Frigga rose as he walked into her sitting room. "They let you out of the Infirmary already? Why, that's… that's wonderful, dear," she said, after a glance at Judah.

"I'm fine, Mother," Loki said, and kissed her on the cheek. "Judah – I thought perhaps we might go see Uncle Phil. How would you like that?"

Judah hopped to his feet. "Really?"

"Really."

"Are you coming back?" Frigga said, brow furrowed with worry.

"Of course, Mother. I just need to put some distance between myself and this day."

"Well, you could hardly put more, I suppose."

Loki held out his arm and Judah ran to him. "Well, let's go. Can't promise you we'll see him, though – I don't actually know what time of day it is on Midgard. He might not be up. And he could always be on assignment."

"Just going back home is enough," Judah said fervently. "Getting to see Uncle Phil will be extra."

"You really don't like Asgard, Judah?" Frigga said.

Judah looked back at her and shrugged. "I don't know. It hasn't seemed very nice so far. I love you, Gramma, I really do. But it seems like everyone here is out to get Daddy."

"You know that's just not true, don't you?" Frigga said.

"No, it isn't, Judah," Loki said.

"I heard the crowds. Calling for you to get beaten. They hate you. They don't even know you, but they hate you. All because of something you did that doesn't even affect them."

"You can't say it doesn't affect them, Judah – my treason made me their King."

"Were you a bad king? Did anything you did hurt them?" Judah challenged.

"I tried to kill off an entire race of people. People they hate and would happily kill off themselves, but it was still wrong."

"Then they're just as guilty as you were!" Judah said. "They created the hate you acted on!"

Loki grinned. He couldn't help it. He smoothed back Judah's curls. "You surprise me, sometimes, with just how smart you are. But you're wrong, in this instance. No one is to blame but me, Judah. I am responsible for my own actions."

"You don't know how good it is to hear you say that, my boy," Frigga said. "Even though the actions in question still hurt me in my heart, and especially the consequences."

"I'm slowly coming to an acceptance of maturity, Mother," Loki said. "It still does not come easily for me."

Frigga gave Judah a hug, then hugged Loki. "Go and enjoy your visit to your friends on Midgard. Come home feeling better, I pray. Both of you. I know it may not seem so thus far, but we really enjoy your presence here – both of you."

Loki bowed to his mother and kissed her again, then took Judah to the flyer hanger and treated Judah to his first ride on the small, open-air aircraft that Asgardians used for personal transport, which he quite enjoyed. It took them swiftly from the palace along the Rainbow Mile to the Observatory, where they debarked and entered. Heimdall greeted them as he always would until the day his time as Gatekeeper ended.

"I honestly thought you would never return to Midgard, my Prince," he said, not sounding too surprised about it. "Should you be leaving the realm while Prince Thor is away?"

"I won't be gone long," Loki said. "You'll keep an eye on things here and warn me if anything goes wrong, won't you?"

Heimdall nodded slowly. "Of course."

"Besides, what exactly would I be able to do if Thanos did attack?"

"You did quite well against Malekith and Hela."

"Malekith almost killed me, and Hela didn't have an army at the time."

Heimdall didn't answer, he just opened the Bifrost. Loki took hold of Judah and together they stepped into the beam. They were shot through space at super-light speeds and deposited on the Quinjet platform on Stark Tower. Tony took off his sunglasses and came outside to greet them.

"Hey, fancy seeing you here," he said. "You going to break my window again?"

"Probably not," Loki said. "Is Coulson around?"

"That's all you have to say after all this time? 'Is Coulson around?' Really?"

"What do you want me to say?" Loki said.

"How about, 'Hi, Tony, how have you been? Sorry I broke your window before I left!'"

"You know, in the timeline that didn't happen this go-round, I tossed you out of that very window to the ground many stories below – shall we reenact that happenstance?"

Tony raised his hands in a gesture of peace. "All right, all right, enough about the window. You really came back just to see Phil?"

"More or less."

"Well I'm sure he'll be glad to see you. I think he's in his apartment. Want me to call him?"

"I think we'll surprise him," Loki said.

"How? I mean, you're not going to come up behind him and jam a spear through his chest, are you? 'Cause even if it were an illusion, that wouldn't be cool, man."

"Give me credit for a bit of subtlety. Come along, Judah."

They headed for the elevator and got off at Coulson's floor. At the door of Coulson's apartment they stopped, and Loki cautioned Judah to silence. He tried the knob. Locked.

"Only use what I am about to show you in the direst of circumstances, or the most imperative of mischief," Loki said quietly, and cracked the high-security lock in a heartbeat.

"How did you do that?" Judah said, trying not to cry out.

"People like to think they are tricky, but they always fall for familiarity," Loki said. "Coulson's security code is his ex-girlfriend's birthdate. It's sad, really. Come on, inside. Quietly now."

"What are you going to do?" Judah asked.

"Shh. You'll see."

