Well now, dear readers! After the last two chapters, we're all asking one question: How will the Avengers react? I'm sorry to have kept you waiting for an answer, but here it is! Enjoy! (Also, thank you to everyone who's been reviewing and communicating with me. Even if the last chapter was your first review for this story, I still love hearing from you. Please feel free to keep it up!)

Loki said nothing else until the next day.

In fact, nobody said much until the next day.

They had all been absolutely seething with questions, but mercy seemed the more apt route to take, all things considered. Loki deserved a bit of rest – as did they all.

The next morning, the tower was silent save for the sounds of Pepper and Bruce moving around, going from room to room, Pepper for maternal comfort and Bruce for medical care.

As Bruce sat by Tony's bedside, he remarked, "Sure is lucky you've got enough medical supplies to stock a small hospital."

"Yeah," Tony groaned, sitting up a bit, "I thought it might come in handy."

Bruce drew up a vaccine absently. "So . . ."

"So." Tony sighed loudly, though he barely flinched as Bruce injected him with antibiotics.

Bruce put pressure on the site to stave off any bleeding. "So, Elizabeth."

"Yeah."

He took the syringe apart and put the needle into a small orange sharps box, throwing the rest of it into a trash bag. "Did you . . . did you have any idea?"

"Not a clue."

"Okay, good." Bruce pulled out a stethoscope, placing the buds into his ears and rubbing the metal circle to warm it. "Glad I wasn't the only one."

Tony stayed still as Bruce listened to his heart and lungs, but, as soon as the stethoscope was put away again, he said, "Has he said anything yet?"

Bruce shook his head, lowering his voice and glancing furtively behind himself at the open door to make sure there were no eavesdroppers. Specifically of the Norse god variety. "But, just between you and me, he almost died," Bruce said. "By the time we got him back to the tower, he was right on the brink."

Tony gave a low whistle. "Crazy son-of-a-"

"I know." Bruce was packing his things back onto his medical cart, saying, "Look, don't mention what I just told you to anyone. Least of all Thor."

"No sweat."

"'Cause he's worried enough as it is."

Tony gave a hum of understanding, and Bruce was out the door. "You're recovering really well," he told Tony. "Don't do anything stupid."

"I'll try."

Bruce closed the door to Tony's room, heading down the hall. He knocked gently before entering, but he didn't expect an answer. His patient was probably asleep. He had been an hour ago, at least.

Quietly, Bruce pushed the door open, glancing around the room. The fabric over the mirror was always up now; he made a mental note to ask Loki about that sometime. When he was up to talking, of course. Everything else was neat as a pin. Just like Elizabeth had left it.

Lying in bed with the blankets pulled up to his shoulders was Loki. He was still pale, but not nearly as ghastly as he had been the day prior. Bruce laid a hand on his forehead; the fever had gone down as well.

Bruce almost laughed at the irony of the current situation. Not long ago, he would have never anticipated treating Loki this way – caring for him as he cared for his best friends, nursing him back to health because he genuinely wanted to see him live through this.

Under Bruce's hand, Loki's eyes opened blearily, blinking away the twenty-odd hours of sleep that had hit him like a wrecking ball the second he had collapsed into bed.

"Hey there," Bruce said, pulling his hand away and writing down the decreased fever in his notes.

Loki licked his lips sleepily, and then he muttered, "Did everybody live?"

"Yeah," Bruce replied, setting aside his medical equipment for a moment and just talking as a friend. "But you had me going there for a while."

Loki gave a long exhale. "I'm not ready to die. Not when I have only just earned my freedom."

For a moment, Bruce just looked at him. Then, he said, "I'm not gonna ask, but I hope you know that won't last forever."

"Oh I hope not," Loki said. "All of you deserve an explanation."

"Yeah, I think we do." Bruce folded his arms easily and shifted his weight to one leg. "But, as long as we're being straight with each other, I wanted to say thank you." Loki didn't respond, but Bruce didn't need him to. "You saved our lives back there. At the risk of your own. You, of all people, didn't have to do that."

"Yes I did," Loki drawled, a hint of his personality returning to him. "After you were all so kind to me, even going so far as to call me a friend, I could hardly leave you to die. I owed you a lot; even if I didn't, it would have changed nothing." He paused, taking a deep, sleepy breath. "You know, when we're not trying to kill each other, we actually make a good team."

