It was a ludicrous suggestion to begin with. Loki meant to refuse it; to say they could settle somewhere else after all. Somewhere where no one would suggest he should be bound, by the ties of a marriage or any others. He meant to say this in the certain knowledge that not one of the rest would back him up, and that he'd be able to slip away in the chaos that would follow.
But when he looked around at all of their faces, the first thing he saw was that not one of them expected him to agree to this, and the second thing he saw...the second thing, from all of these who still called him their prince in seeming sincerity, was the determination that they would have to go, then. All of them. With him.
Even a year ago, he wouldn't have believed it to be anything other than a trick. Back then, it wouldn't have been. But they'd traveled together for nearly a year now, he and those who remained of a people who were and were not his own. They'd all changed. Even he had changed, a little. He'd saved them, and they'd accepted it. If he left, some of them would follow. Perhaps even most, if Thor didn't forbid it; and Thor's expression leaned neither one way nor the other, for he'd learned something of the art of not wearing everything he thought on his face, this past year.
The thought that he could lead and they would follow...it wasn't far off from being what Loki had always wanted. Somehow, it still chafed, as much or more than their rejection would have.
"Fine," he said, to spite them all, everyone who thought they knew him so well, knew just what he would do. "I'll do it."
*
They'd chosen a husband before him beforehand, of course; and of course it was to be a close personal friend of Captain Rogers'. He'd probably be big and blond, too. Whatever he looked like, he was all but guaranteed to be a stumbling oaf. Tiresome in bed, probably, but easy enough to lead around by the cock.
By the time they were permitted to meet, an hour before the ceremony, Loki had decided this was all going to work out. If everyone thought he couldn't use his magic anymore, no one would think to pay him that much attention. It would make it that much easier to quietly find a way around his new limitations, without anyone knowing he still had teeth until he'd bared them.
He wasn't permitted to set foot on the planet prior to the nuptials--or possibly after the nuptials, a debate that was still ongoing--and so they'd brought his husband-to-be to him. Loki made sure to arrive late, and invisible, wrapping an auditory illusion around himself as well. Thus was he able to get a close look at Captain Rogers' friend without being spotted himself.
He didn't look a thing like the good Captain, as it happened. His bearing was different, something other than that of a soldier; his hair was long, dark, and pulled back; and while his right hand was bare, the left was gloved. Loki couldn't help but wonder why. It wasn't as if he'd been given many details other than the man's name...
"Got your fill of looking yet?" Barnes asking, before Loki had gotten around to dropping the illusion.
When he turned to look in Loki's general direction, his eyes, too, were something much different than expected.
Loki let the glamour fall, effected a bored tone: "How did you know I was here?"
"Well, the air moved a little. And they told me you're a bit of a magician. It wasn't that hard to figure out."
"...That is not what I am," Loki said, but he was too distracted to object more than mildly, as he now found himself under a similar scrutiny to the one he'd had Barnes under a moment ago. Perhaps it was the frank openness of Barnes' gaze that made him ask the question he hadn't bothered wondering before now: "I know why I agreed to this farce. Why did you?"
Barnes shrugged. "No one else wanted to do it. You don't have the greatest reputation. I thought maybe you deserved a second chance."
Uncertain whether to be stung, pleased, or some third option, Loki had somewhat more difficulty than usual sorting through potential responses to this. Finally, he managed, "Why is that?"
"Well, I don't have the greatest reputation, either, and I got another chance. But I guess you already knew that."
Loki hadn't, but there was no force in the universe that could have compelled him to admit that he didn't know as much about Barnes as Barnes evidently knew about him.
"Certainly," he said, and resolved to have it out of Barnes by the end of the night if he could manage it subtly, or to ask around at the reception if he couldn't.
*
A few hours later, the wedding was over, and the attendees had all dispersed, leaving Loki alone with his new husband in their quarters. Loki hadn't expected to feel very comfortable on this particular occasion, but now that they were alone and Captain Rogers was no longer alternating between glaring at him and giving his bridegroom looks that said 'you can still get out of this' as clearly as he'd actually said it before, during, and after the ceremony...well, Loki found himself relaxing despite himself.
