"Hey, strangers," Natasha greeted, joining the two supersoldiers stood talking.

"Natasha, you look good," Steve told her, smiling at her happy face.

"Thank you! I got ready with Lana, she looks really good, too," Natasha told, hiding her smirk as she glanced at Bucky, who's attention was elsewhere.

"Yes. We noticed," Steve claimed, looking sayingly at Bucky's frustrated expression, Natasha laughing soundlessly.

"She just went to say hi to Thor, she noticed him when we were dancing," Natasha assured Bucky, even though she wasn't sure he was listening.

"Yup. We noticed the dancing, too," Steve muttered, smiling at his friend, who's eyes was fastened on the balcony. Natasha followed his eyes, seeing Lana walking happily towards the bar, Thor walking smilingly behind her. They reached the bar, talking and laughing before Lana leaned over the it to grab something, Bucky inhaling sharply at the sight. Steve looked away politely, turning his attention to Natasha, who was smirking, either because she seeing a very nice view of Lana, or because she was Bucky's reaction at that view.

After a tauntingly long moment she stood up straight, pouring the contents of a bottle into two shotglasses, handing one of them to Thor, who stood proudly as he told her about something, most likely relating to him being inhumanly strong, unreasonable handsome and literal royalty. Bucky rolled his eyes at Lana, who listened to his bragging before drinking her shot, quickly refilling it while Thor just put his down.

The conversation went back and forth between them, sharing laughs and eventually shots, Lana seemingly having worn Thor down.

"Earth to Bucky?" Natasha interrupted his thoughts, and he turned her head with a confused 'hm?', not having followed the conversation. Natasha smiled, clearly finding whatever conversation they'd been having amusing.

"Have you seen Lana?" she asked curiously, watching as Bucky pointed to the bar where the two were definitely standing closer than before.

"Thor is looking good today, isn't he?" Natasha prompted, ignoring the chastising look Steve sent her.

"Hadn't noticed," Bucky claimed shortly.

"Really? Must've been the only one not to. Lana clearly has," Natasha continued, making Bucky's eyes shoot to hers.

"What are you talking about?" he asked confused.

"Well, I can't say, but that looks an awful lot like flirting to me," she explained with a shrug, turning their attention back to the pair by the bar, Thor looking at Lana with concentration. Bucky scoffed.

"She could do better," he stated.

"Probably, but you gotta shoot your shot. Otherwise someone is going to swoop her up before you," Natasha told, eyeing how his face fell slightly.

"Looks like someone just did," he stated, turning around and leaving. Natasha furrowed her eyebrows, looking back at the two, who had left the bar, Thor holding Lana's hand and leading her out of the crowded room.

"Thor, we don't even know where he is," Lana realised, immediately sobered up by the fresh air the rooftop offered.

"He is my brother. He cannot hide from me," Thor stated, holding his hand out. He was a sight to behold, fiercely standing with his legs slightly apart, the formal human attire not able to hide who he was, what he was; a god. The airy breeze of the night touched his hair slightly as he waited, Mjøner suddenly firing through the air, landing in his hand perfectly. Despite the sound of his hand clashing against the handling, he made no movement, clearly unaffected by the sudden weight that had hit him.

"Come on," he ordered Lana, reaching his hand out for her.

"I haven't told anyone we're leaving, Bucky is-"

"Is fine. We will be back. I need to help my brother," Thor said, dropping his brave face.

"All we need to do is talk to him. I don't need to be there for that," Lana claimed; "You're his brother, that's plenty." Thor froze, lowered his hand before taking a deep breath.

"Tell me you have no effect on my brother, no matter to him," Thor said softly; "Then I can go alone, knowing I have done what I could. If my brother is in harm's way, I cannot in good spirit leave without knowing I have pursued every opportunity."

Lana bit the inside of her cheek, taking a deep breath before nodding, stepping closer to Thor.

"Let's go," she muttered, accepting as he placed his hand around her waist, holding her close to him before lifting Mjølner in the air.

***

Landing on the ground, Lana almost fell until strong arms secured her. She smiled thankfully to Thor, breathing shallowly in surprise of the experience.

"My, oh my, if it is not my brother and dearest enemy," Loki's sarcastic voice mused. Lana looked up, seeing Loki standing in front of them, his hands gathered behind him and rolling on his heel, acting as if he'd been expecting them.

"Loki," Thor greeted, nodding curtly at him.

"Dare I say, brother, you look absolutely moronic. The midgardians did not have anything more flattering you could wear?" Loki asked before his eyes flicked to Lana, curiously eyeing her black dress and sharp lipstick.

