Things were moving a lot slower on the Doctor Sofen front than Tony had hoped. The earliest appointment Pepper could book with her was in January. Who would have known that November and December was the busy season for psychiatrists? Tony had begun to wonder if he shouldn't just warn Bruce and Leonard that she was a fraud, but his only evidence had been obtained from hacking into the woman's case files. He doubted that would win him any points with the two doctors, one of whom had given him a lecture on the importance of doctor-patient confidentiality a few months ago before insisting that he remove JARVIS's cameras and microphone from his office. The man had then watched him do it, as if he didn't trust Tony enough to believe he would do it if he didn't. (Then again, Doc might have been right not to trust him. At one time, his office had been two rooms, which meant there had been two sets of microphones and two cameras in there. Tony had only removed one set. But he hadn't watched or listened to any of the recordings from Doc's office since then; he'd left the other microphone and camera for honest-to-God security purposes and had instructed JARVIS to delete the recordings on a bi-weekly basis.) At least Bruce hadn't had any more growly episodes. If anything, he seemed a little lethargic. He wasn't going on calls as an Avenger for the time being, but that was fine. Tony's shoulder had healed, and he hadn't had a concussion after all, which meant that he could go on missions again. It was probably a good thing there was an extra person to stay home with the kids when the rest of them were out. At least Doc and Pep wouldn't be outnumbered.

Loki wasn't grounded anymore, which meant he wasn't as mopey as he had been. Not that the kid had ever had much reason to be mopey. Even though he'd told the kid he wasn't leaving the tower for anything fun, they'd found a few loopholes that let him get out of the tower enough so that he didn't get cabin fever. He'd been jogging with Cap (exercise, especially trying to keep up with Capsicle, was not something Tony considered fun), walking in the park with Doc (psychiatry sessions were definitely not an extracurricular activity), he'd been to the library to help Natasha research some spy thing (again, an afternoon of helping Natasha meticulously examine microfilm records wasn't his definition of fun), and he'd been to an archery range with Clint (training was necessary, and while there was an archery range in the tower's basement, Clint had explained that it was a good idea to switch things up and go to an outdoor range once in a while, so you didn't get used to shooting under the same conditions every time). Loki had also been job shadowing Pepper in the guise of Lauren the intern, and Pep had taken her out for a couple of "business lunches," which had never been Tony's favorite kind of lunch. The only one who hadn't taken Loki out was Bruce, but that was because Bruce didn't leave the tower at all unless his boyfriend cajoled him into it. He had allowed him to assist him in his lab, however, with the caveat that he was to run for the safe room Tony had built for Pepper in the penthouse if it even looked like he might lose his temper. Of course, it had never happened; even when Loki had pulled the chain on the emergency wash station and flooded the floor of his lab with fifty gallons of water, Bruce had kept his cool.

After everything he'd said about Loki's bad behavior being an attention-seeking thing, Loki had gotten more attention than usual. But there was one part of the punishment that Loki had hated, and that had been the nine o'clock bedtime. She hadn't put up too much resistance after that first night, but she had still grumbled about it. The word "infantilizing" had been bandied about. Tony hadn't slept next to Loki after the first night, because she hadn't needed him to. Having a regular bedtime had been good for her after all, and in a relatively short amount of time, she'd started sleeping better. Loki must have realized that, but being ordered to bed still stung for her, and what probably stung most was that the Maximoff twins, who were younger than she was both technically and in the relative sense, had been allowed to stay up until nine-thirty. Doc had thought it might be a good idea to write that into the rules early on for them, since he and Tony were pretty much on the same page when it came to Loki's bedtime becoming a permanent fixture. After the punishment was over, and after a little negotiation, Loki's bedtime it had been pushed out to nine forty-five; she was a little older than the twins, after all. For their part, neither Wanda nor Pietro seemed to have thought to protest having a bedtime. But then, the twins still kept to themselves and seemed reluctant to make waves. Also, by nine-thirty, Pietro had usually expended enough energy that he was pretty well sacked out, and Wanda had to drag him along behind her and put him to bed.

Thanksgiving had passed quietly. Clint and Natasha had gone off to some undisclosed location together; as often as that happened around holidays, at least one of them had to have a secret family somewhere. Thor and Loki had gone out to try to see the parade in person; an excursion he had said an exuberant "hell no" to while the rest had politely declined. Pietro had seemed interested, but Wanda didn't like crowds or something. The two might as well have been conjoined twins as little as Tony saw them apart, and Pietro certainly wasn't going to leave his sister alone in the home of their "enemies." Which suited Tony just fine, because he wouldn't have trusted Thor to keep an eye on Loki and two other potential flight-risks on his own. The rest of them had watched the parade on TV, Tony hoping against hope the entire time that he wouldn't see Thor and Loki on TV doing something he'd have to ground them both for, like picking a fight with one of the giant balloons. Luckily, the broadcast had been blissfully Asgardian-free, and Thor and Loki had come back grumbling about how they hadn't seen anything, because Thor kept getting mobbed by crowds of tourists everywhere he went, despite his brilliant disguise as a big blonde guy who looked exactly like Thor wearing sunglasses. Then they'd all enjoyed a Thanksgiving dinner that had come mostly preprepared from SI's corporate cafeteria, which was the only corporate cafeteria in the world with a Michelin 3-star rating. All they'd had to do was put everything in the oven and heat it up; it was almost too easy.

