Chapter 40 - The Banyan Tree

With his fist over his heart, Heimdall bowed to Thor. "My king," he said. Then he looked at Loki and grinned. Which quite frankly made Loki want to crawl out of his own skin, because he couldn't recall ever having seen the man smile before. Not at him, anyway. What the Hel was this about? Of course, the man would have been privy to everything that Loki had done on Midgard over the last few months, including some episodes in which Loki had to admit that he might have acted a touch over dramatically. He had even attempted to kiss the man's sister—

Tony walked up behind Loki and draped an arm around his shoulders. He looked up at Heimdall and nodded to him. "What's up, 1984?" Heimdall's creepy grin faded as his eyebrows drew together. Despite his supposed omniscience, he must not have gotten the reference.

Sif, Steve, and the two ex-SHIELD spies had stayed on Midgard. The entire Avengers roster couldn't leave their home realm at once, after all. In addition, nothing had been decided in regards to Karla Sofen, and someone had to play prison guard.

While Loki had been inclined to agree with the thinly veiled insinuations that mostly came from Natasha and Sif—after all, from a completely pragmatic perspective "putting the woman out of her misery" would have been the simplest way to prevent her from harming anyone ever again—the thought had occurred that he had likely been the first to benefit from the "Avengers don't kill" policy that Steve Rogers insisted on. (Not that they would have had an easy time of it had they had attempted to end his existence during the invasion. He might have been inclined to lose to them in order to escape Thanos' influence, but he hadn't been suicidal at the time.)

"No one is putting anyone out of their misery," Tony had told them. "But she can't stay locked in a guest room, especially one that's now flooded."

Pepper's eyebrows had knit together in concern. "Did anyone check on her after that happened?"

The adults had looked around at one another wearily. "I'm sure she's fine," Tony had finally said. "It's not like she's the Wicked Witch of the West. Although that would have been a convenient way to get rid of her."

When Steve had spoken, his voice had been filled with righteous conviction. "We're not killing her."

"I already said I agreed with you." And for once, Tony had managed to come off as the voice of reason within the group."Obviously, the best thing to do would be to hand her over to the police before someone accuses us of keeping her falsely imprisoned."

"Can we even prove she's done anything?" Pepper had lowered her voice then, as if she had been afraid that Sofen, who was still multiple floors down from where they had all gathered in the relatively dry penthouse, would hear them. "I mean, without admitting that you had JARVIS hack into her private files?"

Doctor Samson had spoken up next. "I'm not sure that handing her over to the police would be the best thing for her."

"And why should we be concerned about what 'the best thing for her' would be?" Tony hadn't been the only one to eye the doctor suspiciously. "Do I need to remind you that she screwed with your boyfriend's head for several months, and had him taking who knows what—"

"I know," Betty had interrupted, sounding guilt-ridden. "I developed the drugs she gave to Bruce."

"It isn't your fault," Bruce had told her, though to Loki he had looked a little green around the gills. "Like you said, you didn't have a choice."

"Karla isn't okay," Samson had gone on. "She needs professional help, and she isn't likely to get it in prison."

"Doc, most of the people we put away 'aren't okay,'" Tony had said, running a hand through his hair."You can't help everyone." Loki supposed he had been lucky that Tony had deemed him worthy of assistance instead of leaving him to rot in prison for the rest of his very long life. Too bad for Karla that she hadn't made the cut.

This time, as Loki walked down the Rainbow Bridge towards the Royal Palace of Valaskjalf, he felt relatively calm. After all, he wasn't in much danger of falling off the edge while hemmed in on all sides by his mortal family. Tony and Bruce in particular had taken up positions to his left and his right, and he saw them both nervously eying the edge of the bridge.

Loki found himself both touched and a little annoyed at the same time. Did they think he was going to suddenly run to the edge and throw himself over it, or that some mysterious force would drag him down? But once they had reached the bridge's halfway point, he found that he was too exhausted to care.

