Once Stark gave him a brief rundown of the last few days, Rogers agreed – albeit reluctantly, but the reluctance was due to his unwillingness to lie, not his unwillingness to help – to not rat them out to Fury and report that everything is in perfect order. That ought to buy them at least a couple more days and – seeing that Loki was no longer dying – might be enough for the matters to settle.

"Loki acted… weird today," Rogers judged, after he made sure their resident alien is nowhere within the earshot, twice.

"Compared to all the non-weird ways he acted before?" asked Stark with a sarcastic smirk, then his expression slowly shifted to forlorn. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I know some of it must be still sickness speaking, but… fuck, it makes me want to go and punch something when he looks at us that way. That shit from a moment ago and the scene from the morning…" He turned to Rogers. "We were running a test in the lab. Bruce hooked Loki to a sensor array, which comes with wires and contact pads on skin. Loki immediately assumed it was a torture device."

Rogers mouthed something that could've been a curse.

"I don't know what's worse," Stark carried on, "The fact that he stayed with us for, what, four days now, and still thought us capable of casually telling him to go down to the lab with us so we could have fun with a pain machine, or that he didn't even try to fight it. He was convinced he is going to be tortured and still went with us willingly. He sat there calmly and didn't even flinch when Bruce connected the goddamned wires. Who the fuck does that?"

"People who think they have no other choice," said Rogers in a hollow voice. "We've all heard what Loki said during that exchange with Thor and we've all seen how Thor reacted. That wasn't some dirty little secret for Thor to be ashamed of. It's how it's done where they are from. And who knows if that was the only instance, if it was even deserved or how long it lasted?"

"A couple of years," Natasha provided, matter-of-factly. "That's what Loki told me when I asked. And I don't think there's a single crime that makes one deserving of that kind of punishment."

Natasha wasn't naïve enough to believe a justice system could function without the threat of punishment and that there were no situations that called for harsh, swift actions. But there was no version of the events where she could imagine years of torture to be a justifiable mean to correct a person, not to mention how counterintuitive it was. It was a miracle Loki could even return to being a functional member of the society after something like that. Hell, the fact that he even stuck around after being released spoke about some deep psychological issues.

There was a few moments of uncomfortable silence. Rogers hid his face in his palms, Banner looked like he was torn between throwing up and turning into the Hulk and Stark's gaze was just plain terrified, before a grim decisiveness replaced it.

"I'm going to call Rhodey," he said and moved to get up.

"What for?" she asked.

"There's no way we can handle this without fucking up. And Rhodey's got this psychologist friend, who is specializing in trauma recovery and helping torture victims and who is supposedly the best at what she does."

"Suzanne McQuaid," Natasha supplied. SHIELD had vetted her once she popped on the radar as a possible POI to come into contact with Stark. The screening came up as clean as those things can get, and she wasn't affiliated with any group or agency, at least a year ago.

"Yes, her," Stark confirmed, eyeing Natasha suspiciously. "Rhodey tried to hook me up with her a couple of times after Afghanistan. It didn't work out with me, but maybe she could do something…"

"I don't think it's a good idea, Tony," Bruce said quietly. He took off his glasses, wiped them with the edge of the apron he was still wearing and put them back on his nose. "I'm all in for professional help, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it's a good time for it yet. Therapy requires trust and Loki doesn't trust anyone right now. From his perspective, everyone is out to get him – his former master with his army, Fury, us, his own people. You think he would talk to a complete stranger without seeing it as a ploy?"

"Besides," Natasha added, "it's best if we kept it under the lid, at least for now. Both for Loki's and our own personal lives' sake. Once it slips out that you have an alien living in your tower, you'll have a murder of press people camping at your door and I can't see this doing any of us any good."

Stark shook his head in dejection and clapped back down onto his seat. "Then what do you suggest?"

"Let him rest and heal, make sure he feels safe here," Bruce said. "Then, maybe, he would be able to accept the help he needs, in time."

Stark groaned and ran his hand through his hair. "This is so far out of my comfort zone. Give me goons to punch and I'll gladly go and punch them, all day any day. This? This I'm completely unequipped for."

There was no machine he could build to solve it, no secret he could crack to fix things in an instant, no bad guys to blow up to bits to make everything right and keep everyone happy. This was a long, arduous road to recovery and Stark was lacking mental tools to cope with that, due to his own stunted emotional growth.

Still, it was something one could learn.

She had.

They sat and talked well into the night, trying to come up with ideas, an exercise in futility if someone asked her, because they weren't going to get any further than Banner's original suggestion of just allowing Loki to recover in his own tempo.