Tony had gone to bed that night with the sense that something horribly wrong had occurred—a holiday with the Avengers where there'd been exactly zero shenanigans, hijinks, or super villains showing up to ruin the day? And seriously, Thor and Loki had left the tower together and nothing had happened? In fact, nothing much had happened for the last two months. It was almost like they were in one of those awful fanfics people wrote about them, and the author had resorted to reducing that time to a few paragraphs of exposition, just so that the Christmas chapter could be published at Christmas instead of sometime in February.

And maybe that was why he'd completely forgotten that Thor's dad's wedding was coming up until they had all been sitting around the Christmas tree that the kids had just finished decorating, drinking hot cocoa, and Thor had casually dropped that he and Loki would need to leave for Asgard early the next morning. Tony had spilled hot cocoa on his own lap, and subsequently made a good dent in his swear jar credit. The others in the room had cleared out after that. Even Loki must have sensed that he and Thor needed space to have a chat, because he had disappeared too. "You don't normally take your sibling to a wedding as your plus one. Also, are you saying that you're planning on taking Loki, who's banished from Asgard under pain of death, but you're not going to take anyone else?"

"I might have taken Jane."

"Point Break, Jane broke up with you two months ago. You need to try to get over it."

"Were it Lady Pepper who had spurned you over a simple misunderstanding—"

"Yeah, I get it." Luckily, the scandal surrounding the photographs of half the Avengers team at Doctor Doom's wedding had been resolved. The official explanation had been that the people in the pictures were lifelike robots created by Doom, and that explanation seemed to make more sense to the public than Avengers actually showing up to his wedding. Victor had even done them a solid by issuing a press statement confirming the story. Maybe Frigga had convinced him to do it, or maybe he just wanted the world to think he was capable of creating lifelike robot clones of the Avengers. Tony tried not to think about it too much. He and Pepper hadn't even had to announce their engagement as a distraction, which had been kind of a disappointment. But Doctor Foster hadn't bought the official explanation, probably because Thor had already admitted to her that he'd been at Frigga and Doom's wedding when he'd called her to explain to her that Natasha had only been his pretend date. "That doesn't have anything to do with this. There's no good reason for you to take Loki to your dad's wedding."

"That is where you're wrong. It is my intention to steal the bride away and bring her back to Midgard should she be agreeable. In all likelihood, I will not be able to use the Bifrost to return to Midgard. I will require Loki's knowledge of the 'back ways' between realms to get us home. Do not worry, friend. I shall not allow Loki to come to harm. No one will even know she is there."

"And how is that going to work?"

On that cue, Jane Foster sauntered into the room wearing a sly expression that Tony was sure the scatterbrained astronomer had never worn in her life. "Doctor Foster" stood with her hip jutted out seductively and her arms crossed over her chest. "What do you think? Convincing?" Even the voice sounded like Jane, but it still wouldn't have fooled him. The real Jane didn't have Loki's swagger.

"I guess to a bunch of Asgardians that think Midgardians all look alike, it might be; which doesn't matter because I still don't like this." Tony stabbed his finger into Thor's chest, and immediately regretted it, because it had felt like stabbing his finger into a brick wall. His finger might actually be broken, but he'd have to get Bruce to look at it later. "You're going to get your little sister killed. Is that what you want?"

"Of course that is not what I want. Friend, I swear to you that I will keep Loki safe. Were my father's spear, Gungnir, here, I would swear to you an oath upon it."

Tony wanted to put his foot down and say absolutely not, but if Thor decided to run off with Loki to Asgard anyway, there wouldn't be much he could do to stop him short of hiring Doctor Foster to build him his own Bifrost so that he could chase after them. "Wait, that's it—I'll just hire Jane to build us our own Bifrost! Then you won't have to bring Loki with you."

"There are two problems with that plan," Loki the Jane said. "The first is that Doctor Foster still has exactly zero clues as to create a stable Bifrost, and she's not going to figure it out anytime soon, because it's impossible unless you have something similar to the Tesseract, or, well, the Tesseract. The second is that Jane has already stated that she wouldn't work for you in a billion years, which is quite an impressive amount of time—roughly two hundred thousand Asgardian life spans."

"She said that?"

"Yes," Thor confirmed. "She told you herself at the charity gala back in the spring, the one that Natasha wore a dress full of bullet holes to. Jane was there as my date, and you offered her a job."

"So how come she didn't accept? Most people would love to work for SI."

"I believe it is the way in which you made the offer," Loki told him in Jane Foster's voice. Then Tony heard his own voice coming out of Jane's mouth, which was more than a little disconcerting. 'Hey, since you're Thor's girlfriend and all, I could always find you a place at SI. You're what was it, an astrologer or something? I'm not really sure we have any positions available for fortune tellers, but that's okay, maybe we can just start you out as a receptionist in accounting."