In the sunken living room, they could see Coulson sitting watching TV with the sound turned low. He had his suit jacket off, his dress shirt off, he was sitting in a plain white undershirt. His shoulder harness was on the couch next to him. Loki spied a heavy glass vase sitting on the nearby sideboard and reached out to purposely knock it over. Phil looked up at the sound, then reached for his weapon. Loki cautioned Judah to silence and cast a shroud of invisibility over him. Then he turned into a black tom cat and jumped up on the railing separating the living room from the upper area. He mewed at the nervous Agent.

Phil checked his weapon. "Hey, kitty, how'd you get in here, eh? Where'd you come from?" He scratched behind the cat's ears. Loki purred appreciatively, then…

"Oo, yeah, baby, Loki like."

Phil jumped back like he'd touched something hot. "Loki! I should have known."

Suddenly it was Loki sitting there, balanced perfectly on the narrow railing, grinning a Cheshire grin at him, in full battle regalia. "Yes, darling, you really should have," he said.

"What are you doing here? I really didn't expect to ever see you again."

"Judah missed you, and Midgard, and… well, I thought I could use a break from Asgardian politics myself."

"There a story in that?"

"Ah, rather, I suppose. My father is forcing me to get married. You know, standard royal arrangement."

"Wow. He sprang that on you fast. I mean, it's been awhile down here, but… not much time has passed… up there, right?"

"Asgard is more 'out' there than 'up' there, positionally, but yes, not a whole lot of time has passed since you left us, on our side of things. Apparently he was planning it from the very start. My visit to the Sanitarium was a veiled attempt to give my prospective brides a chance to get to know my… aches and pains, I suppose."

"Where is Judah?" Phil said. "How does he feel about all this?"

"Oh goodness, he's still invisible." Loki jumped down from the railing and cut the shroud covering the boy. "Judah, come give your uncle a hug."

Phil hugged Judah, then gave Loki a look. "Did I hear you right? Brides?"

"I have my choice between two. One is half frost giant, like me. She's wonderful and understanding, and she likes to have fun."

"Sounds perfect for you."

Loki nodded. "Mm. Unfortunately, the 'fun' she likes to have is not exactly my idea of fun, it's bars and crowds and loud noises. She also seems to have some issue with the fact that I'm raising a child. Just what that issue is I am not quite certain, but she hasn't been terribly warm toward Judah as of yet."

"Okay. What's the other one like, then?"

"A born psychologist. She can't miss an opportunity to ask me how this or that makes me feel. She's very good with Judah, though."

"But you resent being constantly analyzed."

"Rather."

"So you're going to go with the party girl?"

"I don't know. I don't know what to do. More than ever, I just want to take Judah and make for the hills, but I honestly don't know where to go. Now that he's immortal, he'll never survive here on Midgard. The days are too short for his energy supply, and when he needs sleep, the nights are too short for him to get enough rest."

"You managed."

"I'm a grownup. Judah labors under the stresses of still growing. And believe me, it wasn't easy for me to deal with the short sleep schedule. Hence the advanced coffee intake in the mornings."

Phil nodded. "When Thor stays here, he drinks a lot of coffee, too."

"Thor can sleep anywhere, at any time of day. He just likes coffee."

"Yeah, I've found him lounging in unexpected places. Does he have to sleep naked?"

"It's pretty standard in Asgard."

"In public areas?"

"No, that's fairly unique to Thor."

"How do you sleep?"

"Like an octopus, curled into the smallest space possible, color-shifted to match my environment."

"That… fits, actually. That seems perfectly plausible. So what else is going on? Anything?"

"Nothing much," Loki said.

"Odin beat Daddy," Judah said. Phil looked at him, then looked at Loki.

"He's back to calling you Daddy? And what is this about Odin beating you?"

"It's nothing," Loki said. "I told him I rather missed the days he called me Daddy so he went back to it."

"What about the other thing? The beating thing?"

"My sentence for my crimes wasn't legally binding. Odin had to sentence me to caning to make the people happy."

"It happened this morning," Judah said. "I could hear the crowd yelling and screaming. They wanted it to hurt."

"It was public?"

"Yes," Loki said.

"Well, that's unpleasant. Gosh, I… don't know what to say, here, guys. I'm sorry you had to go through that. Loki, are you all right? I mean, it happened just this morning, you're not in pain, are you?"

"I'm fine. A brief stint in the Infirmary and I'm up and running."

"Godly recuperative powers, I guess."

"Well, we can't stay long. Thor is off trying to prevent Ragnarok. I promised him I'd keep an eye on Asgard while he's gone."

"Maybe you could stay for dinner? I could order takeout for us. Indian, maybe – you always liked that. And a cheeseburger and French fries for Judah. Thank the gods for Grub Hub, right?"

"That sounds great, actually."

Phil got out his phone and placed an order on his Grub Hub app. He motioned for the two to seat themselves in his living room. "So," he said. "What do you think you're going to do? You can't live in Midgard and Asgard is a hotbed… where can you go?"

"I don't think there's anywhere we can go," Loki said. "Vanaheim remains a possibility, but I don't know enough about it. Everything I've heard suggests it's a terrible place, but I just don't know. I still haven't asked Mother what she thinks of the idea. She's from Vanaheim, so she should know the truth of what it's like there."