Still, they reached some potentially helpful conclusions. They should try involving Loki in the common activities to make sure he felt welcome here and familiarize him with how life on Earth looked like. They still had no full picture of what he did and what he didn't know about their world – on one hand, he seemed aware of concepts Natasha was certain were purely human social norms and inventions, on the other, there was basic stuff he was absolutely oblivious of. There was a pattern there, she could say, even if she couldn't fully see it yet, so she made it her personal quest to find more about that, on top of the more general plan of "taming Loki", as Stark undiplomatically put it.

Stark's eyes brightened at the notion, because it was something he still could do.

What followed was another revelation that, in hindsight, should've been obvious – none of them knew what normal life should look like. When not flying missions or doing PR stunts for his company by showing up on parties and galas, Stark was used to spending entire days (and then nights, on occasion) in his workshop, tinkering with machines and working on new projects, sustaining himself solely with coffee, overpriced booze, and delivery food.

Bruce clung to the edges of civilization for years, hiding away, staying away from populated areas and people and now he found himself right smack in the middle of Manhattan and it was obvious he wasn't sure what to do with that fact. She suspected he would be long gone if his expertise wasn't needed and she knew that his inherent sense of duty and responsibility would keep him here as long as it was necessary.

Not that she could necessarily judge either of them for that, her own life was spent between one mission and another and her only idea of how normal life looked like came from the infrequent visits to Clint's farm. Which she couldn't even mention right now because of how top-secret the operation was.

Rogers was probably the closest to ever having a normal life, in the times before the whole serum and Captain America things happened, but his data was about seventy years outdated.

She actually sighed in relief when Stark announced that Pepper was coming back from DC tomorrow. Potts was a reasonable, down-to-earth woman and had the added benefit of being completely removed from the whole SHIELD operations, which might be exactly who Loki needed to be around right now. As long as they can keep her from freaking out – which made Natasha a bit anxious, as the task of informing his girlfriend of what to expect was in Stark's hands, and the man was overly fond of dramatic gestures at times.

Maybe it wouldn't be too bad though.

For now, they settled on shared meals at regular times, which alone seemed to be a foreign notion to Stark. Perhaps Loki wasn't going to be the only one to benefit from that exercise. There was still research Banner needed to go through to find out exactly what was wrong with him and Loki would be needed for some of it, but other than that they decided to allow him more independence in deciding his own actions. He'd been devoid of that privilege for way too long already.

"What if he wants to leave the tower?" Stark asked, raising an eyebrow.

She shrugged. "We are not keeping him prisoner here, I thought we have already agreed upon that."

"Yeah, of course not, but it could be dangerous, you know, as long as he looks like he does…"

She rolled her eyes. "When was the last time you actually walked the streets of New York? Sure, blue skin is an uncommon sight, but I'm willing to bet you you're going to see weirder shit just taking a stroll from here to West Village."

Stark didn't seem convinced.

"It might be obvious in context, here. But out in the streets? It could be anything. Cosplay for a convention, stage makeup, extreme body mod, or skin condition, just off the top of my head. You have no idea how blatant of a lie people are willing to believe because it makes more sense than the truth would. As long as Loki knows it's not safe to reveal who he is to the general public for now – which I'm pretty sure he does – there's like a million excuses."

"Okay," Stark agreed, carefully.

"Besides, he haven't even left the room on his own yet," she pointed out, "so I don't see him venturing outside anytime soon."

That settled it.

Rogers got going soon after that, promising to return first thing in the morning. He had his own plan, which involved inviting Loki for a session in the gym if the god felt well enough and up to it. Natasha didn't shoot the idea down, as low as she judged the success rate, because, yeah, some exercise might actually do Loki good. Hell, she should probably join them as well, she's been sitting on her ass for too long already and that nagging, fidgety urge to do something productive was already brewing at the back of her mind.

She left fifteen minutes later, along with Banner. Stark stayed behind, eyeing the booze display behind the bar longingly. She bit down the comment. It wasn't her business.

Bruce and her parted ways in the lobby. Bruce's room was on the other end of the building. She sighed and marched down the corridor towards the bedroom she was occupying these past few days, just to stop a few dozen steps down the hallway.

If someone asked, she wouldn't be able to tell why she did, or why she was now standing, with her hand up, hesitant to knock.

It was not what they had decided. She shouldn't be here. They were to proceed with caution, not be obnoxious about their attempts, leave Loki alone when he acted like he wanted to be left alone and give him as much personal space as possible to work through things he needed to work through on his own. And there was little that screamed "I want to be alone" louder than sneaking out to one's room in the middle of a social gathering.

She knocked, once, then listened for an answer, but none came. She brought her hand down with a sigh. He was probably sleeping.

She turned and was about to leave when the knob turned, the door cracked open and Loki's face appeared in the opening, his eyes narrowed against the light in the hallway.

Her brows furrowed and she took a step back. "What happened?" she asked warily.

"What?"

