38 - F You, Thor

Content Warnings: This chapter includes strong language, as well as a fairly realistic (because it's based on my own experience) depiction of a mild panic attack from the point of view of the character experiencing it. Though personally, I think that reading it it may help those who suffer from anxiety/panic attacks, especially the part at the end :)

"Loki, open this door."

A door further down and on the opposite side of the hallway opened instead. "What do you want?" asked someone who sounded distinctly like Loki, but also not like him.

Thor turned towards the owner of the voice slowly. "You're not my brother."

"Thanks for reminding me," said the Loki they had all met over the summer.

"I mean, you're not my brother from this universe. You're some other me's brother. What are you doing here?"

"I'm on vacation."

"You're running away from something," Thor corrected.

Other Loki rolled his eyes just as he'd seen his own Loki do thousands if not millions of times over the last millennium. "I'm not running away from anything. As an introvert, I occasionally need time on my own to recharge. I don't expect you to understand that, of course."

"Oh, please. If you're anything like my Loki, you aren't really an introvert; if anything, you're an exhibitionist who thrives on constant attention from others. You just don't like most other people because you think they're stupid."

Other Loki looked him up and down. Thor had the feeling he was being evaluated. "Interesting—you seem to know me better than the Thor from my own timeline."

"I've been making more of an effort recently." Thor stared at his little brother's closed door. "Or I've been trying to, anyway."

"Stark's AI will unlock the door if you ask, you know."

"I know, but he hates it when I just barge in—"

Other Loki walked around him. "I doubt that he hates it as much as he pretends to," he said, as he pushed Thor's Loki's door open. "See, it wasn't locked at all."

Thor unsuccessfully tried to suppress a smile when Loki's doppelganger was immediately hit in the face with a pillow. His little brother lay on his bed with his back to them. "Go away," he growled at them.

Other Loki folded his arms over his chest and scowled at the pillow as he kicked it away. "Brat," he complained.

Thor walked past him into the room. "Loki, please, we need to talk. I haven't come to take you back to Asgard permanently. It's only for a visit."

Loki sat up but didn't turn around. "Why would I want to visit Asgard?"

"It's more that you're being required to come back for a state function."

"Oh, Hel no—I hate those."

"I know you do, but as a prince of Asgard, it is your responsibility to make an appearance."

"In that case, I renounce my title."

"You're not allowed to renounce your title just to avoid going."

"You can't forbid me from abdicating."

"You're not of age yet, so I can."

"In Asgard, I'm of age."

"The age of majority in Asgard has changed recently. From now on, all Asgardians will be considered adults when they have entered their twelfth century. You've a century and a half of childhood left."

"You're kidding me! You changed the law, just so that you would have more power over me. Even though you're not actually my guardian—"

"The law changed because it made sense to change it. Adulthood has nothing to do with the ability to kill a bilgesnipe, and requiring women to marry in order to be considered full members of adult society was always unfair, as Sif often complained. And as far as Asgard is concerned, I am your guardian."

Loki got out of bed and began pacing the floor in an agitated manner. "I'm not even a legitimate heir to the throne in the first place."

"Loki, you are my little brother, even if you are adopted."

Loki stopped in his tracks, and Thor saw his jaw clench. "Really? If it was a legal adoption, I'd like to see some documentation of that."

"You know that in Asgard, we don't document adoptions. When a family takes in a child and gives them the name of the parent, the child becomes a part of that family. Whether you like it or not, you are still an Odinson."

Loki reached for the large, leather bound volume atop his dresser. Thor didn't know what he intended to do, but he had a bad feeling about it. "Loki, what are you doing?"

"I would think carefully," Other Loki warned his younger self. He didn't sound too excited about it, but for Thor it was enough confirmation that that whatever his brother was doing, he wasn't going to like it.

"I don't need to think about it." Loki scribbled something in the book, then threw it at him.

Thor caught it in one hand. Now that he got a closer look at it, he recognized Loki's grimoire, the one he'd used ever since Frigga had started teaching him magic. Thor opened it to the first page, and saw what Loki had done.

The Grimoire of Loki Odinson Stark

"It can't be as easy as that," said Thor. Then again, a grimoire was a magical book, and for all he knew about magic, anything that was written in it would become the truth.

Other Loki's voice came from over his left shoulder. "You're thinking that it might be the case that whatever he's written in there will become the truth, aren't you?"

"Er—yes, that sort of was what I was thinking," Thor admitted.

"Oh, for Norns' sake. Here I was, thinking you might actually be smarter than the Thor I once knew. Do you really think your mother would have taught a child magic if that was the way it worked?"

