Really, there should've been some kind of alarm system in place. Something to keep it from being easy for someone -- especially a past Victor like Bucky Barnes, good God -- from twisting his door so easily from its hinges. Really, it was a travesty.
Or an inevitability, depending on your perspective. It would be easy to just... let a system like that fail, just in case someone with a grudge wanted to slip in and finish off a Gamemaker. It was an easy thing to imagine, although it certainly wasn't Loki's first thought when Bucky sidled in. It wasn't until the next day, when it wouldn't even matter, that Loki would discover the broken lock, and it would almost make him laugh.
For now, he was too busy taking in his work, the little living beings -- he thought of them that way, anyway, as living -- he worked so hard to cultivate and protect. But his head did snap back toward Bucky, his eyes narrowed in annoyance, even as his voice slurred. "I'm made of stronger stuff than that Mr. Barnes!"
He wove a little closer, making it only a few steps before getting distracted by a clutch of pale pink peonies, fussing with their arrangement. "I may not have the same, mm, fortitude as my brother, but I can drink, dammit." He reached behind the table for one of the many lightweight spraybottles carefully concealed around the greenhouse and began, absently, to water them, slow, careful spritzes. "What's your angle, Mr. Barnes?" he asked. An eyebrow arched upward as he caught Bucky's eye. "You know I can't save your friend."
It was remarkably forthright, for Loki. But then, he was drunk, and drunkenness had a way of undermining even his well-practiced subtlety.