Of course, the wine helped too.
"You're not a lightweight, are you?" Barnes asked. "I can't get drunk anymore, so I kind of drink extra to make up for it. You don't have to match me or anything."
"I can hold my liquor," Loki assured him, and so they held their liquor together for the next few hours, lying side by side on the bed.
"We're supposed to," Barnes said at some point. He seemed to struggle over the word to use, before settling on a hand gesture that was surely more obscene than any of the other options. "Right?"
"Consummation is generally expected, yes," Loki said. He'd intended to get very, very drunk by the time they got to this part, but in fact was merely tipsy. The hazard of drinking a Midgardian vintage, he suspected. "Definitely necessary, in our case. Because of the spell."
"Well, okay. If we have to," Barnes said, and leaned over in the bed, and kissed him.
Loki had spent several weeks bracing for his wedding night, and planning. Surely the big, blond, clumsy oaf they'd marked for him would be even more clumsy in this particular setting. Surely he'd insist on plowing Loki, like any other conquest.
Loki had intended to turn it around, of course; if he was the one who was to be bound, then it seemed only fair that he be the one doing the plowing.
But this was...different. Not what he'd expected at all. Barnes knew what he was doing with his mouth, for one thing. For another, he seemed in no hurry to get Loki on his back, or even to get either of them undressed. Even after they'd turned towards one another, and Loki's leg had draped over Barnes' hip of his own accord, and there was no further question that they were both hard...even then, there was very little sense of urgency, not for the longest time. Instead, there was Barnes' mouth, and Barnes' hands, and his mouth was hot and the one hand was hot and the other (which had turned out to be made of some metal) was cool, and the urgency, when it came, was all Loki's, when the tipsiness had worn off and what remained was the intoxication of desire.
By then, Loki had had enough of slow, and showed it by wiggling out of his shirt and trousers, and helping Barnes out of his as well. Once they were bare against each other, things moved as quickly as they had moved slowly before.
Loki found the lubricant, shoved it into Barnes' hands. If Barnes had tried to lead, to take control, Loki might still have turned it around on him...but he slathered up his cock just as Loki bade him, and pushed into him in just the way Loki wanted him to. As unexpected as they'd been at the night's beginning, the next few minutes were very satisfactory. Loki had always enjoyed this act, even if he rarely found anyone with whom he wished to indulge in it...and if Barnes' skill were any indication, he had often indulged.
"That wasn't too bad, was it?" Barnes asked, after they'd both come (Loki first, striping over Barnes' hand and onto his own stomach; Barnes a minute after, pushing deep into Loki with one final grunt.)
"I could have been worse," Loki said. When Barnes grinned at him, he added, "It could also have been better." And, when the grin didn't subside even the tiniest bit, "Much better."
"Uh-huh," Barnes said, much too knowingly for Loki's taste.
A minute later, he was asleep. Loki watched him for a while, trying to decide whether or not to stab him in the neck. Eventually, he decided against. If he had so few tricks left to him, perhaps it would be better off to keep that one up his sleeve for now.
*
If Loki had expected to see his new husband twice a week at most before the wedding (he had in fact expected this), he was disabused of this notion the following morning, right after he suggested he might show Barnes to his own room.
"I don't need my own room," Barnes said. "My stuff's all here."
"You could move it."
Barnes leaned down to pick up his suitcase...then dropped it onto the bed, opened it, and began sifting through his belongings. "Not happening. I agreed to marry you. Not to sleep with you one time for the sake of some spell and then get ignored for the rest of my life."
"...It's a political marriage."
"Sure, but that doesn't mean we can't make something real out of it. Or at least try. I'm not saying we have to keep it up forever if it's not working, but...we got along pretty well last night, didn't we?"