Thor supposed he was right; Frigga wouldn't have been foolish enough to trust an adolescent with total control over the universe.

Other Loki reached out and traced along the ink with his index finger. "However, it is generally considered that whatever name is written in a magic user's grimoire, that is their true name. And magic is a force more powerful and more binding than the laws of any king, even Odin—or you."

"So, this is easily fixed, isn't it? Loki, give me that pen."

Thor expected his little brother to refuse, but instead he handed the pen over without any fuss. That couldn't be good. Surely enough, when he tried to cross out "Stark" and write "Odinson" again, it was as if the pen had run out of ink.

"Only the owner of a grimoire can write in it," Other Loki confirmed. "Really, Thor, that's something you should have learned from your tutors before you were old enough to grow that crappy beard of yours."

"My beard isn't crappy. It's a very fine beard. You're just jealous; I bet you still can't grow one, even though you look as if you must be older than I am."

"You appear to be the same age as the Thor from my timeline, which means that at least physiologically, we would be the same age."

"You can't mean that in the timeline you're from, those who don't know you're adopted believe us to be twins?"

"Obviously, we would have been fraternal twins, not identical."

Thor got an idea. He held the grimoire out to Loki's other self. "You and he are essentially the same, so perhaps you could fix this."

"An interesting theory, but I'm not going to test it. This is between you, him, and Stark."

His Loki had turned his back to them again, and had pulled his hands into the sleeves of his sweatshirt. "Loki, you don't have to hide from me. How you look doesn't matter to me."

"It matters to me. Just get out."

"Please, turn around and let me see you."

"Leave me alone, Thor. I don't want you to see me like this, and I don't know how to turn back. Even if I wanted to go to some stupid court function, obviously I couldn't go back to Asgard looking like this."

Thor wanted to tell him that no one in Asgard would fault him for being as he was, but somehow Loki always knew whenever he tried to lie to him. "Alright, I'm leaving you alone for now. But you will come out for your own birthday party, will you not?"

"It isn't my birthday, it's Wanda and Pietro's."

"All the same, the others regret that they missed your birthday a month ago and wish to celebrate it now."

"I don't like it when they all fuss over me."

Loki might know it whenever Thor tried to lie, but Thor knew when Loki was lying too. "Brother, you know you love it when they all fuss over you. Being fussed over might be your favorite thing." Loki picked up the remaining pillow from his bed and threw it at him without turning around, but like the grimoire, Thor caught it. "I feel like we've been over this before, but pillows aren't for throwing, and neither are books. I'm confiscating both until you come to be in a more agreeable mood."

Loki didn't answer him, so Thor took his new pillow and the grimoire and returned to the common room, where he found Stark sitting on the couch. "Man of Iron, I have a—what is the phrase that mortals use? Something about gnawing on bones?"

"Been working on your English, huh?"

"Sorry, allow me to start over. You and I have a problem."

"What did I do this time?"

"This." Thor shoved the grimoire under Tony's nose.

Tony took it from him and began to leaf through it. "Point Break, I hate to tell you this, but this definitely isn't my handwriting. I can't even read this. Are those runes?"

"The handwriting is Loki's, and the book you are holding is his grimoire. Look at the title page."

"You mean this is some sort of spellbook?" Tony flipped to the title page, where Loki had crossed out "Odinson" and written Stark's name. "Okay, so what am I supposed to be looking at? I still don't read Asgardian."

Thor pointed to Loki's name. "That is 'Loki' written in our language. And that," he said, pointing to the runes that were crossed out, "used to say Odinson."

"So what? You can't be too surprised that he crossed that out, after how Odin treated him."

Thor pointed to the next set of runes. "Those runes spell out 'Stark.'"

"Huh, I can kind of see it. That first one looks a little like a backwards 'S,' and the arrow looking one is actually pretty close to a 'T.' The next one looks more like an 'F,' but if you squint, it does look kind of like an 'A.' And then you pretty much straight up have an 'R,' and half a 'K.'" Tony stared at the runes for a moment more before his eyebrows began to drift slowly upwards. "Wait, so—he wants to take my name? That's what this is about?"

"By writing his name thus in his grimoire, he has officially renounced the name of Odinson."

"So that thing your mother said about getting the universe to recognize him as mine—this does that, doesn't it?"

"Er, yes. I suppose it does." Thor had been caught a bit off guard, because he hadn't thought of it in those terms yet. "But there's no reason for that anymore, when Odin is no longer in power; and he's only done it because he does not wish to return to Asgard."

