Chapter 20 - A Child at Prayer

AN: And here we come to the chapter where Loki insinuates that Midgardian witches are imitators and Tony unilaterally disses all religions. The views of any one character in this fic do not necessarily represent the view of the author, but in the interest of equal opportunity, I'm going to have to find a way to offend atheists next.

Loki sat in the middle of a circle that he had lightly scratched onto the floorboards of his bedroom. In the middle of the circle, he had melted the ends of a few of the candles so that they would stick to the floor, and then lit them. Into the bottle of dried and crushed sage, he had dropped a lit match. This had all been done after walking thrice around the circle in a clockwise direction, his athame tracing the circle into the air as well. "I call to thee, Frigga, All-Mother of Asgard. I call to thee, Frigga, mother of thunder and of mischief. I call to thee, estranged wife of Odin. Do not forsake your supplicant this night."

Nothing. It wasn't enough. Loki remembered what he had read of Viking sacrifices. It had not been clear what they had sacrificed. Modern Midgardian witches used things like flowers or food, but his own workings he had always found that to bring forth a powerful being—and Frigga was one of the most powerful in the nine—the sacrifice needed to be somewhat personal in nature. Blood or hair worked best. Normally he would have chosen blood, because hair took time to grow, but mortal skin was not so quick to knit itself together.

The last time he had sacrificed his hair for a spell had been shortly before Thor's coronation, and he had looked dreadful, with pieces of it sticking up at odd angles. He had ended up wearing it slicked back with oil, which hadn't been much better. He wouldn't cut so much of it off this time. Surely, a single lock would be enough.

Loki attempted to saw through his hair with the knife for a good couple of minutes before he gave up, rolling his eyes at the mortals' inability to keep sharp knives in their kitchen. (He didn't recall seeing anything that looked like a whetstone, come to think of it—had the knives been sharpened at all since their purchase?)

He wondered what had become of his daggers. Frigga had been the one to take them from him, the first night he had been imprisoned. The only time she had visited the prisons in person, and it had been to stare him down until he'd handed over anything and everything he had in his dimensional storage that he could possibly use to hurt someone (who she had been worried about, when he had been locked in solitary confinement and could have hurt no one but himself, he didn't know). He had attempted to keep just one dagger, but somehow Frigga had known and had given him one of those looks that could make a school of fish turn around and start swimming upstream until he handed it over.

Loki went to the bathroom to dig around in the toiletries he'd been provided with until he found a pair of nail clippers, then returned to the circle. The clippers were good enough to sever a small lock of hair, which he added to the same bottle as the sage along with another lit match. The smell of burning hair soon overpowered the smell of the sage. Loki stretched his arms out in front of him with his palms turned skyward. "Frigga, daughter of Vanaheim who was raised by witches, I offer you this sacrifice. Come to me now!"

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the door to his room opened, and the lights were switched on. "Mother?" Loki turned his head to see a sleepy-looking Bruce standing in the . Of course it hadn't worked—he had based this on some stupid mortal imitation of magic to begin with, and the materials he had used had been substandard to say the least. What had he been thinking?

"Loki." Loki didn't worry that he was about to be smashed into the floor again, but he recognized the tone. It was similar to the tone his mother used with him when he had been caught doing something foolish and was about to receive a reprimand. The idea that he would be reprimanded by a mortal ought to have been horrific, but it was hardly the first time it had happened in recent history; he was starting to become accustomed to being taken to task by the tower's residents. "Do you have any idea what time it is? What do you think you're doing?" asked Bruce. And oddly enough, he had heard his mother say something similar to that many times as well. Perhaps mortals were not so different to Aesir after all. "Put the knife down, please." There was a hint of warning in the command, but still nothing that indicated that Bruce's other personality was close to surfacing.

"I wasn't going to stab anyone," Loki argued, but laid the knife down on the floor in front of him all the same. How was it that this meek doctor had won Loki's obedience, something that Odin could never inspire in him by growling and puffing out his chest? They ought to have set Banner on him instead of the Hulk during the invasion. He may simply have handed the scepter over.

