Author's note: Hey guys, thank you so much for 4k! Love you all <3 :)) For some reason it won't let me upload gifs to the chapter at the mo, I'll fix this when I can! Here's chapter twenty four, enjoy! x

...

Nine days later, it was the day of the mission and there was a palpable sense of tension in the air around the tower. For the last week and a bit you had been training almost non-stop with Loki trying to learn how to cast and hold an illusion; it was the hardest magic you had attempted yet and you'd only mastered it two days ago. You and Loki had had some pretty intense arguments during the first couple of days; you hadn't been able to change even your hair colour for three whole days, but once you'd overcome that hurdle things had gone much better, mainly due to the fact that you were actually making progress each day. Annoyingly, arguing with him had only magnified your feelings for him by tenfold, and this had made you even more frustrated, which led to more arguing, and thus you were stuck in a vicious cycle.

If only you knew that he was stuck in the exact same cycle as you were.

Between training with Loki you'd had to find time to train with Nat, who for the last week had been training you in stilettos in preparation for the party 'and who knows what else.' You'd been walking around in those stupid shoes all week to try and get used to them, and were outraged when you discovered you still weren't nearly as tall as Loki with them on. At the start of the week you'd looked like a new-born giraffe walking around in them, but with Nat's insistence that you wear them every day with insoles and your persistence, yesterday you'd even admitted that they were actually quite comfortable. Nat had told everyone that she could now die happy because she'd completed a seemingly impossible goal.

"Now you'll never have trouble wearing them again." she had told you triumphantly.

On top of this, you'd had to research this Penelope girl you were imitating in order to ensure that you acted and sounded just like her so as not to raise too much suspicion. Her excessive British accent which you had been practicing had been the cause of much amusement during the last week. You were quite good at it if you said so yourself.

Today however, there was no joking around, everything was deadly serious. Breakfast had been a sordid affair, no one had talked much and you were unsure whether Loki had actually spoken all morning. His mind remained as shut off as ever, and you'd decided to return the favour so that now you couldn't communicate with each other at all without talking. He hadn't brought it up. It felt weird.

It was now mid-afternoon and Tony had decided to call the seventh meeting about this mission since last week; you all gathered in his lab to go over the plan yet again; you sat on a work surface again and tried not to overthink the situation when Loki joined you. It didn't go well. You were rather preoccupied during the first five minutes of Tony's speech, mainly due to the fact that Loki's hand was resting about two inches away from your thigh on the table. It was only when you heard your name that you re-joined the meeting and engaged with Tony's speech (which you had heard numerous times before anyway).

The plan was this: you, Loki, Bucky, Clint and Nat (who had been outraged when Tony suggested her not going) would go to the party in disguise (Nat had seen to it that your fake identities had make their way on to the guest list). Once inside, you would find Penelope and 'make sure that she was out of the way' as Tony had so deftly put it, and then you would cast your illusion to make yourself an exact copy of her. After that it was up to you to get Ricci drunk and lure him out the back of the mansion by the pool where the Tony, Steve, Bruce and Thor would be waiting nearby, and get him to the jet without a struggle. Loki, Bucky, Clint and Nat were essentially there for if anything went horribly wrong, which it inevitably would. There would be armed security there and CCTV cameras surrounded the mansion, it would be a miracle if you weren't caught. But hopefully by the time they'd worked out what was happening you'd have Ricci and be out of there. There had been numerous arguments about whether you should even be attempting this with you in such a dangerous position, but with your consistent nailing down of your belief that you could get yourself out of any bad situation you might get into with your magic you'd finally won everyone over. Well, almost everyone... Loki still wasn't thrilled about the idea. You had a feeling that that wasn't going to change.

Thankfully the meeting only lasted half an hour, by which time it was just after 3pm: five hours until you were scheduled to leave for Connecticut. Despite being glad that the meeting was over relatively quickly, you were now facing five hours of nervous anticipation which you were not looking forward to in the slightest.