"So in other words, instead of getting him out from under Odin's thumb, since you're king now, it's gotten him out from under yours." Tony sighed as he ground his fingertips into his temples. "Thor, I'm not in any shape to fight you over who gets Loki. Though I'd like to remind you that last time we had that fight, I won."

"If you're referring to when we first met, I don't think anyone won that battle."

"Nah, the way I remember it, I totally won. Anyway, I might not be in fighting condition, but I have an entire Iron Legion I can throw at you if you try to take him."

Thor shrugged. "And while reducing them to a pile of metal scraps sounds like a fun way to spend ten minutes, I only mean to take Loki back to Asgard temporarily, so that he might attend an official function."

"Don't hate me for saying it, but I'm not surprised he doesn't want to go back so soon after his last visit. Still, there really wasn't any way for him to get out of whatever it is without disowning you?"

"As long as Loki is my brother, he will be a prince of Asgard, other than when he is Asgard's princess. There are certain obligations that princes and princesses must fulfill."

"Maybe he shouldn't be a prince or princess of Asgard then. Asgard hasn't exactly been kind to him."

Thor understood where Tony was coming from; it hadn't escaped his notice that Loki typically seemed to be happier on Midgard than he ever had growing up in Asgard; but he had a feeling that wouldn't last. "Surely you appreciate that you nor anyone else in this tower will live more than a fraction of Loki's lifespan? If he completely alienates himself from Asgard, what is he to do when you're all dead?"

"Well, this conversation just took a cheery turn."

"It may not be cheery—and yes, I've gotten better at recognizing mortal sarcasm—but it is a truth that we all must face eventually."

"I have to admit you have me there. I've promised your brother that I'll try not to do anything unnecessarily stupid from here on out, but the way I live I'll still be lucky if I make it another ten years, let alone the fifty or sixty I'd have left if I actually manage to die of natural causes."

"For Loki's sake, I hope you're wrong."

"Just for Loki's sake, huh?"

"And just what is it that's supposed to be for my sake?" Thor looked behind him and saw that Loki had come out of his bedroom, though he was still keeping a fair amount of distance between them and was still attempting to hide inside his sweatshirt.

"Don't worry about it," Tony told him.

"I don't like it when people talk about me behind my back."

"We're not talking about you behind your back. If you want to be included in this conversation, you're free to join us, oh Son of Stark."

"Thor showed you what I wrote, did he? You shouldn't read too much into it. I only did it because—"

"You really don't want to go to whatever this thing is your brother wants you to go to," Tony finished for him. "Yeah, I get that. I don't really like having to go to all the charity events Pepper drags me to. While I'm all for charity, I'd rather just write a check—but sometimes we all have to do things you don't want to do."

Thor was a little surprised to hear Tony telling his brother such, but perhaps the reminder that much of Loki's future depended upon his acceptance by the Asgardian court had gotten to him.

Any chance they might have had at continuing a private conversation between the three of them evaporated as the elevator's doors opened and the rest of the tower's adult residents poured into the common room, most of them holding either armfuls of wrapped presents or paper sacks marked "Chef Zemo's." "Food's here," Clint announced holding up one of the bags. Then he held up the opposite hand, which held a "six pack" of ale in the aluminum cans mortals favored. "We've got more beer, too."

Tony arched an eyebrow at him. "Don't you think it's a little inappropriate to bring alcohol to a kids' birthday party?"

"If you'd ever been to a party with thirty screaming six year olds bouncing off the walls after they've consumed a piñata's worth of candy, you wouldn't be asking that question—I mean, not that I've ever been to that kind of party."

Tony and Thor exchanged a look with one another; likely everyone in the tower suspected by now that Clint had a large brood of children hidden somewhere. He constantly disappeared to some undisclosed location, especially around Midgardian holidays, and since the end of his employment with SHIELD, it had been more difficult for him to come up with believable cover stories for those trips.

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Betty felt a little overwhelmed, suddenly being around so many other people. At least Bruce seemed as uncomfortable as she did. Not that she enjoyed seeing him that way, but somehow, knowing that she wasn't the only one having trouble adjusting to what should have been a fairly normal situation made her feel less alone. Also, there was something almost funny about seeing him standing there, holding several helium filled mylar balloons, one of which happened to be a large green balloon with Hulk's face on it.

Leonard had tried to explain everything that had happened since she had been underground. Bruce didn't have to hide anymore, because being a member of the Avengers had made Hulk a hero in the eyes of the public. She hadn't fully appreciated it until now, but if they were putting Hulk on kids' birthday party supplies, that had to mean Bruce would be safe from persecution now, didn't he? He had chosen to turn himself over to her father. She had to wonder what he'd been thinking; obviously, no matter how much Hulk had been accepted by the general public, Bruce still had some issues with him.