"I didn't think you were. You haven't hurt yourself, have you?"

"No. I only cut a little of my hair, I didn't make a blood sacrifice."

Bruce sighed in relief. It still defied reason that the man should be concerned for him, but there it was. Bruce came closer and knelt down next to Loki. He took his arms in his hands and turned them over, scanning them up and down as if it were necessary for him to confirm that Loki hadn't done any mischief to himself. Only once he was satisfied did he look around at the mess Loki had made. "What did you do to the floor? Tony isn't going to be happy about this."

Loki looked around himself. It was only a light scratch in the wood, and a bit of melted wax. Nothing that magic couldn't—oh, right. He couldn't do actual magic at the moment, so there would be no fixing Stark's floor that way, unless Mother came back and did it for him.

Bruce leaned across him to snuff the candles out. The contents of the sage bottle had already burned up, leaving behind the smell of ashes and burnt hair. "We'll worry about it tomorrow. Come on, you need to be in bed."

"But I'm not—" The look Bruce gave him then stopped him from completing that statement. "Yes, Doctor Banner," he said instead. He allowed Bruce to help him up and lead him back to bed.

"What were you trying to do?" asked Bruce, as he pulled the covers up around Loki's shoulders. Loki couldn't remember when the last time he'd been tucked into bed had been—not that that was what was happening. Bruce had only helped him into bed because he was ill. He wondered if perhaps his fever was flaring up again, because he could feel warmth building up in his cheeks.

He couldn't bring himself to answer Bruce's question honestly, but strangely enough, he didn't want to lie either. "I don't feel well," he nearly whimpered instead. He would have felt worse about deflecting the question in this way if it wasn't the truth.

"You're still sick. That's why you're supposed to stay in bed and rest, and at this hour you should be asleep anyway. You left the room like I asked you not to, didn't you?"

Loki could hardly have claimed not to have left his room when he had been caught in possession of items that had come from the common room kitchen. Technically, he was guilty of theft, though the items he had taken were but trifles. Loki whimpered again and Bruce attempted to shush him, which ought to have felt more like an insult, coming as it did from someone a thousand years younger than himself. "It's alright, I'm not angry with you." Loki supposed he could believe him on that account, since he still couldn't see so much as a green tint to his skin.

It occurred to him that anyone else might have been angry at having been disobeyed in such short order and woken up in the middle of the night, but that Bruce was much more in control of his emotions than anyone he had ever known. He supposed the man had no choice but to live practically as a saint, if he didn't want to constantly be transforming into his other self. "We'll talk about this tomorrow," Bruce told him. "Stay in bed this time. If you can't fall asleep, try closing your eyes and counting backwards from one thousand."

(ノ ˘_˘)ノ - i call to thee, Frigga

Steve hummed to himself as he made breakfast. As usual he had been the first up, and being the first up, he felt obligated to make breakfast for everyone. The others had attempted to tell him that he wasn't, but he knew if he didn't they'd all just drift in and out of the kitchen grabbing coffee and instant oatmeal and frozen breakfast burritos, and he enjoyed having everyone sit down for an actual meal together whenever possible. He'd already gotten in his morning exercise, sprinting up and down the tower's emergency stairwell until he'd been slightly out of breath. Usually he'd have gone for a run outside, but the weather had taken an unexpected turn sometime early that morning. The sun should have been up by now, but it was so overcast that it seemed like night still. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Tony was the first to stumble into the kitchen, which probably meant he'd been up all night working in his lab. He stopped at the coffee machine to pour coffee into a cartoonishly large mug that he had brought with him; luckily the coffee machine was a high-capacity commercial system that Tony had invested in after the others had complained that he had been hogging all the coffee for himself.

