Chapter 7 - The Burden of Two Hundred Proof

"I apologize for these accommodations, my friends," said Thor, "but I must keep you as far from the royal living quarters as possible, so as not to alert my father to Healer Samson's presence."

"I don't know why you're apologizing. This seems fine to me," Leonard told him. "Fine" was an understatement; the suite of rooms Thor had given them far surpassed any of the four or five star hotel rooms he'd stayed in over the course of his existence. Three rooms, each with a large bed and at least one wall that opened onto a balcony that overlooked the city, converged on a central room full of low furniture surrounding a metal table with a fire pit built into in the middle of it. Tapestries in shimmering gold, vibrant purple, and rich burgundy covered the walls from the ceiling to the highly polished marble floor.

"There's nothing wrong with the room itself," Thor agreed. "However, I feel it is only fair to tell you. These quarters have not been used in many years, but in my Grandfather Bor's time, there were women who lived here, who catered to the—pleasures of the court."

Tony seemed to be amused, if not delighted over the provenance of the room. "So this is literally the tarts' boudoir? Guess that explains the mirrors on the ceiling."

Thor blinked, and his eyes drifted up towards the ceiling. "Those aren't mirrors. They're just polished metal tiles—though most rooms in the palace have painted ceilings—oh." Thor's face started to turn red.

"Don't worry, Point Break, I'm sure no one here minds that you're putting us up in your granddad's rumpus room," Tony told him. "I mean, I'm guessing it's been cleaned since the last time it was used?"

"The last time it was used would have been at least three thousand years ago, so I would think so," Thor told him.

The rooms were all the same, so they each chose one at random. After Leonard had thrown his overnight bag down on the bed, he went back into the central room. A woman with reddish brown hair, secured in a complicated braided knot on top of her head, had appeared in the open doorway. She curtsied to Thor, who didn't seem to be to concerned that she had discovered them; in fact, it was almost as if he had expected her.

"Huldra," Thor acknowledged her, with a nod.

"I'm afraid I'm Syn, your highness."

"Right, sorry. But in my defense, there are a lot of you, and you all look rather similar—"

"Huldra's hair is silver, sire." The woman's tone remained respectful, if not downright cheerful. "There are only eleven of us since Lofn left us, and many of us have been your mother's handmaidens your entire life. But forgive me, I should never have expected someone such as yourself to be able to tell us apart."

"Man, Point Break, you just got totally burned by your mom's handmaiden," Tony crowed as he walked back into the room.

Thor furrowed his eyebrows at Tony in confusion, but the woman's attention had turned to Leonard. "You are the mortal healer, Leonard Samson?" she asked. "I am to take you to the Queen, when you are ready."

Leonard wondered how she had known he would be there at all, and furthermore, how she had known him from from Tony and Bruce. Thor had mentioned that his mother could do magic. Maybe she had a way of seeing everything that went on in the palace, and had even been eavesdropping on their conversations? Sending one of her handmaidens for him before Thor even had an opportunity to introduce them was definitely a power move—but the woman was a queen, he supposed.

"An excellent idea, as you won't be able to attend the feast tonight," said Thor. "My mother will be able to entertain you instead, and you shall be able to speak to her of Loki, as you wished."

"Won't she be expected at the feast?" asked Leonard.

"The Queen and her ladies are not always expected to attend," said Thor. "When warriors visit from other realms, you never know what might happen—"

"The Queen and her ladies do not always wish to attend," Syn corrected. "It has less to do with visitors from other realms, than with Aesir men who cannot be trusted to behave themselves around them."

By this time, Bruce had rejoined them as well. "Sorry, but what might happen at this feast?" he asked, looking a little alarmed.

"It's nothing," said Thor. "Sometimes the warriors like to issue challenges to visitors, and sometimes a fight will break out right there in the middle of the Great Hall—then occasionally, everyone will get involved, and it will turn into a brawl involving nearly all the warriors in Asgard. But do not worry, friends, I will try to make it clear that you are not here to prove yourselves stronger than us Aesir, and that they would be better off not waking your beast. After all, the Hulk very nearly bested me, their prince—"

"Thor buddy, if you say it like that, you're going to make them want to try it," Tony warned him.

Leonard decided he was glad he'd be dining with the Queen tonight.

