Sorry, guys, it's a short chapie, but I hope you'll like it ;)

Chapter 8

It had been three days since Loki first set foot in Jane and Thor's apartment. Three of the most boring days in his life. Even the ones the young king had spent in his cell had been more fun because of his mother's daily visits.

The young king lay on his bed in the spare room of the apartment. It was still dark outside. Loki never managed to get more than four or five hours sleep per night. Every time he closed his eyes, the usual nightmares took their grip on his imagination. Nightmares about The Battle of New York, the empty and dark nights and days in his cell, but also child memories of his first battles.
Loki sometimes wondered if Thor suffered from the same nightmares. His stepbrother, who always led the battles, never seemed scared. And when he was finally accompanied by his hammer, Mjölnir, Thor had been the nightmare of most of their enemies… But Loki had always been the soft one. He wasn't as big, as strong or as fast as his brother and that was the probably the main reason why his mother had taught him how to use magic.

The young king had recently found out that he had chosen the right time to come down to earth. A time called vacation. It basically meant that Frigga didn't have to go to school. Also Thor didn't have to go to work. He kept on talking about different shifts during this particular period. Loki had been wondering what Thor did for living…
Only Jane sometimes left to go to her laboratory. She worked – off all places - at Stark Tower. After Stark had rebuild his tower, now with a huge A on top of it, he had changed two floors into an enormous, high tech laboratory, fully intended for research on Alien Power Sources and Energy or APSE as he liked to call it. In short, he was trying to build a new Tesseract or something that had the same unlimited power. Loki knew Thor had tried to convince Stark not to make one, but once Stark had said his mind on something, there was no stopping him.

Little Frigga would ask her parents every five minutes if they could go the park, but because it had been raining for the last three day everybody was forced to stay inside. Even Loki was starting to get irritated to walk through the lousy apartment, seeing the same walls, the same pictures, the same grey view outside, the same three faces,… He was quite sure Thor was responsible for the bad weather.
Because Loki was always up really early, he could hear Thor leave and come back half an hour later before anyone woke up. He supposed his stepbrother went to wherever he had hidden Mjölnir. The hammer gave him the power to control the weather and by doing that he could make sure that Loki stayed inside the house so he could keep an eye on him. A pathetic plan according to the young king.

Loki checked the digital watch next to his bed. Six o'clock. Time to get up. Loki left the room as quiet as possible and made his way to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and got himself a can of the delicious drink he'd had in the park: Coca Cola. Frigga had already warned him that it wasn't very healthy, but he just ignored her and said: "You've had five years with this drink, I've had thousands without it…" Then he would open the can and leave the little girl by her own. She had made a game out of spying on the young king and every time he tried to get a coke, she would sprint to the kitchen and grab the last one from the fridge.

Loki took a sip of the coke and opened the glass door leading to a small balcony while he changed his appearance in "Tony's". Thor thought that even this high - the apartment was on the tenth floor - people would be able to spot Loki sitting outside. The young king didn't really care. This way he could at least practise his magic.

Loki said down, feet dangling over the edge and looked over New York. In the far distance, a bit to the left, he could see the massive construction of Stark Tower, standing close to the Empire State Building. In front of him, Loki looked over Central Park. From this angle it all looked quite close, but the young king knew it was entirely the opposite.
After the incident at Central Park , Loki and Thor had to do whole way to the apartment by foot because Jane had taken the car to go home with Frigga. Not something the young wanted to do again any time soon. He got sick from the constant smell of what Thor called hot dogs... You could literally find a hotdog stand on every damn corner! Loki couldn't understand why anyone would want to eat a warm dog…

The young king noticed that for the first time in days it wasn't raining. Maybe Thor had accepted that he couldn't keep deceiving everyone. Or maybe he just overslept this time…
A second later Loki got his answer. Thor stumbled into the kitchen, trying to tie his shoelaces while searching for his keys he always left on the kitchen table. Only then he realised that Loki was staring at him with a smug smile covering his face. Thor sighed. He grabbed his keys and walked over to the balcony.

"Why are you up so early?" he asked while putting on his coat.

Loki grinned.
"I'm always up this early, you only didn't notice because you're too busy getting everyone soaked."

"No idea what you mean!" Thor answered.

Loki's grin grew even bigger when he looked up at his stepbrother.
"Oh come on, Thor! You may deceive everybody else, but I know a magic storm when I see it. I may not understand how that television-thing works, but I do know what an idiot pointing at little suns is doing. That guy is going to lose his job because of you…"

Thor waited a few seconds before giving in. He sighed and set down next to his brother.
"There's just no deceiving you, is there?" he said with a smile.

"Fantastic, after a thousand years he finally got it!" Loki answered sarcastically.

Thor didn't respond, so Loki continued.
"I am the God of Mischief, I deceive people, not the other way around…"

"Well, making bad weather is my job…" Thor said.

"Oh, and that involves sneaking off in the middle of the night…"

Thor sighed. Loki smiled and drank from his coke.

"So," Loki started after short silence, "where is the mighty Mjölnir?"

Thor shook his head. "Forget it. Not in a thousand years I would bring you any close to Mjölnir."

Loki pulled up his eyebrows.
"Why not, if I might ask?"

