Tony had been mildly surprised to find Steve waiting for him and Bruce when they emerged from the elevators at the medical floor. He came to a stop, studying the unhappy expression on Steve's face, then grimaced. "You're grounding me," he guessed.

Steve nodded. "Yes, for the next two or three days, until they take you off the stronger painkillers and put you on ones that don't impair your judgement and reaction time. At least the doctor told me that you should be healed up enough for the switch by then. You good with that, or are you going to argue with me?"

Tony considered for a moment, then sighed and nodded. "Yeah, fine, though if something extra-super-bad comes along I hope you know I'll be saying fuck it and joining you guys in the field anyway."

Steve smiled crookedly. "If something extra-super-bad comes along then I think that yes, we'd be slightly more worried about winning the fight than your level of impairment. But I don't want you suiting up for anything less than potential Armageddon unless I give you permission otherwise. Clear?"

"Yeah, yeah, very clear. You got that Jarvis?"

"Yes, Sir, suits on lock-down until use of them is cleared by Captain Steve Rogers."

Steve's eyebrows rose slightly. "I didn't realize Jarvis was on this floor."

"Technically he's on every floor of the tower, including a few that don't officially exist," Tony explained. "Anyway, let's get this medical hoopla over and done with, I hate hospitals, even tiny ones that I own myself."

Steve smiled, and fell into step with Tony as Bruce led the way the same examining room Tony had been in the night before. A different nurse was already waiting there for their arrival, and quickly took the required blood samples, checked the healing wound, re-dressed it and left.

"We done here?" Tony asked Bruce.

"Yeah, we're good," Bruce agreed, and the three of them headed back to the elevators. Bruce stopped Tony's reach for the penthouse button, pressing the 'doors close' button instead, and glanced at Steve. "We should talk. Without Loki on hand."

Tony looked back and forth between the two of them. "Been brought up to speed on last night's events, I take it?"

Bruce nodded. "Natasha and Steve told me, yes. Clint's been updated as well; of all of us he's naturally the most unhappy about the situation."

"Understandable," Tony said. "My lab good for this?"

"Sure," Steve agreed.

Tony pressed the button for his floor. "I'll say right off the bat, I don't think Loki's a danger to us right now. Gut feeling."

Steve smiled. "I think I'd still like to talk it over. I'd prefer to have more than just your abdomen's emotions to go on."

Tony grinned. "Fair enough," he agreed.

They settled into Tony's lab, each in their preferred places; Tony at a workbench, Steve sprawled on the couch, Bruce wandering around the room and looking curiously at the assortment of ongoing projects. Tony picked up a device he'd been working on – the modified version of the Doombot's needle gun that he'd been thinking of adding to the next version of his suit – and then set it down and spun to face Steve. "So... questions?"

"Why do you believe Loki isn't currently a danger?"

"The spell is still holding him. And even if it failed, I don't think he'd necessarily be in a big rush to leave."

"Why not?" Bruce asked.

Tony opened his mouth, then paused, frowning. "I'm... not entirely certain on that point, actually. But, okay, the chitauri. We know they backed his attack here, and in return we blew up a ton of them. We beat them. Then they tried to grab Loki from prison on Asgard, and Thor dumped Loki on us because he thought Loki was safer here with us. When he told us about that... I don't remember his exact wording, but thinking back I don't believe he ever said that the chitauri had tried to rescue Loki. I think he'd just said that they'd failed to snatch him, more or less. Jarvis?"

"That is correct, Sir, the word rescue was never used."

Steve and Bruce were both frowning thoughtfully over that. Bruce spoke up next. "If it wasn't a rescue..."

"That's what puzzles me, I think," Tony said. "If it wasn't a rescue, why were they after him?"

Steve spoke up, his expression going distant and bleak. "There was a time back in the war when a HYDRA scientist messed up and we successfully captured him, I managed to knock him out before he could suicide. HYDRA somehow found out we had him, and where. They spent quite a few lives in a massive raid to get him back. But it wasn't a rescue; we later learned that they'd tortured him to death afterwards, as an example to the rest. Failure and capture were not to be tolerated; only success or suicide."

After a brief silence, Tony spoke. "And Loki failed the chitauri pretty massively. So, yeah, maybe that's what I couldn't put my finger on, though I think maybe my subconscious had figured it out already. Loki doesn't want to leave here, because we're currently the only protection between him and the chitauri. We beat them before. Until and unless Asgard wipes them out, he's got to be worrying that they'll recapture him, drag him back, and express their extreme displeasure over his failure. Does this make sense?"

