Loki x Reader - Partners: Ch 7

You and Loki rode in the rear of the jet in silence. “It should only be four hours until we land.” The pilot called back over the roaring of the engines.

You gave him a thumbs-up and looked at Loki for some sign of confirmation.
He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed and foot tapping in silence. You couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or bored, maybe both.

You sat on the opposite side of him. After a few minutes, you stood up and started walking around. Loki’s eyes followed you, you swore the intensity of his gaze could burn a hole in you.  A few more minutes and the quinjet hit a cruising altitude and the roaring had ceased. You could talk at a normal level.

“Have you ever been on one of these before?” You asked Loki.

Loki smirked. “Just once or twice. Thor cut my ride short though.” You nodded thoughtfully. “I was also relatively tied up.” He added ruefully.

“The other time?” You asked.

“SHIELD’s helicarrier was falling from the sky…” he muttered. He almost sounded sheepish.

“Do you regret trying to enslave humanity?”

“Not really.” He shrugged. “And I wasn’t really trying to enslave humanity, I was only going to rule it. A benevolent god, if you will.”

You glared at him, “You blew up half of New York, that’s not very benevolent.”

Loki shrugged unapologetically, “I learned those ruling skills from Odin, the dear all-father…” he nearly spat the last word and you looked over at him. His eyes were nearly black and he seemed lost in thought.

“Thor’s dad?” He turned his head sharply to stare at you. “You were more or less adopted.” He narrowed his eyes at you as you spoke. “I asked Thor,” your voice started to become hesitant. “He said-“

Loki stood up and glared at you. Suddenly he was very close and towering over you. “That wretch, Odin,” he spat the word as if it were a curse, “stole an infant in the midst of a war from an enemy king. He then raised the bastard child as if it were loved and had some sort of right as a king.” Loki paused and then said, “Odin made it very clear to me that that was never the case. This war trophy was the means to an end; he would have gladly left me to die otherwise.” You couldn’t help but shrink back in fear. Loki’s eyes were filled with such wrath; you felt very small. He stepped away from you and looked out the window. “That no longer matters. I’m here on Midgard to aid Thor, I have no other reason.”

It seemed like he trailed off, but you couldn’t help but wonder if that were actually the end of his sentence. ‘I’m here to aid Thor, I have no other reason.’ ‘No other reason,’ you repeated the phrase to yourself. “They said you were tortured.”

His gaze snapped back to you again, “What?” He hissed.

“Not they!” You quickly backtracked. “I saw the SHIELD footage from when you first got to Earth, uh Midgard.”  He still looked at you with narrowed eyes so you nervously pushed on. “What you looked like, the cameras, you looked like you were suffering from heat exhaustion. And your every movement looked deliberate and pained.” He looked at you curiously, but no less angry. “And then your eyes.”

“My eyes?”

“They’re an amazing-“ you coughed, “green, very particularly green.”

He shrugged, “Well yes.”

“When you came to Midgard, they weren’t. I studied your case file closely, I knew I was going to be working with you and I wasn’t going to suddenly be partners with anyone, going in completely blind. Even if I was working with Captain Rogers or someone, I would’ve wanted to make sure I knew everything I could about them.”

“And what do my eyes have to do with anything?”

“When Selvig was possessed by the tesseract, his eyes were bright blue, so were Clint’s.” He still seemed confused. “During some of my downtime over the last month, it occurred to me about the eye colour change. Whatever caused the tesseract to control others, it affected you.” You finished timidly.

He just grunted then returned his gaze to the window. He seemed lost in thought and you tried one last time.

