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The Barton abode was a flurry of chaos as the kids got ready for Halloween. Barton and Natasha had been called to a briefing, but Loki hadn’t been, so at Barton’s invitation he’d decided to see what “Halloween” was all about. Watching the kids run around, trying to get their costumes together, while Laura mediated was highly amusing, but he eventually couldn’t stand aside and Cooper got him to paint an old shirt for blood.
Loki was adding some final artistic blood spatters when Laura’s mobile phone chirped like a bird. She took it into the next room to talk, but when she returned, it was obviously bad news. “Well, that was work. They need me to come in. It’s Halloween, and they’re understaffed.”
“But, Mom,” Cooper started. “We were gonna go trick-r-treating...”
Loki could tell his objection was made without any expectation of success; he already knew it wasn’t going to work.
“I know, sweetie, I’m sorry,” she said. “but I don’t think you’re old enough to take Lila on your own. It’s dark, people get drunk, and it’s just not safe without someone there. And with your dad away--”
She didn’t look at Loki, very carefully, not putting any pressure on him to offer, but Loki felt it anyway. “I could take them,” Loki offered. “I can keep them safe.”
“Would you?” she asked, with relief. “That would be great. You two go change, and you can drop me off--” she stopped and frowned at Loki. “You can drive, right?”
“Of course,” Loki answered, as if surprised there was any doubt. She didn’t have to know that had been sixty years ago, during the war. But he’d observed Clint driving his car and it did not seem to be that different a process. Easier without manually shifting gears, at least.
“Okay, good. Go get your costumes ready,” she shooed the kids, but only Cooper pelted up the stairs.
Lila stared at Loki. “So what are you going to be?”
“Your minder,” he answered.
Her look was pure impatience. “You can’t go trick-or-treating without dressing up.”
“I could go as the Ice Demon,” he suggested. He’d seen the comic book, he could do a version of that costume easily enough.
She rolled her eyes as if he were the biggest idiot in the galaxy. “That’s who you really are, you can’t be who you really are for Halloween. I’m going to be Princess Leia,” she announced. “So you could be Luke?”
“You have a brother already,” Loki reminded her, and her nose wrinkled.
“Oh, right.” Lila glanced toward her brother’s bedroom and her lips twisted as if she wished she could trade Cooper in for a different brother. He definitely understood that sentiment.
“You’re old so you could be Obi-Wan. Or Darth Vader?”
Old? He was about to be incensed that she thought he looked old, but realized she was actually more right than she knew.
“Lila, the grown-ups don’t always dress up when the kids--” Laura started.
“No. He has to. He can make a lightsaber, so he should be a Jedi,” she decided. “Like Obi Wan.”
“The lightsaber is just for you to know about,” he reminded her.
She stuck out a lip, pouting, but then shrugged her little shoulders. “Still. Or maybe Vader before he got all mean!”
“He was Leia’s father though?” he asked, and glanced at Laura to check if that was too much presumption.
Laura laughed and waved her hand. “Go ahead. At least you’re tall.” She smoothed Lila’s hair. “C’mon, button, let’s go do your hair real quick, and then I have to get changed, too.”
They went up the stairs, leaving Loki to ponder his costume, flipping through his memories of watching the movies and seeing the photos in one of Cooper’s books about the characters. He could do the costume with illusion, but it would be better to summon it so he wouldn’t have to restore it every time it was touched. So piece by piece, he called the different layers of garment to himself until he had a very close approximation of the fabric and leather of Anakin Skywalker’s clothes before the lava battle.
A black cape completed the look, and he was ready by the time Lila came down the stairs, staring wide-eyed at him. She was wearing a white dress, her hair pinned up beneath a wig with the silly double-bun hairstyle.
“I love it!” she shouted, and launched herself off the steps at him, and he barely caught her against his chest. “It’s so good!”
“You look very much like a princess, and I should know,” he told her very seriously and set her down.
“Cooper!” Laura called, still out of sight behind her door. “Put your shoes on! And get a jacket.”
She emerged in her hospital wear, and checked her step at the sight of him. Then coming down the stairs she intoned, “Impressive. Most impressive.”
Lila giggled. “Mommy!”
As she passed, Laura touched his surcoat as if her fingers couldn’t quite help testing whether it was real. Then she shook her head and chuckled. “I don’t know how you do it. But that’s amazing.” Gathering her purse, she called, “Cooper! Get a move on!”