"It's at least a possibility," Bruce agreed, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms. "Though so far I'd call it an untested theorem."

Steve was frowning again. "Recapture him, you said. Why recapture?"

Tony blinked. "I... don't know why. I think my subconscious might be having more thoughts it hasn't chosen to brief me in on yet." That drew a snort of laughter from Bruce and a briefly amused look from Steve. "It is food for thought though; what if Loki wasn't the puppet-master of the invasion; what if he was one of the puppets."

"A pawn?" Bruce said dubiously.

"Mmm, not quite, one of the higher game pieces than that, but probably not the queen or king," Tony said. "A piece that can be easily sacrificed without losing the game. You know, that sort of fits with what Steve said about the HYDRA non-rescue. In which case the chitauri were the pawns – maybe they were all the other pieces as well – but definitely the pawns. Cheap. Numerous. Expendable."

"You realize we have no real evidence for any of this, right?" Bruce asked.

"Yeah, I know, it just happens to hold together, at least tenuously. But it's mostly just a collection of what ifs at this point in time. I think we still want to keep it in mind though, because if Loki wasn't the real leader of the chitauri, then somewhere out there is someone who is. And it's someone who wanted earth, or something we have. Space, resources, power, something else maybe, but whatever it was, was something that they considered worth spending time and effort on trying to acquire. Something worth promising Loki a kingdom on earth for, assuming they'd even actually follow through on that and not just fuck him over once they had what they wanted."

"I don't like that idea," Steve said. "I really don't like that idea. Loki and the chitauri he brought were hard enough to deal with; the thought of something strong enough to be using Loki as nothing more than a sockpuppet is disturbing, especially if it's something that might still have an interest in us."

"Yeah, and with Thor still not here and Loki not in any kind of talkative mood so far, it's not like we can enquire," Tony said, suddenly feeling frustrated. "I guess we just have to hope that Asgard is delivering enough of an ass-kicking to the chitauri and their theoretical puppet-master that it's not going to be a worry. Though given that it's been over a month since Thor dropped the black sheep of the family in our laps, I have to admit I'm feeling more than a little nervous. What's taking him so long to get back to us? The way Thor talks about things back home, you'd think they could have smashed the chitauri into tiny little smithereens ina week tops without even having to try all that hard."

"Have I said already I don't like this chain of thought?" Steve asked, sounding unsettled.

"I don't think any of us like it, Cap. At this point I'd be heartily relieved if Thor was to show up tomorrow morning, tell us he'd been kicking back on vacation for a couple weeks somewhere after wiping the floor with the chitauri, and dragged his darling baby brother back home for continued time out."

"I don't think we can ignore the possibility though," Bruce said slowly. "Thor brought Loki here because he wanted him to have our protection. That implies to me that he thought there was some chance that Loki might actually need our protection at some point; that they couldn't protect him properly on Asgard. Because as messed up as their relationship is, you know Thor still loves his brother; he'd want him kept safe."

Steve groaned and slid down a little, covering his eyes with his forearm. "I really really don't like this conversation."

Tony frowned. "Yeah, well, honestly, neither do I. But I think Bruce is right, we need to keep it in mind. And I think I better bump up the priority on finishing that magic sensor thingamabob. Jarvis, how's progress on the particle accelerator going?"

"Construction should be completed the day after tomorrow. Testing will require approximately twelve hours, after which production of small amounts of synthetic vibranium will become possible."

"Okay, so I can probably get the first sensor element made in two or three days time. Excellent. Cap, you're our strategist, maybe give some thought to how we're going to handle it if the chitauri come knocking on our door again."

Steve groaned again and dropped his arm, then pushed himself to a more upright position, sitting on the edge of the couch. "I hate that we didn't think about this a month ago. If you're right, we've been in danger of another chitauri attack all this time, and we haven't been prepared for it."

"Yeah, I guess we were all too hung up on and freaked out by the whole 'Thor's evil little brother Loki is living in our house' to think overly much about why he was here," Tony said grimly. "Let's all try to think about it now though. After swearing to Thor that we'd protect Loki it'd be kind of embarrassing to mess up."

Steve's cell phone beeped at him. He slid it out of his pocket and hit a couple of buttons, then smiled. "I have to go. I'll get back to you about this tomorrow," he said, and bounced to his his feet, nodding to the two of them before hurrying off, texting back a reply as he left.