((*^^)_旦 ~ 旦o(･"･｡))

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Son of Sam."

"A pleasure to meet you as well, your majesty," said Leonard. Then, not sure what to do, he attempted to copy the motions Syn had made before the Queen when she had left them. Half-way through he realized that he was curtsying, which wasn't what men were supposed to do, and managed to turn it into a sort of a clumsy half-bow.

Two tall, blonde women—Leonard supposed they were also the Queen's handmaidens—had been loitering a few feet away. When they saw him botch his greeting, they began giggling at him from behind their hands. The Queen, who had maintained her decorum, only needed to arch an eyebrow at them disapprovingly, and the women curtsied and excused themselves.

Once they were alone, Frigga relaxed and smiled warmly at him. "Do not worry, Doctor. I do not expect you to know our customs. How would you greet the mother of a patient in your own realm?"

"Well, I would usually offer my hand for her to shake," he said, extending his hand to her and returning her smile.

The Queen reached out and placed her hand limply in his. For a moment he was struck by the odd urge to kiss it instead, but he shaked it gently, and gestured towards the Queen's settee. "Please take a seat, your majesty," he said, before he realized that he'd just invited the Queen of Asgard to sit on her own furniture. He winced apologetically. "Sorry, somehow I forgot I wasn't in my own office. Not that this looks anything like my office. Too much gold."

Everything in Asgard seemed to be made of gold, or some sort of material that looked like gold, but might have been more highly reflective. Frigga's sitting room was also filled with cut flowers in various containers. They looked like the roses, lilacs, and alstroemeria he had seen on Earth, but they were all roughly the size of sunflowers and perfectly formed, without one wilted leaf or petal. If not for the light, not unpleasant floral scent that permeated the room, he would have suspected them to be fake.

Leonard kept a small cactus on a shelf in his office. He thought it was supposed to produce flowers, but it never had. This was definitely not his office.

"That's quite alright, Doctor," said Frigga, sitting down and gesturing for him to take the seat across from her. It's still early for dinner, but would you care for some tea?"

"Tea would be lovely." Leonard didn't normally drink tea, but he worried it would be rude not to accept. He also hadn't had anything to eat or drink since they had arrived in Asgard. Thor, perhaps a little overeager, had taken them to the prisons to meet Loki as soon as they had gotten there.

The tea had already been laid out on the table in front of them, and Frigga poured them each a cup herself. He brought his cup to his lips and discovered that the contents had a much richer taste than any tea he'd tried before. It tasted almost like coffee, which would have been his preference.

Suddenly he wished he had some Lorna Doones.

The Queen waved her hand through the air, and a small plate of shortbread cookies appeared on the table between them. Leonard took a cookie and politely tried to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "Actually, I don't usually treat minors," he told her, "so most of the time I don't meet my patients' mothers unless there are family issues that need to be addressed and the patient agrees to a family counseling session."

"I am afraid we have no shortage of 'family issues' here," Frigga told him. "But if we are going to speak of them, I believe I'd like something a bit stronger to drink." Frigga pulled a small amber colored bottle out of thin air, as if taking it off an invisible shelf. "Would you like a bit of this, Doctor Samson? It is a spiced liqueur made from the fruits of my own garden, and it is absolutely delicious in tea."

Leonard wouldn't normally drink on the job, but again, he worried it would be rude not to accept.

~✿~ : ~✿~ : ~✿~

Bruce was a little disappointed that the food at the feast hadn't been more exotic. At first he had wondered if the massive slabs of meat laid out on the table could be from one of those bilgesnipes Thor had told them about, but when he'd asked about it, Thor had told him it was wild boar—though judging by the looks of it, the boar must have been the size of a small elephant, so there was that. The boar tasted like pork, but a little gamier.

The vegetables served alongside the boar looked and tasted like carrots and potatoes, and in fact turned out to be carrots and potatoes, which made him feel a little silly for asking. Though there was still the question of whether Asgardian carrots and potatoes were really the same as the carrots and potatoes on Earth on a molecular level—he didn't have the equipment to analyze anything here, but he would ask Thor later if it would be alright to take samples of Asgardian flora back to Earth with him.

