Thor never ceased to be amazed by Midgard. Not only did the realm have supportive homes for those like Loki in adulthood, but he soon learned that Cooper and Lila's school included all children.
"Gigi really likes sports," Cooper shared over breakfast before explaining that Gigi, like Loki, used a wheelchair, and had even less control of her body than Loki. Cooper watched Loki swing his fist. "Juan can walk and he loves drums."
Cooper told of how Gigi and Juan joined Cooper's class for music and art, where an aide helped Gigi participate by moving her arms, and recess, where Cooper often helped her play bowling or pushed her around the blacktop like a race car.
"It would have been better if you'd been born on Midgard, brother." Thor watched Loki, wondering how different their lives would have been.
"Not really," Clint countered as he helped pack his kids' lunches. "All this is really recent. You guys are, what, a thousand?"
Thor didn't answer, busy watching as Loki quickly shimmied toward the counter, pulling himself up. He grabbed for the sandwich, but put it in Cooper's lunchbox rather than his own mouth.
"Thanks, Mr. Loki," Cooper said.
Clint smiled, but quickly turned serious. "Things weren't great for disabled people here for most of the last century, let alone the last millennium. He would've been stuck in an institution at best, and those were nothing like the care homes today."
Thor nodded solemnly, though he smiled as Loki continued to pack lunches, though Loki didn't seem to care whose lunch went in whose lunchbox.
Clint stopped talking after seeing his children distressed at the thought of Loki or their friends at school being mistreated. He didn't mention that the care and acceptance Thor admired was not a constant throughout the planet.
While the children were at school, Laura pulled out an Avengers jigsaw puzzle, sitting with Loki to work on it together. Loki gazed at the box and moved pieces around. He grabbed Hulk-Green pieces, and red pieces of Thor's cape and Iron Man's armor. "You found Hulk!" Thor and Laura cheered. Laura showed him two pieces. "Here's his arm, and his head. Can you put them together?"
Loki bit the bumps, leaving the pieces gnarled and unusable. He banged his fist on the Thor pieces, and Thor smiled. "Aye, brother. That is me."
In an effort to keep Loki from putting his fist through the floorboards, Laura read Loki some Shakespeare, and at lunch gave him options for what to eat and worked on using a spoon. "You'll be so refined," she said, because Loki certainly had a sophisticated taste in literature.
Loki would eat off a spoon, but waited for someone to feed him like the royalty he was. Never mind that his equally-royal brother was usually the one feeding him.
When Cooper and Lila returned that afternoon, Lila thanked Loki for the lunch, though he was too engrossed in his book.
"Can we get an elevator?" Cooper asked after telling Loki and Thor about the lift on Gigi's bus.
"They make chair lifts for stairs, but I think Loki's good." Laura said. Loki had crawled up the stairs last night, and had slid down in the morning.
Lila asked Thor if he'd ever been bowling before turning to Laura. "Can we play Wii, Mom? Please?!"
"Only if you let Thor and Loki play, too."
Lila passed out remotes, instructing them to always wear the strap. She and Cooper had already made a Thor Mii, which Thor was enthralled by. They had all the Avengers as Miis, but not Loki.
The kids asked Loki which nose, eyes and other facial features he wanted. Loki seemed like he couldn't care less but Thor eagerly gave his suggestions for a Loki Mii.
Once the Miis were ready, they set up a game of Wii Sports Tennis, and the pairs of siblings teamed up against each other.
"We're going to beat the princes of Asgard!" Cooper grinned slyly, and Thor teasingly insisted that they were no match for the Mighty Thor and Loki.
Loki quickly grasped the concept of swinging his Wii remote, but did not bother to look at what was happening onscreen. He kept banging his remote into his leg and bouncing it on the sofa cushions. Lila, too, swung the remote furiously and ended up hitting the ball several times by sheer luck.
Cooper shared how others would help Gigi or other children swing, and Thor held Loki's arm to help him swing at the right time. Loki put up with it for a bit, then tugged free and swung his remote at Thor.
Thor sighed heavily as Loki went back to his book. He often though his brother spent too much time with books, which Thor found rather dull.
Though Loki hadn't played tennis on the Wii, he soon began whacking the light-up balls with the Wii remote. Thor beamed and tossed balls for Loki to hit, though this led to bunch of broken bouncy balls and one broken Wii remote. Tony had some spares express-shipped overnight.