"Obviously, I was joking." Or he'd had too much to drink. He didn't drink to excess as much as he used to, but he still had a few oopsie-daisies here and there, and there wasn't much to do at those charity galas but drink too much and say things he'd regret when he found out about them six months later. "If the woman can't take a joke, maybe I shouldn't hire her after all."

"It is true that Jane has no sense of humor," said Loki. "Really Thor, you could do so much better. In fact, I am certain I could go out on the street, choose a woman at random, and she would be a better fit for you than Jane, provided that woman does not turn out to be a lesbian or aro."

Thor's eyebrows knit together. "Midgardians have so many terms to do with relationships that do not translate into the Aesir language. I know that a lesbian is a woman who is attracted only to other women, but what is 'aro?'"

"It is short for aromantic," Loki told him. "Someone who is aromantic does not experience romantic attraction."

"Like Sif, then."

Loki's—er, Jane's eyebrows shot upward. "Sif?"

"Yes, she confided in me years ago that—now that I think of it, I shouldn't be telling you this."

"And yet you already have. It makes sense enough, though I had been under the impression that she still loved you, and that was why she never responded to any of the men or women who pursued her after the two of you ended things."

"Don't be ridiculous, Loki. Sif and I were never more than children playing at romance. It wasn't a real relationship."

"I always thought it might have been more real to her than to you."

"It wasn't. As I accidentally told you, Sif has never felt romantic attraction. When she told me, she asked if I thought there was something wrong with her."

Loki examined Doctor Foster's fingernails. "And what did you tell her?"

"That there was nothing wrong with her, of course. Why should such a thing matter? But this is why I know that Sif cannot wish to marry Father. She told me then that she didn't want to marry anyone. She couldn't see herself marrying for a reason other than the kind of love she doubted she would ever feel."

Loki nodded. "Then we can't let the All-Father force her into something she doesn't want."

"Really, Loki? I didn't think you cared about Sif. You said before that she deserved this."

"It isn't about Sif anymore. It's an injustice, plain and simple. No one should be forced to marry if they don't want to."

"And you care about righting injustices, now?"

"I always have, Thor. We just haven't always agreed on what constituted one."

ϞϞ(๑◕ ․̫ ◕๑) █▬▬ ◟(`-´ ◟ )ㄣㄣ

Pepper paced back and forth in front of the penthouse window. "This is crazy. We shouldn't be letting Loki go."

Tony couldn't agree more, especially when he had never figured out how to prove to the universe that Loki was his and therefore protect her from Odin's psychic influence, but he'd already come to terms with the fact that there was nothing he could do about it. A couple of glasses of whiskey had helped. "We can't stop her. I mean, we could try, but it would only end in tears, probably ours. Loki's determined to go, and Thor's determined to take her. Threatening him with the Amber Alert system isn't going to do any good this time, because no one has phones in Asgard."

"Couldn't we get a message to Frigga? She could stop this."

"Even if we could get a message to her in time, I don't think she would. If you haven't noticed, Frigga's pretty hands off when it comes to parenting."

"What if we just told Loki she wasn't allowed to go?"

"Then she'd probably disobey us, and when she came back we'd have to punish her for doing something that she'd been convinced was the right thing to do, which would suck for everyone involved. All we can do now is tell both her and Thor how concerned we are about this, and hope that maybe they'll come to their senses. Thor promised they would wait to leave until everyone was up tomorrow and had a chance to see them off."

"No, I refuse to just stand back and watch Thor take Loki back to Asgard when Odin threatened to have her killed if she went back there." Pepper headed for the stairs, Tony following at her heels.

Before he could think of a way to stop her, or a way to convince himself that he should, Pepper had made her way across the common room and down the corridor that led to Loki's room. threw Loki's door open without knocking. "We need to talk, now. Under no circumstances are you to—" Pepper got that far before she realized she was talking to herself. "JARVIS, where is Loki?"

"Thor and Loki left the tower thirty minutes ago, Ms. Potts. If you meant to stop them from returning to Asgard, you're too late."

✲ﾟ*｡⋆ ( •̀_•́)◡ɞ◡(〃'-')_中✲ﾟ*｡⋆

"You've never insisted on holding my hand before when we've traveled this way."

"Loki, you are going to hold my hand until we get all the way across the Rainbow Bridge."

"What do you think I'm going to do, jump? I'm not particularly suicidal at the moment, and besides, we have already established that jumping from that particular bridge is not an effective means of ending one's own life. Believe me, I'm not planning on getting anywhere near the edge."

Thor only stared at her for several moments in silence before stretching his hand towards her, pinning her with a look that she knew meant he wasn't going to back down. "You're meant to be Jane. Jane would hold my hand, perhaps until we got all the way to the palace."

Reluctantly, Loki took his hand. "You're being every bit as bad as Tony right now, you understand that, right?" But when Thor called for Heimdall, Loki closed her eyes and tightened her grip. With any luck, Thor would assume she was trying to break his fingers, and never guess that she was nervous about traveling this way again when she had been traveling via Bifrost for centuries.