"I suppose," Loki said, searching for the flaw in Barnes' logic, or the angle buried in his seeming sincerity. Surely one or the other existed. It was just a manage of figuring it out. It had to be. Loki had taken a few minutes before the ceremony to ask Heimdall about Barnes' past...perhaps he was still brainwashed to some extent. Hydra wouldn't have been any happier about Loki's previous dealings on Earth than anyone else, considering his conquest would have denied their own...
Glancing up in time to see something of Loki's hesitation, Barnes paused his item-sorting for a moment. "Look, if I'm moving too fast for you, we can slow it down. It's just that I've spent a long time not knowing what I wanted. Or...not being allowed to want anything. Or to act on it when I did. I don't see the point in not at least asking for what I want now. I want to at least try. I'd rather go for it and see what happens than sit around wondering about it. I've had enough of my time wasted already."
Then why was he here, Loki wondered, but didn't ask. Whatever Barnes had been doing, or not doing on Earth, he wouldn't have come here unless it somehow afforded him more freedom than he'd had there. Even if Loki's shackles were his, too, now, he must have considered the exchange worth it.
Instead of saying any of that, or indulging in the earnest conversation Barnes so clearly wanted, Loki said, "So you're going to waste my time, instead."
If Barnes found this remark devastating, he hid it well. "Yep. It's going to be good. Just you wait."
Loki doubted it.
*
Within a week of the marriage, the Asgardian resettlement effort had begun. A few preferred to remain aboard the ship until their new home had been built; most preferred to be a part of the work, and thus departed. The result was that the ship that had begun to feel claustrophobic less than a day into the journey now felt quite large.
At first, Loki feared Barnes would insist on accompanying him everywhere. Thankfully, this turned out not to be the case. During the days, Loki slipped away to his various nooks and crannies, and began the work of finding some crack or loophole in the spell, and Barnes...well, whatever Barnes was up to, he rarely interrupted. Once or twice a week, he insisted they have lunch together. Other than that, they saw each other almost exclusively at night.
To his relief, Loki also saw very little of Thor for the first two months of his marriage. He spent much of his time down on the surface, soaking up adulation as well as...performing whatever his duties were. The thought didn't sting as much these days as it once would have; Loki was content to leave Thor to it, as long as he didn't have to suffer through any more of the earnest brotherly conversations Thor had tracked him down for twice a week during the voyage.
It turned out he couldn't dodge such conversations even now. One day, when he was deep in meditation, looking for a gap in the bonds he could see, but could not yet touch, someone said, "Brother, we should talk."
Jolted out of the depths of his own mind, Loki very nearly toppled over. After he managed to right himself, he said, "No, we shouldn't." When Thor persisted in looking at him, and failed to stop blocked the doorway with his gigantic shoulders, Loki sighed. "What now? Make it quick."
"It's about the succession," Thor said.
"...Why? Are you dying?"
"No, of course not!"
"Pity."
Thor ignored this, but did so so transparently Loki decided it counted as a reaction. "I'm not ready to settle down yet. If I were to die in battle before fathering a child, that would make you my successor. Since your child is obviously your successor, that would make it my successor. In the meantime. Obviously."
"Interesting," Loki said, though what was obvious to him was that Thor seemed to have gone mad. For a moment, he wondered if he might even be having him on...but Thor looked so very earnest, the way he always seemed to now that he was the king. "Unfortunately for you, my husband and I are both male."
Not that that meant much, all things considered. But if Thor didn't know about certain aspects of Jotun anatomy--which he didn't; it wasn't anything they'd ever been taught, and it wasn't as if he'd ever opened a book--then Loki wasn't about to volunteer them.
"Of course. I know that. But Heimdall said--"
Loki never did learn exactly what Heimdall had said. Heimdall's name was enough to lend a legitimacy to this absurd discussion that it hadn't possessed before. Heimdall wasn't the type to tell Thor wild stories, or send him on useless errands. If Heimdall had said anything about this, there had to be a reason for it, and a reason for what Thor had just said about the succession, and Loki's child's place in it.