Without his dimensional storage, he had once again been forced to carry his things the way the non-magically blessed carried them, and this time Thor had patently refused to help even though he wasn't carrying anything himself and Loki had both an oversized duffel bag and a rather large birdcage to contend with. Somehow, Thor must have felt Loki glaring at the back of his head as he walked in front of him. "You didn't need to bring all that, Loki. I told you, your rooms at the palace are as you left them. You have everything you need there."

Loki had no doubt that it was as Thor said, and that under the protection of their mother and her handmaidens, his rooms had been kept as some sort of shrine to his former life; but somehow, he just didn't think he was ready to see them again. "And I told you, I'd rather wear my Midgardian clothing."

"Even so, you didn't need to bring clothing for a month," Thor told him. "You can't wear Midgardian attire to the funeral anyway. Besides which, these things never last more than three days—unless you're planning to stay for a while after?"

There was something hopeful in Thor's voice that made Loki roll his eyes. "I wouldn't hold my breath, if I were you."

"Why would I—"

"Never mind," Loki interrupted. Apparently, even if Thor could now recognize Midgardian sarcasm, he had not gotten better at recognizing their colloquialisms. "Anyway, I didn't bring clothing for a month. I've barely got enough for two days in here."

He wished there was someone else who could help him, but the others carried their own luggage, except for Wanda, whose bag was being carried by her brother, and Tony, who couldn't carry anything and whose luggage was being carried by JARVIS—or rather, by one of Tony's Iron Legion suits, which was currently housing a miniature supercomputer on which he had installed an offline version of JARVIS's source code. (Which begged the question, was this JARVIS really JARVIS at all, or JARVIS's clone? After all, the "real" JARVIS was still back on Midgard, overseeing the tower's security and ensuring that SI ran as usual in Pepper's absence. He would only "remember" this trip later once this version of himself returned to Midgard and the memories of the two versions of the AI were merged.)

"I could carry your bag for you," Pietro offered.

Loki probably should have refused. He didn't want Pietro getting any strange ideas about the state of their relationship. But in the words of mortals, why look a gift horse in the mouth? After all, if the horse turned out to have bad teeth, you could turn around and sell it to a glue factory, making a tidy profit; Loki was fairly sure that was the point of that saying, anyway. He stopped (which forced everyone around him to stop) and turned towards Pietro to hand him his bag. "Only if you're sure you can handle it."

"It is not a problem," Pietro said as he handed Wanda's bag back to Wanda, and Wanda glared at him murderously, her irises spontaneously tinging with a touch of scarlet.

Pietro then stepped around both Loki and Thor and took off at full speed. Five seconds later, he was back, empty handed. "I dropped both our bags at the palace gates," he explained, as he took Wanda's bag back from her.

"Hey, no running on the bridge over nothingness!" Tony scolded him, much too late. "What if you'd tripped?"

Pietro shrugged. "You told me before not to run inside, but this is outside."

Tony shook his head. "From now on, no running inside or when we're on weird alien bridges where you might fall through space if you're not careful."

Loki felt just a little bit sick to his stomach then, and found himself reaching for Bruce's hand. When he took it, Bruce turned his head to blink at him (perhaps still surprised that someone wanted to touch a "monster," which was a sentiment Loki understood wholeheartedly) but he didn't say anything.

ﾟ. * ･ ｡ﾟ_/|\_ﾟ. * ･ ｡ﾟ

Luckily they had traversed the rest of the bridge and made it to the palace without further incident. As soon as they got to the sitting room of the guest suite that they would all be staying in and the others went to drop their things in their rooms, Loki dropped the covered birdcage he'd still been carrying onto the floor, and an unappreciative squawk issued from the cage. He ignored it and turned towards his brother. "Can I go home now?" he asked, even though he knew what the answer would be.

"This is your home," said Thor.

"Asgard hasn't been my home for a long time."

"Loki, don't be dramatic. It was only three years ago that—er, things happened."

