"Christmastime doesn't officially show up until I see this one every year," Tony said, happily shoveling a handful of caramel corn in his mouth.

The Avengers (and Loki, for whatever bizarre reason) were sprawled on the various couches in Tony's home theatre, most of them looking content. Pepper had gotten up just at the end of the chorus of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and was now returning from the kitchen, carrying a huge platter, which she put on the coffee table in the center of the room amid the debris of their earlier snacks.

"What on earth is that?" Loki asked, his face twisting in confusion.

"It's a Yule log," Pepper said, looking a little disappointed. "I thought maybe you and Thor might recognize it."

Thor regarded it curiously, then said, "And so I do! It is a cake!"

"Well, yes," Pepper said. "I guess they used to just have a real Yule log that they burned in a fireplace, but the French came up with the idea of turning it into a dessert instead."

"Leave it to the French to turn a pile of dried-up wood into a fancy-schmancy dessert," Clint said, but he was already positioning himself to be first in line for a piece.

"It's significantly different than the last one I saw," Loki said. "For one thing, it isn't on fire. For another, it looks delicious."

Pepper smiled as she pulled out a knife and cut it into round slices, handing them out to the others.

"Chocolate and raspberry," Thor said, grinning. "By far, this is the most delectable bit of firewood I have ever eaten."

"Why does it have little mushrooms on it?" Loki asked, poking them critically with his fork.

"Those are meringue," Pepper said. "They're just a decoration to make it look more realistically log-like."

"As long as they aren't poisonous," Loki said, chewing one thoughtfully. "Thor, do you remember that idiot from Alfheim? What was his name? Dranorban?"

"Aye," Thor said. "I also recall he did indeed try to poison you."

"Yes, with mushrooms," Loki said as casually as if he were discussing the weather.

"Wait, what?" Clint asked. "Someone tried to kill you? How utterly… unsurprisingly really, now that I think about it."

"Yes," Loki said, not looking especially emotional over it. "However, I was barely more than a child at the time, so it was perhaps a little less understandable. In any case, I believe his actual target was Thor as the crown prince, but the mushrooms happened to find their way into my room."

"Meaning you stole them," Thor said.

"Meaning I stole them," Loki agreed. "However, it was rather a good thing that I did take them as I had happened to be studying potion ingredients at the time, one of which was the precise type of mushroom in the prettily decorated little basket. They were, of course, lethal."

"You had a pretty intense childhood," Bucky said, stabbing the cake with his fork.

"I suppose. Father wasn't very pleased when he found out," Loki said.

"What'd he do?" Tony asked.

"He invited Dranorban to either eat the mushrooms himself or be cast into the abyss of space," Loki said. "He chose the mushrooms. At least he planned a speedy and painless death for whomever was his intended target. But regardless, he was still dead."

Natasha looked at him for a long moment before saying, "And what else?"

He returned her gaze silently, then sighed, adding, "And then Father locked me in the dungeons for three weeks for being a thief."

"He did?" Thor asked, looking unhappy. "That part I did not know."

"Yes, well, you left on a hunting trip with your friends the day after it occurred, so you were away," Loki said. "Why would you?"

"I take it back," Bucky said. "You had a pretty intense and deeply messed up childhood."

There was an uncomfortable pause before Tony looked around almost frantically and then made an obvious attempt to redirect the conversation.

"That's great and all, or horrible and all as the case might be, but what the hell does any of this have to do with Snoopy?" Tony asked, pointing at the screen. "Aren't we required to discuss it or we earn the fury of Fury?"

"I like this one," Peter said, looking up from his cake.

"For once, Santa isn't a jerk," Clint agreed. "Granted, he's not in this, but it's still refreshing not to find out jolly old St. Nick needs a good kick in the keister in one of these."

"So, Charlie Brown is suffering from seasonal depression over the holidays?" Steve asked.

"Charlie Brown is always depressed, regardless of the season," Bruce said. "But basically, yeah. Christmas can be a rough time."

Steve looked thoughtful for a while, then said, "I can get that. My first Christmas back after freezing wasn't very pleasant. Nick stopped by my apartment in the afternoon and we played cards for a while, which was nice of him, but I hadn't met most of you yet, and pretty much everybody else was gone. Wasn't a great feeling."

"There are few feelings more dismal than to be alone during a time of celebration," Loki said, glancing first at Steve, then at Tony before returning to eating his cake.