Until recently, she had never thought about what might happen if one was somehow thrown from the Bifrost. Norns knew where you would end up.

_━━_━_* [| _━_*_

*━_━━ `-o-' _━━*_

━*━_━━ |:| _━━_━_*

_━━_━_* \/ _━_*_

"My prince." Loki opened her eyes in time to see Heimdall cross his fist over his heart and bow to his brother, and when the man looked at Loki, she had the eerie feeling he could see through her with those creepy golden eyes of his. Heimdall probably knew she wasn't Jane. "Princess," Heimdall said, giving Loki a bow that was only slightly smaller—which was not at all what Loki had expected if she had been recognized.

"Not yet, my friend, but perhaps someday." Thor chuckled heartily and leaned in to give Loki a kiss on the cheek. It took all the will she had not to wipe her cheek with the back of her hand.

Heimdall said nothing, but the corners of his lips quirked upward. The bastard definitely knew. "I assume you and your lady are here for my sister's wedding to the All-Father." Somehow, Loki always forgot that Heimdall and Sif were siblings. After all, Heimdall was much older than Sif; though now that he thought of it, they didn't look much alike either. Sif was—Loki wanted to say shorter? They did share a hair color, but before she had cut Sif's hair and replaced it with what turned out to be a substandard magical Dwarven wig, the girl had been blonde.

"So we are," said Thor. "Though I cannot imagine this is what Sif wants."

"What lady would not wish to be Queen of Asgard?" Heimdall, of course, was well practiced at giving non-answers to any question.

Thor led Loki out onto the bridge, and once again, she found herself glad Thor had insisted on holding her hand. She had been on the Rainbow Bridge once since her fall, but that time she had been in chains and surrounded by so many Einherjar that she hadn't been able to see over the edge. "Thor," she whispered.

"Yes, my darling Jane?"

"This is scarier than I thought it would be. Why in Hel don't they put guardrails on bridges in Asgard? I'm not sure I'm going to make it."

"What do you mean, you're not going to make it?"

"My legs feel as if they were made of orange marmalade." As Loki took another step, her knees buckled beneath her, and she sunk down to the ground. "That's it; I can't feel my legs at all now. I'm paralyzed from the waist down."

Thor bent down and scooped her up in his arms, bridal style. "I'm sure it's only temporary paralysis," he told her. Loki buried her face in Thor's neck as he carried her down the bridge.

"It is okay to open your eyes now," said Thor, after what seemed an interminable amount of time. Loki opened her eyes and saw that they were at the entrance to the city. A crowd of onlookers had gathered there at the foot of the bridge, just as they used to do when she, Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three had returned home from a journey. Of course, this time, she couldn't even pretend that they were there for her, unless they had come to gawk at Thor's mortal woman. The people, though keeping a respectful distance, began following them throughout the city as if Thor were the sun who had returned from the land of the dead, the light birthed out of the darkness. And maybe to them that was what he was; Asgard's shining son returned to them.

It was all enough to make Loki feel sick to her stomach; otherwise, she would have insisted that Thor put her down. This entire trip had been a mistake. What did he care if Sif was forced into a marriage she didn't want? Yes, it was wrong. But there were plenty of other 'wrong' things going on at that moment. Midgard's polar ice caps were melting. There were ongoing droughts in Africa. In the Caribbean, the Anguilla Bank skink was being driven to extinction by feral mongeese. Of course, she wasn't sure what she could do about any of those things, short of turning herself into something that ate feral mongeese so that she might hunt them all down herself. Not only could she do something to help Sif, she and Thor might be the only ones who could.

"You know, you are quite a bit heavier than the real Jane," said Thor, breaking her from her reverie.

That was it. Loki was going to kill him. "I am not fat, Thor! Stop trying to fat shame me."

"I wasn't trying to fat shame you."

"Then why do you keep making these comments about my weight?"

"Well, at the moment, I'm carrying you, and I am beginning to wonder why I am still carrying you."

"That doesn't give you leave to harass me!"

"I wasn't trying to harass you. I was only—" Thor's eyebrows knit together, and a moment later, he was the one who looked like he was going to be sick. "Being careless with my words again and hurting you, I suppose? I'm sorry. Most times I only mean to tease you, but I forget that you have these self-esteem issues."

"It's my fault then, for being too sensitive?"

"No, that isn't what I meant. I take full responsibility for my words. And I know that I have probably contributed to your self-esteem issues. Every time I thought I was teasingyou, it was actually bullying. Perhaps I even believed I was doing you a favor by motivating you to change, to be more—"

"More what?"

"Normal, I suppose."

"So I'm abnormal."

"Loki, you must admit that by Asgard's standards you have always been exceedingly abnormal."

"Thank you, Thor. I'm so glad we had this little chat."

Thor gave her a sheepish smile. "Did I say abnormal? I believe what I meant to say was 'exceptional.' You know I am not as talented with words as you are."

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Brother, but please go on."

"Sister, you are the most intelligent person I know."

"More intelligent than Tony or Bruce?"