Loki rolled his eyes. "What things would those be, Thor?"

"We both know what I speak of, though if you wish to discuss it—"

"I don't."

The muscles in Thor's face relaxed. Obviously, he hadn't really been all that keen on once more rehashing what had happened.

"Maybe to you it has only been three years," Loki told him, "but to me it feels like a lifetime ago." It wasn't just because time passed differently in the void between worlds. As miserable as he had been much of the time, his childhood in Asgard had been idyllic compared to the time he had spent hanging around with Thanos' lackeys, and those prior centuries of relative innocence now seemed not one but two or three lifetimes ago.

"Brother, are you certain you do not wish to stay in your own rooms?" asked Thor. "Surely you would be more comfortable sleeping in your own bed."

Loki shook his head. Even without taking his own rooms into consideration, he just couldn't bring himself to enter the wing of the palace where his "family" had once resided, especially when he knew that Frigga would not be there.

"I shall leave you to get settled in, then. While I would like to spend more time with you, it seems the work of a king is never done."

Loki spoke without stopping to think. "You don't have to tell me that, Thor. I'm quite used to being of no more than secondary importance to the All-Father of Asgard." When he saw the conflicted expression on his brother's face he regretted those words almost immediately; not because he felt bad for making Thor feel bad, but because he had been about to go, and now Loki would be hard pressed to get rid of him.

"Loki, I—"

"Forget I said it! I mean it, just go do whatever needs to be done. I want to be alone for a while anyway."

As he had expected, his brother crossed his arms over his chest defiantly. "I am not leaving this room until I hear you say that you understand your importance to me."

"Very well," said Loki, relieved that he wouldn't have to lie. "I understand my importance to you perfectly."

Thor scowled at him. "I can recognize your doublespeak, Brother."

"You never used to."

The scowl faded, and Thor wore a sheepish expression instead. "In the past, I paid little attention to what anyone said, and only heard what I wanted to hear. As it says in the Book of Doom, 'When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; but when I became a man of Doom, I set aside childish ways.'"

Loki wasn't sure what to say to that, and for more than one reason.

"Pardon me, but are you going to let me out anytime soon?" asked the occupant of the still covered cage.

Loki picked it up. "Don't leave this room then," he told Thor. "I'm going outside to let my bird out." By the time Thor gathered his wits and called after him, he had made it out the door and half way down the corridor.

⋛⋋( 'Θ')⋌⋚

In the middle of her garden, there was a banyan tree that Frigga had planted when Loki had still been small. He and the tree had grown up together, though the tree had grown considerably faster. That was fortunate; because by the time Loki was old enough to feel the need to find places to hide and be alone, the tree had been large enough to offer quite a few exceptional hiding spots among its sprawling aerial roots and branches.

Loki sat among them now, feeling certain that no one would find him; after all, somehow, Thor had never discovered this particular hiding spot of his. The one person who had known about it was Frigga, and she had generally respected his need to be alone at times.

With the cage still in one hand, he climbed up into the branches of the tree and found a good place to sit where he would be able to see anyone approaching the tree but with any luck, they wouldn't be able to see him. Holding the cage in his lap, he finally threw off its covering, revealing a magpie which, although it lacked the ability to display more than one expression, somehow still managed to look thoroughly teed off.

As soon as Loki had opened the cage, it flew out, landed on his head, and began a campaign to peck a hole in the top of Loki's skull. Loki dropped the cage as he attempted to cover his head with his arms. "Hey, cut it out! What do you think you're doing, Ikol?"

The bird came to rest on his shoulder."Ikol?"

"I can't keep calling you Loki, or even 'Other' Loki. It's too confusing."

"Then why don't you go by something else?"

"Because this is my timeline, and I was here first. Besides, while we're in Asgard, I can't go around calling a bird 'Loki' while I call myself something else. People will think I've lost what little was left of my mind."

"Fine, call me whatever you like, but you could have let me out sooner. I was cooped up in that cage for over an hour."