"Yeah," Tony said, choosing to say nothing more.

"The music is fun, though," Pepper said almost desperately, trying to get the conversation lighter again.

"Yes, the bit during the Christmas play when they were all dancing was festive but rather strange," Thor said. "Also, who were the twin girls?"

"Those were 3 and 4," Peter said.

"What?" Clint said, looking at him like he'd lost his mind.

"That's their names: 3 and 4. They have a brother named 5," Peter said, licking the chocolate frosting off his fork. "Schultz was criticizing people being treated impersonally, or at least that's my take on it."

"Exactly!" Bruce said. "Inside a Christmas special that focuses on the emptiness of commercialization, Schultz puts in two minor characters who embody the extreme effects of eschewing traditional concepts of identity and humanity! It's brilliant!"

"It's two kids doing this," Tony said, shifting his head back and forth rhythmically. "I don't think it's got to be deeper than that."

"Maybe, maybe not," Bruce said, topping off his cake with a swallow of hot chocolate.

"Regardless, the focus is definitely on Christmas being too much about overly modern things," Steve said. "I'm kind of glad I missed the aluminum Christmas tree era. They look too cold."

"I don't know," Tony said. "Put some lights on them, a few glass ornaments, and they're okay."

Bucky wrinkled his nose.

"I think people forget how much the world changed in about thirty years," he said. "Everything went space age, jet propelled, mechanical, and a lot of the softer things got pushed aside as being corny."

"I don't think it's like that so much now, though," Natasha said. "It sort of swung one way, then back the other, but different."

"Maybe," Steve said, "but I like Charlie Brown. He's a good kid. Maybe it was sentimental to want to help the one little wooden tree, but it was sweet."

"Can we all just agree that was not the same tree at the end?" Clint said. "I don't care how much stuff they took off Snoopy's doghouse, there is no way that tree looked that spectacular."

"You're forgetting the power of Linus's blanket," Bruce said.

"And that made it turn from a single scruffy branch into a mini-version of the White House Christmas tree?" Clint said.

"It's the magic of Christmas and love," Pepper said firmly, setting down her hot chocolate. "It's transformative."

"Hope," Tony said, wrapping his arm around her "Even when things seem impossible, hope makes it better. For once, I'm willing to suspend a little disbelief in the spirit of the holidays."

"That's nice," Steve said, smiling.

"Now get out," Tony said, grinning as he opened the door. "And clean your stuff up. Pepper and I had to do everything last time."

To a series of grumbles, they all got up and began putting the room in order. Normally, either Clint or Tony would have been shooting Loki dirty looks at his refusal to fix the problem with magic, but he was nowhere to be found. Oddly, neither was Natasha.

Two forms were seen on the helipad. Loki was one, but the other was much smaller than Thor, who was currently drying plates inside.

"You knew," she said quietly, and he didn't startle.

"About the mushrooms that were meant for Thor?" Loki said, still looking at the sky. "Yes. I did. I also knew if I told him they were poison, he would think I was sulking over not getting a gift as well and trying to ruin his fun, and he would eat them to spite me."

"So you stole them."

"So, I stole them," he said. "It was entirely in character for me, just as it would have been perfectly reasonable for Thor to think I was lying out of malice."

"He never figured it out, did he."

"No," he said with a brief laugh. "I didn't even earn an invitation to go hunting with him and his friends the next day. Instead, once he left, I was locked up."

Natasha said nothing.

"There is no reason to pity me," he said, sounding almost angry as he turned towards her. "I got away with many truly petty and cruel tricks over the years. Sooner or later, I did something to deserve it."

"Probably," she said. "But not that time."

He sighed and looked back out at what little of the stars could be seen over New York.

"No," he said. "Not that time."

She stood with him, craning her neck up to look into the blackness.

"What would you do if Linus's heavenly host just suddenly appeared up there right now, singing away?" she asked.

"Run," he said, with a quiet snort of laughter, "because I could be certain whatever message of peace they brought would never be meant for the likes of me."

Natasha smiled sadly as she looked away.

"Me too," she said. "You stopping by this week?"

"Perhaps."

"And perhaps I'll be around. If not, feel free to raid the fridge. Someone should eat that cheesecake before it goes bad."

She started to go back into the penthouse when she heard him call out, "Natasha!"

She turned, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Not a word of this."

She smiled and shook her head before promising, "Not one."