"If I'm to be honest, I meant that you were the most intelligent person I know who hails from Asgard. It is difficult to draw comparisons between you and those of our Midgardian friends who are also so well-learned. But you have never flown into the side of a building while talking on the phone or taken horse tranquilizers to see what effect they would have on you, so I'm going to say it's a possibility."

"Am I more intelligent than Jane?"

"Jane cannot be so smart as everyone thinks, if she cannot see that we are meant for one another," Thor grumbled.

"Sure," said Loki. "Anyway, feel free to keep extolling my virtues."

"Mother always said that you have the potential to become the greatest mage in the nine realms, perhaps better than Father."

"She always told me that I could be anything I wished, but she never told me that."

"I think she might have been afraid it would go to your head, or perhaps that saying so might put too much pressure on you."

Loki remembered something. "The other me, the one we met during the summer—he told me that I was more powerful than Odin."

"Loki, please don't get any ideas. I am certain you have the potential to become a more powerful mage than the All-Father someday, but Odin has four thousand years more experience as a magician than you have. Whatever you do, you are not to reveal yourself, nor are you to challenge Odin directly. We are here to get Sif and get out. Remember what happened in Latveria? I would hate to have to ground you myself."

"We are likely both going to be grounded when we get back to New York, for slipping out of the tower without waiting for everyone to see us off."

"They would only have tried to convince me to leave you behind." Thor snorted. "Stark cannot ground me. I am not a child."

Loki wasn't so sure that would matter to Tony. Natasha was older than Thor in a relative sense, and when they'd been on vacation in Malibu, he had sentenced her, along with Loki, to a week of after-meal clean up duty after the wine cooler incident. "I promise I won't confront Odin if it isn't necessary, but do you suppose he will simply allow us to spirit his bride away?"

"He may send the Einherjar to pursue us, but all we have to do is outrun them."

"Even if we get Sif all the way to Midgard, do you expect that Odin will not pursue her there?"

"The All-Father would not risk starting a conflict with Midgard in order to take her back."

"How certain are you of that? Besides, he would hardly need to wage war with the entire realm. Perhaps your brothers and sister in arms might be willing to stand in Odin's way, but I doubt all of Midgard would rise up to defend her."

"The Avengers alone were enough to stand up to the Chitauri forces."

"Outside the nine realms, the Chituari have a reputation as the 'suckiest army in the universe.' Quite frankly, you were lucky I managed to convince the Other that Midgardians are so weak that it would not be worth wasting other resources."

"They did not present much of a challenge," Thor admitted.

"And yet you still fought them for nearly three hours."

==_()ˆᴥˆ_ ==🌞︎

When they got to the palace gates, Thor put Loki down, but he made sure to keep hold of her hand. He had begun to suspect that Tony had been right, and that bringing Loki back to Asgard had been a terrible mistake. His sister had allowed him to carry her all the way to the palace, when she had never before let him carry her more than a few feet without complaint. He could only assume that meant she was feeling a little insecure. If Tony did ground him when they got back to New York, perhaps it would be well deserved.

They were met inside by a small squadron of Einherjar. Their leader stepped towards them, placing a fist over his heart and bowing to Thor in the traditional manner. "Your Father will meet with you immediately in his study."

Loki whispered to him. "He knows."

"How would he?" Thor whispered back.

"Heimdall, or those blasted ravens."

"But Heimdall didn't know, or he'd have said something, or at least hinted that he knew."

"He called me 'Princess,' Thor. As talented as Heimdall is at double-speak, I thought he made himself pretty clear this time."

Loki was right, he had called her that. But still, he couldn't believe that Heimdall would betray them. As much reason as the man might have to be upset with Loki (she had, after all, unleashed the power of the Casket of Ancient Winters on him that time), Heimdall had always been a loyal friend, and Thor had done nothing he knew of to offend him. "There's no guarantee he'll have told Father his suspicions.I think it is best to keep up our rouse until we're certain we've been found out, dearest Jane."

"And then what?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Loki looked a little like she might throw up on him like she had in the Latverian airport, but even if she did, he wasn't prepared to let go of her hand until he had to. "No more talk of bridges, please."

Thor took a deep breath and pushed open the door to his father's study with his free hand. Inside, Odin sat behind his desk, a thick stack of paperwork in front of him. It had never failed to amaze Thor how much paperwork a king had to do. Perhaps he ought to be grateful to Loki for interrupting his coronation, because if he had taken his father's place as king, it would be him stuck behind that desk for half the day pouring over trade agreements and such. When his father looked up at him, it struck Thor that the man seemed a lot smaller than he had once looked to him. Had he shrunk? Or had Thor grown? But he had stopped growing decades ago, so perhaps it was Loki who had grown. No, that couldn't be it, because she was currently in the guise of Jane, and Jane was shorter than Loki had been in two centuries.

"Thor, my son, you have come." Odin stood, lifting his arms expectantly. "I worried that you would not. I am happy to see that you have come to your senses and returned to us."