He expected Bruce to wander in after Tony, but the next ones through the door were Clint and Natasha, both fully awake after their own morning training, and a yawning Doctor Samson, who smiled at him as he made a beeline for the coffee machine. He'd also brought his own mug with him, although it wasn't as large as Tony's and said "Keep Talking, I'm Diagnosing You" on it.

Steve slid the bacon out from the pan onto a plate and set it down on the table. Bruce still hadn't shown. Loki hadn't either, but he'd expected that, having heard about his sore throat from Bruce the day before. He'd made him some scrambled eggs and a bowl of oatmeal with sliced bananas, and if Bruce didn't show up soon, he'd take it to Loki himself. Being sick could be lonely even when you had a mother and a brother (or someone who was like a brother) around. He could only imagine how Loki felt right now, Frigga and Thor having left him in the care of near strangers.

"Hey JARVIS, where's Bruce?" Tony asked before Steve could think to. He always forgot that JARVIS tracked all of them throughout the tower, and that he could ask for the location of any of the other residents at any time. "Don't tell me he slept in for once?"

"I'm afraid I had to wake Doctor Banner in the middle of the night so that he could tend to Master Loki," JARVIS told them.

"Is Loki okay?" asked Doctor Samson.

"Master Loki is doing well. He even managed to get a few hours of sleep last night, although he is currently awake. I only awoke Doctor Banner last night because he had asked me to alert him if Loki left his room without permission again. He is meant to be quarantined."

Clint snorted at that, but whatever he was thinking, he didn't share it with the group.

"Okay, so why'd he leave his room last night?" asked Tony.

"He went to the kitchen to gather the tools needed to perform a magical ritual." With those words, everyone at the table tensed. They were probably all thinking the same thing—that somehow, they had been duped into believing Loki was powerless.

"What do you mean, J?" asked Tony. "Loki can't do magic—can he?"

"There is no need to worry," JARVIS told them. "When I say he was performing magic, what I meant was that Master Loki has discovered New Age spirituality, via the Internet."

"You mean that phony witchcraft stuff?" Tony's eyebrows crept up towards his hairline. "Like those people that build altars in the park and stand around in circles chanting at the moon?"

"Wicca has been an officially recognized religion in the United States for almost thirty years," said Doctor Samson reproachfully.

Tony rolled his eyes. "I'm not saying it's any phonier than any other religion."

Doctor Samson shook his head. "You ought to have more respect for the ways in which other people express their spirituality. If Loki's found a religion he can identify with, it might be good for his overall mental health. We should be supportive."

"I am not certain that Loki has found religion, so much as he wished to summon a very specific aspect of the mother goddess," JARVIS interjected.

"Frigga," Tony muttered, pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. "Damn it, if she doesn't come back soon, I'm going to try chanting in the park, or yelling up at the sky. Maybe that Heimdall guy can at least get a message to Thor."

Steve struggled a little to keep up with the conversation. The only witches he had been familiar with in his own time were the fictional kind that presided over legions of flying monkeys or prophesized over the fates of Scottish kings. But in this time, there were both people like Frigga, who could actually do the kind of magic he had read about in dime store novels, as well as normal people who practiced some sort of ceremonial witchcraft.

What was easier for him to understand was that Loki had been desperate to see his mother, probably because he was every bit as lonely as he'd figured. "I'm going to take Loki his breakfast," Steve announced. "I haven't been sick since the serum, so I'm pretty sure I'm immune to whatever he's got."

"Just don't let him lick you," Clint huffed, which earned him raised eyebrows from both Natasha and Tony.

(: P (^д⊙ );;

"Where's Bruce?" asked Loki, as Steve put the tray down in his lap. His voice still sounded rough, and Steve winced empathetically.

"He slept in. I think he's just a little tired from last night. JARVIS told us he got up to"—Steve paused, because JARVIS hadn't been exactly clear on that point— "take care of you."

"It isn't because he's angry with me?"

"Nah, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure that if Bruce was angry, we'd all know. Why do you think he'd be angry?"

