A/N: A bit of Dragon Age creeping in here: Abominations come from that lore.

Loki said nothing more about moving over the next couple of days, apparently willing to wait until after Judah's birthday, or just so unaware of the passage of mortal time that he completely nonplussed the fact that days were passing. Phil wondered if he should ask him when, precisely, he was planning on leaving, but was a little afraid to. Frankly, he was afraid to precipitate action. The last he'd heard, Odin was at least as angry with Loki as Loki was with Odin, and more than capable – and apparently willing – of throwing him in the Asgardian dungeons. Phil liked Loki, though he wasn't one hundred percent certain he didn't deserve a little time in the clink for what he had done to New York, and New Mexico before that, but how long would Odin think was appropriate, and what would that do to Judah?

Well, if worse came to worst, Phil would raise him. Assuming Judah wasn't immortal at that point. If he was, well, Thor would probably take him in, though he was rather awkward with the boy. Probably because of the problems still present in his and Loki's relationship. Or because he was mortal. Or because Thor just wasn't used to kids. Thor once told Phil that kids were rather rare in Asgard, with most families only raising one at a time. Having a sibling like Loki, relatively close in age, was a great rarity, and hadn't really prepared him well for dealing with normal children, Loki having been so determinedly abnormal from the start.

It was at the birthday party that a concerned Thor pulled Phil aside.

"Judah says that he and my brother are moving to Asgard?" he said, brows furrowed. "Do you know of this?"

Phil sighed. "Loki wants to take Judah there so he can be made immortal, and live on a longer timespan," he said, though he didn't think it should be up to him to tell Thor this.

Thor looked, in a word, thunderstruck. "That will never happen," he said. "Father will never allow that. He believes that immortality is not to be handed out like that."

"Loki said as much. He said he'll get it for Judah no matter what it takes."

And it was Thor's turn to grab the lapels of Phil's jacket and raise him off the ground, though the expression on his face was not so much anger as dismay. "If Loki goes against Father, the best he can hope for is a life sentence in the dungeons of Asgard," he said, his blue eyes wide. "The best."

"I know. But you're much better able to stop him than I am," Phil said, trying to remain calm as he dangled there in the god's fist. "He'd beat me into a bloody paste without even thinking about breaking a sweat."

Thor lowered him gently to the floor. His face now was stricken. "But I cannot do that, because I understand where he's coming from," he said. "I am in similar straits. Jane does not age so swiftly before my eyes as Judah does before Loki's, perhaps, but always am I mindful that time is rapidly running out for us. If I could give her immortality, believe me, I would."

"So… you're going to let him go for it?"

"I… think I have to. As grief-stricken as I shall be when Jane is gone, that would be nothing compared to the loss of a child."

"You don't think it's kind of selfish, forcing Judah into a life he's not made for, just to spare Loki the grief of losing him when he's the adult in the situation?" Phil said, playing devil's advocate.

Thor gave him a look of close scrutiny. "Loki has known enough of grief," he said in a tight voice.

"Yeah. He told me about… 'the incident,'" Phil said, employing Thor's term for Loki's captivity.

Thor's eyes went wide again. "He actually spoke of it? To you? He must truly consider you a friend. Or he meant to mess with your mind completely. He speaks of that time to no one. Did he tell you much?"

"Just the bare fact of it, really, but that's more than I've gotten out of him previously," Phil admitted. "He told me how he was taken prisoner, held and… erm… treated… badly… for most of an Asgardian year… and how you came to his rescue. I can tell he resents that, but I know it's because you saw him in a vulnerable position."

Thor's face blanched. "It was horrible," he said. "They had him hanging by his wrists, and he was naked. He was all sliced up and beaten… I hardly recognized him. They were trying to make him summon a demon, but he wouldn't do it."

"Is that something a sorcerer does?"

"That's something a sorcerer does just before he loses complete control of his mind and joins with the demon," Thor said. "They become an Abomination, an immensely powerful magical creature that is neither god nor demon, but a hideous conjoining of both. I don't fully understand how it works, and I definitely don't know what they thought they could do with such a beast, but apparently they thought he would be of some value to them if they could control him afterwards. I have never heard of anyone controlling an Abomination. A single one can decimate legions."

