Tony's Epic Prologue

So, it turns out that the Tesseract can't actually take Thor and Loki back to Asgard. It's a wormhole, right? A connective doorway between two points in space-time. Well, if the doorway from your kitchen leads to your bathroom, you're not going to walk through it one day and end up in your closet. With, obviously, Earth being the kitchen, Asgard being the closet, and wherever the heck those alien lizards came from being the bathroom. Obviously.

Somehow, I can never quite explain this to my fellow superheroes. They're left with Bruce's (rather sub-par, in my opinion) explanation: "The Tesseract can only connect to one place."

It isn't exactly true, of course. The Tesseract connects to another power source and creates a portal between them. The secondary power source, assumedly, can be moved, and if it is, the portal will connect to wherever it has been relocated. Sort of akin removing the door that goes to the aforementioned bathroom and placing it between the aforementioned kitchen and closet.

Again, only I seemed to understand my own brilliance with similes.

What was the point again? Oh, yeah.

So, Thor and Loki are staying at Avengers Tower until A: Thor's gabby scientist girlfriend finishes her experiment to replicate the Bifrost, or B: the Godfather up in fairyland gathers enough "dark energy" to pull the two of them back home. Heh, "Godfather." That's a good one. See, cuz he's a God... and Thor's father... I just made that up.

"Idiot."

Pepper? Stay out of my prologue!

"Well, if you stayed on topic for more than a minute at a time, I might!"

Not a moment's peace...

ANYWAY, so Thor's living the high life, eating all of my food by day and cuddling with "Lady Jane" by night. He's not too put off by the whole thing, unless you mention Loki. Still a sore spot. The guy continues to defend the little dirtbag.

Speaking of, Loki's down in a cell in my fabulous medieval dungeon addition. Luxury stone floors, lumpy cot, and a breathtaking view of nothing. I thought it might make him feel at home. I even got a dragon to guard the thing. I named her Toodles.

That was a joke.

"Topic, Tony!"

Don't I have paperwork you should be doing?

"Technically, you should be doing it."

Good. Go do that.

So, yeah, the cell isn't really medieval. C'mon, nothing in my tower is going to be that grungy. Nope, high-tech all the way, baby! Really, it's too nice for him, but I have a reputation to uphold.

It's been nearly a week since he was put in there. I would say I'm proud to be the holder of the "Longest Forced Confinement of Loki Odinson" world record, but the guy really hasn't been trying anything. It's more than a little suspicious.

I expected once the muzzle came off (c'mon, we couldn't keep the thing on him forever), he would be ranting and raving and threatening and all of that crap. But when Thor (the only volunteer) unclasped the creepy metal device, Loki just licked his lips and said that wearing the muzzle was better than something to do with Dwarves and sewing.

I didn't know, and I didn't ask, but Thor seemed to go kinda pale-like. We all left Loki alone after that.

Since then Loki hasn't spoken, eaten, or slept. I keep surveillance on him 24/7, so I can tell you. I guess that these Asgardians-or "Aesir," as I'm told-have a stronger constitution than humans, and can live longer without food, water, and all of those necessary things, but even Thor seems to be getting worried. Loki looks like he's losing weight. The angles of his face seem sharper. I think he's nearing the end of his rope.

It occurs to me that that could be misconstrued as "we don't feed him." Don't get me wrong! Steve-bless his goodie-two-shoes soul-brings in a nice fruit salad for him every morning, and small portion of whatever we're eating for dinner every night. He never touches it.

I can't help but wonder if this is another ploy, or if he's just depressed. I honestly don't know which is worse. I mean, I don't want him running around killing people again, for sure. If he gave up on that, that'd be great! But, it seems more like... he's given up on everything.

JARVIS, is Pepper still eavesdropping?

"No, sir. Miss Potts is reviewing the documents from the project you started in-"

Alright, alright, I don't need all the details.

Since we're alone here, I want to admit that Loki has grown on me. Not the things he did, but his personality. You know, he's rather witty, and actually kind of funny when he's not being maniacal (sadly, not often). He's dynamic, unpredictable, clever... I think under different circumstances, we could have been friends. In another life, where his brilliant personality isn't cloaked by oh-so-much hate and vengefulness and oh-so-many complexes and issues.

I could continue being exactly the same in that life, of course. I'm awesome.

I can almost hear Pepper screaming, "Topic! Topic!"

So, anyway. Most recent development: a hot blonde shows up at my door. Not surprising, right? I mean, I'm me, after all. But wait, here's the twist: she's Thor and Loki's mom.

I mean, what? What?

After an intimidating, but empty threat from Thor (he gives a lot of those) for calling his mom "hot," she revealed that she'd been searching through Loki's possession, and found a route along the branches of Yggdrasil from Asgard to Earth. Unfortunately, the passage is a one-way trip. Like jumping off a ledge you're never going to be able to climb again, except... magical and such.

Her and Thor talked for a while. Lighthearted topics that purposefully ignored the elephant in the room-or rather, the elephant several floors below the room, sulking like an angsty teenager in his cell. Apparently, it's going to take Odin a few more weeks to gather enough dark energy to bring Loki back. Still longer for Thor and Frigga, but their presences here are hardly as... significant (read: dangerous!) as Loki's.

It's late, and everyone is going to sleep now, but not Anthony Edward Stark! When there's science to be done, he shan't rest 'til it has been... done.

That sounded a lot cooler in my head.

'Til it has been... scienced!

'Til it has been... completed?

Whatever, you know what I mean.

Either way, I'm definitely going to need some coffee tomorrow morning.