"I disobeyed his order to stay in my room. Also, I've ruined Stark's floor." Loki pointed to a spot on the floor beyond the end of the bed, where a circle had been scratched into the floorboards, and a few birthday candles had been melted into the floor.

It shouldn't have been funny, but Steve couldn't keep himself from smiling when he thought of what Tony might say when he saw that. He always made a fuss whenever any of them caused damage to the building, claiming that his remodeling budget had already been blown for the next five years after the invasion. Like when Romanoff had managed to throw him into the wall of the gymnasium when they'd been sparring, and he'd made quite the impression on the wall. Or when Bruce had absentmindedly left something on a Bunsen burner in his lab (he'd heard later that it had been Chinese leftovers he'd been attempting to reheat, which he'd left to check on his actual work). While the resulting fire had been negligible, the sprinkler system had gone off, ruining some of the surrounding equipment.

When Tony had found out Clint had been using the back of his bedroom door for target practice, he'd just about had a heart attack.

Of course, then he'd turn around and do something like buy a car for Romanoff, because he felt bad about yelling at her for throwing a super soldier into his wall. He'd also built Clint a state-of-the-art archery range in the tower's basement. Steve was inclined to believe that in most cases, Tony had actually been more concerned about the people who could have gotten hurt, but since he still had trouble letting anyone think he cared about anyone other than himself, he had chosen to focus on the damage to the building.

Steve shifted his attention back to Loki, who wore a solemn expression as he shoved the scrambled eggs around his plate. "You're not the first person to do some sort of damage to the building. Bruce wouldn't be angry at you for that, and Tony might act like he's angry when he sees it, but he won't really be that angry. He can afford to fix a few scratches to his floor."

"I'm not sure he's forgiven me for the first time I causeddamage to the building. I broke a window, remember?"

"I'm pretty sure Tony has forgiven you for that," Steve told him, "or you wouldn't be staying here."

"And what other choice was there, to let me wander about freely? I might have been under the influence of the scepter when I tried to kill Stark—when I did kill all those other mortals. But I've admitted to wanting to rule your realm."

"Clint wanted to turn you over to SHIELD. Tony could have let him."

"Oh," Loki said, still poking at his eggs. "I suppose I should be grateful to him then, for not condemning me to either death or life as a lab experiment."

Steve was tempted to point out that a little gratitude wouldn't kill him. Loki hadn't even thanked him for his breakfast. But then, he got the feeling there were reasons that Loki had difficulty expressing gratitude, just like there were reasons that Tony couldn't just tell people how he felt about them, Romanoff couldn't express her own feelings about pretty much anything, and that Clint was pretending to still be angry with Loki, when the truth was that he had never stopped being ashamed and illogically angry with himself for everything he had done under the scepter's influence.

"Is there something wrong with your breakfast?" asked Steve, thinking it best to change the subject.

"Can't I have pancakes instead?"

"Pancakes aren't a 'sick' food," Steve told him. "You need soft foods for your throat."

"Pancakes are soft," Loki pointed out.

Steve supposed he had a point. Still, pancakes just weren't something he'd think to give a sick person. "I'll ask Bruce if you can have pancakes when he gets up. If he says yes, I'll make you some for lunch—if you're good and eat all of your breakfast."

"I will try to be good," Loki told him, "it's just difficult when one is predisposed to be bad."

Steve's heart broke a little for the kid, because as flippant as he had probablymeant it to sound, it hadn't quite come off as a joke. What the heck had happened to make Loki think he was "predisposed" to be anything? Then he remembered. "You aren't a monster," Steve told him. "It doesn't matter where you were born, or who your folks were."

Loki stared at him for a long moment, and Steve couldn't get a good read on his expression. He thought Loki might fly into a rage, but it didn't happen. "I do not need your pity," Loki finally told him. "Just leave."

"It isn't pity. Are you sure you don't want me to keep you company for a while?" He wasn't foolish enough to think Loki would take him up on that offer, but he couldn't leave without making it.