Bruce let out a small laugh. "Ain't that the truth." He gave Loki a little pat on the shoulder, saying, "Get some rest. I won't bother you any more now."

Loki nodded drowsily, and, when Bruce was about to leave, said, "Thank you. For caring."

Bruce turned back and looked at him. "You're welcome, Loki."

He shut Loki's door just as quietly as he had opened it.

Bruce walked down the hall from Loki's room, proceeding to his next patient of the morning. He didn't know much about Asgardian medicinal practices, but he was trying. Between Thor, Loki, and Sif, he figured he would learn very quickly.

Again, he knocked on the door more out of courtesy than request. When he heard no objection to his entrance, he opened the door to the room that Tony had lent to Sif.

The woman was propped up on her elbow in bed, reading a thick volume. When she heard Bruce pull his medical cart into her room, she looked up. "Son of Banner," she greeted.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" he asked good-naturedly, unwrapping a blood pressure cuff and draping his stethoscope about his neck. "We fought Chitauri together. You can call me Bruce."

She almost smiled, nodding. "Bruce," she repeated. "What a strange name."

He put the stethoscope into his ears, glancing up at her before pressing the metal disc to her chest. "I could say the same thing about you guys. Now breathe deep."

She obeyed, familiar with the routine at this point. During their day of recovery time so far, Bruce had probably taken their vitals at least five times. He had a chart set up for each patient, save Loki, who had been asleep, and Bruce hadn't had the heart to wake him.

Once he had put the stethoscope back around his neck, jotting her vitals down on his clipboard, Sif said, "I still find it difficult to believe that you were that giant green creature during the battle."

"Yeah, well," he replied, wrapping the blood pressure cuff around her upper arm, "my theory is that we've all got a rage monster somewhere inside us. Mine's just a little less metaphorical."

"So you only look like that when you're angry?"

He watched the dial as he pumped air into the cuff, pressing his stethoscope to the crook of her elbow. "Not so much anymore. I've learned to control it. But, it's not like I stick the Other Guy in a cage until I need him; we've learned to coexist." He removed the stethoscope from his ears and deflated the cuff, shrugging. "He's just a different side of me, really."

"The bad side?"

Bruce shrugged again, recording her blood pressure. "Just a side."

She nodded, settling back into her upright pillow. Sif just watched him as he drew antibiotics and pain relievers into a syringe, clearing it with a flick of his finger. When he reached for her arm, she obliged. She held perfectly still for the shot, and, as he put pressure on the injection site, she said, "You remind me of him." Bruce looked at her, and she specified, "Loki."

His brow creased as he separated the syringe. "How so?"

"You're both so . . . gentle."

Bruce chuckled to himself, writing the dosage that he had given her on her chart. "If you think he's gentle, I'd hate to see his rage monster."

"I presume you already have," she told him, picking up her book and setting it in her lap.

Bruce just looked at her, confused.

She sighed. "When last you saw him – he's not normally like that. He's normally –" her voice trailed off, and her eyes drifted to follow. "He's normally like this," she finished, more quietly. "But they do not sing songs or tell tales of the ones who form the pedestal upon which the hero stands."

"So, what?" Bruce asked, folding his arms loosely. "Was he just having a bad day?"

Sif shot him a harsher look. "More like a bad year. He did die, after all." When Bruce just stared at her, she asked, "Did Thor not tell you the story?"

He shook his head. "Tell me."

For a moment, she considered. Then, she nodded at the edge of her bed. "You may wish to sit, for it is a lengthy tale."

So he sat, and he listened as Sif explained, "You must first understand Frost Giants. We on Asgard know them to be barbaric warlords who strike fear into most everybody who encounters them. They are twice our size, with blue skin like marble and eyes redder than all of the blood they've spilt over the centuries. They live on Jotunheim, in a realm of eternal winter and have long been the enemies of my people, the Aesir."

Bruce nodded, and she took a breath. "Once, centuries ago, there was a war," she began, "between the Aesir and the Jotunns—Frost Giants. Much was lost during the war, but the Aesir arose victorious. In the wreckage of the Jotunn temple, our king, Odin Allfather, found a Jotunn baby. His conscience convicted him, and he simply could not leave it to die. So he brought it back to Asgard and raised it as one of his own – a prince – with no knowledge of its true parentage and race. That Jotunn child was Loki."

Bruce cocked his head at her. "Thor said once that his brother was adopted."

"Then you know this part already?"

"No, please, continue."