“I haven’t talked to Thor, not really, this is just my observations.” He didn’t acknowledge you, so you took this as a sign that you could continue. “I mean, I’ve talked to Thor in general, we’re both Avengers, but you can see how dearly he cares for you.” Loki’s back was turned to you, but his shoulders seemed less tense. “You can’t fake that type of love and it’s not one sided. There’s no way he could have that much affection for you without it being reciprocated. So I don’t know what that Odin guy said, or did, or even thinks, but you’re not a monster. The tesseract seems to play on emotions that already exist, so if anyone was hurt or betrayed or something, it’d be like tenfold.” You looked up at the ceiling as you continued talking; you were afraid what might happen if you stopped, that look in his eyes was terrifying. “So a regular human finds out they’re adopted in such painful terms, they’d want to lash out at people. But then you take an Asgardian, someone with that type of power and let them lash out at people, all that damage would be cataclysmic. But then I was thinking, if you were tortured on top of all that, you were probably mad with pain and were practically a force of nature just unleashed in one place.”

Loki turned around and gently placed his hand on your shoulder. He smiled softly as he looked down at you, “Thank you.”

“That’s what partners do.” You beamed up at him.

Loki looked down at you amused, “Yes, I suppose they do.” Then he smirked, “This doesn’t change anything, though, I still don’t like you.”

You stuck your tongue out at him, “Good, grumpy old guy who thinks he’s a god…”

His eyes narrowed and he glared at you. “I can snap your neck quite easily from this position.”

You glanced down nervously at his hand and stepped back. “Sorry…”

Loki turned away from you and was staring out the window. A force of nature? That made sense. He hardly felt in control the entire time he was last on Earth. The memories alone were hazy. There was no way he would dare admit to anyone, even Thor, about the tortures that still plagued his mind. Yet you had somehow picked up on them, not the extent of the horrors he faced when he closed his eyes, but you could see the traces of his pain.
Loki cast a glance over his shoulder; you were sitting down and staring at your shoes in silence.



The rest of the flight was filled with silence. Loki stood there thinking of your words. Had he really not betrayed Thor as much as he feared? He wouldn’t admit the remorse he felt at trying to kill his brother, not even to himself, but the feeling was still there; it lay buried under layers of emotional armour he had carefully cultivated over the centuries of feeling like an outcast, not as good as Thor, and that constant doubt that Odin never truly cared for him.

You sat there wondering if you had crossed a boundary with Loki; that you had done something that might push him over the edge and back into the madness that still afflicted him.
Maybe it was walking in on him sleeping, seeing the pain of whatever nightmare had horrified him, you knew that he was suffering.
But no matter what, you knew some remnant of that torture stayed with him.

When he had been asleep, you saw that innocence that lay beneath his cold exterior and knew that someone had to make sure he was given a second chance.

Around him, you still had that sensation of butterflies, the type you’d experienced years ago around childhood crushes, but there was also that urge to make sure you protected him.
You found yourself glad that he was your partner. You vowed to coax that remnant of humanity that still resided in him and bring it to the surface. That is what partners, no, friends, do.
You smiled as you looked at him. You promised yourself that no matter what, you would support him and be there for him.



The quinjet started to descend and the engines became louder. It shuddered as it made contact with the ground. The rear door opened and you exited followed closely by Loki.

You had landed on the outskirts of a small town. Several metres away, there was an abandoned looking shed.

“Erm…” You looked around unsure.

“There.” Loki walked towards the shed. He glanced back at you and sighed at your hesitation. “Don’t you see the insignia?”
As you got closer, you managed to make out the SHIELD symbol.
Loki pressed his hand against it and the building shuddered. After a moment, one of the walls opened to reveal a small room. There was a computer on the wall and to the side, something covered in a cloth.

“Schematics of the mission and local maps…” Loki murmured as he look at the screen. “This technology is so old.” He muttered, making a face.

You laughed and lifted the covered item. “Ahh…” you exhaled softly.

“What?” Loki asked, looking over.

“A snowmobile. Seems they gave us only one.”

“Snowmobile?”

“A vehicle to efficiently traverse snowy land. Help us get there without the extra fuss of walking.” You looked over at him. “I take it you don’t know how to drive one.”

Loki clenched his jaw, “No.”

“Guess I’m driving then.” You sat down, then slowly turned it on. It was far quieter than the average snowmobile. You raised an eyebrow, “Covert, very nice.” You backed out of the shed and revved it experimentally. Loki hadn’t moved and was eyeing it distastefully. “Get on, dumbass.”