Bruce had turned down offers of mead and ale. He never drank much to begin with, but after what Thor had told them, he knew he needed to keep a clear head. To Bruce's relief, few Asgardians tried to talk to either him or Tony, though nearly all of them spent a significant amount of time openly gawking at them. Nearly all and not all, only because Thor had an elderly uncle named Hoder, who was blind.

Tony and Bruce sat at the head table to one side of Thor, and on his other side sat the only woman in the room. She had been introduced to them as Sif, and on her other side sat a man who hadn't said a word to them or anyone else but had been introduced to them as Hogun. Farther down sat Fandral, who reminded Bruce of the lead character from an Errol Flynn movie, and Volstagg, who seemed to be too busy eating to say much.

Odin hadn't shown. He had a feeling that being snubbed didn't sit well with Tony, but Bruce had been relieved. He wasn't sure he wanted to meet Thor's father at this point, and he was terrified of what might happen if Tony had the opportunity.

Half-way through the evening, someone demanded the story of "Loki's Humiliation in Midgard." Apparently, that was what they called the invasion, and while they had heard the story before, they wanted to hear it again. They expected Thor to tell it, and Bruce was fine with that, not only because he had no desire to be the center of attention, but because for him most of the battle was a complete blur. Tony attempted to help with the telling a few times, but what he had to add didn't seem to please an audience that seemed to be mainly interested in the most violent parts of the story—they didn't care about how ridiculous Tony thought Steve looked in his Captain America costume. They weren't even that impressed with how Tony had fixed the engine on the Helicarrier, as dangerous as that had actually been. Then again, maybe they didn't know what an engine was.

When Thor told the part about the confrontation between himself and the Hulk, he noticed a few of the Asgardians staring at him, sizing him up. "I know what some of you are thinking, friends—you would dearly love to challenge Doctor Banner's berserker yourselves. I myself would challenge him to a rematch here and now!" The room went wild, and Bruce hoped that Thor knew what he was doing. Thor held up his hands, gesturing for silence. "Alas, the transformation is only possible on Midgard, as the magic is tied to that realm," he told them. Most of the men who had been staring at him looked away and began grumbling to one another, disappointed, but a couple still seemed to be contemplating the merits of challenging him anyway. Thor went on. "There would be no honor in challenging him in his current form, of course—why, even Loki could defeat him like this!"

That got him a few laughs, and they all seemed to forget about challenging Bruce. While he appreciated what Thor had done, he couldn't help feeling a little offended—for himself, for humankind in general, and maybe even for Loki. Making jokes at the expense of someone who wasn't there to defend himself just didn't seem right.

As the story went on, Bruce became increasingly uneasy with how much sadistic pleasure the Asgardians seemed to take in the story. He doubted any of them cared about the Earth or anyone on it—they just wanted to hear how Loki had lost. Hearing their reaction to the part where Hulk had smashed Loki into the floor made Bruce's skin crawl. He wasn't sorry he'd stopped Loki, but he also hated it when the Hulk hurt anyone for any reason.

When the cheering died down, Tony leaned forward in his seat. "So after it's all over, we find him lying in the middle of a big hole in my floor, and he says, 'If it's all the same to you, I'll get that drink now.' You have to admit, Loki does have a good sense of comedic timing."

The room was completely silent, but then one person laughed. "He always was quite the jester, even as a child," said Fandral. "When Thor confronted him over what he did to Sif's hair, do you know what he said? 'But Brother, you told me you liked bald women! Though I may have a little wax built up in my ears, so perhaps I misheard you—don't tell me it was bold women you liked?'"

"That wasn't funny," said Sif said, holding herself as stiffly as she had all night. "We should have all known there was something wrong with him then."

An hour later, almost everyone who hadn't been at the head table had left or had fallen asleep, either in their seat or having rolled under one of the tables.

Tony stared morosely into his now empty tankard, which had only been refilled once. Earlier, Bruce had been relieved to see Tony pacing himself, but he was starting to worry that Asgardian ale was a lot stronger than alcohol on Earth. "Does Asgardian alcohol have hallucinogenic properties?" Tony asked. "Because I kind of feel like I'm drunk and high. Like right now, I'm seeing three empty tankards here, but I'm pretty sure only one is real. Wait, are any of them real? Am I real?"

