

'Have you a better plan, captain? Or you, brother?'

Thor glared at Loki, then muttered a curse that would have left their mother aghast. 'So be it then. I don't like this, brother, but I know better than to argue with you once your mind is made up.' He fiddled with the leather strap on his hammer. 'I don't know what the best location would be, however, I can be useful in arranging a meeting. The Maw suggested to me that a deal could be made. I can tell him that I have changed my mind and want to discuss terms. It's a matter of getting the message to him.'

'Isn't that the plot of the B-grade movie playing in the cafeteria upstairs?' Stark responded.

'If we do this, it would be better if they think we're not expecting them at all,' Rogers said. He turned to Coulson. 'Would it be possible to get the word out that Loki was spooked by what happened in San Francisco and has decided to go into hiding? Then not-so-accidentally leak his safe-house location?'

Coulson cocked his head. 'Might work. Maria, let's not pretend Fury hasn't figured out a way to get to SHIELD's internal communiques. We might as well take advantage of that.'

'Can we do this away from major population centres this time?' Hill asked. 'I like Loki's sentiments about minimising casualties.'

Stark pulled out his phone. 'I do own a lodge in Switzerland that I don't care for.'