Chapter 233: Tony: Thor Is a Crying Giant Baby Muscle Man?
Kaito shrugged. "You were being obvious about it." He studied the hammer one more time, then turned away with the philosophical acceptance of someone who has learned to leave things he can't take. "I followed you because I wanted to see what you were doing. The illusion is good, by the way. Just not perfect."
Loki filed this under problems and kept his expression level. The fact that this particular man could see through his glamours was more concerning than he wanted to show. He glanced around the research teams cataloguing the hammer — none of them registering either presence — and revised his assessment of Kaito Kumon upward.
"You said you were looking for a friend," Loki said.
"A particular one, yes." Kaito didn't elaborate immediately. He had the irritating quality of someone who shared information on his own schedule.
"You have friends," Loki said. He meant it as a slightly contemptuous observation.
Kaito tilted his head. "Is that surprising?"
"For someone like you? Somewhat."
"Mm." Kaito looked at him with the mild interest of someone recognizing a pattern. "Do you?"
The question landed in a particular way. Loki started to say something dismissive and found the words weren't there, or weren't convincing enough to bother with.
"Gods don't require—"
"That wasn't what I asked."
A pause.
"No," Loki said, with the precision of someone making a statement rather than admitting something. "I don't. I don't need them."
Kaito made a small sound that wasn't quite agreement. "My friend — the one I'm looking for — I met him through what you might call mutual stubbornness. Neither of us particularly wanted the other around. It took a while." He was looking at something in the middle distance. "I'd have said the same thing you just said, not that long ago."
"And?"
"And now I'd do most things for him." Kaito said it without drama, the way you state a fact about weather. "Not because he asked. Just because he's — him, and that means something." A pause. "Ridiculous, really. I still find it ridiculous."
Loki said nothing for a moment.
"That won't be my experience," he said finally.
Kaito smiled, not unkindly. "If you say so."
"I do."
"You're very certain about yourself," Kaito observed. "For someone who just spent considerable effort making sure his brother didn't come home."
Loki's jaw tightened.
"I saw your face when you left that room," Kaito said. "Just for a second. Before you remembered to put the other face back on."
"You saw nothing."
"I saw something." Kaito wasn't pressing it. He was just noting it, the way you note that it's going to rain. "For what it's worth — the people who say they need no one the loudest are usually the ones who feel it most when no one's there." He started walking. "Come on. Standing next to an immovable hammer gets boring after a while."
Loki stood where he was for another moment.
Then he followed.
Back at the school, the response to Ethan's announcement had been immediate and entirely predictable.
Every professor with functioning legs had attempted to come. Otto had argued that field observation was scientifically valuable. Hank McCoy had suggested the journey would constitute meaningful faculty bonding. Frank Castle had not argued anything, he'd simply appeared by the door.
Ethan said no to all of them, which took longer than it should have.
He said no to Tony twice.
Tony donated five million dollars to the school.
Ethan looked at the number on the transfer confirmation, looked at Tony, and accepted that this was happening.
"You're coming," Ethan said. "Don't make it weird."
Tony's new armor was waiting for him two blocks away. He'd had it driven over. It was different from the previous version — sleeker, with modifications Ethan could identify as direct responses to things that hadn't worked last time. He filed that under Tony Stark processing failure by building until it stops feeling like failure.
"Is it really him?" Tony said, as they walked toward the portal. "Actual Thor. God of Thunder, son of Odin, hammer-related powers."
"Parallel universes exist," Ethan said. "A Norse god is not the surprising part of that sentence."
"Fair." Tony thought about it. "Is he what you expected?"
"More or less," Ethan said, which was honest.
He opened a portal to the facility's interior. They stepped through.
The room was a standard S.H.I.E.L.D. detention setup — functional, utilitarian, the kind of space designed to communicate that you are here because someone with more authority than you put you here. Thor was sitting in the chair in the middle of it, and he looked up when the portal opened.
"Ethan." His voice had something raw in it. "You came."
Thor had been through quite a lot in the past several hours. The exile. The hammer. The interrogation. Loki's visit, and every piece of news Loki had delivered, all of it sitting on top of everything else. He was a man who had been carrying himself with the dignity that his upbringing required even when the ground had dropped away underneath him.
He held it together for approximately two more seconds.
Then he didn't.
Ethan and Tony stood in the doorway and watched the God of Thunder — six feet plus of Asgardian warrior, capable of surviving things that would end most other beings, currently stripped of his power and his title and his home and his belief that his father was alive — cry.
The silence lasted several seconds.
Tony leaned toward Ethan. "So," he said, very quietly, "this is — this is the crying muscle baby situation you mentioned. We're here."
"I didn't mention anything," Ethan said.
"The crying. The muscles. The baby energy. I'm just describing what I'm seeing."
"Tony."
"I'm being descriptive—"
"Tony."
Tony closed his mouth.
Ethan crossed the room, pulled a chair to face Thor's, and sat down. He didn't say anything immediately. He let the silence do what silence does when it's given enough space.
Then: "Tell me what happened."
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