"I am also feeling very much 'high,'" Thor announced, ignoring Tony's existential crisis. He clapped Tony on the back too hard, causing him to jolt forward and nearly hit his head on the table. "Though it is your companionship, I believe, and not the ale that makes me so. You do not know what it means to me, friends, that you have journeyed all this way to lend aid to my brother."

Sif grabbed Thor's arm. "What do you mean, they are here to aid Loki?" she demanded.

"It is no concern of yours," said Thor, pulling his arm away from her.

"It is my concern, if Loki has manipulated you into thinking he either needs or deserves help."

"You're starting to sound like Father," Thor told her.

"And you are starting to sound like Loki!"

"Is that such a bad thing, Sif? Loki has always been well spoken."

"Are you jesting, Thor?" Sif bared her teeth at him. "He ruined your coronation, tried to murder all of us, and nearly allowed the Jotunn to assassinate your father. Then he double crossed them and attempted to use the Bifrost to destroy their entire realm!"

Thor bared his teeth back at her, and Bruce thought he was going to challenge her to a fight. But then the fight seemed to drain out of him. "Loki saved Father from Laufey. And though it was the wrong way to go about it, he was trying to end the war. A war which I started."

"A war he tricked you into starting. He planted the idea of going to Jotunheim in your head, I'm certain of it! And your father wouldn't have needed saving if Loki hadn't showed Laufey the way into Asgard."

"Who's Laufey?" Tony asked, too drunk to just stay out of it.

"He was the king of the Frost Giants," Thor said, at the same time that Sif said, "He was Loki's true father."

"So wait, Loki really is adopted?" Tony asked. "I kind of thought you were joking about that."

"It doesn't matter," said Thor.

"It kind of does, though," said Tony. "Disowning your kid is bad enough, but disowning your adopted kid is a special kind of awful. I mean, he was already abandoned by one set of parents, right? How long has Loki even known?"

"Have a care how you speak of the All-Father," Sif growled, at the same time Thor said, "I believe he found out shortly before he fell."

"Well damn. I thought my family was screwed up, but you know what? You win, and I need another beer." Tony picked up his tankard and threw it across the room, where it smashed against the floor. "ANOTHER!" he cried, as they had seen a number of the Asgardians doing throughout the night.

"Tony, maybe that's a bad idea." Bruce hated to be a buzz-kill, but someone needed to kill Tony's buzz before Tony's buzz killed him. "Seriously, I'm worried you're going to get alcohol poisoning, and I don't know if they know how to treat that here. I'm starting to suspect that Asgardians can drink however much they want and be fine." He had lost count, but Thor might have gone through at least a dozen tankards of ale himself, to Tony's two.

Luckily, most of the 'serving wenches' had already left, though a few of them had curled up with the men underneath the tables. If Tony wanted more ale, he'd have had to go find it himself, and since he didn't seem too coordinated at the moment, that probably wasn't happening.

"Perhaps friend Banner is correct," Thor said, arching an eyebrow at him. "Though I must say I'm impressed. You have already had more ale more than my brother is capable of imbibing without becoming drunk."

"That's 'cause your brother is underage. Damn, how messed up is that? He's really just a kid, which I prob'ly shoulda caught onto when he threw a big temper tantrum and threw me out the window insteada taking me up on that drink. Oh man—you know what I just thought of? I offered him a drink. I'm totally guilty of trying to corrupt a minor."

"Loki may look like a child to you, but according to Asgardian law, he is an adult," Sif told him. "And his corruption had begun long before his invasion of your realm."

"Well that's probably good, because I'm reaaaalllly good at corrupting people. Still working on the teetotaler here, though." Tony hitched his thumb in Bruce's direction.

Bruce rolled his eyes. Tony knew why he couldn't get drunk with him, but it didn't stop him from trying. Why were they friends again? Oh right, because Tony knew why he couldn't get drunk with him, but it didn't stop him from trying. "Tony, I hate to ruin your fun, but I think we ought to go back to our room. It's getting late." Leonard had probably returned to their room hours before, and he didn't want him to feel too much like they had abandoned him.

He was still a little bit surprised the man had dropped everything and agreed to come. Leonard certainly didn't owe him any favors. They weren't even friends, really, and even saying that they were colleagues was a stretch. All they had in common was Betty. The least he could do was not stay all night at a party Leonard hadn't been invited to. Luckily, Tony didn't pout too long after he figured out that no one was bringing him another drink.