Loki didn't catch anything else Thor said, because he was too busy using what magic was left at him to look. The same ability that allowed him to seek cracks in the spell that bound him also allowed him to look into himself, not his mind this time, but his body. He was able to look deeply enough to see what he'd missed before, what he'd never thought to look for. The thing that was growing inside of him, that must have been there for months now. Long enough for Heimdall to see, and to send Thor here...
"I don't mean to push," Thor said, looking at him earnestly some more. "I know we've had our differences. I just wanted to tell you that if you need anything from me, it's yours."
Even a day or two, there had been any number of favors Loki could have come up with, given such an open-ended offer. He could have made Thor regret it from one side of the galaxy to the other. But he couldn't think of anything right now. Whether he wanted it, or didn't want Thor to have it, or anything else. There wasn't one single thing.
"...I need to lie down," he said.
"Of course," Thor said, with a deference that would have been beyond hilarious if Loki had ever considered lying about being with child. "I've kept you too long."
"You always do," Loki said faintly.
A little while later, Thor had gone, and Loki found himself in his bedroom, alone, with no memory of how he'd gotten there.
*
By the time Barnes came to bed, the shock had worn off to some extent. Enough for Loki to think back to their wedding night. Enough for him to go over it again and again in his mind, trying to figure out if he'd felt any different than usual when he'd let Barnes fuck him.
He hadn't gotten around to deciding how or if to tell Barnes. In the end, he didn't have to; when Barnes showed up, he shut the door somewhat gingerly behind himself, and said, "Uh. Your brother talked to me..."
"Wonderful."
"Want to know what he said?"
"Not particularly."
"Okay." Silence. Barnes sat on the side of the bed, also gingerly. Took off his shoes, his socks. Left his pants on, which seemed odd; he'd started their marriage sleeping in his clothes and muttering in his sleep, but by now he'd progressed to sleeping in his boxers and snoring. Sometimes Loki even enjoyed the view, but he suspected he'd have been too distracted tonight in any case. "So. Uh. Do you even like kids?"
So he was going to have to suffer multiple earnest conversations in a single day. At least it wasn't Thor, this time. "I haven't the faintest idea."
This was true. There'd been a handful of brats aboard the ship until recently, but it wasn't as if anyone had ever asked Loki to watch them. Nor had he had much contact with the ones that had been born along the way.
"Well, I like kids. I'm good with them, too. I had kid sisters growing up, so I've had a lot of practice."
There was something Loki hadn't known, despite Barnes' tedious habit of telling Loki at least one previously-unrevealed fact about himself most nights. Interested despite himself, he said, "You had sisters? And you liked them?"
"Yeah. It was good. This could be good, too, maybe. Don't you think?"
"...Maybe," Loki said.
He had no idea if he meant it.
*
It turned out not to matter if he had meant it or not; there was no stopping the process now that it had started. Loki had already been two months along when Thor blundered into alerting him to what was happening; by the time he was four months gone, there was no denying that he was very obviously pregnant. He didn't even have the benefit of his illusions to hide it. This inability to present himself the way he wished to was by far more distressing than the changes his body (likely because no matter how much rounder he grew, at least he hadn't turned blue). The longer it went on, the less Loki could stand to have other people look at him, to know something this personal about him whether he chose to let them know it or not.
The frequency of Thor's appearances increased with Loki's size. Another thing that increased was his deference, and a little more awe every time Loki became larger in his absence. Thor's awe turned out to be much more vexing than Loki had once imagined, and so, on his eighth or ninth visit, Loki stabbed him in the stomach. Then, because Loki didn't have his magic and Thor didn't dare strike him in return, they had a screaming match. It wasn't how they usually fought, and never had been...but in the end, Thor stormed out in a rage, and Loki spent the rest of the day feeling as if he were floating. It was nearly as satisfying as the real thing.