"Do you want to go and practice the illusion? Last chance before tonight." Loki asked you as you left the room. You wondered, not for the first time, if you were really successfully blocking him from reading your mind at all.

"Yeah, sure." you said gratefully, and followed him to the training rooms.

"How are you feeling about it?" he asked, as you entered the training room and thankfully kicked off the stilettos, no longer being under Nat's watchful eye.

"Tonight? Okay I guess, kinda nervous." you replied, trying to not show your surprise at his question as he nodded. He didn't often ask you how you felt.

"Right, show me Penelope." he said, gesturing for you to cast the illusion. You closed your eyes and concentrated, picturing the woman's face and shape best you could as you cast the illusion. In theory it would be easier when you had her in front of you to use as a guide; for now you were just going off of pictures of her. When you were convinced you'd done a good enough job, you opened your eyes to gauge how well you'd done from Loki's expression. He looked mildly impressed.

"Good job. Of course Ricci and this girl will be drunk by the time we make the swap, so if you're a bit off with appearance hopefully he won't notice anyway."

You prayed that that was true, who knew if you would even be able to hold this illusion as long as you needed to, let alone get it right in the first place.

"Just a small observation... I'm pretty sure Penelope's eyes aren't purple? Or they weren't in the picture I saw..." Loki said, a small smile playing across his features.

"I can't help it." you huffed, concentrating harder to try and cover your eyes with the illusion. Nothing changed, apart from a blinding pain shooting through your right temple.

"Ow..."

"Okay, sit down." Loki instructed, standing up and conjuring a chair for you to sit in, pushing you into it gently.

"What am I supposed to do when that happens tonight?" you said bitterly, massaging your head.

"It won't happen tonight, and like I said, everyone is going to be too drunk to notice anything out of the ordinary."

"Not the guards."

He didn't have an answer for that one.

"It will be fine." he said firmly, but unconvincingly. You threw him a look.

"Why are your eyes purple?"

You.

"Nerves." you shrugged.

He didn't respond. He didn't believe you. You sat in silence for a while, until finally the pain in your head dissipated and you managed to turn your eyes the bright blue which matched the appearance of Penelope.

You looked at Loki triumphantly, who smiled at you as if to say: 'I told you so.' You held the illusion firmly in place as your face flared red, before realising that he hadn't been smiling at you at all, but Penelope. A woman ten times prettier than you. That stupid feeling in your chest returned, and you internally cursed yourself for being so naïve.

"So, who are you going as?" you asked, determined to keep things normal between you and him.

"Good question." he replied nonchalantly.

"You don't know yet?" you asked in disbelief. You'd practiced the illusion of the woman you were getting into the party as (Louise something-or-other, you couldn't remember her last name, Nat had made up the fake identities for you all last week) numerous times as well as Penelope, just to be safe.

"No, I'll work it out tonight. It's not likely to be a problem." he said.

"Well, I hope whoever it is you're being can communicate with me through his mind. That might make things quite a lot easier for the mission." you remarked after a beat, not looking at him.

"I have my reasons for not letting you into my mind." Loki responded after a moment, a hard edge to his voice. You wondered whether you'd pushed it too far.

"I can't read your mind though, I only hear what you want me to hear. Same with me." you probed, finally letting your illusion down and looking at him properly, forcing him to meet your gaze.

"You're getting too good at reading minds... I don't want you hearing anything you shouldn't."

"Like what?"

"If I told you that would completely defeat the object of me not letting you read my mind."

"I'm just curious. Surely it can't be that bad?" you asked, conscious that you were pushing your luck.

"Alright, let me into your mind and I'll do that same." Loki challenged.

"Point proven." you muttered after a pause, with a reluctant smile.

"There are some things about me you're just better off not knowing." he told you.

There's nothing you could tell me that would change the way I feel about you.

"If you say so." you shrugged.

"Come on, let's do some actual training, it'll pass the time. Get those shoes back on." he said, pointing at your discarded stilettos on the floor.