"He's really gotten a lot better with that phone lately," Tony said after the doors had slid shut behind him. "Two months ago he flatly refused to ever try texting again."

"Two months ago he wasn't dating Natasha," Bruce pointed out, smiling slightly. "He just needed a good impetus to acquire the skill."

Tony grinned. "I wonder if they ever sext each other."

"I don't know and I don't want to know," Bruce said firmly, then walked over and sat down on the couch. "And I wouldn't recommend trying to spy on them and find out. You wouldn't want Natasha mad at you."

"Or Steve either, but yeah, of the two Natasha is the more likely to do something extremely painful and humiliating in return. Steve would just stand by and hold her coat for her while she did it."

"Ever the perfect gentleman," Bruce agreed, smiling slightly. A brief silence fell after that, Bruce lying back and thinking, Tony fiddling around with some of the odds and ends on his workbench. "This... thing, with Loki moving around when he hasn't been told to," Bruce said slowly after a while.

"Yeah?" Tony asked, setting down what he'd been working on, and turning to face Bruce.

"Natasha said you'd told her that you wanted him there, so it didn't worry you that he'd come."

"It didn't worry me," Tony agreed. "I might not have told him to come, but he did. Actually it might be that I did tell him," he pointed out, and reached up to tap a finger against the necklace. "Loki might have been too far away to hear me say I wanted him there, but this heard."

"Mmm. Could be," Bruce agreed thoughtfully.

Tony raised an eyebrow at him. "Could be? Sounds like you're thinking it might be something else. Share with the class, Brucey baby."

Bruce smiled crookedly. "This might be a little... out there. Tell me, is there ever a time when you don't want him nearby?"

Tony opened his mouth, then closed it, and frowned. "No," he finally said after a while. "I kind of like having him near. I've gotten used to his company. It's nice to not be alone, even if the company usually has four legs and fur and it not exactly on the talkative side. Lord knows I talk enough for both of us most of the time anyway."

Bruce nodded. "Jarvis, show us what Loki's up to at the moment." A display bloomed into view to one side of them, showing Loki lying on the floor near the elevator lobby, reading something on a display of his own while music played. Bruce smiled crookedly. "Looks to me like he's waiting for you to get back. He likes being near you too."

"Maybe he does," Tony agreed, watching the display with interest. "I did tell Natasha that he's kind of clingy lately. Jarvis, what's that he's studying?"

"He's working his way through recent texts on sub-atomic particles at the moment, Sir."

"Into the sciences now, is he? Interesting," Tony observed, then looked back to Bruce again. "You're looking a little smug. What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that maybe the reason why he came to you last night despite the binding spell telling him to stay near Phil was a much older and simpler reason than anything magic. You both wanted to be together," he said, and held up a hand to silence Tony before Tony could say anything in response to that. "Hear me out. There's a way to maybe test it. You ordered him to remain in the penthouse, right?"

"Yeah, I did," Tony agreed, and glanced over to the screen where Loki was busy reading. "I told him to stay."

"Okay. Just humour me then, and without saying anything verbally about it. I want you to think about how much you'd like him here. That's all. Just let yourself miss his presence. Jarvis, if Loki tries to go anywhere, please don't either help or hinder his movements."

"Of course, Dr Banner."

"Okay," Tony agreed, and settled back with his hands tucked together in his lap, looking at the display of Loki. They waited several minutes, without anything happening.

Bruce frowned, then rose to his feet. "Oh... Tony, why don't you work on something for a few minutes. I need to think."

Tony lifted his eyebrows at Bruce, then turned to his workbench and called up a display, setting to work on sketching out several different ideas for sensor elements to try out once they had the vibranium manufacturing underway. The next time he glanced over to where the display of Loki had been, it was gone, and he felt a brief pang of disappointment; it had been nice being able to watch Loki even when he wasn't right there. Almost as nice as actually having Loki here with him would be. He sighed and went back to work, losing himself in the details of standardizing the electrical connections of the sensor machine to work with a variety of possible sensor elements.

Bruce came over after a while, and sat down on the edge of the workbench, a pleased-looking smile on his face, studying a small display he had cupped in one hand. He grinned briefly, then glanced at Tony and dismissed the display. "Open the door, Jarvis," he said softly.

Tony turned to look as the lab door slid open, and grinned as Loki dashed across the floor and leapt up into his lap, purring loudly as soon as Tony caught him and began petting him. He exchanged a look with Bruce; he hadn't said anything aloud, but Loki had come anyway, and without Jarvis' help.