He was a little surprised when Loki seemed to hesitate a bit before saying, "I do not require your company at the moment."

Steve nodded. "I'll come back in a little while then."

Loki rolled his eyes, but he didn't reject the offer that had been made. Of course, maybe Loki hadn't read it as an offer, since it hadn't been a question. Maybe that was the key to dealing with Loki—don't ask if he wants what he obviously needs, just give it to him without giving him room to object.

Steve felt he was getting better at managing people, which had to be a side effect of living alongside so many people who needed to be managed.

( ＾-＾) 乃

Loki had eaten as much as he could of the breakfast Steve had brought, but both oatmeal and eggs was a bit much for his stomach to handle. Loki supposed that meant he wasn't "good" after all and that Steve wouldn't be coming back, but Steve came back twice that morning with liquids to force on him, and a few hours later, he came with another tray of food.

"Bruce said no to pancakes with butter and syrup," Steve announced. "He said that much sugar and fat could make the inflammation in your throat worse and make it more difficult for your body to fight off the infection. But I came up with something I think you'll like."

"I didn't eat all my breakfast," Loki pointed out.

Steve blinked at him, not seeming to comprehend the problem. "It's been a few hours since then. I would have thought you'd be hungry again by now."

"But I was bad."

"You're kidding, right?"

"You were the one that said—"

"It's just a thing people say." Steve put the tray down at the end of the bed and placed a hand on Loki's forehead. "You feel a little warm, but you're not burning up. Still, are you starting to feel worse, Loki? Should I get Bruce?"

Loki shook his head, and Steve removed his hand from his forehead. Then he retrieved the tray and placed it in Loki's lap.

"I thought Bruce said I couldn't have pancakes," said Loki.

"I made these with rolled oats, wheat flour, and apple sauce without any added sugar. I cooked them in a little butter, but there isn't any oil in them. The topping is an apple compote that I made in the microwave without any added sugar—it's just apple, orange juice, cinnamon, and a little sugar substitute."

"Is this a recipe you made up?"

Steve shrugged. "Baking is all about proportions. Anyone can come up with a recipe if they know what proportion of dry ingredients to liquids to fats to use, and what can be substituted for what—like apple sauce for oil and eggs."

Loki arched an eyebrow at the dish in front of him. Substituting ingredients usually ended in disaster when it came to magic. It was with a slight amount of trepidation that he skewered a piece of pancake with his fork and lifted it to his mouth.

###Steve's Oat & Applesauce Pancakes###

#########(＾-＾)＿=*=###########

(makes 2 servings)

- 1/4 c whole wheat flour

- 1/4 c rolled oats

- 4 oz unsweetened apple sauce

- 1/2 tsp baking powder

- 1/4 c milk or plant-based milk

- 2 tsp butter

for topping:

- small green apple, diced

- 3 tbsp orange juice

- 1/4 tsp cinnamon

- 1 tsp sugar or sugar substitute

Combine flour, oats, apple sauce, baking

powder, and milk in a small bowl. For

each pancake melt 1 teaspoon butter in

a medium skillet over medium heat, drop

in half of batter and spread out a little

with spoon (batter will be thick). Cook

1-2 minutes per side, or until it is easy to

flip pancake without tearing.

To make the topping, combine apple,

orange juice, cinnamon, and sweetener

in a microwavable bowl, and microwave

on high 1 minute 30 seconds, or until

apples are soft.

############################

"It's different, but it isn't bad. The apple sauce is what makes it sweet, isn't it?"

Steve seemed relieved to hear that it wasn't horrible, which made Loki wonder if he'd even tried it for himself before he'd made Loki test it for him. When he was finished eating, Steve put the tray with Loki's empty plate on the floor and pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket. "I thought maybe we could play some cards."

Loki stifled the urge to roll his eyes. "I don't know any Midgardian card games," he bluffed. (He was actually quite proficient at poker.)