*
Around the sixth month, the brat's easily-ignored little twitches became much less ignorable. It rarely kicked when Loki was awake and moving around, but always seemed to when he was on the verge of sleep. The thing seemed to have taken occupancy of the rest of his body, as well. He had to piss constantly. His bladder wasn't the only thing in a constant state of compression: he couldn't even walk from one side of the ship to the other without finding a place to sit and catch his breath. And, despite all these irritations, he spent half his time hard, and all of his time in bed alternating between relief that Barnes hadn't noticed, and resentment toward him for not paying enough attention to have noticed.
On one sleepless night, with Barnes snoring next to him, Loki decided to look at the baby with his magic again. See how it was truly getting along.
He wasn't expecting anything like what he found. The last time, it had been around the size of a raspberry, physically, but to his magic had appeared as a tiny gem, no larger than a fingernail. Now, while it was much bigger in the one sense, it was about the same size in the other...but it shone much more brightly than it had before. It was beautiful. For a few long minutes, Loki was unable to turn away.
Some faraway part of him was aware that what he was seeing wasn't quite a person. Not yet. Some other part of him knew that he must have decided at some point that he did want this baby, at least right now...for this kind of magic was heavily influenced by what its wielder felt about whatever they were looking at. Nothing that truly horrified him would have been beautiful; nothing he cared for could have been ugly. It was strange indeed to look at something, still a part of himself, and see it shine like that...
"Barnes," he said with a sudden urgency. He reached for Barnes' shoulder, and Barnes sat up quickly, instantly, in a flash of blue light that was in itself nearly blinding.
"What's wrong? Is it the baby?"
"In a manner of speaking. Look." If all Loki had left was this ability to see, then he also had the ability to share what he saw. He shared it with Barnes now, omitting the blue light, focusing only on the other, smaller glow.
"Oh, wow," Barnes said. "Am I looking at...wow."
Later, when the light had faded, and they were in the dark of their bedroom together, alone again, Loki became aware of Barnes' hand on his stomach. They didn't usually touch, despite Barnes' insistence they sleep together every night; they hadn't come anywhere near kissing again since the night of their marriage, much less sleeping together. Loki had told himself he didn't care. Mostly, it had been true. But now Barnes was close, so close it was hard to believe he was only a few inches closer than usual.
"Thanks. For letting me in," Barnes said.
Then he kissed Loki, for the first time in six months. He was still good at it; despite himself, Loki not only returned the kiss, but groaned into it, and dragged Barnes' hand down to his already stiffening cock.
Barnes kissed his neck. "I'll do you one better," he said into Loki's ear, then crawled down and took him into his mouth.
Loki had spent the last few weeks concealing erections, and hadn't taken himself in hand since this morning's shower. He'd never been going to last long; the moment Barnes slipped two slippery fingers into him, he came explosively enough to make Barnes choke around him.
"Want me to keep going? Or are you done?"
Barnes' voice when he pulled his mouth off was so low with lust that Loki was tempted to say they were done, just so he could spend the rest of the night knowing Barnes was in misery over wanting him. But the temptation that won was the one sparked by Barnes' fingers, still inside him, and the knowledge of what else he could have, if he only admitted to wanting it.
"You can keep going, if you'd like," Loki said, meaning to effect a bored tone. It must not have worked, since instead of insisting on an earnest discussion about what Loki did or didn't want, Barnes pulled away. There was a sound of shifting fabric, and Barnes' shadow in grew a new appendage, one that bobbed stiffly in front of him, and Loki wanted it inside of him desperately.
Due to Loki's size, the position was more awkward this time than it had been the first time. So much so that Loki would have called it off if he'd wanted it even a little less. But he did want it, and if having it meant Barnes had to remain standing, while Loki had to scoot over to the side of the bed on his back in order to wrap his thighs around Barnes' thighs, well...
Barnes lasted much longer than Loki had. Careful but by no means gentle, hands hot and cold on Loki's belly, he was a harsh-breathing shadow who fucked into Loki until he was hard again.
When a hand wrapped around him, Loki said, "No, not that one. The other one. If you please."
