Book was very thorough in his lessons. It didn't take long for Loki to realize that the boy hadn't been lying—he really could thrive. Lesson 1: Don't look homeless if you can help it. This meant that nearly every morning they walked five blocks to a park and skulked in the bushes until an old man wandered by and unlocked the door to a concrete washhouse. They only had the dim light from mesh covered openings just below the roof and had to share the space with thin-legged spiders and crickets that liked to jump out of dark corners. But it allowed them to scrub their faces and hands. Book also suggested scrubbing at their underarms as well, even if they couldn't sponge off entirely. Loki agreed. He'd never been overly fond of the smell of human exertion—less so when it was he himself who reeked of mortality. Mortality and secondhand clothes.

There wasn't always soap, and sometimes the old man didn't show up before they had to move on. Those days meant more walking to the closest gas station. Sometimes they had to forgo the wash all together and make do with splashing their hands in a fountain.

Lesson 2: Stealing had better be worth the risk. And whatever you steal can't be something that couldn't be chocked up to desperation. Petty cash and food were all right, you could usually talk your way out of it without involving the authorities. Things of value, however, were harder to explain—and apparently harder to forgive. And though Loki was quite adept at filling his own pockets with others' things, Book had a valid point that a person was far more likely to forgive an innocent kid—emphasized by Book widening his eyes and gnawing on his lip, taking years off his age—than a "creeper."

Lesson 3: You're not too good to do a job—any job. It seemed Book managed to get by most of the time with his own earnings. A number of businesses paid him to do odd jobs and individuals often employed him as a "yard slave." This Loki struggled with—he'd never had a job in his life, other than keeping life on Asgard from getting unbearably dull, and he'd never really been paid for that. Work he was well acquainted with, but a job? His pride rebelled against the idea. He was a prince, a conqueror. Unfortunately Book was not so benevolent as to work for the both of them. Loki's status as an apparent "illegal alien" didn't help either. He couldn't hide his amusement every time the boy called him that.

And the lessons continued, each day bringing a new slice of information or trick of the trade. Before long, Book would be unneeded and Loki could turn his attention fully to the matter of his patron. Without his voice, however, the boy became useful as a kind of translator. He got the gist of most of what Loki tried to communicate though they certainly weren't having discussions of much depth.

It wasn't long before the boy decided it was time for Loki to "pull his own weight." Apparently this mostly consisted of standing around and appearing familial. It would seem a complex web of rules governed the lives of children on Midgard and those unattended quickly came under suspicion. Stifling.

This particular excursion was to a "Soup Kitchen," though, Book assured him there was more than soup on the menu. A sizeable crowd—predominately men—already clustered outside the dining hall as they waited for the doors to open. Loki arched away from the murmuring masses. They smelled like unwashed kennels that had been closed up for the past three months. A sharp dig in his side drew him round as Book glared up at him.

"Get over yourself. You're not any better than the rest of us, Princess."

He shot an incredulous glance around the room. In every way possible.

A look of scrunched concentration settled across Book's face as he interpreted Loki's flash of expression. "Do a better job hiding it then—or someone will decide to teach it to you with their fists."

"Book!"
They turned to see a red-faced man pushing through the crush of bodies. He looked a bit rougher around the edges than some of the others, beard hanging from his chin and jaw in scraggled tufts and worming its way above his lips. Not a particularly big man, he sported the broad shoulders and wiry sinew of someone who knew what it was to work.

"Come here, boy," the man barked in a friendly sort of way as he grabbed Book around the neck and drug him into a back-pounding hug. "How you been?"

Squirming away, Book grinned. "Fair enough. But I haven't seen you in months!"

Untold stories hid in the wry smile the man gave. "I've been all over hell and half of Georgia. Hope to stay in one place for a stretch. You been all right while I've been gone? Still hitting them books?"

Book lifted an eyebrow and smirked.

The man raised his hands, his beard pulling away from his mouth to reveal a nicotine-stained smile. "That a' boy. Can't beat good schooling."

"Like I didn't know that."

"You got yourself a good head on your shoulders," said the man, ruffling Book's hair. Then he turned to Loki and his demeanor grew decidedly less friendly. Flint-chip eyes scrutinized him from beneath heavy brows. "I don't know you."

"Coon, this is my Uncle Loki," Book gestured between them, "Loki, this is Coon."

The man—"Coon"—thrust out his hand and grasped Loki's in a grip too tight to have been polite. Posturing, he thought with a snort, merely quirking a smile and resisting the urge to shake loose his fingers.

"Ain't heard tell of an uncle before," he said with a hint of drawl creeping into his voice.

"Dad's side of the family—haven't really had much contact with him 'cause he's been overseas for years," supplied Book.

"That right? Where abouts?" Disbelief coiled through his words.

Loki raised his hand to his throat and shook his head, not having to pretend the frustration he felt.