As drunk as he was, Tony could still walk on his own, so long as you pointed him in the right direction every few steps. As he and Thor herded him down the hallway, a silence fell between them and Thor became contemplative. "It is odd," he said. "Loki's most heinous crimes are against your people, but it is my people who seem to hold the most animosity for him."

Bruce wasn't sure that was true. Loki was far from well liked on Earth. A lot of people had been angry that he'd been extradited to Asgard. At the time, Bruce hadn't cared what happened to Loki, so long as he was somewhere where he couldn't hurt anyone else. Now he wasn't sure what he felt, but it wasn't his feelings that mattered. Thor hadn't given up on his younger brother, and Bruce wasn't going to tell him to.

When they were still a little ways down the corridor from the guest suite he heard singing, which could only be one person, because as much as Asgard seemed to have cultural ties to Scandinavia, he doubted ABBA had much of a following there. Leaving Tony with Thor for a moment, he poked his head inside the room, which was lit only by a fire that had been built inside the table that doubled as a fire pit.

"You are the dancing queeeeeen! Young and sweet, only se-ven-teeeen!" Leonard belted out as he danced around the fire with a fire poker, which he sang into like it was a microphone. Bruce recalled a joke he had heard once, about how "karaoke" was Japanese for "out of tune."

"Oh hey, you're back!" Leonard ran across the room and threw his arms around Bruce, hugging him to him like he was his best friend.

"Uh, good to see you too, Leonard—" He took the opportunity to grab the fire poker before Leonard could put one of their eyes out with it.

"Call me Leo. Like the lion. Roar." Leonard made a clawing motion with his hand that made him look more like an uncoordinated kitten than anything else.

"I'm guessing you've tried the alcohol here?" Wonderful—this was all he needed, another drunk person to take care of.

Leonard held up his thumb and his forefinger with just a tiny space in between. "Just a couple of smidges of the Queen's homemade liqueur. Didn't want to be rude."

Now, maybe Leonard was just a light weight, but Bruce couldn't help thinking that Asgardian liqueurs must be pure ethanol, if this was what he was like after "a couple of smidges."

The next morning, Bruce woke up sandwiched between an engineer and a psychiatrist. He knew he had gone to bed alone, and that the other two had gone to their respective beds alone, so he wasn't quite sure what had happened. He tried to disentangle himself from them as gently as possible, so as not to wake them. Kneeing Tony in the groin was a complete accident, of course. The man just made a whining noise and turned over to his other side.

ヾ( ＾。^*) ～

Loki realized that he had not read a single word on the page before him, though his eyes had continued to scan over them. He tossed his book aside and went to the barrier of his cell, attempting to look as far down the corridor as he could, which wasn't very far. It had already been a full day since his brother had shown up with Stark, Banner, and the psychiatrist, and he was starting to think that he wouldn't see any of them again.

But the one called Samson had said that they would return later, had he not? Not that he was particularly desperate for them to return. At least, that was what he tried to tell himself. But the truth was, he was desperate for whatever little entertainments he could get, and if they didn't come back soon, he was going to have to do something else to entertain himself, like trash his cell again, or attempt to incite a prison riot. He had thought of a few ways he could accomplish the latter, as isolated from his fellow prisoners as he was.

The only reason he hadn't tried it yet was that if he succeeded in inspiring the other inmates to riot with words alone, he was likely to end up wearing a gag full-time. And as much of a fashion statement as that would be, a gag would be almost as comfortable to wear for an extended period as stiletto heeled boots and a corset.

There was a reason he didn't break out his "Lady Loki" persona often. Though now that he thought of it, he could be either sex he wanted to down here and wear whatever he liked. Even if Lady Loki chose to wear leggings and a tunic, it was not as if anyone that mattered would see.

On Asgard, ladies did not wear trousers, leggings, or breeches, even to ride. Only Sif got away with wearing leggings into battle, so long as it was under something that at least resembled a skirt—but that was Sif, and special accommodations were always made for her, because unlike Loki, she actually had the All-Father's favor.

