Loki was already struggling with the sarcasm break. As soon as Strange had asked what was going on he'd been tempted to say something ridiculous which was obviously not what had been happening, maybe like riding unicorns with Thor across space. He opened his mouth to speak, but then he remembered the no-sarcasm rule and stopped himself.

Loki looked at Strange standing up awkwardly (did he do anything non-awkwardly?). "Do you want to sit down, Strange?"

"Uh, yes please," Strange said, and Loki gestured towards the co-pilot chair that no one ever used.

"Don't touch anything," Loki warned as Strange reached out to touch the steering handles/weaponry on his seat. "That's a gun."

Strange's eyes were wide. "It is?" he asked, staring at it in disbelief.

"Yes," Loki said, and promptly pulled the lever on the armrest of his chair that enabled only his controls to work rather than Strange's, just to be safe. Strange looked confused as all the lights turned off on his side of the cockpit. "So you wanted to know what's been going on? Well, basically what's being going on is a load of shit."

Strange looked at him. "I thought you said no sarcasm."

"That wasn't sarcasm," Loki argued.

"Definitely sarcasm," Strange insisted.

"No, it's really not," Loki corrected. "It's an entirely valid response to your question."

Strange wasn't giving up. Loki had to admire the stubbornness, even if he was wrong. "No, think about it, you haven't actually told me what's going on and you even said it in a sarcastic fashion."

"How can you say a load of shit in a non-sarcastic way?" Loki pointed out. "And anyway, sarcasm involves avoiding the truth, whereas actually I just haven't elaborated on my point."

"Well please, elaborate on the point," Strange said.

Loki almost wanted him to carry on with the argument, but he didn't, which was disappointing. Maybe he knew defeat when he saw it.

But where did he even start? So much had happened since they last saw each other it was hard to explain without simply summing it up by saying "A load of shit."

Loki sighed. "This'll be fun. Well Strange, I know you don't know much about the politics of space and everything, and I don't know if it's the same as on Midgard, but up here, we have these rules where, if you do something a government doesn't like, you can get arrested or killed for it."

"That sounded sarcastic," Strange said, frankly.

"It did a bit," Loki admitted. "But you get my point. I did something a government really, really didn't like, and never mind arrest, they want to kill me in a brutal way for it."

Strange's eyes widened even more. Loki wondered whether he knew how ridiculous he looked. "What on earth did you do?"

"I did some research when I came out here," Loki said, as though Strange hadn't said anything. "And I found out that Thor was travelling with the Guardians of the Galaxy. I've never actually met them, but I have heard rumours and they're quite famous, so I figured it would be easy enough to find them or send a message to Thor through one of the governments here. What I didn't consider was they would have some enemies out here who want the Guardians and anyone who is a potential ally to the Guardians dead."

"And that's who you contacted?" guessed Strange. He looked totally shocked. When Loki nodded, he exhaled emphatically, clearly relieved. "The way you were speaking I thought you'd committed global genocide or something."

"Oh, I did that too," Loki lied, but he sounded so casual about it Strange's face went pure white. The sight nearly made Loki lose his poker face. Nearly.

"Y- wha- are... are you serious?" Strange spluttered.

Loki let the act drop and laughed. "Of course not, Strange. I'm just messing with you. Do I look like Thanos?"

Strange relaxed again as he realised Loki looked absolutely nothing like Thanos. "You're breaking the no-sarcasm rule again," he pointed out.

Loki couldn't help rolling his eyes exasperatedly. "I am not. I asked a rhetorical question. But anyway, I have no clue how I did it, but somehow I got a meeting with the high priestess of this apparently important planet. They just seemed like a bunch of conceited douchebags to me but I didn't say it to their faces. I introduced myself and then said I was on a quest to find my brother and she seemed quite sympathetic with that and was all willing to help at first. Apparently Asgard and their planet had been allies at some point before Ragnarok. She didn't know where Thor could be so I mentioned I knew he was travelling with the Guardians of the Galaxy if that was any help. Big mistake because the number one crime on that planet is being the Guardians or mentioning the Guardians and the punishment is death." He felt strangely cold at the memory. "I had to sprint out of there like crazy when she ordered the whole army after me. I'm lucky I have my own ship or there's no way I'd have made it out of there."