Sif acquiesced with a nod. "He never was quite like the rest of us. We never understood why; he never understood why. So, when he recently discovered of his heritage entirely by accident, it was naturally quite a shock. Especially when taking into account that all Aesir children know to fear the Frost Giants and all Aesir adults—including Loki—know to despise them."

"Wow," Bruce breathed. "So now all of Asgard knows he's a Frost Giant?"

"No," Sif said. "Aside from his parents, the king and queen, only Loki, Thor, and I know."

"Oh, okay. So they don't all hate him?"

She looked at him a bit sharply. "He hated himself. Is that not worse?"

Bruce was all too familiar with the self-loathing that had originally come along with the Other Guy. "Without a doubt," he replied.

She thought for a moment, eventually saying, "To make a very long story as short as I possibly can, he had a vendetta against the Frost Giants. He was determined to kill them all – to disown his own race."

"Couldn't Thor stop him?"

"Thor was banished to Midgard," she said. "Odin had fallen into the Odinsleep, and Loki was acting as king in his stead. All this, not a day after he learned of his true bloodline."

Bruce shook his head. In his mind, he pictured all of these events playing out with the Loki that he had seen defending them the day before at the center of it all. The man who had saved all of their lives in an explosion of almost-reckless passion. "That had to be tough," he said, and he meant it.

"More than you know," Sif told him. "I looked at him, and, I knew it was his face. I recognized his body, his features, his voice. But it was not him. He had become hollow, and, though he is the best liar I will likely ever know, he could not hide this fact from me."

She took a breath. "He helped the Frost Giants into Asgard under the pretense of allowing them the opportunity to kill Odin while he slept, but his plan all along was to kill them instead, thereby saving his father and earning his place as a hero. Affirming himself. Formally denouncing his own blood. It would have worked, had Thor not returned to Asgard and exposed Loki's trick.

"The brothers struck out at each other in violent rage, Thor destroying the Bifrost in the process." Bruce eyed her blankly. "The Bifrost is a means by which we could travel between realms; a long Rainbow Bridge led up to an observatory that provided transport portals."

"Ah."

"Thor broke the bridge, and – understand that I was not present for this part, so all that I say is merely what Thor has told me – in the course of their fight, they both had fallen over the edge."

"What's over the edge?"

She fixed him with a troubled gaze. "Ask Loki. As far as I know, a void of nothing. And it was over this void that both brothers hung, and Loki –" She paused. "Loki let go."

For a moment, Bruce sat in stunned silence. When his voice returned to him, he asked, "What?"

"Odin had awoken and had come to save them. He held Thor, Thor held one end of the staff, and Loki held the other." She hesitated for a second, the memory clearly painful for her. Her fingers were twisting themselves in a black leather bracelet around her wrist, turning it around and around. "He just . . . let go. And he fell."

"He – he killed himself?" Bruce asked. He remembered a gun, pointing right into his own mouth, tears streaming down his face, his trembling finger pulling the trigger. "No one deserves to feel that lost."

"You speak from experience," she observed shrewdly.

He shrugged. "It's the only way to know."

She looked at him a moment, studying the sincerity in his face before clearing her throat. "He fell," she repeated. "When he landed, it was on a Chitauri moon. They enticed him with an artifact that would provide unlimited power."

"The Tesseract."

"Yes. He had little choice but to help them; failure promised great suffering, and success promised great profit. It was hardly a decision at all. So he was sent to Midgard to find as much information as he could."

"And that's right about when we met him," Bruce finished. Sif was watching him carefully, gaging his reaction. He was sure he looked about as troubled as he felt.

She hesitated, then she said, "As he himself pointed out to me, that does not change what he did. But I hope it helps you envision him as a person. Yes, what he did was wrong, and that is why he did not run from his punishment or even plead his case. Just know that, when I say that circumstances hadn't been kind, I do mean it."

Bruce mulled that over for a moment, running a hand over his face. "He hasn't had it easy, has he?"

Sif just shook her head. "Now do you see what I mean?" she asked. "The last time, you and your comrades only saw the rage monster. This time, you finally get to see the man."

"And it's nice to meet him," Bruce told her.

She leaned back into her pillow, a crease deepening between her brows. "He would be upset," she hinted, "if he knew I told you."

Bruce smiled at her, pushing his medical cart out into the hallway. "Don't worry; he'll never know. It's safe with me."

Sif nodded and offered him a miniscule smile in return for his silence as he closed the door.