He glared at you before walking over and sitting behind you. “Now what?”

“Well, you’re going to have to hold on if you don’t want to fall off.”

Loki let out an exasperated sigh. “The Norns truly loath me…”

“Go on, partner.” He wrapped his arms around you, trying to keep as much space between you as possible. You could hear him muttering darkly under his breath. You only caught a few words but none were pleasant. With a smirk, you revved the snowmobile forward. His grasp tightened on you, then you stopped and he slipped forward until he was full on embracing you. “Aww… Hugging a filthy mortal.” You teased. He was silent this time.

At the back of your mind you found yourself appreciating the closeness. ‘Of course you are,’ you thought to yourself, ‘it’s starting to get cold and he was comfortingly warm.’
“Ready?” You shot forward and Loki was back to holding you tightly so he wouldn’t fall off.



You drove for two hours or so, the goggles protecting your eyes from the burning wind. After that, you found yourself outside a forest, another hour passed and you broke free of the tree line. You glanced down at your coordinates. “It should be around here,” you turned off the snowmobile and looked around. You and Loki had reached the edge of the forest and were looking out over a valley.
You reached into a compartment on the snowmobile and grabbed a pair of binoculars, surveying the land. Loki stood next to you and followed your gaze. “Do you see anything?” You asked him.

“Give me those.” You handed Loki the binoculars and he looked around. “There.” He pointed.

You took the binoculars back and looked where he had pointed. “Looks like a snow drift.”

Loki nodded, “It’s a small building. If they’re smart at all, they’ll want a low building to save resources on heating.”

“Plus there’s no links to major threats, so it should be a small base.” You agreed with him.

“Above ground will probably just hold means of transportation, it would be more efficient than transporting the vehicles to various levels. Also digging that deep in near permafrost conditions would take a greater deal of resources than Midgardians have access to.”

“SHIELD’s kept track of this area, there hasn’t been any major construction. It’s going to be at most two levels deep.” You paused a moment. “I have to get explosives on the four corners outside, and then the more that I can plant inside, the better. The nanos should level it, and then I’ll add some incendiaries and that’ll wipe all traces of the building.” You walked back to the snowmobile and found another compartment, there was a pullout tent, more like a lean-to that could shelter you from the wind.

“So we’ll stay here until tonight, where you will sneak down and plant your explosives.” You nodded and Loki continued. “Then tomorrow we’ll have to get inside to plant the rest of them?”

“That’s the plan.” You pulled out the tent and set it up, there was a slight heater that came from the snowmobile’s engine and afforded you some warmth against the cold air. You sat down and leaned against the heater, enjoying its warmth.

Loki crouched down a distance from the tent and continued watching the building.
You yawned then asked, “Do you think we’ll get lucky and have some vehicle enter and then I can just sneak in afterwards?”

Loki scoffed at you. “I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

You turned the heat up on your jumpsuit, but even leaning against the tent’s heater, you still found yourself shivering some. “You’re not cold?” Loki shook his head at you.

You and Loki stayed there in silence. Several hours passed that way; you must have dozed off because you were next aware of Loki shaking you. “(y/n),” he hissed. “Wake up.”

You looked around, somewhat groggy. Then you were awake instantly, for you realized the sun had set and it was dark.
“There’s been no movement all day.” Loki whispered. “I don’t trust them not to move now, night would be the optimal time. Also, the snowmobile left tracks into the forest. The forest itself will have covered our tracks but if anyone travels to that village we came from, they’ll easily see the path we took.”

“Damn…” you cursed under your breath. You stood up and pulled your hood up and covered your face with your mask. As soon as you left the shelter of the tent, you knew you were in subzero temperatures and you couldn’t stop the shivers. Loki chuckled and you shot him a glare.

“How long should I wait before I assume your pathetic mortal hide needs saving?” You opened your mouth to say something. “I’m only repaying the compliment you gave me earlier.”

You pulled a face and said. “Give me a half hour.”

“Twenty minutes, then I come looking for you.”

You smirked. “Alright.”