Feeling as if he had little choice in the matter, he let go of Loki's hand and stepped towards Odin. The two embraced in a manly, warrior-like hug that didn't last for more than two seconds. "I am only here for the wedding, and to be honest, I am here more for Sif than for you. We have been friends for centuries, and I would be remiss if I did not attend her nuptials, especially when I thought Sif would never settle down."

"It took a bit of persuasion, but I managed to convince her that such a thing was the only option."

"I see." He really didn't, though.

"And I see that you've brought your mortalpet along with you."

"Jane is not a pet, Father."

"My apologies, Thor. I meant no offense to Jane."

"Jane" pulled on Thor's sleeve. "Thor, I'm tired. Do you think we could go back to your room now, so I can lie down for a bit?"

When he turned around, he saw Jane chewing her lip again in the way that Loki tended to do when nervous. Though he could appreciate how the situation might make his sister uncomfortable, he and Odin still had important business to discuss. "You can't be that tired when I carried you all the way here."

Loki glared at him, and Odin smiled at her in a way that seemed almost fond. "It's alright, Thor. I'll have one of the Einherjar escort her to a place where she can rest, and then we can continue our discussion."

Before Thor could object, Odin had gone to the door and summoned one of the Einherjar standing watch there. "Please escort the lady to the room I ordered prepared for her."

Thor wondered how Odin had known to have a room prepared for Jane, when he could not have known Thor would be bringing her. Still, it didn't matter, because he wanted Loki where he could keep watch over her. "Father, the lady will be staying in my room."

"Nonsense, Thor. She shall do nothing of the sort."

"Why not?"

"Because she is not yet your wife. It would be inappropriate."

"You have never minded if women stayed in my room before."

Odin waved him off. "Those women did not matter. None of them would have made suitable wives for you."

Thor couldn't stop his jaw from dropping. "You think that Jane would be a proper wife for me? I thought you didn't like her."

"I never said that I disliked Jane."

"The last time I brought her to Asgard, you said that what I had done was akin to bringing a goat to a feasting table."

Odin stroked his beard. "How I do miss my children's gentler antics. Not that you have my permission to dress up Toothgnasher as the Yule Goat and bring him to the feast this year, mind you."

"Jane and I won't be staying for it. After the wedding, we will return to Midgard."

"We shall see," said Odin.

Loki glared at Thor again as the Einherjar took her away. He didn't like being separated from her any more than Loki must have disliked it, but he would just have to trust that she would be more than comfortable until Thor could go to her. After all, Odin seemed to hold Jane in much higher regard than he had thought. Surely, if Odin thought her worthy of someday becoming his bride, she would be given the best of the guest suites and treated to every luxury.

When Loki had gone, he rounded on the old man. "Where is Sif?"

"I believe she is preparing herself for the ceremony," said Odin, "which isn't until this evening, but women always do take hours to dress themselves for this sort of thing."

Thor had never known Sif to take hours dressing herself for anything. Whenever they'd gone on journeys together, she had seldom failed to take the least time in the inn's bathroom of a morning. Fandral had always taken the most time, followed by Loki. "Father, I wish to speak with her."

"I see no reason why you should not. You should find her in the dressing room that once belonged to your mother."

Thor's teeth gnashed together involuntarily. "You say she is in my mother's dressing room, but which mother are you referring to, exactly? You shall have to be more specific, I'm afraid."

Odin frowned at him. "Thor, what are you—"

"Frigga is not my mother. At least, she isn't the mother who birthed me. When she married Victor Von Doom, her geas was broken, and she told me."

Odin collapsed back into the chair behind his desk. "I'm sorry, my son, you should have been told sooner."

"Did you plan to ever tell me? Or to tell Loki about his heritage? Or were you going to let us believe your lies our entire lives?"

"What you didn't know could never hurt you, and I never wanted you to be hurt. You saw how your brother reacted when he found out."

"He would never have reacted that way if he hadn't found out the way he did."

"You might be right. Perhaps it was a mistake to let that child believe he was one of us—"

Thor slammed his fist down on his father's desk. "That was not your mistake! Loki always was one of us, and you should have assured him that was the case, even though he was not Aesir by birth."

"You are absolutely right, Thor, and I intend to make things right with Loki."

That hadn't been the response he had expected. "And how are you going to do that, Father?"

"Why don't you go see Sif now?" Odin had sidestepped his question, which now that Thor thought of it, was all too typical of him. "There are still wedding preparations I need to see to, as well as preparations for the feast afterward."

"This discussion is not over, but I will go see Sif. I would like to hear from her that this wedding is what she wishes, because if I am honest, I have difficulty imagining that any woman would have you willingly."

"You think I am forcing her?" His father smiled as if amused at the accusation.

"I did not wish to spell it out so, but yes."

Odin dismissed him with a nod. "Go talk to her then, and let her put your mind at ease."

༼ つ ҂▼ -*༽つ ⊂(-︵-;;⊂) (ò_óˇ)

How could Thor be so oblivious to his father's double-talk, when he had been more blatantly obvious about it than Heimdall had been? "I never said I disliked Jane," he had said, but he had also never acknowledged that Jane was in the room, because he knew she was not. He had called her Thor's "mortal pet." Had Thor forgotten that Loki was currently as mortal as Jane? Just like Heimdall, Odin had looked right through her disguise. And now, Loki was likely following these Einherjar to the prison cell Odin had ordered prepared for her.