"And you, darling... Midgardian formal attire does have something to hold over that of Asgard," he told her. Lana almost smiled at his riddle-like way of talking.

"Which is?" she asked.

"You are the one to wear it," Loki stated, smiling smugly as he let his eyes run over the dress again. Lana almost laughed at his ridiculous claim, opting to ignore it instead of behaving as awkwardly and flustered as felt her natural.

"We are here to talk," Thor told his brother.

"What a shame," Loki muttered, finally meeting Lana's eyes; "There is so much else we could do."

"Where are we?" Lana asked, glancing around them. It was definitely an apartment, but not one she could imagine belonging to either Thor or Loki with the classic IKEA furniture and decorative lampshades.

"My current residence. Please... Have a seat," Loki added pleasantly, gesturing to the couches.

"We are here to talk," Thor told again, raising his voice slightly.

"Commonly done sedentary. Sit," Loki ordered sharply. Thor narrowed his eyes at his brother but seemingly decided to obey, sitting on the couch, that suddenly seemed smaller than it had not long before.

"You as well, darling," Loki insisted. Lana looked unsurely at him. He was acting strangely, and she couldn't claim to like it, but no matter what, she'd have to cooperate. She sent him a strained smile before placing herself next to Thor, watching as Loki strolled to the armchair opposed to them.

"May I pick the subject?" he asked, looking at Lana; "I would like to know what caused this. You. In my home. Dressed as such. Just so I know how to recreate the situation."

"We were at a gala. Now brother, as I said, we have come to talk," Thor told, politely placing Mjølner on the small coffee table between them, probably to show he wasn't there to fight.

"What's wrong with you?" Lana asked bluntly, ignoring Thor's gentle approach.

"That is not quite how we agreed to phrase it," Thor whispered loudly to her.

"No, I know, this has nothing to do with that," Lana told Thor quickly; "What's wrong with you, Loki?"

"You dare call me flawed?" he questioned, raising his eyebrows slightly.

"What's going on?" she asked, ignoring his attempt at a deflection.

"Lana, what are you speaking of?" Thor asked, confused.

"You don't see it?" she asked, looking at Thor, who shook his head slightly; "He's being weird."

"He is weird, he is Loki," Thor agreed.

"No, he's trying to distract us," Lana continued.

"Preposterous," Loki interjected, sounding almost bored.

"He's flirting with me, Thor. Heaven knows it's not because he fancies some human!" Lana insisted.

"You are not exactly just some human, and you do look... You do look fairly... You are, hm hmm, you do look-"

"Absolutely breathtakingly beautiful," Loki interrupted, smiling satisfied.

"See?" Lana commented; "He's trying to scare us."

"Should he attempt to frighten us he would be threatening us, he would be wielding a knife," Thor reminded her.

"No, because we've both been stabbed because of him, yet we're both sitting in some random apartment he claims to be his, without backup. Clearly, we do not scare easily, so he had to take another approach," Lana reasoned, turning to face Loki; "He's distracting us from something."

"You are clever, darling, that I must give you, but you are not without the ability to fail," Loki told her.

"She's right," Thor realised, his eyes searching Loki's face before running over his body.

"This is not you," he realised slowly; "It's an illusion!"

"I am right here, brother," Loki assured with an eye roll, leaning back in the chair.

"No. No, I know your illusions, this is one, it must be!"

"Never have you been able to tell my illusions apart from my self," Loki reminded his brother dryly.

"No, this is an illusion. I see the shimmer of it. It is an illusion!" Thor insisted stubbornly.

"Had it been an illusion, you would not have been able to tell, I'm much too powerful to fail in fooling a simpleton," Loki claimed, crossing his arms above his chest.

"I am no simpleton! Take that back!" Thor ordered, standing up.

"Or what? You shall write mother? That would need you able to spell it," Loki huffed, leaning back in the chair.

"Sit down, Thor," Lana interrupted.

"But-"

"Sit. Down," she repeated slowly. Thor looked angrily at Loki, sitting back down with a pout.

"Yes. Best listen to the human, lest she shall use big words in your presence," Loki prodded, sticking his tongue out at his brother.

"Thor, you said he couldn't hide from you," Lana remembered, turning to look at Thor, who nodded, listening closely to her words.

"How did you find him?" she asked.

"I used my wits," Thor told with a confirming nod.

"He has no such thing," Loki interrupted with a scoff; "He cheats, he uses his derisively farcical tool to demand Heimdal to command the Bifrost to take him to me."

