The ruins of the research facility made for a poor base of operations, but Coulson was keen to remain relatively close, so a helicopter was arranged to airlift them to a more structurally sound SHIELD bunker the best part of an hour away.

'My apologies if this is not to your usual standards of accommodation, your highnesses,' Romanoff said when she brought the helicopter down onto a poorly maintained landing zone.

By the time Loki and Thor had unbuckled their seatbelts, the small squadron of SHIELD agents who had accompanied them had thrown open the cabin door and rushed out to secure the surrounding area. Coulson and Thor were quick to follow them, but Loki trudged out. The bunker really was nothing to be enthused about. The bulk of it had been buried into the hill, with only the weather-worn concrete facade jutting out. Inside, the fluorescent light fixtures inside flickered unpleasantly and the air smelled as if the place hadn't been inhabited for a decade.

'Director Fury possessed encyclopaedic knowledge of SHIELD's facilities,' Coulson said. 'This is the only place this side of the country that he might not know about and that contains the equipment we need.'

'I trust you're scouting other SHIELD facilities right now? If your director knew their locations, they seem like a good place to hide,' Thor said.

'Unless he's intelligent enough to know that those would be the first places SHIELD would look,' Loki replied.

'Fury is nothing if not conniving,' Coulson said, 'but are checking all the locations we know about. Due diligence and all.'

As Loki nodded, he trod over something solid and once he shifted his foot, he cringed. He wasn't quite certain, but the offending object looked decidedly like dried-out rat dung. The place Barton had taken him to had at least been clean, if rather lacking fresh air. He wondered if Ebony Maw and his accomplices hid in the very same place right now. Not that Loki could guide anyone there. Between the long hours spent on invasion preparations during his last days in the Sanctuary and the infinity stone inside the sceptre warping his mind, Loki hadn't been in best shape when he had arrived on Midgard. He had let Barton take the lead after they had secured the Tesseract.

'I may be able to track the Tesseract for you.' Loki ignored the startled double-take Thor performed. 'If I have the right equipment. The artefact emits all sorts of energy, but it also spurts out low levels of gamma radiation. Unless they have found some place to bunker down beneath a few dozen feet of lead lining, it should be trackable.'

'We'll see what we can do in terms of equipment,' Coulson replied, but in his tone Loki read exactly what the Midgardian was thinking - his director was an intelligent man, he was undoubtedly hiding out beneath fifty feet of lead right this moment. 'Agent Romanoff, could you show our new friends where the sleeping areas are. They might want to rest or freshen up while we work through the bureaucratic backlog.'

Romanoff gave them a tour of the areas of the bunker not dedicated to operational support, putting on the air of a hotelier who didn't quite realise that what he thought was a top-notch establishment was, in fact, a disintegrating shack in the middle of the woods. Thor laughed heartily at her every word, while Loki hung back, only chuckling along where he felt he had to. He was a master liar and she had managed to trick him once before, Loki wasn't about to give her the opportunity to get the better of them now. But there was no reveal. She finished the tour at a sparsely-furnished room Thor and Loki would be sharing and excused herself, leaving the two brothers alone.

Thor set Mjolnir down on the linoleum-lined floor and sat down on the bed closest to the door. The bed-frame sagged under his weight, not that Thor seemed to notice.

'What happened with you?' he asked. 'You look like you haven't slept in weeks.'

Who'd waste time on sleep when you have Sakaar's high life to savour?

'You're not exactly fresh-faced yourself,' Loki replied. He considered the other bed, but the bare mattress didn't appeal. Instead, he leaned against the particleboard wardrobe door.

'It's been...' Thor shrugged. 'Sweet mercy, Loki, if only you knew how worried we've all been. Mother can't go through a day without weeping, father is always in a foul mood and I can't concentrate on what's in front of me for all the dark thoughts I've had about why you chose to cut off contact. Mother too was sure something awful had happened. If not for father's insistence I leave you be, I'd have come and dragged you back to Asgard myself.'

'Mother always frets. Look at me, Thor. I'm fine, even my limbs are all accounted for.'

Loki had aimed to calm his brother down, but his words seemed to produce the opposite result. Thor shook his head vehemently, his lips taut and his face pale. 'Did you stay away because of something I did? If so, I -'

'It had nothing to do with you.'

For a moment Thor's face took on the playful expression Loki remembered from their childhood days, usually to be found when Loki had talked their way out of punishment they rightfully deserved. But it didn't last. Thor fiddled with the strap of his hammer. 'Who then? This Thanos person? You didn't tell the Midgardians so much as half the story.'

'I told them what they needed to know,' Loki replied. He threw his hand up to silence his brother when Thor began to speak. 'I'll tell you the rest. Just bear with me. It's not a tale I relish telling.'

And it wasn't an easy story to tell, but Loki muddled over his words less because of the events that had taken place than out of the necessity to radically edit his motivations for becoming entangled with Thanos and his ilk. He could only hope that Brunnhilde never crossed paths with Thor and gave him the opportunity to cross-reference Loki's tale, because within two minutes Loki' carefully constructed lies would come crashing down on his head.

'I'm sorry about Nebula's fate,' Thor said when Loki got to his and Brunnhilde's hurried return to Sakaar. 'The threads of her life were cut too soon.'

'Were cut? I cut them, Thor. She thought I was a friend and I...'