Strange looked pretty speechless. Loki could barely blame him. "Damn," he said eventually. "When was this then?"

"Maybe a week ago?" guessed Loki. "It's hard to keep track of time in space. No clocks."

"And you've been on the run since then?" asked Strange.

Loki nodded. "I went straight through about 20 jump points to escape them before I ended up here. It's the furthest place away from there that I could think of and they haven't found me yet." Loki looked out the front window and adjusted the steering slightly before they collided with any oncoming traffic. These Ravager ships were much easier to steer than Asgardian ships. "It's only really a matter of time though. The Sovereign people can be pretty damn determined when they want to be."

Strange was quiet. Loki looked to him to see why; Strange was staring, mouth open, out the window above them. Loki didn't get what he was looking at – nothing was out of the ordinary as far as he was concerned.

"What?" asked Loki, concerned because Strange looked even more moronic than he normally did.

Strange pointed straight above them. "Is that Captain Marvel up there?"

Loki breathed a sigh of relief. He was half expecting something major to be up there. "Probably. She's always coming in and out of Knowhere. We even got a communication channel set up from my ship to her earpiece, if you want to speak to her."

"Sure," said Strange, obviously confused. "Wait, talk to her? From here?"

"Yes," Loki told him, slowly and deliberately. He could barely read Strange's thoughts because they were so jumbled, but Loki knew he did, in fact, want to say hi. He pressed the communications button and selected Captain Marvel's channel. "Hi Danvers," he said into the mic.

Loki could see Strange jump out the corner of his eye as Danvers replied, "Oh, um, Loki! Hi. Uh... how, how you doing?"

She sounded really embarrassed and nervous but Loki decided to look past that. "I'm doing the best I can while on the run from High Priestess Moron. Strange wanted to say hi. Say hi, Strange!"

"Hi, Strange – um, I mean, hi, Carol," said Strange, perplexed.

"Strange?" asked Danvers. "Is Strange in space?"

Loki gave Strange a stare. "He's pretending to be my co-pilot as we speak." He wasn't joking either, while Loki had been distracted adjusting the steering, Strange was using the opportunity, while he thought Loki couldn't see him, to try the controls. Loki had been wise to disable them.

"How come he's here?" Danvers asked while Loki slapped Strange's hands away from the arm rest panel before he hit the eject button.

"Don't touch the controls!" Loki nearly shouted at Strange. He put the mic back on to talk to Danvers again. "He's meant to be helping me out with a situation but at the moment I'm tempted to teleport him back to Midgard." He was pleased to see Strange prevent himself from touching the controls at that.

"Oh... that situation?" Danvers asked, and Loki could tell Strange's eyes were on him, and inferred he was asking him a silent question of what situation?

But he actually could hear him thinking that so it was hardly inferring.

"Yep," Loki confirmed. "That situation."

"What situation?" asked Strange. "Also, hey Carol."

"Hey, Doc," Danvers said.

"You already said hi," Loki pointed out before he could really help himself. He was choosing to ignore Strange's question for now until Danvers was offline. "I suppose we'll leave you to it."

"Oh, um, yeah, I kinda got a... thing to do," Danvers said awkwardly. It was beyond Loki why she spoke so flustered-ly around him but, like many things in life, he chose not to question stuff. "A, thing... to do. Yes. That's it. To do a thing. Thing a to do."

Strange and Loki exchanged a glance, which was the first time that entire trip they'd shared the same emotion. Strange mouthed to Loki, think she got a thing to do. Or that last part might have been for you. Loki wasn't great at lip-reading.

"Bye then, Danvers. See you around," Loki said, then flicked off the communication.

Immediately after Strange was sure they were disconnected, he said, "Is she always that awkward?"

"A lot of the time, yeah. Why?" Loki said, flicking autopilot back on and putting his boots up on the steering column casually. He already knew what Strange was going to say.