Lana hummed slightly, considering what they'd both said.

"At least father entrusted me with such a tool!"

"And you almost instantaneously lost it to Thrym, who is, quite possibly, even more vacuously dunderheaded than yourself!"

"I avenged the thievery of Mjølner plenty!"

"Yes, once I had already constructed the strategy of reobtaining the ridiculous piece of forgery!"

"Heimdal, he sees all, right?" Lana interrupted their arguing, still deep in thought.

"He likes to think so himself. I have found myself capable of tricking him on numerous occasions," Loki said proudly, smiling at the thought.

"Loki has on rare occasions been able to hide from Heimdal, that much is true, but rarely without leaving a realm through some passageway," Thor corrected.

"So..." Lana dragged out, her head suddenly turning to Loki; "Where were you?"

"Pardon?" he asked, lifting his eyebrows in confusion.

"Thor looked for you earlier and couldn't find you, so you clearly went somewhere even Heimdal couldn't find you, which must mean pretty far away. And you did well at distracting us from the matter at hand when we came in, the flirting almost worked, but you could have been gone before we even came. You managed to distract Thor just now, but he wasn't entirely wrong, was he? You're here because you weren't strong enough to leave, and that's why Thor could see through your illusion. It's a poor excuse of an illusion because something has drained your energy. That's why you insisted on sitting, too," Lana ranted, connecting the dots as she did so. Thor furrowed his eyebrows, thinking about what she had said as Loki closed his mouth, leaning slightly back in his chair.

"If you, for any reason, have changed your mind, we could be an excellent pair, darling," he stated, his smile gone and tone sharp.

"Except we are. We are a team, and you've been doing so well, and that's why we were even here in the first place," Lana remembered.

"Alright. I am growing tired of the games, what do you want?" Loki asked, looking directly at Lana.

"I want to know what's going on," she replied quickly; "I want to know what's wrong."

"Drop the illusion, brother," Thor said softly. Loki's eyes shot to him.

"You do not get to make such calls," he hissed; "Leave."

"May I?" Lana asked quietly, both gods turning to look at her. She slowly stood up, walking past the coffee table to sit down on it, closer to Loki than she particularly liked to be at that moment. She lifted her hand and leaned forward slowly, allowing him to reject her at any moment as she touched his cheek, a flinch running through his feature, his illusion dropping as it did. She ignored Thor's gasp at the state of his brother, carefully keeping her hand still as it cupped her cheek, their eyes meeting in a moment of pure honesty and vulnerability.

"What happened, brother?" Thor asked horrified, not daring to move from his seat.

"He's been protecting us. Haven't you?" Lana asked softly, accepting Loki looking away from her as an answer. Her eyes ran over his bloodied and bruised face, painfully aware of the slight cramping of his hand and tangles in his hair, wishing some of his forced dignity would remain. Instead, he allowed his vulnerability to appear clearly before them, this time in the form of colourful marks splattered across his skin.

"Protecting us? I don't understand," Thor said. Lana slowly let her hand fall, turning to look over her shoulder at Thor.

"I looked into you guys. Loki, Logi, Lokkemand, Loke, Lokki, Luki, through every version one thing remained; his ability to trick and his ability to create chaos that would benefit," she explained to Thor.

"He is a troublemaker, a bored prankster," Thor commented.

"But through every myth and legend, things are always better by the end, because of him. His ways are unconventional, but he's not the bad guy. He never was," Lana explained, turning to look at Loki's ashamed face.

"I, I don't understand," Thor breathed out, looking to Loki for answers.

"His name... Is Thanos," Loki finally admitted.

Lana called Loki logi, Lokkemand, Loke and Lokki. Logi technically means flame and was never his name, only suspected by some to be part of the original meaning of Loki. Lokkemand was the old Danish name for him, meaning the man who lures (which fits pretty well with him luring people into trouble etc). Loke, Lokki and Luki were alternative spellings of the name, which, fun fact, might have derived from the word 'luk', which today means 'close', but then more often things such as web, knots, locks, which fits pretty well with some common words today. Lokkanet means cobweb in Faroese, and is directly translated literally as 'Lokis web'. He was considered the cause of knots and loops etc, so there's even some spiders named after him. Lockespindlar, for example, means Loki-spider, so Peter Parker, move the fuck over.

Another theory is that he is literally named after 'closing' because of his role in ragnarok.

Additional fun fact: some places in Sweden they'd call him names beginning with an 'N' instead of 'L', like Nokke, which could come from 'nøkkel' (key), which some say could be because he's the key to ragnarok.