'My rashness cost Sif her life and nearly our father's.' Thor pushed himself off the bed, sending the bed-frame violently groaning. He rested his hand on Loki's shoulder. 'I wish I could go back and undo that, but I can't. You just have to go on, avenge them if you can. And if you can't, make their death meaningful in some way.'

Loki shifted his shoulders just enough to shrug off Thor's hand. 'You weren't there, so drop the subject, will you?'

He makes it sound like I'm tearing at my clothes and beating my bare chest with grief. She mightn't be dead for all I know. And if she is, what of it? I've done plenty of nastier shit in my life.

Loki grit his teeth and pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth until the lump in his throat dissipated. 'Thanos and those who follow him are dangerous; that's all I care about right now. Except I don't know if I even should get involved. All I manage to do of late is to walk into a bad situation and turn it into an outright disaster.'

'Of late?' Thor snickered. 'One thing I could always rely on when you're around is that chaos is sure to follow. But, as good as you're at getting us into trouble, you're also ten times better at getting us out of trouble than I am or anyone else will ever be.'

'If only that were true,' Loki muttered.

'It is true,' Thor insisted, then sighed. 'And right now we do have a Tesseract we need to take back. So what exactly is gamma radiation?'

'A type of energy that the infinity stone contained within the Tesseract produces.'

'The infinity stone... it's the space stone inside the Tesseract, isn't it?' Thor frowned. 'Are we sure they are still on this planet? What's not to say they already left Midgard? They could be anywhere in the universe right now. Norns, Tyr might've taken them home.'

'I...'

Loki fell silent before he could get out anything more. Thor was correct here. While Loki had come to conquer Midgard, it didn't mean that Tyr, Gamora or Ebony Maw shared his aims. Ebony Maw certainly wouldn't demean himself to something as base as megalomania; his life and his soul belonged to the Mad Titan. As far as Loki knew, Gamora too wasn't in the business of planetary conquest. And what would Tyr want with Midgard? His quarrel lay with Asgard and Asgard's royal family.

'Get in touch with Heimdall and make sure the Einherjar is placed on alert,' Loki said. 'I'll still do what I can with Midgardian equipment. If they are gone, the space stone's signature should at least be distinctive enough for me to tell whether it had been used and where.'

'Maybe I should return home.'

'Father and mother are back on Asgard. The realm is not unprotected.'

Thor reached for Mjolnir, but then thought better of it. 'It may be father would be a better person to reason with Tyr than you or I. They were like brothers once.'

'Exactly.' Loki rolled his shoulders as he wistfully thought back to Vridu's warm lips and shuddered breaths. Loki had been looking forward to that party for days; now he was stuck in some nameless Midgardian bunker. 'I've no desire to see Heimdall's smug face right now. I'm going to look around, see if there's anything that's edible and what Romanoff's tour left out.'

'As long as you're coming back,' Thor replied.

'I've no plans not to.' Loki shrugged, then was out the door.

There were few people about in the bunker's ill-aired and mind-numbingly dull corridors. It was so quiet, he heard Coulson and Romanoff conversing from half a corridor away. Raising an eyebrow, Loki pressed himself against the wall by the entrance to the kitchen. It would have been unconscionable to not make use of an opportunity like this.

'-- was Fury's own idea, you now plan to use it against him?' Romanoff said incredulously.

Coulson let out an irritated grunt. 'We're not dealing with an ordinary threat, we need someone more than ordinary to counter it. I'll go corral Stark. He talks a big game about being a free agent, but he's never one to shy away from heroics and this affair will need heroics. You take care of Rogers. Do be gentle with him.'

'What about Banner?'

'I've never agreed with Fury on this one. Perhaps if we needed an expert on gamma radiation, I'd bring him in as a scientific consultant, but Loki seems to have it covered.'

'If we can trust those two.'

A deafening whir of the coffee grinder swallowed the next several seconds, but Loki doubted his missed much. If he couldn't hear a thing over the machine, he suspected the Midgardians couldn't either.

'An enemy of our enemy is not necessarily a friend.' Romanoff went on when the grinder fell silent. The water tap was switched on, then quickly shut again. 'Loki spoon-fed us a few facts, just enough to pacify you. He kept the other nine-tenths of the tale to himself. What do we know about them really?'

'Then make the most of your training.'

'I was trained to deal with humans, not gods and aliens.'

Coulson took a moment to form his response, 'Natasha, if there is anyone I can trust to rise to the occasion, it's you.'

'Thank you, sir, I'm flattered by for your confidence in me. Although it rather makes what I planned to say next twice as awkward.'

'Is that so?'

'May I ask for twelve hours of personal leave?' Coulson must have reacted badly to those words, because Romanoff quickly added, 'I know there's no confirmation on Agent Barton's status, but he was shot and then the research lab detonated with him still inside. I would like to inform his wife that he's unlikely to be coming back home.'

'He was married?'

'He kept it quiet. Very few besides Fury and me ever knew.'

A cup was set down roughly, then Coulson winced and said, 'Damn it, Clint. Go then. I'll hold the fort until you're back.'

Loki moved away lest Romanoff storm out of the kitchen and realise he had been listening in on their conversation. He waited until her footsteps faded, then backtracked and this time stepped inside. Coulson sat seated at a long table, his hands wrapped around a steaming mug.

I wonder if he'll make it through this time.