"I think she might like you," Strange said, and with his mind-reading powers Loki could tell he was worried about being stabbed for suggesting such a thing. He wasn't that evil. Instead he just lifted an eyebrow. That was the most effective face to get Strange to shut up.

"Anyone could infer that, Strange," he said dryly. "And I'm not going to stab you."

Strange nodded like he was relieved. There was a bit of a silence, but it was a not-so-awkward one compared to previous awkward silences. "So, er... where we going?"

"Nowhere right now," Loki shrugged.

Strange rolled his eyes. "Haha. So funny Loki." His voice was dripping with sarcasm.

Loki blinked. It took him almost two seconds to catch up. He too rolled his eyes. "And now who's breaking the no-sarcasm rule?"

"What do you mean, we're going nowhere?" Strange asked, looking out the window. "We must be going somewhere."

"Remember how I said this is a great place to be robbed, beaten up or murdered?" Loki asked him. "I don't like to say in the same place for a while. If you stay somewhere and someone takes a liking to the ship they'll just steal it or wreck it, plus you have to pay for parking. Whereas, if you keep to the air, there's no chance of people breaking it, so I spend most the time flying around aimlessly."

Strange nodded, seeing and understanding the logic whilst also not seeing and not understanding the logic. "Bet you get terrible mileage doing that."

Loki took the portable screen from its place slotted inside the control panel to show him the readings. "Approaching 100 million miles," he read aloud.

Strange's face was pure surprise for about three entire seconds. "Wow, my car only did about 3000 before I, er, crashed it."

"Well done," Loki congratulated sarcastically, putting the screen back into its slot next to the controls. It made a pleasing click sound. "100 million miles isn't that bad for a spaceship. These Ravager ones are designed to go for 250 million and over."

"That's a lot of miles."

"So basically, Strange, we aren't going anywhere in particular. I guess you can just enjoy the scenery."

The scenery was nothing to enjoy really, Loki thought, and could hear Strange think. The ground was littered with scummy, tacky buildings and the air was littered with scummy, tacky spaceships. The only thing that was remotely nice to look at was the hole in the sky which showed them a view of the galaxy, and even then you had to see the scummy, tacky mines that were everywhere on the outer edge of the skull.

"Hm," Strange murmured. His cloak floated off his shoulders and started exploring the inside of the ship. Loki watched it to make sure it didn't break anything. Strange turned in his seat to face Loki. "So... I get the whole being on the run thing. But... well..."

"Why are you here?" guessed Loki. Strange nodded. Loki hesitated; this was the part he hadn't been looking forward to telling him about. He leant back in the chair and let his head fall back over the headrest so he was looking straight up at the whatever this place had instead of a sky. "Well..."

"It's something I won't like, isn't it?"

Loki wanted to say no, you'll love it, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and you'll be begging to do it again afterwards. He wanted to tell him how much he'd enjoy it and it would be better than decorating his house with fake plant life and glitter which he'd only have to clean up afterwards. He wanted to tell him he was wrong.

Unfortunately he was correct.

"To make it perfectly clear, Strange, I don't like this either," Loki told him. "And as well... in case you think otherwise, I promise I am not just using you. OK?"

Strange looked understandably a bit wary and said, "OK," very slowly. The cloak floated back to the cockpit to listen in.

Loki sighed. "I need you to help me do something illegal that'll get you killed brutally too if we're caught."

Strange reacted exactly as Loki expected him too. As in his eyes widened and gave him a look of horror crossed with shock crossed with you gotta be kidding me. Even his cloak recoiled in horror as though it didn't understand how he dare Strange to do such a thing.

"How illegal are we talking to get a death sentence?" asked Strange in a high-pitched voice that Loki would have normally teased him about. Though Loki thought he could also detect some anger in there as well.

"Remember this is the same society that executes people for mentioning the Guardians, Strange," Loki said lightly, which by his standards was a pretty poor attempt at diffusing the awkward tension. Strange wasn't easily impressed. "OK... to be fair it's not the most legal illegal activity," he admitted reluctantly. "But it's not the worst crime ever and there will probably be no killing involved. Probably. Don't quote me on that."