And then there had been the whole "Robby" thing. She hadn't had the opportunity to ask Leonard if anything like that had happened with Bruce before; but then, Bruce didn't seem to have been aware of anything like that happening before, and surely if Leonard had suspected that Bruce had any alternate personalities other than Hulk, he would have told Bruce about it.

She wondered what Karla might know about Robby, but she didn't really feel like talking to Karla at the moment.

At first, she had almost liked Doctor Sofen. Almost, anyway. Obviously, she had known that Betty was being held in the bunker against her will. But by the time they had met; Betty was almost starting to believe what her father had told her about the reason she was being held there; that the world above them was no longer safe. He had never given her any details, but he had told her that all the signs pointed to a future where "normal people" would be replaced by mutants and other "monsters," and the world would constantly be at war with itself. No place aboveground would be safe.

Now that she thought about it, given what Leonard had told her about everything that had happened in her absence, maybe her father had believed it; and considering that she was currently in a room where "enhanced individuals" outnumbered those who weren't, maybe what he had told her had been at least partially based in reality.

Not that it bothered her at all that Bruce and Leonard's new friends were a little different. But even if she had been in a room full of what her father would call "normal people" she would have felt a little anxious now; it had been so long since she had talked to anyone other than her father or Karla, she suspected she might have forgotten how to hold a two-sided conversation. Her father always wanted to talk while she listened, and as her "therapist," Karla had encouraged her to talk and only occasionally commented on what she said.

As Bruce and Leonard's friends gathered in the kitchen to load up plates of food, Betty hung back. As hungry as she was, she could wait until the kitchen was a little less crowded. She was left in the living room with Bruce, the blue kid she really hadn't been introduced to yet, who sat on the couch with his knees drawn up to his chest, and a dark haired man who seemed a little overdressed for the occasion in a tailored black suit with a black shirt and tie.

The big blond man, who she had been introduced to as the actual Norse god Thor, came back into the living room first, holding two plates of food. "Loki, I brought you a plate."

"Oh good." The man in the black suit reached out for the plate. "I'm famished."

Thor scowled at him. "I wasn't talking to you. You can go get your own. Why are you dressed like a witch, by the way?"

The man smiled at him. "F*ck you, Thor."

Thor shook his head. "Maybe you aren't the same as our Loki. My brother does not use such language."

"F*ck you, Thor," said the blue kid.

"There's no call for that, just to prove me wrong." Thor pushed the plate he had brought for him towards him. "Take it. I swear, if you don't eat, I'm going to chew your food for you and feed you like a baby bird."

"And I swear that if try it, I'll turn you into a naked mole rat."

The next person to emerge from the kitchen was one of the women who had come to rescue them from the bunker, who had been introduced to her as Sif. "I swear, if the two of you don't knock it off I'll gut both of you with the dullest kitchen knife I can find and bind you together with your own entrails," she announced. "Maybe then you'll learn to get along with one another."

"Stay out of this, you mewling—" the blue kid started.

"Loki Odinson," his older brother scolded him.

"That isn't my name."

"Either way, you're going to stop your sulking right now and eat, or I swear—"

"Hey, everybody calm down," said Tony Stark, as he staggered towards them. "This is supposed to be a party, damn it. Thor, if your brother doesn't feel like eating right now, he doesn't have to. He's not going to waste away if he skips one meal. And Loki, before you call me out on it, that's not an insinuation that you're overweight." He turned to Sif. "As for you, I would have thought you'd have learned to mind your own business by now."

"Mind my own business? I'm sorry, but which one of us grew up with these idiots and has been preventing them from killing one another for the past thousand years?"

Now Betty felt as if she were intruding on some sort of ongoing family squabble. She decided it would be a good time to try to get some food. She stood, intending to head for the kitchen even though it was still a little crowded. On the way there, she ran into Leonard, who was holding two plates of food. She smiled at him. "Is one of those for me?"

"Actually, the extra plate is for Bruce," he said, sounding apologetic.

Right, thought Betty. While she really didn't mind that two of her ex-boyfriends were dating each other now—honestly, she thought they made a cute couple—it was still going to take some getting used to. Betty smiled at Leonard again and nodded before walking around him.

She hung around near the edge of the kitchen, which really was too crowded. She noticed that her heart was racing and that her breath had become more shallow—which was ridiculous, because there was nothing dangerous about the situation. She started feeling a little dizzy and would have liked to sit down, but given that her only choices would have been to go into the crowded kitchen or back into the living room where people were arguing, she ended up at a bit of a loss as to what to do.