"That's alright," said Steve. "I could teach you something."

"I do know a card trick. May I show you?" Loki put his hand out for the cards.

A little uncertainly, Steve handed him the deck of cards, which Loki made "disappear" by throwing them onto the floor on the other side of the bed.

Steve frowned. "Loki, if you don't want to play with me, you could have just said that." He went to the other side of the bed and bent down to pick up the cards.

Loki started to cough, and a moment later, Steve was there, patting his back (Loki wasn't sure what that was supposed to do, but he thought it might be some sort of instinctual human response to seeing one another cough, in line with chimpanzees' instinct to groom one another). Then Loki began to "cough up" the cards he had palmed from the top of the deck.

Steve's patting slowed and stopped. "That's a pretty neat trick." Loki had expected Steve to be angry with him—people usually were when he tricked them—but instead, he sounded impressed.

(⊙O[*][*][*][*]

Loki spent the afternoon trying to find ways to circumvent the "parental controls" Tony had installed on his tablet.

"Master Loki, everything you're doing is being monitored," JARVIS finally warned him. "Though I suspect if I were to tell Sir what you are doing, he would only be amused."

Loki had given up then, deciding that there was no point to his current endeavor if JARVIS was going to tell on him, and resigned himself to watching videos of fainting goats on YouTube and reading random Wikipedia pages. It wasn't as if he'd had a burning desire to watch mortals rutt or be radicalized by a terrorist organization anyway.

By the evening, Bruce had approved him to convalesce on the couch in the common room, so he had moved there not out of loneliness, but for the change of scenery. Natasha had shown up at some point, and while she hadn't said a word to him, they had watched television together companionably for about an hour.

Then Tony came into the room and leaned over the back of the couch they were sitting on. "I saw what you did to the floor in your room," he told Loki, scowling.

Loki remembered what Steve had said about Tony acting angrier than he really would be and decided to just ignore him. Natasha did the same, still appearing to be focused on the 'game show' they had been watching.

"Hey, don't ignore me, Reindeer Games. I don't know how it is in Fantasyland, but on Earth you don't go around damaging other people's homes."

Loki yawned. "Sorry," he said.

"Sorry?" Tony repeated. "Sorry—? You're not nearly as sorry as you're going to be."

"So you plan to make me sorry. That is the implication of that statement, is it not? What are you going to do, Stark? Beat me?"

Natasha finally turned her head from the television monitor to Tony, apparently interested in his answer.

"Of course I'm not going to beat you! I don't go around beating people—ugh, I give up. Yelling at you is about as constructive as yelling at Moose and Squirrel over there." Tony stood there as Loki and Natasha's attention drifted back to the television. He threw his hands up into the air dramatically. "So fine, everybody just destroy my building. Don't hold yourselves back. Maybe you guys can convince Bruce to set something on fire again."

Two seconds later a loud crash could be heard throughout the common room. The television signal cut out, and they all turned towards the source of the noise. Natasha jumped up and pulled a small taser-like device from a holster at her back, but before she could move forward to investigate, the sliding glass door opened, and a hooded figure wandered in. "I do apologize," said Frigga, pulling the hood away from her face. "I seem to have knocked some sort of—erm, thing over. I cannot remember it being there before."

"That would be the satellite dish," Tony told her. "Did you just teleport onto the balcony, by the way? If you can teleport, why did you charge all those first-class plane tickets to my credit card?"

╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭

Author's Note:

So obviously, I wasn't a huge fan of Loki's hair in the first movie and felt it necessary to give him an excuse for looking like a used car salesman.

Word wanted to correct "Frigga, daughter of Vanaheim" to "Frigga, daughter of Anaheim."

I wonder how many of you got Tony's nickname for Natasha. (It's actually a reference to my dad's favorite cartoon from the 60's.) Then again, obscurity and dated pop culture references are the basic ingredients for a Tony Stark nickname.