Book laid a hand on Coon's arm, dropping his voice. "He can't talk. Some kind of freak illness. It's why he's back."

Eyebrows inching upwards, Coon still didn't lose the hostile gleam in his eye. "That's a right shame." His gaze flicked across the crowd to the other side of the room. He turned to Book, "how about you go find out what's takin' them so blasted long to get them doors open."

"On it!" Book dove into the crowd, wriggling through the bodies like a salmon leaping upstream.

Coon leaned back against the peeling plaster wall, arms crossed over his chest. "Now, you might be good people, but I don't know you." He flicked those hard eyes back up to Loki's. His voice sunk into an edged calm, slow, almost lazy. "Anything happens to that boy and I'll hear tell of it. And then I'll be coming round for you. I already got the Law on me for one man, what's one more? You're street and there won't be nobody come looking for you." Coon scratched his chin idly, studying Loki for a long minute. "You hear me?"

Loki inclined his head, sure that the man didn't understand his sudden amusement. Try harder, little man, I've faced monsters and gods and devils—what are you to that?

The thick brows dropped ever lower with Loki's apparent lack of concern. Muscles along the shallow jaw tightened. "You'd best decide this ain't so funny," warned the man as he closed the gap between the two of them.

Loki couldn't help himself. He reached out and gave the much shorter man a condescending pat on the head. The apoplectic flush that filled the man's face made any repercussions worth it. Coon clamped his raising fist to his side as Book suddenly popped out of the crowd.

"A ketchup bottle exploded," he announced. He noticed the flush in Coon's face. "You okay, there, Coon?"

The man managed a tight smile. "Touch crowded in here is all. I'm gonna grab me some fresh air. Y'all go on ahead." He was already heading for the exit.

"Well, if you're sure," said Book with a frown. He rounded on Loki. "What did you say to him?"

He gestured at his throat in exasperation.

"Oh, don't give me that. You can make yourself perfectly clear when you want to." The doors opened, and he drug Loki into the disordered stampede of cattle that was the mass of homeless attempting to form a line. "Seriously, Coon is a good guy—those are hard to find out here."

The frantic gnawing of his stomach distracted him as the scent of cooked meat suddenly hit him above the general odor of somewhat unwashed individuals. Thankfully the line moved quickly, and before he knew it he had a brown tray with men and women wearing white mesh caps shoving plates of food at him and asking questions he couldn't always answer. Book often provided one for him. Yes mayo, yes to an apple, no pickles, and broccoli instead of fries—to be healthy.

Apparently Loki also wanted banana pudding even though he wasn't entirely sure what that was. It reminded him of karz, a yellowish delicacy among the dwarves—he certainly hoped it didn't taste like karz. He was fairly certain the dwarves had managed to not only bake off their sense of humor in their sweltering mines, but their taste buds as well.

"Score!" shouted Book as he bounced away from the line. "Hamburgers! Did we get lucky or what?" The boy led them to an abandoned table in the corner and flopped heavily into a chair.

Loki sniffed the food experimentally. More and more he realized how limited his knowledge of day to day life on Midgard really was. He was well acquainted with the realm's top secret military organizations and combat capabilities—but he had no idea what was sitting on the plate in front of him. During his last visit he'd been too busy to think of sampling the local cuisine—and pudding had hardly been a matter of importance when he'd grilled Barton on SHIELD and its agents.

Leaning in on his elbows, Book peered across the table at him. "Haven't you ever seen a hamburger before?"

Dark hair brushed against his face as Loki shook his head.

"Dude, where are you from? Space?"

Loki ignored him. This "hamburger" appeared to be composed of a roll sliced in half with meat and vegetables piled between. He lifted off the top piece of bread to reveal the bottom half slathered with red, yellow, and white sauces. As Book continued to watch him in bemusement, Loki dismantled the rest of the sandwich. There is no ham in here, he thought vaguely. I do not understand these creatures.

"Got room there for one more?" grunted Coon as he suddenly appeared at Loki's back, balancing a tray in his hand. The anger had left his face to be replaced by a kind of calculation.

"Sure!" Book beamed as he gestured at the vacant space across from him.

The other man drug out the chair with a screech and thumped his tray onto the table. He dropped down, intentionally pressing into Loki's space.

Loki rolled his eyes. I've fought for a place at the dinner table with Thor, do you think to intimidate me? Suddenly the scent of criminally unwashed human jammed its way up his nostrils. He swallowed a gag. Dear, sweet, Valhalla.

"Sorry there—ah—Loki," said Coon, his tone anything but sorry. A thought seemed to catch him halfway through a bite of his food. Jamming the half masticated slurry-covered meat into his cheek, he proceeded to talk around the food. "What kinda name is 'Loki' anyhow?"