The boy thundered down the steps, impossibly loud for one mortal child, and his eyes widened at the sight of Loki’s costume as well. “I have the coolest uncles,” he said and held out his fist toward Loki. He looked at it, uncertain what he was supposed to do. “Fistbump, Uncle,” Cooper ordered with a little less awe.
Loki touched his own fist to Cooper’s. “Your costume is a clever pun,” Loki returned. Which was a bit of an exaggeration, but at least it was an effort at one.
Lila frowned at her brother. “You killed some cereal boxes. I don’t get how it’s a costume.”
“We’ll explain in the car, sweetie,” Laura said. “Come on.”
She turned off the lights and locked up. The kids were put in the back seat, and on the way Loki explained the pun in ‘cereal killer’. Lila still wasn’t impressed, but she didn’t call Cooper’s costume stupid, so that seemed a bonus.
The farms gave way to suburban tracts which became town, and where the main hospital where Laura worked was located. She pulled off to the side in the red zone, put on her hazard lights, and got out of the car. Loki followed to switch positions.
“Okay,” she said, inhaling a deep breath. “Cooper knows the neighborhoods we do to. We’re usually out less than an hour, but Lila’s bigger now so she may not get tired as quickly. And I know you’ll keep them safe, I do, I just --”
She heaved another breath and he interrupted, kindly, “Laura, they’ll have fun, I swear.”
She gave a little nervous laugh. “It’ll be fine, I know. In bed at ten. And I’ll call you for pick-up. Thank you!” she added in a rush and headed toward the front doors. She got only a few steps turned around and shouted at the kids, “Have fun. I love you!”
Then she went inside, and Loki slid behind the wheel. “Well, now it’s just us. Where do we start?”
Cooper’s eyes met his in the rearview mirror, and the boy had the most excellent glint in his eyes. “I say we start on Main Street, and we don’t stop until we have so much candy we can’t carry it.”
“YES!” Lila shouted.
Loki grinned. “Then let’s begin.”
The rule was interesting: if the porch light is on, the house is fair game for trick-or-treating. Loki thought it was rather boring and eliminated what the original point of the holiday was supposed to be about, extorting candy through the threat of ‘tricking’.
As he stood on the sidewalk and watched the little hooligans rush up to the next door, he wondered at how civilized this had become. Were there no tricks in this land? What place for a trickster god in such civilization?
Or was there?
The next house they passed where someone was home but the light was out, he gestured to the light to flick on. Cooper and Lila were already at the next house so didn’t notice but the group behind him, did, exclaiming that they had candy.
But then he heard the kids disappointed that the house didn’t have candy, and he watied for the kids to say they should throw eggs at it for failing the trick-or-treat test, but no one did.
He sighed. Were there no pranksters left in these children?
His mood couldn’t stay surly as they gathered with the other group to form a herd. One of the other parents, not in costume, admired his. “That’s a great costume, I’ve only seen ones that nice at cons. Do you cosplay?”
Uncertain what that was, he shook his head. “No. It’s just a costume.”
He was spared by Cooper’s fleet-footed return down the path and turn toward the next house. “Where’s Lila?” Loki demanded, and Cooper waved vaguely behind.
“She’s slow.”
After his reflexive annoyance – because he remembered being the slow, younger sibling – Loki went to meet Lila, who had slowed down. “Can we go home now?” she asked. “My feet hurt.”
He glanced in Cooper’s direction, knowing the boy was not going to slow down for awhile. “I could carry you?” he offered, and she instantly brightened and lifted up her hands.
Feeling a bit played, he picked her up and she twined like a monkey against his chest. “I feel better,” she announced. “Can we trick-r-treat some more?”
It didn’t take long before she was drowsing against his chest, and he could barely poke her awake to give her line of 'trick-or-treat!.'
“All right, princess, let’s gather up your brother and go home.”
Cooper was less willing to stop but when he saw Lila was nearly asleep, he gave in and was quiet enough in the car, Loki suspected he wasn’t all that upset about stopping either.
On his slow careful trip back to the Barton farm, Loki watched the sleepy kids and the ones still running house to house, and smirked to himself as he set the spell.
If every darkened house happened to get their porch light ignited and a small bowl of chocolate candies on the front stoop, well, that was a better trick than they probably deserved.