"You have family there, right? Her family?"

"An aunt and uncle – well, her sister and brother, they're not really my aunt and uncle, and I've never actually met them so I probably shouldn't call them that. Especially since their relationship with Mother seems to be… strained, at best. Freya is the de facto ruler of Vanaheim since her husband King Odr ran off some years back, and Freyr, her twin is… well… she's trying to marry him. Odin is making every effort possible to block the marriage, but with Vanaheim being only a protectorate of Asgard, he doesn't have infinite power to stop her from doing whatever she wishes. Odin can really only point out that there's no proof that Odr is dead and never coming back to reclaim his throne."

"Heimdall can't find him?"

Loki shook his head. "There are ways to hide yourself from Heimdall's eye. It would seem that King Odr knows of at least one of them."

"So you have no relationship with your mother's family at all. You can't depend on them for help?"

"You heard what I said about my aunt banging my uncle. You think I want to seek help from them?"

Phil shrugged. "Yeah, well, I kinda thought as much, but where royalty is concerned, you never know exactly how that kind of thing is viewed, you know?"

Loki sighed. "It is unfortunately quite acceptable, if not exactly desirable. Until we 'widened the breeding pool' by going off-realm for marriage prospects, extra fingers and toes was considered a sign of Asgardian royalty. Even now we're woefully inbred. It takes a lot of generations for that kind of damage to be undone, and generations happen slowly in Asgard. I'm probably the product of a similarly inbred breeding program. Perhaps worse – Jotunheim is even more isolated than Asgard. My only salvation may come from the fact that my mother was an off-world captive."

"Do you know who she was?" Phil said.

"No. Angrboda – one of the ladies I'm meant to choose from, the half-frost giant – said she was likely from Vanaheim, captured by Laufey when he conquered much of that land, as her mother was. After all, I am a god. That had to come from somewhere. It makes more sense than the theory I had to explain the phenomenon, even though it is the accepted theory for how gods evolved from giants in the first place."

"Heimdall would have seen her, wouldn't he?" Phil said.

Loki shook his head. "I was born when Heimdall was but a boy in school. While I am sure he saw the event, he would not have known to pay attention to it. I certainly couldn't expect him to recall it now."

"Couldn't hurt to ask. If you want to know, that is."

"I don't know what good it would do me."

"You'd know."

"I'd know she probably died a frost giant slave."

"No, that's what you think. Heimdall can help you know."

"If it was good news don't you think he might have told me?"

"Is he in the habit of volunteering information?" Phil said.

"N-no," Loki said.

"Then ask him."

"And what do I do with this information when I have it?" Loki said, determined to be obstinate.

"Heal. It's eating you up inside, not knowing who she was or what happened to her. Your half-frost giant lady somehow got away, right? Maybe your mother did, too. Maybe she's out there somewhere right now, wishing she knew what happened to you."

"Hmph. I don't really believe that."

"But you want to."

"And if that desire is shattered?"

"Then at least you'll know the truth."

"And if I find out she is alive and wants nothing to do with the offspring of a horrible savage rape?"

Phil let out a breath through his nose. "That is a possibility. But you've got to try, right?"

Loki threw up his hands. "I don't know. I have a mother, she's been everything to me. Do I need another?"

"Maybe your mother needs you," Phil said. "I mean, think about it – she could still be a prisoner."

Loki looked at him as one would look at a crazy person. "She couldn't be. She would never survive so long."

"She's a goddess, right? That means she's probably pretty damned tough."

Loki's eyes grew wide. He sat down heavily. "Laufey is dead, I killed him myself," he said. "If she was still his captive, who knows what would have happened to her after that. I have no idea how frost giants deal with the dispensation of a dead king's… property. I don't even know if Laufey had any legitimate heirs."

"You guys don't keep track of enemy governance?" Phil said.

Loki scratched the back of his head. "Well, I… kind of left them pretty broken not that long ago, they're kind of in a shambles right now. Don't know what's going on over there at the moment with the rebuilding efforts, just know they definitely don't want any assistance from us. Odin offered. They told him to go to Helheim."

"You know, if Laufey has any legitimate heirs, they're like, your brothers and sisters," Phil pointed out.

"I don't think there's any family feeling there," Loki said, delicately.

"How do you know? They might want to meet you."

"My father abandoned me to die alone because I was not what he wanted in a son, whatever what he wanted may have been. I doubt any children that he did keep will have any better mindset about castoffs. And why would I want to associate myself with them?"

"Just because your father was a bad guy doesn't automatically mean his kids are, too. If you manage to develop a friendly relationship with his heirs, that could mean peace between Asgard and Jotunheim, couldn't it?"

"Phil – I'm the one who unleashed the Bifrost upon them, killing thousands of their people and destroying much of their already destroyed planet. They won't want to be friendly with me."

"Oh. Good point," Phil said.


A/N: The concept that Loki sleeps like an octopus comes from a comment by "V" on a Pinterest post about Avengers' sleep styles.