"You're the one who insisted on traveling that way."

"Only because a magpie is too small to travel via Bifrost without being secured."

"You could have waited until we got to Asgard to turn yourself into a bird," Loki pointed out.

"If I'd done that, Heimdall would have seen me."

Loki couldn't believe what he had just heard. In no universe could he possibly be that dense. "Is your brain truly the size of a bird's at the moment? He'll have seen you already unless you've actively been concealing yourself from him."

"Who says I haven't?" (Loki thought that sounded like a lie; in all likelihood, his other self had completely forgotten to conceal himself from Heimdall due to the fact that he hadn't been doing anything particularly devious.) "But you know very well that while we can conceal ourselves from him at a distance, we can't make ourselves invisible."

"Oh? I'd assumed that since you're all-powerful now, you'd have found a way."

"By no means am I 'all-powerful,'" said Ikol, contemptuous. "I couldn't make myself completely invisible without the aid of a potent magical artifact. And while technically, I happen to have access to a drawer full of Reality Stones, I've explained before why they're not leaving the TVA."

"How boring of you. If I had access to the Infinity Stones, I would—"

Ikol bit his ear.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"Child, if you ever come into possession of even one of the Stones, you are to do the responsible thing and hand it over to an adult—just not Stark. Or Banner. Or most of the adults you know, for that matter."

"Just who am I supposed to give it to, then?"

Ikol tilted his birdy head, taking a moment to think before answering. "Sif or Barton. Neither possesses the ability to use such a thing, nor the creativity to do anything entirely stupid with it."

"I suppose that makes sense. But what makes you so sure that I wouldn't be able to handle—"

Ikol bit his ear again.

"Ow—alright, fine! If I ever come across an infinity stone, I'll give it to Sif or Clint. But what about Steve? Certainly, he wouldn't—"

"No."

"Pepper?"

"Definitely not."

"You think that Pepper could use the infinity stones, or that she would?"

Ikol clicked his beak together indignantly. "I'm beginning to understand why Odin didn't like it when I asked too many questions. Can't you even trust your own judgment?"

Loki turned his head slowly to arch an eyebrow at the bird.

"Alright, forget I said that."

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After they had gotten settled in their room, Bruce had fallen asleep. Leonard knew he was still exhausted from the ordeal they had all been through less than twenty-four hours before. He didn't want to disturb him, so he went back into the sitting area of the suite, where he found Thor sitting on his own. "Is everything okay?" he asked, having a feeling that the answer was no.

"Ever since I became king, I have been overwhelmed and more often than not, overwrought," Thor told him. "I fear now that there is no way I can fulfill my duties to both Asgard and to Loki, and to care for my Father."

"You've been caring for Odin yourself all this time?"

"I have my mother's once-handmaidens to help me, but I can't leave him completely to their care. If I leave him for even an hour, he asks after me. Loki needs me as well, and I haven't been there for him. I don't know what to do."

"Thor, you can't be everywhere at once. You have to decide what your priorities are. Your mental and physical health are important, too."

"But the realm, my brother, my father—all are equally important."

"Are they really equally important to you? Or do you just feel like they should be?"

Thor blinked at him, then stared at something over Leonard's shoulder for a good minute. Finally, his gaze drifted back to him. "I think it is probably the latter."

Leonard nodded. "So what is it that's most important to you?"

"Loki is my first priority," Thor answered immediately. "He is my little brother and I love him more than anything. I did not mean to neglect him; I only assumed he wouldn't need me so much since he had all of you to care for him. I was wrong, I think. But I can no longer shirk my responsibilities to Asgard as its king, and Father needs to be cared for."

"Exactly what are your responsibilities as king, Thor?"

"The King of Asgard makes the laws, enforces the laws, decides civil disputes between his subjects, and oversees economic planning for the kingdom. He is responsible for the protection of the realm, commands the Einherjar, oversees diplomacy to other realms—"

"That's a lot for one person to handle. In the United States, we have three branches of government and thousands of elected officials and government employees to handle all that. Can't some of those responsibilities be delegated to others?"