Even though he'd seen how uninterested Loki generally was in the TV, Cooper asked "Why don't you have a talker? Gigi has one, and it sees where she's looking. But you can use your hands on a tablet, right, Mr. Loki?"
"We have tried one with his eyes," Thor replied. "Perhaps we shall keep trying."
Cooper and Lila's tablets did not have any communication software on them, but Lila pulled up a list of music videos for Loki to pick from. Loki flipped the tablet over, as if closing a book.
"Can you pick our next song, Mr. Loki?" Lila turned the tablet over hopefully. "Daddy said you like being a DJ. And we can have a dance party."
Loki jabbed randomly at the screen before flipping the tablet again. He spat, fast, which. JARVIS had realized meant he wanted rap music. Clint turned some on on the stereo, but the kids were clearly at a loss as to why Loki would reject a tablet.
Lila gave Loki the dollhouse toilet. "Now you can say when you have to go, instead of wearing diapers."
Loki dropped the toilet into his cauldron.
They settled into a routine. Every morning, Loki snuck joke items into the kids' (and sometimes Clint's) lunchboxes. Fake fangs, an empty banana peel, a plastic alligator head that Loki had bitten off the body. While these gestures were generally met with appreciation, Lila's face turned red with embarrassment one afternoon as she regaled Laura with the tale of the pacifier in her lunchbox.
Laura said she could have sworn that she threw them all out years ago. Alone in the guest room, Thor asked "Is that your way of showing how many years we have on them, brother?"
While the kids were at school, Loki sometimes helped Laura with housework. Laura, used to dealing with rather disruptive help from her children over the years, hardly batted an eye as Loki snatched folded towels, though she did look surprised when they abruptly changed color.
"Up to mischief?" Thor tried to take the towel away, and of course Loki pulled back. Thor went in search of Loki's wizard towel, but by the time he found it, Loki had changed the current one to match. Thor sighed. "You are bothering Lady Barton."
"You're not a bother." Laura assured Loki. "But I'd appreciate it if you managed your mischief."
She lay a towel out on the floor and showed Loki how to fold it like a book. Loki watched, and made a few cursory attempts, but played with his own wizard towel rather than the one Laura folded.
The Avengers called a lot, much to Cooper and Lila's delight. Loki, too, seemed excited when JARVIS joined the conversation, though he did not interact with the Avengers when they called as he had in person.
Steve showed his drawings to them, and praised the drawings Lila, Cooper and Loki made. Loki filled a page with green and red scribbles, which Thor insisted was a portrait of himself and Loki, but Tony pointed out it could have just as easily been Iron Man and Hulk, or Loki making his own yes/no screen.
Lila showed her gymnastics moves to Natasha, and gave the Avengers tours of their block villages if Loki hadn't destroyed them.
Once, when the kids were not around, Thor asked seriously "Have you found who tried to harm Loki?"
"We're getting there, big guy." Tony assured. "But really, with the amount of enemies we have, I think there may be a line."
One afternoon when the kids returned from school, they looked around the living room in confusion.
"Where's the sofa?" Cooper asked.
"Why is the toilet here?" Lila pointed, stifling a giggle.
They looked through the house- there weren't many places to hide such a large couch. But the couch wasn't large anymore. They found it in the dollhouse, where it was the same size as all the other toy furniture.
Then they realized the dollhouse toilet was missing, and the toilet in their living room wasn't quite real.
Lila picked up one of the dolls. "We're going to have to be their doll size just to use our couch."
"Mr. Loki, can you fix our couch?" Cooper plopped the couch on Loki's open book. Loki scowled, spat, and pushed it aside. Cooper sighed. "Were you going to put it in my lunch tomorrow?" Cooper asked.
Lila had other things on her mind. "Did you shrink our beds?"
The children ran off to their bedrooms to check on the furniture in there. Thor sat beside Loki.
"That was a great prank, brother, but you must fix their couch. They cannot replace it as easily as Tony."
In the end, Loki either wouldn't or couldn't. He sat atop the fake toilet despite never using the real thing.
Clint shook his head. "I know some people call it the porcelain throne, but we need a place to sit too."
Thor helped Clint drag an old futon up from the basement, and they did their best to steer Loki clear of it all afternoon and evening.