For a moment, Barnes went still, in everything he was doing. Then the warm hand returned to where it had been, and it was the cool one that wrapped around Loki's cock, and they began again, until Barnes came a few minutes later, and then Loki did, too.
"That was almost passable," Loki said when he'd caught his breath.
"If you say so," Barnes said. Loki couldn't see the grin on his face, but knew it was there, nonetheless.
*
Over the next few weeks, they fucked often enough to make up for all the time they hadn't been, and then some. At least once in the morning, at least once before bed, and it was the rare occasion when Loki didn't track Barnes down for a mid-day encounter.
Then, one day, Loki woke up, and Barnes kissed him, and that was fine, that was normal...but when his hand inched downward, it was suddenly the least welcome thing in the universe.
"Don't touch me," Loki said. "You're repulsive."
"No you're not," Barnes said, though he'd moved his hand sufficiently north again.
"Not me. You. Don't ever touch me again."
"Got it," Barnes said, and kissed him again.
*
Several days after that, Loki realized what a terrible idea everything about this had been. Coming to Midgard in the first place? Letting them take his magic away? Just sitting here after they did it, as if he didn't mind presenting an unmoving target to every enemy he'd ever had?
He was warming up the shuttle when Barnes found him.
"Loki? What are you doing?"
"Getting away from here," Loki said. "Don't try to stop me."
If Barnes did try, well, Loki had eight knives. At least one would hit the mark.
"Is there a reason you want to leave now?"
Because he was having a premonition of his imminent death...but to say that would have been to admit far too much, and so Loki said, "I have cabin fever."
"...Okay. I'm coming with you, though."
If it had been anyone else, Loki would have stabbed him, pushed him out the door, and lifted off alone. But he'd grown accustomed to their conversations before bed, tedious as they could be. He'd gotten used to Barnes' breathing next to him at night. Wherever he ended up, he'd need to be well-rested if he was going to properly navigate the local politics. It made sense not to disturb his routine any more than need be.
Half an hour after liftoff, Barnes said, "You know you're being crazy right now, right?"
"But I'm not," said Loki. Nor could he help but notice Barnes had waited to make this observation until there was no way Loki could leave him behind. "I've made any number of enemies."
"Yeah. I know. That's why your brother wanted you to get married to an Avenger."
Never before having considered that his safety had had anything to do with any of this in any other mind than his own, Loki found himself lost for a retort outside of, "You're not an Avenger."
"Yeah, but I was about as close as you were going to get," Barnes said mildly. "Can we please go back to the ship now?"
"Why? So you can lord it over me about being...being..."
"Worried about you? Because you're off your gourd today, not to mention your water just broke? I might be guilty of that, yeah."
Loki looked down to see the spreading stain on the floor. Now that Barnes mentioned it, he realized he was definitely very...wet. Something had shifted inside of him, and everything felt different below the waist. Somehow he hadn't noticed any of it from the throes of sudden-onset panic. Nor did the panic seem to be ebbing any now that he had.
"We don't have a doctor with us," Barnes said, as softly and non-threateningly as Loki had ever heard him say anything. It would have been insulting if he'd had any offense to spare. "There's no medical kit here, either. I think it might've gotten used up when you guys were on your way to Earth. We have to go back."
"Fine," Loki said. "Yes. We'll go back."
"Sit down before you fall down," Barnes said, and slid behind the helm. Loki expected him to ask for guidance, but he turned the ship around smoothly, and set their course with no hesitation.
On any other day, Loki would have been able to come up with at least fifteen reasons why it was suspicious for his husband from Earth to know how to do that. As it was, he glared at Barnes, and willed him to understand why.
Barnes knelt beside him; at some point, Loki had indeed sat down, but on the floor instead of a seat. "What, you think I've spent the last seven months wandering around on a spaceship without finding out anything about it? Nah. Anyway, I've had some pilot training, so it's not that much of a stretch. Is it okay if I look at what's going on down there?"
"What, have you had some midwife training, too?"
"Nope." Barnes lifted Loki's robe, tucked it carefully around his waist.