That sounded completely reasonable to Loki, but for some reason Strange wasn't satisfied. He raised his eyebrows and looked completely bemused for a minute. Then, to Loki's surprise, he gave a small laugh. "OK. OK. Loki, you know, I'd love to help and everything, but if we're gonna get violently executed by a group of space jerks for breaking the law I don't think I'm up for it." Behind him the cloak was nodding its collar in agreement.

Loki wasn't going to give up. He hadn't expended his energy and power just to have a nice little chat with Strange about severed heads floating around space and to enjoy the scummy, tacky view with him. As pleasant as it was. "Strange, I haven't even told you what it is we're doing yet. Aren't you always doing illegal stuff as Avengers?"

Strange frowned. Yep, he'd definitely been around Loki too long (not even an hour). "It's a bit more complicated than that. And we're doing so to save the world, not just ourselves."

Ouch.

Loki hesitated. He was rendered temporarily speechless. Strange took the opportunity to stand up and pace the up and down the ship. The cloak started pacing as well. Strange stopped after a few seconds and looked at him. "Sorry, I didn't mean it the way I said it."

"You did," Loki said.

It was Strange's turn to hesitate. He looked shocked. "I didn't," he eventually said. "Really, I didn't. But I... don't – not that I don't want to help – it just doesn't... seem right. To break the law while... I don't know, there are other choices."

Loki stared at him for almost half a minute. Then he laughed. "Doesn't seem right? Strange, I haven't even told you what we're doing yet! How can you possibly know if it's right or not?"

"But-"

Loki held up his hand to stop him. For some reason it worked. "What if I told you doing this could save not just a world, but the whole galaxy?"

That stopped him. Strange blinked a couple of times, dumbstruck like he usually was. "But, you said..."

"I didn't say anything, you assumed," Loki said, somewhat smugly. Strange's thoughts were quite amusing when he was dumbstruck. He raised an eyebrow at him. "You assumed I was doing this all for my own benefit, didn't you?"

"Well... um, that is something you would do, to be honest," Strange said, but he didn't sound convinced by what he was saying.

"Thanks," Loki said, rolling his eyes and resuming his seat. He steered the ship away from the oncoming traffic mostly as an excuse not to look at Strange. Without looking at him, he said, "Strange, I know breaking the law sounds bad, especially since if we get caught we'll be murdered with extreme prejudice. But... it's not. There's some pretty shady crap going with that planet that's trying to lynch me and no one seems to know about it but me, and that's due to the fact, as a precaution, I read the mind of everyone I meet to check whether they're going to kill me or not." Loki heard Strange think paranoid in a sing-song kind of voice. Ass. He turned around and stared at him. "Not paranoid. Smart. Anyway, I was lucky the Sovereign people actually had brains, because at first I had suspicions they were solid gold robots. By reading the high priestess' mind I found out some pretty disturbing truths about what's happening on that planet."

"What sort of disturbing stuff?" asked Strange inquisitively. (Oh, so now he was interested in helping out.)

"I guess disturbing isn't really the right word," Loki debated, mainly to himself. He was distracted by a red flashing light on the control panel screen. Loki tapped it twice to check the problem, then silently cursed to himself. "Strange, we're going to need to stop off for some fuel. Unfortunately that entails stopping."

"It can't be that bad, right?" Strange asked. His cloak reattached itself to his shoulders as he spoke. "Surely nothing will happen just while we're getting some fuel? We'll be, like, 5 minutes or something, won't we?"

Loki flicked off autopilot and smiled to himself. He didn't answer immediately. If only it was easy as Strange thought it was. He steered the ship over to the nearest public parking lot and landed in one of the spaces. Only when he'd cut the power did he turn around to Strange.

"Trust me, we're not going to be here for just five minutes," Loki warned him, getting out his seat and walking over to the drawers where he kept his weapons and strapping his guns to his belt and slipping his knives up his sleeves for emergencies. "I'll explain along the way. It's time for you to find out why you shouldn't go to space without an expert."