She thought about stopping in her tracks and start running the other way, but then she realized that they weren't going in the direction of the prison. Perhaps they were taking her to a guest room after all, and Odin meant to play with her a little while longer. In that case, attempting to run would only put an early end to the game. It was a game she ultimately had no chance of winning; Thor had been right, Odin had four thousand years more experience as a magician than she had, and she had no hope of besting him when she didn't even have access to all the magic she had until a few months ago. Still, she might as well play, and enjoy a few more moments of relative freedom before spending the rest of her life in a cell—a life that wasn't likely to be too long, come to think of it, since Odin had promised she would be put to death if she returned.

Perhaps she would be allowed to end her life as a ritual sacrifice to the Yuletide spirits. Asgard didn't have a tradition of ritual sacrifice, but they could always make a new one. They could burn her with the Yule log, or they could bake her into mince pies; then everyone could literally get their piece of her. Loki attempted to shake the dark thoughts from her head. She really shouldn't have watched Sweeney Todd with Natasha last weekend, even if the woman had claimed it to be a "Midgardian holiday tradition."

They made their way through winding corridors that she hardly recognized, even though she'd lived in the palace for 1,048 years of her nearly 1,051 years of existence. Clearly, Odin meant to separate her from Thor by keeping her far from the royal chambers. Finally, they came upon an ornate door that felt somehow familiar. Instead of opening it, her escort knocked on it. The door opened, and Loki came nose to nose with a familiar face. Before she had time to regret her earlier decision not to try to run, a large woman with auburn hair and a ruddy complexion pulled her into the room and shut the door, then threw her arms around her and pulled her headfirst into the overabundance of her chest. "Loki, you naughty girl! How could you stay away so long? And up to your tricks again, I see. Whose skin is this, then?" she asked, patting Jane's backside with nearly enough force to bring tears to Loki's eyes.

With her face still buried in Sofjin's chest, Loki's voice came out muffled. "Thor's ex-girlfriend's. I demand you let me go! I'm mortal now, which means I bruise easily."

"Mortal?" Sofjn pulled back but kept a grip on Loki's upper arms. "Young lady, this is why Nanny should never let you out of her sight. Now, why don't you let that glamor slip so I can see your adorable face?"

Loki released her glamor; there wasn't much point in wearing it inside a room where she was trapped with yet another person who had seen right through it. "You aren't my nanny anymore. I am an adult, you know." At least she was an adult by Asgard's standards anyway. She certainly didn't need a nanny.

"Nonsense, girl. Young ladies do not become adults until they marry and start making their own babies."

"But you don't have any babies," Loki pointed out.

"You are my baby as surely as you are Frigga's. As one of your Mother's handmaiden, I am as good as Frigga's wife."

Loki changed tactics. "But I'm not always a young lady. I can be a man, if I so choose—" She attempted to shift genders, but nothing happened.

Sjofn gave her a pitying smile. "Sorry sweetling, but I'm afraid I've slipped a little something around your wrist when you weren't looking."

Loki looked down and blanched when she saw a copper bracelet that had been inscribed with runes. She knew what it was immediately, and what it did. When she had been very young, she had often been required to wear one just like it; for a time, it had been the only way to keep her from turning herself into a baby squirrel and scurrying away from Nanny and the other nursemaids in an attempt to avoid nap time. "Take it off," she growled.

"I won't be taking it off anytime soon if that's the way you're going to speak to me. Do I need to put you in the naughty corner?"

Loki looked around herself and realized why the door to the room had seemed familiar; she had been taken to the old royal nursery. "You're insane! You can't just start treating me like I'm a toddler again," she complained, even though Bruce had given her a time out not that long ago for flooding his lab. (To be fair, Bruce had to have known that pointing to a chain and saying, "Whatever you do, don't pull that," was essentially the same as saying, "I beseech thee, god of mischief, to pull this chain the next time I'm not paying attention.")

Sjofn pointed to the corner. Loki, deciding it would be easier to just play along for the time being, crossed the room and stood with her nose in it. After all, Thor would surely come looking for her after he had finished speaking to Odin, and then he could talk some sense into the woman.

"There's a good girl," said Sjofen. As much as Loki had once believed her nanny to have eyes as all-seeing as Heimdall's, she obviously hadn't seen Loki roll hers.

\ō͡≡o˞̶ BONUS: PROJECT "INFORM THE UNIVERSE THAT LOKI IS TONY'S KID," ATTEMPT #3

With JARVIS technically driving the car, Tony didn't need to keep his eyes on the road, but ever since they had left the garage at Avenger's tower, Loki had been glaring at him in a way that made him not want to make eye contact. "I don't like surprises," Loki told him. "In my experience, surprises are never anything good."

"Yeah well, we'll have to work on that. Anyway, I promise this is a good surprise."

"Is the surprise that you're going to drive me out into the middle of nowhere and leave me by the side of the highway like a sack of cats?"