"Delegated?" Thor asked as though he'd never heard the word. Maybe it didn't translate.

"Let other people be responsible for some of those things. Maybe you could ask Pepper for advice. Being the CEO of Earth's largest tech company can't be too different from being a king." She had also been getting better at delegating recently. It was something she had made a conscious decision to work on so that she would have more time to be with Tony and the kids.

Thor nodded. "Perhaps I will speak with her."

"As for your father, even if he does ask for you constantly, you can't possibly make yourself available to him all the time. You're going to have to delegate there too. Isn't there anyone else he asks for?"

Thor's shoulders slumped. "Yes, but neither of them are likely to go to him. I doubt Frigga will ever return to Asgard, and I cannot ask Loki to see him, can I?"

"It probably wouldn't be a good idea," Leonard agreed.

-⋆⁺₊ ⋆ ︎ ₊ ⁺⋆ ₊ ︎ ⋆ ⁺₊⋆-

The suns were getting low in the sky, and Loki had all but fallen asleep in his hiding spot in the banyan tree. Ikol had already fallen asleep on his shoulder.

Maybe he would just stay there all night. When he didn't return, Thor would worry about him, which would serve him right; but then again, he didn't want to worry any of the others. He had caused Tony in particular enough grief lately.

Loki sat up and was about to start climbing down the tree when he heard the rustle of leaves. Someone else was coming up. He turned his head toward the sound, and a moment later he saw a familiar face framed in golden locks. "Mother?"

"I'm here," said Frigga.

"But what are you doing here? I didn't think you would ever return to Asgard."

Frigga pulled herself onto the same branch where he and Ikol perched. She wore a cashmere sweater and light colored jeans, which was both curious and a little reassuring, considering the fact that her new husband had once declared a woman wearing jeans to be "a symbol of the vulgar American capitalist agenda."

"Did you leave Victor von Doom already?" Loki asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

"No, I did not. In fact, both he and Zora have accompanied me here for Lady Kelda's funeral."

Loki nearly fell backwards out of the tree, but caught himself at the last moment. Ikol woke with a squawk, launching himself off Loki's shoulder and hovering in the air until Frigga held out her arm and he landed on it. "Mother, you can't have brought Victor von Doom to Asgard! I doubt the new All-Father will be happy about it when he finds out."

"I don't see why your brother should mind. He has given my marriage his blessing," Frigga pointed out.

"Just because he accepted that you were going to do whatever you wanted to do doesn't mean that he wants Victor von Doom in Asgard. Not to mention, half of the Avengers are here, and they're more than a little upset that Zora ran off with that blasted scepter and likely handed it off to your insane dictator of a husband."

"She didn't give the scepter to Victor, Loki."

"Where is it then?" Loki demanded.

"That's nothing for you to be concerned about." Frigga gave him one of her firmest "and you're not to ask about it again, young man" looks.

A tension in Loki's chest that he didn't know he was carrying released. He was glad to know that it was Frigga who was in possession of an Infinity Stone and not Doom, but then again, Ikol had just told him to give any such stones he found to Sif or Clint. He hadn't mentioned Frigga.

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Author's Note:

As promised, this story is back from hiatus and should be published weekly it's until it's finished :)

I realize now that I got Kelda's last name wrong in chapter 16. In the comics, her name is Kelda Stormrider, not Kelda Stormbreaker. Stormbreaker is the name of Thor's ax (the one he had Eitri forge for him in Infinity War). I'm now contemplating whether or not to go back and fix it or let it stand as it is:

He wouldn't mind too much being married to Kelda "the Sexy" Stormbreaker. Yes, she could break Thor's storm anytime.

OR

He wouldn't mind too much being married to Kelda "the Sexy" Stormrider. Yes, she could ride Thor's storm anytime.

Wow, I'm really not sure which is worse...