New! Improved! Edited for added clarity!

Predictable, their first stop in the bedroom in Stark Tower. Predictable also, the reaction he receives there: "Oh no, it is the villain Loki! The war-criminal, the mass-murderer! – Oh Loki, Loki, do you know that e'en now at the behest of your father, your brother seeks your whereabouts?" Long moments go by, ere their mortal brains properly process what they're seeing.

"Tony... What?" Bed-Tony, to Tony in the wheelchair. "The fuck, you're me."

"That proves it..." – A moment's beat of reaction and Wheelchair-Tony manages the desired humorous response. – "I'm too good for there to be just one." He throws a grin up at the woman Pepper, then looks back to his doppelganger. And then the real reaction sets in.

"I'm gay?"

"Bi," from Tony in the bed. "...But in a relationship." He stares at Tony in the wheelchair. "I'm with Pepper?"

A sigh from the woman. "Sometimes I wonder why."

He glares. "You told me you wouldn't have anything more to do with me after the birthday party when Rhodey took the suit..." –

"I told you the same thing." The man in the chair next to the bed speaks. He is barely recognizable as the same Bruce Loki remembers seeing on the helicarrier, albeit better groomed – And better-fed. – than Loki remembers him. His grin is the same though, awkward and nervous even without a Green Beast as his alternate-self. "I don't know what it is, Tony. People just forgive you stuff."

Both Tonys together: "It's my devilish charm."

Together too, from Pepper and Bruce, the snort in response.

Tony in the wheelchair looks past Bruce, at the two men by the fireplace (and testament to Loki''s state of mind as well, that he has scarce noticed there are others in the room). "Modell, right? Horizon Labs? The fuck, I've been trying to set up an appointment with you for a year, but you won't return my calls." Unspoken, the question: What's this other Tony have that I don't?

"That's because you're an asshole," says the stout man with the red hair. "Now Bruce on the other hand..." He grins. "Kidding, man."

"We've been meaning to come over since the accident," says his bearded companion, "only I had a case that was going to trial. – Don't know why it took so long for them to settle. They didn't have a chance in hell if it went to court." A beat. Then, "Is there a reason we're all standing around here chit-chatting with the guy that just tried to take over Manhattan?"

Tony-in-the-Wheelchair: "This isn't the dangerous one. He's from an alternate universe, and we just came back from the past where he was trying to fix some damage he did with a time-portal."

"Damage." Bruce waves a hand and chairs are procured.

"With a time-portal." Bed-Tony lifts a bottle from the bedside table. "Hey Max, go get a corkscrew and some glasses, will you? This should be interesting."

Interesting, it is not, rather, brief; Loki has recounted this tale before: "Yes, a portal. No, I did not think of the risks when I made the change. – A return, yes. And I begged All-Father most heartily to grant assistance. ...Or rather, it was not I but Thor who did it." Loki looks up. "In a moment, my brother will be here."

A nod from Tony-in-the-Wheelchair. "I'm surprised he's not here yet. He tracks you by the magic you do, right?"

Pepper as well: "And he's got orders from Odin to catch you."

Thunder breaks, and everyone looks toward the window. - "And you wanted to stay home and watch Mad Men!" Modell's voice in an undertone. - A moment later, the glass bursts, and the Thunderer is on the scene.

"Brother!"

"See Thor, I attack not." It were well this part of the conversation were over quickly; the problem with these "alternate realities" is the sheer amount of repetition they entail. "Pray notice your friends,: Take note that they are still safe and unharmed."

"Brother, I had not expected to find you so quickly." Uninvited, Thor takes a seat, and a glass of the wine Modell has poured. "Had you not resorted to magic, you had remained free."

Oh yes, but we have been through this before, Thor. (at least, some of us have). Had he not resorted to magic, he had still been where he first appeared, in the dirty, noisy darkness of the city, and with the painted warrior-children oppressing him on all sides. "I am not of your world." – It feels, not the second, but the thousandth time he has told this. – "Rather, I am of another, a changed world that was created through the use of what Tony calls a 'time-portal'. He references a Midgardian mage, who put a cat in a box."

"Schroedinger." An interruption from Bruce. "So you opened the box."

The box? It is not just the Thunderer who stares.

"Because that's the thing with Schroedinger's cat," Bruce says, "is that there's two of them, one alive, and one dead. This is Alternate-Tony here. – Where's Alternate-Bruce?"

"He's dead." Flat answer from Tony-in-the-Wheelchair. "His father beat him to death."

"Greg Annenberg? – I know he's my step-father, but..." Bruce swallows. "Oh yeah. Mom told me some stuff about my real dad. ...Fuck!"

He must have picked up the language from Tony. Bruce-on-the-helicarrier was never profane.

"But listen:" The interruption comes from the one called Modell. "We've got two Tonys, right? And we know why we don't have two Bruces. But where's the other Loki?"

"You're right, Max." Bruce, having recovered from the news of his alternate-self's death. "There should be two... – No, there should be three Lokis, shouldn't there?"

"Three Loki's?" Thor, of course, is confused.

"One from the first world, one from the second one, and another from ours." The explanation comes from Modell. "See the thing is, when you change the past, you create another whole altered timeline. Your timeline goes on the same as it was before, it's the new one that's different."

Tony-in-the-Wheelchair looks at him. "I can't believe I didn't catch that." He turns to Loki. "He's right, Reindeer Games: Where's your other self?"

"He is on the run somewhere." The words scarce pass Loki's lips, ere he catches himself. But if that were so, why did the door put him where it did?

"Yeah, in some downtown somewhere across from a gay bar. We went there with you, remember?" Tony's words, emphasizing what he's already realized: "You said the door always put you back in your cell after you left the portal, so your world's Loki should have gone back there again."

"Only when you changed things, you made another world." Even the woman Pepper, weighs in. "So it's that world's Loki that would have been on the run. – That's what you mean, right Tony?"

His lips are stiff as he speaks. "I opened Schroedinger's box. There should have been two cats."

"Two Lokis, yeah." Tony-in-the-Wheelchair waves a hand. "So that means you were right all along: It was all a simulation of your dad's."

All of it, yes: He never met the young Tony, nor yet the young Bruce. When he made the changes in their world, it was not into his own world that he returned, but into another part of the simulation. All along he has been fooled, by a deception Odin made merely to divert him. ...And it worked.

His anger must show on his face, because Bruce's voice is sympathetic when he speaks. "If you think about it, he had to have done it because he loves you."

"No, he did it to keep me busy." His own voice is bitter. "Because he did not believe me capable of success in the real world."

Modell again: "Some simulations can be quite challenging. There's a whole business devoted to making them: They're called video games."

Yes, these mortal "games". He has heard about them; they are not worthy of the attention of a god. "Oh really?' His tone is as polite as he can make it. "How does one escape from these 'video games'?"

Tony-in-Bed, helpful: "Well with games, you can turn them off."

And Bruce: "I'm guessing with this, you have to defeat whatever the final challenge is. – Like in a game, where you win the final Boss battle, and then the credits roll." He looks at Loki. "Any idea what the final Boss would be?"

"Odin." Tony-in-the-Bed speaks. "Because where else are you going to go after you figure out it's a simulation, than back to Asgard ask questions."

"And because Loki hates his dad," Tony-in-the-Wheelchair adds helpfully.