His cheeks were covered with darker smudges that looked suspiciously like blood.

"Your…" she said, and gestured vaguely at her own face.

He ran his fingers under his eyes, then examined them in the faint light of the corridor. "Oh," he gasped and wiped his face with his sleeve.

Those were tears, she realized. So much for privacy.

"Are you all right?"

"Everything is in perfect order, I assure you," he said nonchalantly, straightening his clothes. The mix of emotions that was there just a second ago got replaced with that guarded, neutral look on his face and an engineered indifference in his voice. "Is there anything you require of me? The hour seems to be rather late, Agent Romanoff."

"It's not why I'm here."

He cocked his head to the side and glared at her.

"I'm not here because it's my job."

"No? Then why are you here?"

"I…" she started, then realized she had no answer. Because, really, why was she here? "I'll take no more of your time."

She turned to leave.

The door squeaked and opened all the way. "Oh, yes, because my time is so precious these days," he said lightly and retreated back into the darkness of the room, leaving the door ajar.

This was probably the closest thing to an invitation she was going to get with Loki.

"Why are you sitting in the dark?" she asked, following him inside.

He shrugged and walked towards the windows. He sat down on the floor, right next to the glass, resting his back against the side of a sofa. "It's hardly dark with all those lights outside," he said, folding his legs. "And Jötnar eyes are better at seeing in low light conditions," he added.

She clapped down next to him. "That's quite a view."

"Beats my old cell, that's for sure," he chuckled.

"Loki, this is not…"

"A prison. Yes, I understand the difference. Trust me, I truly do, and I'm infinitely grateful for the dispensation you're granting me. We do not need to have this discussion."

"I think we do."

"I know my current looks might be confusing, but I still have some of my wit about me, Agent Romanoff. I know what my position here means. I know that the graces you're all bestowing upon me are given in earnest and, make no mistake, I'm thankful for them. But I also know that each can be withdrawn at any moment and…"

His voice broke and he turned his head away, his impression of indifference cracking and crumbling away.

"Loki," she said quietly and reached out to place a hand on his arm. He twitched on contact, then pulled his limb away. "Wait, wasn't your body temperature supposed to be in the fifties? Are you running a fever again?"

Some of it might be due to the layer of cloth, but his arm was… not necessarily warm, but not cold. Kind of room temperature, give or take. The AC wasn't turned on, either.

"No. I'm… I think it's an adaptation tactic. Keeping the body temperature low in a hot climate requires just as much energy as keeping it hot in freezing conditions. It's been happening gradually since I changed in the morning."

"You seem surprised by that."

"Well, this is the longest I've ever spent in this form, so I had no opportunity to experience it yet."

She crooked her head. "How so?"

"I didn't know I am what I am until…" He paused and ran his hand over the nape of his neck. "Just before my fall. And the time in the Mad Titan company did not give me many opportunities to experiment with it. Not that I was really looking forward to it."

"Why is that?"

He crooked his head and glowered at her. It looked impressive, with the city lights bringing out the red highlights in his eyes. "You think I enjoy being a monster?" he snarled, baring his teeth.

"I can tell you absolutely despise looking like you do now, but I don't understand why. And the whole monster thing just makes no sense. It's a skin color, Loki. If there really is something horrible about it, I'm sorry, but I can't see it. None of us does."

He sighed and hid his face in his palms. "It's not the color, but what this skin means."

"And what does it mean?"

"That I'm a Jötunn?" he said with incredulity, peeking at her between his fingers.

"So what?"

He pulled his hands away from his face and a deep wrinkle formed between his eyebrows. "Didn't I just tell you this morning what my kind did? They are but mindless, primitive beasts. Something you scare your unruly children with."

Oh, so Stark was right and it was a cultural thing after all. Fucking space Vikings. "You did. So what? It happened centuries ago. If we'd be holding people responsible for what their leaders decided to do in the past no one would be speaking to no one at this point. It wasn't you, personally, who started that war, was it?"

"No," he said carefully, but there was hesitation in his tone, "I wasn't even born yet."

"See? So why should you be the one to take the blame?"

He blinked at her, confused, as though the concept was entirely alien to him.

"And that mindless beast part? I'm not buying it. I've grown up in Soviet Russia. I know how propaganda sounds like and this smells like just that from a mile away."

The red eyes were still focused on her, the deep lines of worry softened by some more heartfelt, hopeful emotion and a sudden urge to run her fingers along his quivering lips overtook her. She laced her fingers together in her lap instead.

"I mean it," she said. "I don't know how it is in Asgard, but no one here is going to hate you just because of what planet or species you were originally from. This I can promise. It doesn't matter if you look like you do now, or like you did before."

He ran his hand through his hair and let out a sigh. "It's… good news, considering I cannot change back."