"Is there a way to save the sorcerer after… after it happens?" Phil said.

Thor shook his head. "The best you can do is kill them, and it's damnably hard. According to father, the prospect of Abominations are why the training for mages and Battlemages are so much more stringent and… well… brutal… than the training for Warriors. Loki has had it rough from the beginning, truth be told, all because of his cursed magic."

"Is that why he doesn't use it anymore?" Phil asked. "He's tired of being pushed too far because of it?"

Thor shook his head. "Loki is stronger than that. No. I am almost positive that the reason he doesn't use it any longer is because he's afraid he will accidentally summon a demon. I think they brought him to the edge of it, and now he thinks he stands there forever."

"Is that something you can… accidentally… do?" Phil asked.

"Yes. They are drawn to weakness of will. I don't understand the mechanics fully, but casting magic opens the doorway for them, somehow, and it is only the strength of your will that keeps them out."

Phil shivered. "How do guys like Doc Strange manage to keep from becoming Abominations?" he asked.

"Simple. They are not gods."

"Oh. It's a god thing."

"Not precisely; there are only a few realms with connection to demonic planes of existence. Asgard is, unfortunately, one of them. Midgard is not. When you encounter demons, they have to take much harder paths to get here."

"So he's actually safe as long as he's here."

"Yes. I am certain he knows that, but knowing something and actually feeling it are often two different things. Particularly since he has not lived here very long."

Phil reminded himself that four Earth years was nothing to Thor and Loki. Phil wondered whether a week of Asgardian time had passed since Colonel Fury gave the order to bring Loki in on the Avengers project, more or less just to keep an eye on him. It was mind-boggling.

"Why doesn't he get help?" Phil said. "He told me about Asgardian sanitariums, they sound great. We should be so lucky here. Our idea of mental hospitals is usually a room where we leave people to scream and an orderly to watch and see that you don't hurt yourself."

"He is stubborn and prideful," Thor said. "He thinks because the short time he spent in one when he first came home did not work to cure him of all the ills inflicted upon him, that they are nonsense and good for nothing."

"He's too smart to be that stupid," Phil said.

Thor shook his head. "Sometimes the smartest people are capable of the most frustrating forms of stupidity," he said, with a wisdom that was startling coming from him. Phil was used to thinking of him as rather dumb for a god.

"You learn a lot over an immortal lifetime," Phil said.

"You learn a lot being Loki's brother," Thor said. "He is both the most intelligent and the most stubbornly idiotic person I know. When we were children he was quiet and studious, always serious, except for the bare fact that I was always larger everyone thought he was older than I, and you could not find a more stalwart friend. Now that we are grown he is childish and fractious, prankish and often downright mean, not to mention unreliable."

"He's been doing well lately," Phil said.

"Has he?" Thor said.

"Well… maybe you haven't noticed… because from your perspective, it's only been a couple of days or so," Phil said, with a lame tongue.

"I wouldn't trust any change you think you've seen to stick, Son of Coul. Loki is clever and manipulative. He was that way even when we were children, he just used it to our advantage back then, rather than merely his own."

"Well, I don't know about his ability to stick to the changes," Phil said, "but I think he genuinely wants to change. For Judah."

Thor stood where he was and appeared to think about it. "I have often wondered exactly why he adopted the boy. It seems highly out of character, even before his personality shifted it would have been somewhat out of character. Does he truly want to change? Is the boy a pawn in some sort of game Loki is playing? Is it some sort of whim? Loki is so difficult to read that I cannot decide which is the most likely."

"I'm… actually… fairly convinced that he loves Judah," Phil said. "I know that may be hard to believe. Even I have trouble believing it sometimes. I… think he wants to be a good father. And I… think he wants the time to do it right, in his way."

Thor clapped Phil on the shoulder, not as hard as he could but hard enough to make the agent stagger. "I will speak to him of this," he said. "Perhaps I can convince him to think a little harder about his plans to go against Father. And… perhaps I can help him come up with some plan to convince Father to acquiesce to his desire to make Judah immortal. Something that won't see him killed or in prison for the rest of his life."

"I would like that," Phil said. "Just… don't mention me, please? He might… kill me, if he thought I put you up to it."