Midgardian women had taken to wearing trousers as of late, and in a way, it was good to see the females of a realm so unencumbered. Not that it wasn't a shame to see the entire realm looking as if it were "casual Friday" all the time. He rather liked tailored Midgardian suits on himself, and someday, Lady Loki might wish to wear a Midgardian evening dress, perhaps something slinky with green sequins and a slit cut up the side—

Someone whistled at Loki from one of the cells across from him. Looking down, he confirmed his suspicion, or rather, she confirmed her suspicion, that she had shifted into her female form unconsciously. Thinking about how it might feel to wear something slinky, which would hug deliciously to the curves of her body, was all it had taken. Sometimes it had happened that way when she was younger, but centuries had passed since she had so little control.

She had not taken this form at all since falling from the Bifrost. Thanos seemed to prize "daughters" more than male hangers on. And if Thanos hadn't seen her as "daughter" material, that could have been worse—he had heard rumors that Thanos had strange tastes in women, and that his "type" could be described as, "pale, dark haired, morally ambivalent goddesses." Either way, had he known that Loki could spontaneously grow a pair of boobs, he might not have seen her as disposable. He might have made more of an effort to retrieve her after her attempt on Midgard, or he might never have sent her at all.

And then where would she be? Perhaps not in prison, but even a prison cell on Asgard was a step up from a floating, barren, ironically named rock on the edge of the Universe. Now that she thought of it, she ought to turn back into male Loki as soon as possible. What would happen if the Other decided to "check in" and saw her like this?

"Take off yer tunic, Princess, let us see yer dumplings!"

Now, they didn't get too many female prisoners (though Lorelei should be around somewhere), so Loki could understand just how stimulating her sudden appearance might be. Still, that kind of harassment was uncalled for. Loki felt herself blush involuntarily. Then she told herself sternly that there was no reason she should be embarrassed, and turned her embarrassment into righteous indignation. She glared at the man who had shouted at her, wondering if he would say such things to her had she always been female, or if he felt the right because Loki wasn't a "real" lady.

He appeared to be Aesir or possibly Vanir, and had probably been picked up for vagrancy, judging from the state of him. His body was nearly as filthy as his mind. The guards hadn't even bothered to make him wash before tossing him into a cell; of course, he probably wouldn't be imprisoned long. His kind never were, because Odin hadn't the time to waste on them. Within a week, the man would be brought before the All-Father, who would likely command him to pay a fine for vagrancy. Then he would be expelled from Asgard for being unable to pay it. After that, he would be Vanaheim's problem.

Loki had always disagreed with Odin's policy on vagrancy because it did nothing solve the actual problem. It made little sense to punish someone for a crime that most did not commit by choice. Once expelled, most ended up back in Asgard anyway, after the Vanir drove them out. So she might have actually sympathized with the man's plight, were it not that in addition to being a vagrant, he happened to be anuncouth, ignorant bastard with a complete lack of redeeming qualities.

If her magic could have penetrated the barriers between them, she would simply have turned him into a squealing pig, so that his outer appearance would be congruous to his true nature. As it was, her revenge would have to be more creative.

(. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭

Author's Note:

There's probably still some mistakes in this, but I'd rather get it out by the deadline I made for myself than keep trying for perfection.

In the first draft, they never actually made it to the feast, but when I rewrote it, I thought, "I said there was going to be a feast, so there should probably be a feast." Now I'm not sure whether adding it in was the right decision, because honestly, the whole Asgardians sitting around hating on Loki and being rude to their Midgardian guests thing has probably been done before, but-TOO LATE NOW ^_^;;

Also, I didn't mean to start writing an original character, but then I gave Frigga's handmaiden a name for some reason, and she started mouthing off to Thor-? "Syn" is actually one of Frigga's handmaidens in Norse mythology, and according to my not-intensive research, she's the goddess of boundries. I'm not sure how accurate the website I got that from was, to be honest, but I just decided to go with it. (There's a good chance she'll never be in this fic again after this chapter anyway.)

I don't know, I might have stayed up all night trying to get this done. I might also have had some of Frigga's homemade liqueur, which like all Asgardian alcohol (at least in this fic) is pure ethanol and contains trace amounts of LSD, but for some reason won't actually kill you.

Knowing people read this makes me feel less weird for writing it, so thank you for reading and commenting!

I'm too tired to think of anything specific to ask this week, other than: did any of that make sense?