Ana let her breath out in a huff, turning and gazing desperately out the window. But the dark hills outside didn't offer her any help or words of advice. "You're staying here tonight," she said, turning back to face him again. God, he was stubborn.

"You do not control me," Loki said, glaring at her fiercely.

They'd been arguing over this for almost an hour now, and he was quite annoyed. Of all the mortals he could have encountered when he was sent to this abominable place, he was stuck here, dealing with one who was perhaps the most stubborn of her kind. He may be a mortal now, but he refused to think of himself as having anything in common with the creatures that walked this realm. But he was torn from his thoughts when she spoke.

"Where are you gonna, then?" she demanded. "What are you gonna to do?"

He laughed, but it was cold and humorless. "I do not need your permission to do anything. And if you spoke the truth earlier, then I have plenty of this realm's currency to survive."

She looked annoyed. She licked her lips, frowning away at empty space for a moment before turning her irked expression on him. "Dollars," she said. "And they're only the currency for America, not for the entire world."

But Loki was bored of her constant corrections and additions to his words. "It matters not!" he spat, sounding as if he was about to reach the end of his patience.

"It does too matter," she said just as loudly. "You won't survive out there! You're going to hurt yourself or someone else and I'll be responsible. Not directly, but it'll still be my fault. And we've already had this argument." Then she took a deep breath, glowering at him, and repeated her earlier statement. "You're staying here tonight."

Loki sat down on the sofa rather unceremoniously.

It occurred to Ana just how she'd always seen princes and men or women of royalty seat themselves in movies, and how she'd always imagined them sitting. When compared to the movie kings and queens, Loki's flop downward onto the couch looked ridiculously lowly and ordinary. And Ana started smiling in spite of herself.

Loki noticed this and raised an eyebrow. "This is no victory," he hissed. "I cannot leave now, at the end of the day. I will leave in the morning."

Ana raised her eyebrows and nodded once. So he thought she was smiling because she had won the argument? She shook her head. "No, I . . . it's just . . ." she paused, trying to figure out how to voice what she was thinking. Then she looked to him again and said, "You think you're so much better than I am, but you're not really any different. You're really just like one of us. Just . . . human."

Loki looked furious, and she wondered just how offensive he found her statement. But at the moment she really didn't care. She had other things to worry about.

She went to the hall closet and found some blankets, and she spread them out on the couch. Then she gave him a pillow and stepped back, looking over the couch and the temporary bed she'd spread across it. "That should do it," she said, mostly to herself. Then she turned her attention to Loki, whose expression had changed. He was frowning, though he seemed lost in thought and for once his brow was not creased because of her. She stared at him for a moment.

So this was the god of mischief, the great trickster, now fallen from Asgard and nothing more than a mortal man. This was the trouble-maker that her uncle had told her so much about. This was the adopted son of Odin who had made so many mistakes, whose heart had been hardened when he found out the about his true parentage. This was the poor soul whose view of everyone and everything around him had been twisted into something cold and ugly when everything he knew and loved was twisted and changed so suddenly.

Many of the people her uncle worked with thought that Loki was a monster, an evil creature capable only of mischief and destruction. But her uncle didn't agree. He'd shared his opinion with her and only her, and Ana agreed with him. Loki was no monster. Granted, he was broken and scarred—perhaps beyond repair—but he was not evil. Anger was a secondary emotion. Pain and fear came before fury, so how deeply must Loki be hurt in order for him to be this angry? Just how much pain and confusion had he gone through before he settled into this cold rage? Surely he still felt the pain now. Surely he must still have a heart. But it seemed that his heart—if he did still possess one—was frozen.

Loki looked up, his frown deepening when he found the mortal staring at him. Her eyes were on his face, but her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere, and her gaze was unfocused. "Is it not considered rude to stare in this realm?" he spat at her after a few seconds.

She seemed to come back from her thoughts, blinking once before refocusing on his face. "Sorry," she said. "I was just thinking."

He raised an eyebrow. Was she truly apologizing? This must be the first time that her tone and her words had not been commanding or annoyed. It was certainly the first time she'd apologized for anything. And she was apologizing for staring at him? He frowned. It had been a while since anyone had apologized to him. Surely Thor had apologized for him, but no one had apologized to him in what seemed a long time. Of course, he wanted no one's apologies. He wanted no one's pity.

His frown had turned to an icy glare, and he watched as she flinched away from him ever-so-slightly.

But she shrugged it off a moment later and turned, disappearing down the hallway. She returned soon enough, coming closer to him than before and holding out a strange object. "Here," she said. "There's an extra tube of toothpaste in the top drawer under the sink."

She watched his expression, wondering if he knew what she was offering. Did they have toothbrushes in Asgard?

He snatched it from her and stared down at it, confused. What was this? He held it closer to his face, looking at it carefully. Mortals were such strange things, with all of their small objects and possessions that had strange uses and could do unusual things.

After another moment of watching him as he carefully looked over the blue and white toothbrush she'd handed him, Ana said, "It's a toothbrush."

In an instant his eyes had left the thing in his hands and were on her face. "Do you take me for a fool?" he hissed. "I am quite aware of what it is."

Ana leaned back, folding her arms across her chest and raising her eyebrows. "Do you?" she asked, sounding amused. "What's it used for, then?"

Loki glared at her, but he said nothing.

Ana nodded. "Yeah," she said after a while, "you brush your teeth with it. See? If I let you walk out into the big bad world all alone, you wouldn't survive. Your teeth would fall out."

He continued to glare at her, but he ran his tongue over the inner sides of his teeth, careful to make sure that she couldn't tell from looking at him. Would they truly fall out of his mouth if he didn't use this thing she'd given him, this toothbrush? He gazed skeptically down at it for a moment before looking up at Ana once more.

She cocked an eyebrow. "Well?" she asked.

He frowned at her, making it clear that he did not understand what she was asking.

"The bathroom," she said after a moment, speaking slowly as if to a small child.

He glowered at her, but nonetheless he rose to his feet and followed her down the hall and into the small room. He watched as she picked up a blue and red tube and squeezed a small amount of white something onto one end of the toothbrush. He frowned down at it for a moment, looking up when Ana gave what sounded like a frustrated sigh and snatched the thing out of his hand, turning on the faucet and holding the something-covered end of his toothbrush under the water for a moment. Then she pushed it back into his hand and repeated the entire process with another toothbrush, squirting the something onto it and then holding it under the running water for a moment.

As she squirted the white substance onto her brush, she said, "Toothpaste," and when she'd wetted the thing, she put it in her mouth.

Loki watched what she did for a moment, and then copied her actions. He hadn't known what to expect regarding the so called toothpaste, but it had a minty flavor that was not unpleasant, and it left his mouth feeling cool and refreshed.

That night he slept on the couch, and she in her room. It took quite a while for both of them to fall asleep. Loki lay there, staring into the darkness and wondering exactly what this world had to offer when he left in the morning. And Ana tossed and turned, trying to calm her mind and quiet her thoughts and failing.

That night she dreamt of Loki leaving and wreaking havoc because he was ignorant about so many different things in this world. And he dreamt of Thor and Odin and the Battle of New York. Loki didn't know where he would go when he left in the morning. And Ana decided that she wasn't sure exactly what she was going to do or how she was going to do it, but she couldn't let Loki leave yet. She was going to focus on one day at a time.

I hope you liked this chapter! I've planned out the next one already, and now I just need to write it! Thank you all for reading. I'd love to hear what you thought of this one, and as always any additions/suggestions/corrections are always welcome. Thanks again. ~Taelr