She felt a strong impulse to do whatever she could to escape the situation. Before she really knew what she was doing, she found herself walking away from the kitchen, towards the hallway where the guest rooms were located. No one seemed to notice what she was doing. In a way that was reassuring, since she didn't really want anyone to know that she was totally freaking out for no reason at all—but also a little upsetting, since it meant that no one there was concerned enough about her to notice that she was totally freaking out.

She hadn't known where she was going, but suddenly she found herself outside the door of the room that Karla had been locked in. That was where her knees gave out, and she found herself slumped against the door. What was wrong with her? She felt like she was going to pass out. If she did, would anyone find her? Did she want them to find her? She felt like she was going to die. "Karla," she found herself calling. As much as she didn't want to ask Sofen of all people for help, she felt like she didn't have much of a choice.

A moment later, she got an answer. "Is that you, Betty?"

"My breath is shallow, my heart is racing, and I don't understand it. What's wrong with me?"

"It sounds like you're having a panic attack," Sofen told her without sounding particularly concerned.

"What do I do?"

"Open this door and I can help."

For a moment, Betty actually thought about it. Luckily, she didn't even know how to unlock the door; apparently, most things around the tower were controlled by Tony Stark's AI, but even if she asked JARVIS to open the door for her, she doubted he would do what she wanted. "I can't open the door."

"Guess you're on your own then."

"Karla, please."

"Oh, fine. First, find five things that you can see."

Betty looked around herself. Her eyes lighted first on an indoor plant in a large pot; a rubber tree or something similar. It was drooping a little, which probably meant it needed water or to be moved nearer to a window. On the wall above the rubber tree there was what appeared to be a cubist painting of a red and gold robot. Her eyes drifted next to the door of the room across from them, which was slate gray and shared its minimalist design with all the other doors she had seen in the tower. Next she noticed the hallway's orange toned wood flooring, which offered a sharp contrast to the otherwise modernist look of the tower's interior and added a needed touch of warmth to the decor. Running out of interior design elements to evaluate, she focused next on her own shoes, which were the same pair of comfortable brown loafers that she had been wearing for two years; despite the fact that she had worn them every day they had held up extremely well, likely because she had never worn them outside. "Okay, what do I do now?"

"Next focus on four things that you can feel."

Betty closed her eyes and felt the smoothness of the wooden floor beneath her fingertips and the warmth and the softness of the cashmere sweater that had been loaned to her by Tony Stark's fiancée when she had arrived at the tower. She ran her hand through her own hair, which was a little oily and needed to be washed. Lastly, she ran a finger over her bottom lip, which was dry and a little rough—as soon as she could, she needed to find a tube of ChapStick as well. "What's next?" she asked Karla, already feeling quite a bit calmer than she had before.

"Three things that you can hear."

With her eyes closed once again, Betty listened. The first thing she heard was the murmur of voices from the common room; she didn't hear anything that sounded like an argument, so maybe the situation had calmed down a bit. Next, she heard the barely audible hum of tower's central heating system. The last thing she focused on was the sound of her own breath, which had slowed considerably. She opened her eyes. "Next?"

"Two things you can smell."

That felt a little more challenging, but she could faintly smell the food in the common room, which once again stimulated her appetite. For lack of anything better, she lifted her own wrist to her nose. Her skin smelled faintly of soap and the lightly perfumed hand cream that had been next to the sink in the bathroom she had washed up and changed clothes in earlier. "Alright, now what?"

"The last step is to find one thing you can taste."

Now, that one completely stumped her. Unless she went back to the kitchen to get a plate of food, and she wasn't sure she was ready for that yet—a shadow fell in front of her on the floor, and Betty blinked up at the person hovering over her, expecting to find that either Leonard or Bruce had finally noticed her absence and had come looking. Instead, it was the strange man in the black suit.

He crouched next to her, and Betty saw that he held a small plate with a piece of white sheet cake and a fork on it. "Here, take it. I've found that sugar can help in these situations."

"Thank you," Betty told him, a little embarrassed that the man had noticed her earlier distress but ultimately grateful. She took the plate from him. "Wait, have they even cut the cakes yet, or did you—"

"They won't mind," the man told her, running his finger through a glob of frosting at the edge of the cake and sticking it in his own mouth.

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Author's Note:

I think publishing on Sunday may work better for me now that I'm working fairly regular hours during the week. So from now on, expect new chapters to be published sometime over the weekend, probably closer to Sunday evening than earlier. I'm going to try to keep publishing a chapter a week until this is finished, though!