"If you're king now, you'll be able to actually carry Mjölnir yourself. Next to that you probably have the power to take away my powers…" Thor explained.

Loki thought about that a moment. He didn't want to admit it, but he wasn't entirely sure that he could do that. After all, technically he wasn't king. Not until the former king would have crowned him, but Loki immediately forgot about that possibility.

"Good point!" he said. "But why would I do that?"

Thor pulled up his eyebrows in surprise.
"I think you've got enough reasons, no matter how ridiculous…"

The young king rolled his eyes and crushed the now empty can in his hands.
"I mean, 'why now?' In case you forgot: I could have forced you to leave Mjölnir on Asgard, but even when you wanted to return it willingly, I let you keep it."

Thor frowned. The memory of his last moments on Asgard became visible before his eyes. Now he knew that Odin was in fact Loki, he didn't really know what to think of it.

Loki got to his feet and was ready to go inside again when Thor stopped him.
"Why? Why didn't you take Mjölnir?" he asked.

Loki swallowed. He knew that one reason was the fact that he wouldn't have been able to use Mjölnir, but over the years the young king had found a second reason.

"Even though it's hard for me to admit it…", The God of Mischief started sarcastically, "a king is nothing without his warriors. Taking Mjölnir away from you is just asking for trouble…"

Thor looked up at his brother and tried to make out if he was just selling nonsense or not.

"And by the way, I don't think that Mjölnir would suit me…" the young king added with a smile.

A sudden sound made the two brother look up. Jane walked into the kitchen, dragging her feet and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
"Why are you two awake! It's half past six! Am I the only one who understands the meaning of sleeping?" Jane said while making herself a strong cup of coffee. "And to think that I'm the one who's supposed to go to work!"

Jane looked sleepily at the two men in front of her. Her eyes rested on on Loki for a moment. He still looked like the guy she met in the park. Jane just couldn't get used to the weird feeling Loki's illusions gave her.

Thor got to his feet and joined his wife.

"II thought you didn't need to be in today?" he asked while taking a coffee cup for himself. Jane pulled up her shoulders.

"Tony called me out of bed. He thinks he may have found the problem with the Energy Converter. At least Jarvis has…"

"That's already the fifth time this week!" Thor mumbled while opening the fridge to get the milk.

"Not like I can help it..." Jane muttered while supressing a yawn. "Maybe I can finally get on with my work…"

Thor stood behind Jane and put his arms around her waist. "How can I convince you that it has no use trying to make a new Tesseract! It's dangerous!"

Jane turned around so see could look Thor in the eyes.
"I know… but think of the possibilities… we just want it's power…" she said softly, but Thor's serious expression didn't fade away.

"By the way, if it makes you feel any better: I don't think Tony is going to succeed. According to my research, it's as good as impossible… " Jane finished sadly.

She softly touched Thor's face until he looked at least a little bit less worried. Not that she blamed him. Until a couple of years ago everyone would have said that a millionaire in flying super suit was impossible too…

"And Stark delivers the perfect tools to work with… I can actually get somewhere now…" Jane said.

Thor smiled and tried to kiss Jane, but they were rudely interrupted by Loki who pretended to throw up.
"Do that stuff in your room!" the young king said. He had already change into his own appearance again. "It's bloody disgusting!"

Thor and Jane both took a step back. They really didn't feel like arguing with Loki at the moment.

Suddenly an idea sprang to Jane's mind. She quickly glanced at the God of Mischief. Should she? Would he want to help her? She could only give it a try.

Jane turned to Loki and searched for words.
"Eeeh, Loki, I was wondering… maybe you could help us build a new unlimited power source… like the Tesseract." she said.

Thor immediately opened his mouth to stop Loki from answering. He was quite sure Loki was able to help them, but he never got the chance to say anything.
Loki's usual sneer disappeared almost immediately. A flash of horror shot through his light grey eyes.

Jane didn't notice so she just kept talking.
"I just thought you'd probably know a thing or two about… you know… the Tesseract…"

Silence filled the air while Jane waited for an answer. Only then she noticed the strange look on Loki's face. For a moment it seemed like the God of Mischief was lost in thoughts, horrible thoughts, but a second later his eyes lit up again. The young king looked around the kitchen.

"No!" he said harshly before leaving the room.

Jane watched him confusedly. Also Thor didn't fully understand why his brother was acting like this.

"Did.. did I say something wrong?" Jane asked cautiously after a couple of minutes.

Thor had been thinking over the same words. He couldn't think of any reason why Jane was to blame… So he turned around a forced his most charming smile on his face.

"Of course not honey… You better get going, you don't want to let Stark waiting…"

Jane tried to smile.
"Right, don't forget to wake Frigga up before eleven o'clock. Otherwise she won't sleep tonight…" She said. "And you could go to the park today, I believe it's going to be a lovely day!"

Jane drank her coffee in one gulp, kissed Thor softly on his cheek and ran off to get dressed, leaving her husband on his own.

The God of Thunder's smile disappeared the moment his wife left. He ran over Jane's words over and over again. She had spoken about nothing but the Tesseract. Thor promised himself he would look in to it. He knew Loki long enough to know when his brother was scared to death…

I know, still nothing really exiting yet... sorry... maybe next chapter, if not then certainly the one after that...

Hope you enjoyed it! Please review ;)