"First of all, I just said it was a good surprise. Second, do I look like someone who would abandon little furry animals by the side of the road? Never mind, don't answer that. I promise I would never abandon you anywhere, and please don't start up again about how you've already been rejected by two dads. I'm not going to do that to you." Sometimes Tony wished Odin would drop by again so that he could punch him in the face.

"Maybe you won't mean to."

For a few moments, Tony wandered what Loki had meant by that, but then he put it together. Damn, how had she already figured something out that had taken him forty years? "I know, I'm not immortal. I'm going to die someday, and I'm sorry about that. But hopefully that day's still a long way off, and when it happens, I'm going to make sure you're taken care of."

Loki gave him a tight-lipped smile. "Well, this has been a cheery conversation."

"You're the one that took it in that direction."

"So where are we going?" Again, she eyed him as if she still thought they might be going to the post office so that Tony could stuff her into a box and ship her to Abu Dhabi.

"To an abandoned airfield in New Jersey that I happen to own."

"The one you had JARVIS land the jet at after the twins stole it?"

Maybe admitting that they were indeed headed out to the middle of nowhere hadn't been the best way to reassure her. "Like I told you, there's no way I'm going to teach you to drive in the middle of Manhattan."

"Really?" And just like that, Loki seemed to brighten, her abandonment issues seemingly forgotten, or at least put on hold. "Is that why we're in Pepper's car?"

"Obviously, I'm not letting you drive any of mine. But this one? Feel free to crash it. I'll just get Pep a nicer car for Christmas."

"Can I have my own car for Christmas?"

"Nope." Just because he was giving in and teaching Loki to drive (which he wouldn't be if he'd gotten any kind of sign from the universe that it considered Loki his kid yet) didn't mean he wanted her driving all over the city on her own.

"How about a puppy, then?"

Tony should have seen that coming. Loki had been bothering him about getting a puppy ever since she had watched the televised broadcast of the National Dog Show on Thanksgiving. "I keep telling you, we can't have a Scottish Deerhound in the tower."

"A Newfoundland then?"

"No."

"How about a Tibetan Mastiff?"

"Still no. What do you want with a dog, anyway?"

"Oh, I don't know, why would anyone want a creature that was entirely and utterly devoted to them and would follow their every command?"

And that, along with the fact that Loki didn't seem to be interested in dogs that weighed under seventy pounds when full grown, was why he wasn't sure she was ready to be responsible for the life of another living creature. "I'm already teaching you how to drive. You can't expect me to cave on more than one thing at a time."

Loki heaved a sigh. "Very well. If I did have a dog, with my luck it would bond with Thor instead of me."

໒ ˶′ﻌ ‵˶ ა

"Okay, put the key fob in that slot, then put your foot on the brake and press the start engine button—"

Loki did exactly what Tony told him to, but before he could give her any more instructions, she stepped on the gas. By the time he had time to process what had happened, they were on their third lap around the empty tarmac, and their speed had topped out at 155 mph. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he shouted.

"Driving," Loki shouted back. Tony could barely hear her over the screech of the tires as she made a sharp turn to the right.

"STOP THE CAR!"

Loki turned the steering wheel all the way to the left and slammed her foot on the gas pedal causing the car to spin into a donut. She then let go of the steering wheel and slammed her foot on the brake again to stop.

"What the—" A string of obscenities, some of which might have been in languages he hadn't been aware he knew, streamed forth from Tony's mouth.

"I believe that comes to ninety-six dollars," said Loki, when he had finished.

Tony took a deep breath to steady himself. "Get out of the car, now." As he unbuckled his own seatbelt and pushed open the passenger side door, he tried to remind himself that he had promised Loki he would never hit her. Though he had never said anything about not strangling her with his bare hands—but no, he couldn't do that either. He leaned against the side of the car as Loki stepped out of it. He pointed at her. "Kid, you are so lucky that Bruce would Hulk out and murder me back if I killed you."

"Were you to kill me, Hela would only send me back," Loki pointed out.

"Where did you even learn how to drive like that? I thought I was supposed to be teaching you."

"You would be amazed what you can learn on YouTube. Anyway, I thought that was quite exhilarating, didn't you? Can we do it again?"

As much as Tony was an adrenaline junky, that had nearly caused his arc reactor to have a meltdown. "Hell no! You're not driving again until after I'm dead. You can also consider yourself banned from YouTube for the foreseeable future. Now get in the passenger seat, we're going home."

Tony got into the driver's seat of the car and waited for Loki to get in on the other side. As soon as Loki had settled herself in the passenger seat, she turned to him with a huge grin. "If I can't drive, does that mean I can get a dog?"

｡*ﾟ✲* (๑ò_ó๑)｡*ﾟ✲*

Author's Note:

This is the latest I've posted, but I think this is the longest chapter I've written if you count the bonus scene.

There will be two chapters next week. I'm planning to post the first on Tuesday, which is actually the winter solstice/Yule, and the second on Friday, which is Christmas Eve. Friday's chapter will be the "Christmas special."