A retort welled up only to shatter beneath an icy realization. He was going to say it was the name he was born with—but that wasn't true. An uneasy, sliding sensation dropped into his gut. Even his name was a lie—no more a name than "Book" or "Coon." Would Laufey have even bothered to name his runt of a child before he abandoned him in that temple? Perhaps his birth mother had held a name in secret for the life she bore inside her. He deliberately set his fork down as a poisonous thought crept through him, settling uneasily in his stomach. He had no proof that it wasn't his own mother that had looked in disgust at the weak thing she had bred and left him to the ice and snow.

"Trickster god," supplied Book. "Now quit bugging the guy who can't talk."

"Not that he'll have a need to with you 'round," said Coon. He might have been hiding a smile in his beard.

"Hey!" Book blustered.

The train of idle conversation rattled on, but it held little interest for Loki as he poked idly at his food. A simple question from a mortal fool ought not to have rattled him. The man didn't even recognize the force of the blow he'd unintentionally landed. Long suppressed memories clawed from the recesses of his mind where he'd locked them away with other childish fears. Nightmares of abandonment had plagued him as a child. They were rarely the same, but he remembered being dreadfully cold. Sometimes it was Thor's retreating red that tormented him, others his supposed father seeing him dangling over a precipice or fighting to stay above choppy seas and doing nothing. The worst featured Frigga. What was odd was that he never saw her face, but he knew it was her all the same.

Book's plate was nearly clean and he was eyeing Loki's pudding by the time the trickster pulled himself out of his revere. He neatly hooked his bowl away from the boy with his spoon. He raised his eyebrows and made a small circular motion with his hand. He could see the thoughts tumbling into one another as Book interpreted—correctly—that he wanted him to repeat himself.

"I said that Coon's on the run," said Book, eyes shining with boyish excitement held over from childhood games of cops and robbers. "Tell 'em, Coon."

The man kicked back his chair, balancing on the back legs as he tucked his hands into his belt loops. "Ain't much to tell. The Law says that I gotta be locked up 'cause I killed a man. Don't deny it, but I don't fancy life behind bars."

With a spoon halfway to his mouth, Book paused and leaned across the table. "You're holding out, tell him why you did it." Book turned to Loki, "Coon's not a criminal."

The man gave a swift glance around and then launched into his tale. "There was this here idiot, living down the road a-piece. He kept three, four horses on his plot." Coon gritted his teeth against the memory. "I wouldn't 'ave let that man care for a rattler. He was meaner than a striped snake and was always taking it out on them poor horses. He'd already done gone and killed one of 'em. You ever heard a horse scream?"

Loki swallowed, forcing his curled fingers to straighten in his lap. Memory of red slashes across a silken grey coat. A whip in his hand, wet not with horse blood but with the horse trainer's. He gave a short nod.

"Awful sound, fit to raise the dead. Well I wasn't 'bout to let him carry on like that. But animal control aren't worth a darned thing. What am I paying taxes for I ask you? Bureaucratic red tape and hogwash. Said there weren't enough proof. But I knew, I'd seen. So I decide that it weren't happening again. No, sir. So I sneak in and was making to run off with the last two." A sadness crept into his eyes as he rubbed at his chin. "They were right pitiful, couldn't hardly see cause of the flies crawling all over them. Just as I'm unfastening the gate, here comes their owner and he's cussing a blue streak. So I just lets the horses go. And he pulls out a gun and makes to shoot them just out of meanness. I snatched his gun away and when he came at me, I hit 'em. And I hit him again until I was sure he wouldn't be hurtin' no one else."

"But you didn't mean to kill him," said Book quickly, waiting for clarification. He needed it not to have been on purpose, regardless of the reason.

"I was so angry I don't know what I meant—but I weren't there planning to kill him," said Coon.

And what would you think of me, child? thought Loki as he reflected on the dead he carried. Even if he excluded deaths in war or self defense, the numbers would stagger most. Grim amusement ghosted across his features. When the boy found out his trust had been placed in a killer—a mass murderer from his perspective—how he would shatter.

Author's Note:

Taking a deep dive into Loki's psyche is one of my favorite parts of this story. I've tried to study his canon character traits (pre-Ragnarok) and extrapolate from there. Sometimes I mix in some elements from the mythology (as any mythos buff will pick up on), but always try to put a new spin or twist on them. Sometimes the choices I made for Loki's past and headspace took a lot of time and thought—while others were happy accidents that just came to me. This bit about him realizing that he didn't even know his real name was one such moment of revelation.

Side Note:

I went to visit my best friend this past weekend in order to spend time with her and my godchild. Now this is a house divided as my friend is Team Cap and her husband is Team Ironman. I, however, am firmly ensconced in Loki's Army. I may have secretly bought a Loki onesie and changed my little godchild into it when her parents weren't looking. Since she was also wearing pants and a little jacket they were none the wiser. I bid them farewell and it wasn't until some hours later that they discovered my attempts to convert their child to the Trickster's forces. I am well pleased with myself.