"We can talk more about this tomorrow," Bruce said, and rose to his feet. "Good-night, Tony. Loki."

"Night, Bruce," Tony said, and then looked down at Loki, running his hands down his back and listening to his deep thrumming purr. Was it really something that simple? That they just wanted to be together, and so it happened? He wasn't sure he could believe something like that. It seemed too... too Disney movie of the week to be real. But then so was the magic that had been keeping Loki in animal forms all this time.

"Come on, time for bed again I think," he said, and carried Loki back upstairs.

Loki woke. It was still dark, Tony still sleeping, as he'd been both of the other times Loki had woken since they'd gone to bed. He bit back a curse, torn between wanting to be able to sleep the whole night through himself, and the knowledge that the frequent changes were having the desired effect; he could feel the additional looseness of the spell, the extra give in it that was allowing him to wake for slightly longer periods of time every time he cycled from human to animal form.

Tony was having a restless night, which wasn't helping with Loki's own ability to sleep; he woke every time the other man rolled over. Tony was sprawled out on his back at the moment, sheets down around his waist leaving the arc reactor in his chest fully exposed, his uninjured arm crooked up above his head, the injured arm out to the side. All his shifting around had the gauze wrapping falling loose, exposing the partially healed scar of the original wound and the ugly gash of the more recent surgical cleaning of the infection. Loki frowned at it, disliking it, glad that it meant Tony was healing but displeased with the ugliness of it. He reached out and lightly traced the skin around it with his fingertips, then cupped his hand over it. The palm of his hand felt itchy, but in a good way, so he left his hand there until the binding finally turned him into a cat again.

He rose, then, and went down to the kitchen, drinking water from his bowl and then prowling around the penthouse level, restless and too full of energy to sleep again right away, feeling too unsettled to summon up his interface and study. He wandered down to the bottom floor of the penthouse, eventually finding himself in the pool room, silent but for the faint hum of the pool filter, lit only by the underwater lights casting caustic patterns on the ceiling and walls. He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows and stared out at the darkened city for a while, then turned and walked over to the pool, lying down along the very edge of it so he could look down into the water, see his own distorted reflection in the trembling surface. A white cat, with black patches. He stretched one paw down and dabbled at the surface, enjoying the feeling of the water on the pads of his feet, swishing between his toes. He'd have smiled if he could, remembering Darcy helping him to swim.

He dozed, after a while, still balanced on the edge, and woke to dawn colours lighting the room, his bare arm trailing in the warm water. He smiled truly then, and rolled off into the pool, pushing off the side and swimmingly strongly down in the deep end, touching bottom before turning end for end and racing down the length of the pool underwater, enjoying the flow of the water past his skin, the drag of it through his hair. He blew out air as he rose, inhaling deeply as he broke the surface in the shallows. He smiled as he sunk back down, arching backwards as he ran his hands through his hair, sleeking it back as he rose to his feet again, water cascading down his skin.

How long since he'd last swum in human form, how long since he'd even bathed...

A startled inhalation broke his thoughts. He turned, to see Tony standing just inside the entrance of the room, eyes wide with surprise, staring at him with an intensity that made him shiver. He turned away, wading the few steps to the edge of the pool, then levered himself up and out, turning to sit on the edge with his legs still trailing in the water, ignoring his nakedness. "Tony," he said calmly, keeping his tone of voice light.

"Loki," Tony replied, eyes narrowing, and took a half-step forward. "I..." He broke off. "How?"

Loki shrugged. "No spell lasts forever," he said smoothly, and grinned. "Though the binding is still far from broken." He felt the change begin, and moved away from the edge of the pool, rolling over and rising to four feet, displeased by the dampness of his long black-tipped grey fur. Tony made a sound like a broken-off laugh; Loki glared at him, then walked around the pool and stopped near Tony, sitting down and looking up at him. He was a large cat this time, his head on a level with Tony's knees.

Tony crouched down, a troubled frown on his face as he reached out to slide his hand over Loki's head, hand coming to rest on Loki's back, then resuming motion as his fingers dug into Loki's fur and scratched enjoyable around his shoulders and lower neck. Loki purred in approval, and rubbed his head against Tony's hand and wrist.

"Breakfast?" Tony asked after a minute, sounding both tired and amused.

Loki meowed in agreement, and led the way to the kitchen, Tony trailing along behind.