"Shouldn't I be preserving my energy?" you groaned, standing up and going over to pick your shoes up.

"You don't need it, you can have a sleep before we leave if you really need to." Loki told you, watching as you struggled into the shoes and holding out an arm for support as you straightened up, wobbling slightly. You held on to his arm for a second before you regained your balance and swiftly let go with a quick smile.

"Thanks."

This couldn't go on for much longer. You didn't know how much more you could take.

...

You trained for about an hour and a half, maybe more; the time flew by as you had known it would. When you began to get tired you stopped, and now the idea of having a quick sleep before going on the mission tonight suddenly sounded very appealing. You conveyed this idea to Loki, who agreed that it might be a good idea.

Ten minutes later, you were showered and ready for a good sleep, which you had, and two hours later you were woken up by your alarm. 7pm: an hour until you had to leave. You pulled on some jeans and a loose top and made your way into the living area, which was relatively quiet, all things considered. Nat was... well, not Nat anymore. She had heavy make-up, a floor length dress and a wig on; you only knew it was her because you knew her face so well. The disguise was amazing. She was currently surrounded by a tonne of make up, working on Bucky's face to turn him into someone else; his hair pulled back into a bun which was to be hidden under a hat, while Clint looked on in trepidation. Loki was sat at the table looking over some files while Tony, Steve, Thor and Bruce were nowhere to be seen.

"You look amazing Nat." you said, walking around to inspect Bucky's face.

"Thanks, not all of us can just cast an illusion and look like someone completely different as easily as you." she replied, concentrating hard.

"I wouldn't call it 'easy'." you muttered, joining Loki at the table and realising that he was looking at his fake identity for tonight.

"Lewis Scott." you read over his shoulder and scanned the picture of a man who was actually from Ohio.

"Mhmm." was all the response you received. You retrieved your fake identity from the pile of files on the table: Louise Powell, that was her last name. She was a small, skinny thing, with dyed grey hair and bright green eyes – you were more confident with this illusion than Penelope, you didn't have to get this one right down to a tee. You looked up at Loki but saw instead Lewis Scott, his brow slightly furrowed as he read through the rest of the file. If you squinted you could see Loki through the illusion, but not clearly, as if he were stood on the other side of translucent glass.

Pulling Penelope's file towards you, you looked over it for what seemed like the hundredth time, pretty sure you had memorised everything on there. The plan included waiting until Ricci and his girlfriend were fairly drunk before the mission started going ahead, as it was be easier to distract them and get away with things if they were to go wrong. Convinced that you didn't need to look over the files any more than you already had, you sat yourself next to Clint and watched the end of Bucky's transformation into a rather scary looking man which didn't look at all like himself (you supposed that was the object of the whole disguise idea), and then watched as Clint was transformed into someone completely different too. It took the best part of the next hour, and by the time it was done you were running late, as Tony kept reminding you all every four seconds.

Clint ran to get changed whilst the rest of you headed up to the jet which was reading to go on the roof, you and Loki in gear (and stilettos, in your case), Nat and Bucky in a dress and suit respectively, and Tony, Steve, Thor and Bruce were also in formal wear.

"Just in case." Tony had said.

It had taken a while, but you had eventually convinced Loki to try on the gear Tony had supplied for him. You could tell he liked it, even if he wasn't showing it.

You were also a fan.

Clint rushed into the jet, pulling his jacket on, at twenty past eight.

"Looks like we're going to be fashionably late." Bucky said, sitting down as the ramp closed and the jet immediately started to ascend.

"The flight barely takes ten minutes, you'll be in there in twenty." Tony said.

"Good, the sooner we're in there the sooner we can get out again. With Ricci." Nat commented.

That was true. You kept that thought in your head as you flew towards the mansion in Connecticut, from which you were about to kidnap a criminal mastermind disguised as his girlfriend.

Just your standard Saturday night.