Feeling much more exposed than he ever had when they were fucking, Loki spread his legs so Barnes could see whatever there was to see.
"Huh," Barnes said.
"What?"
"Did you know you have a vagina now?"
"...I suspected." On a few occasions since he'd learned of his true heritage, Loki's curiosity had overcome his disgust; he'd spent very little time in his Jotun form, but what time he had had been instructive. He knew what went where, even if he wasn't sure how he suddenly had the same landscape in his normal form, and even if there was so much else he'd never learned...suddenly, he thought of something he ought to have thought of a long time ago. "How long do human infants gestate?"
Barnes fingers were touching him, measuring. Maybe that was why he took too long to answer. So Loki hoped, until he said, "Nine months, more or less. How long does it take for Asgardian babies?"
"...Ten months, eleven, I don't know. It doesn't really matter. I have no idea how long it's supposed to be for Jotuns."
"Oh. Right," Barnes said, because apparently this had slipped his mind, too, the same way it did for everyone else on a constant basis. "Well, you're pretty dilated. This is going to happen fast. I think it'll be okay, though. I mean, you're really big for seven months..."
"That sentiment will come as a great comfort when I give birth to a premature giant," Loki said. It would have come out more cuttingly than it did if he hadn't felt the pain for the first time at that same moment, a band of pressure squeezing his abdomen, taking breath and thought away until it was over. When it had gone, it left him panting, only to return several minutes later.
"Yeah, this is going to happen fast," Barnes said again. "I can see the head now."
The next few minutes were gruesome, as pushing a large object through an orifice you didn't have yesterday can generally be expected to be. At the end of it, Barnes' hands were covered in blood and other gore. So was the surprisingly small, wriggling thing he'd caught when it had slipped out from between Loki's thighs.
"Hey, there," Barnes said to the baby, who made a small cry, followed by a much louder one. Something in his face had softened; he'd never looked or sounded less like the merciless killer Loki had heard he'd been during long stretches of his former life. "Hey, there. You're all right." Then, to Loki: "I'm not a doctor, but she looks okay to me. Healthy and all. Do you want to hold her?"
"I suppose," Loki said.
Barnes laid her on Loki's chest, then took off his shirt and draped it over her. Loki just lay there, staring at her. She needed to be cleaned, but even now it was easy to tell what color she was, underneath.
Maybe everyone else forgot what he was on a regular basis, but despite half-expecting to bring forth a giant, it had somehow never occurred to Loki that the child might come out simply blue.
As he watched her, lying on his chest, she seemed to watch him, too. As they looked at each other, or seemed to, the blue faded, until she was as red and wrinkled as any other infant. Loki would have suspected he'd done it, even without intending to--but his magic was still locked away. He'd long since figured out that he wasn't going to be able to retrieve it anytime soon. It hadn't been him.
"You don't have to do that," Loki said to his daughter, struck suddenly and fiercely with the conviction that she would always know exactly who she was and from where she had come. "You were fine the way you were."
Despite this admission, she failed to immediately turn blue again. Perhaps she meant to stay red out of spite. Loki could respect that.
Barnes had barely finished wiping off his hands before Thor filled the viewscreen, looking wroth. "Loki. Where are you?"
Loki gave him a moment to observe the scene: enough blood spattered around to make the shuttle look like a murder scene, and the baby in Loki's arms. "Giving birth to the future Queen of Asgard. And you?"
Thor's face did four or five hilarious things in a row. "Well done, brother," he managed, finally, and then: "That's only if I die without fathering children. Don't pretend you forgot that part."
"Whatever you say."
"Are you planning on coming back? You're not cleared to leave the ship, and besides...I'd like to meet her."
As if there were any chance Loki would allow that.
"Yeah," Barnes said, before Loki could say as much. But that was fine. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this tired, or this disinclined to force an argument. Besides, he was already preoccupied with figuring out how to ensure she ascended the throne, some day. "We'll be there soon."
And so they were, the three of them.