Note: In which Loki has a nightmare, and Thor recaps the events of the movie and the last few chapters of my previous story. Sorry, another of my infamous talking chapters!

Chapter Seven

Loki jerked awake, heart pounding, and lay very still as if he suspected danger lurked nearby. It took a moment to orient himself to the strange location: instead of his uncomfortably cozy bed in the little box room at home, he was lying on a metal-framed bunk in a barracks-like room. A moment later he remembered the helicarrier and the events of the last two days.

A moment after that, Annie's voice whispered, "Are you all right?"

"Yes. Fine. I had… I had a bad dream," Loki whispered back. He sat up and took stock: George, Steve, and even Mitchell were asleep in the other bunks, and Annie was sitting on the end of his, one hand resting on his ankle in a gesture of reassurance. Loki smiled unsteadily at her, half-hoping she could not see his expression in the dark. A moment later he swung his legs over the side of the bunk and let himself down to the floor. "I think I need to go for a walk," he explained.

The door was locked. In the aftermath of the dream, Loki experienced a swift jolt of panic, and instead of looking calmly for the locking mechanism he placed a hand on the door and sent a charge of magic through it. The door slid open and he slipped through, then pushed it carefully closed and listened for the lock to engage. There was probably no real danger in leaving the others asleep in an unlocked room, but at the moment he was unable to feel so.

Loki and Annie were now standing in a deserted, dimly-lit corridor, and she was looking more concerned by the moment. Loki managed another smile, no more successful than the first.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" Annie asked practically.

"It is very silly," Loki murmured.

"I don't sleep much, myself," Annie remarked. "And that's one of the reasons why: I'm afraid of what dead people dream about." Loki put his arms around her, a gesture he hoped comforted her as much as it did him.

"I very rarely dream, or at least have any I recall," he remarked. He thought he had dreamed during his madness, as though his mind refused to give him any respite at all. He no longer remembered anything about them, which was something to be grateful for. "I suppose this one was a result of exposure to all that angry magic, and also those bizarre stories Tony Stark related, the Midgardian beliefs about me." And possibly to his conflicted feelings about the effect the magic had on him.

"You didn't dream you'd given birth to a horse, did you?" Annie teased gently.

Loki uttered a short laugh. "That might not have been so bad. I like foals. They always look so… surprised." He rested his chin on the top of Annie's head and went on, "No, there is apparently a story about dwarves sewing my lips shut. They do that, you know, as a punishment for lying. I used to be teased about it sometimes, people would say they were going to send me to the dwarves."

"Well, that's just awful," Annie said quietly. "And not one bit funny. It never actually happened to you, though, right?"

Loki shook his head, which rather jostled Annie's, though she did not appear to mind. "I have always been very careful never to be caught in a lie by a dwarf-What?"

Annie muffled another giggle against Loki's chest. "Most people would be careful not to lie to a dwarf."

Loki almost laughed, himself. "Well, it is a good thing to understand oneself." The cold feeling came back immediately. "No, it has never happened to me, nor have I ever actually seen anyone punished that way, but-" He shivered.

"Ew," Annie said, hugging him. "And you dreamed they had done it to you?"

"Not dwarves. Agent Coulson," Loki replied. A sense of claustrophobic panic crawled into his chest at the memory. He shivered again and told her the worst part. "In the dream, Thor was holding my head still for Coulson." Annie tightened her arms around him. "I know, it would never happen. It just… it felt very real, in the dream. My mouth still feels unpleasant." He ran his tongue quickly over his lips once again, just to make sure there were not really any stitches there.

"That's the worst thing about dreams," Annie said sympathetically. "The bad ones hang on. I had a dream once where all my teeth were falling out, I'm sure there's some psychological explanation, but I could feel the sensation for a couple of hours after I woke up. Yuck."

"Yuck," Loki agreed. "I certainly do not feel like going back to sleep now. I wonder… I think I can find my way back to the observation deck. It would do no harm to go there."

"Do you suppose we're allowed?"

"We are guests," Loki pointed out, and then gestured at his clothing, plaid cotton trousers and a t-shirt with a picture of a whimsical black-and-white dog hugging a fluffy yellow creature that might have been a bird. "I am clearly not dressed for combat, so surely any guards will realize I mean no harm. If we are not allowed, we-I-will simply be told to go back to bed. Come."

They encountered a guard almost immediately, who fortunately recognized Loki at once and directed him to the observation deck by way of a corridor that did not pass through any areas requiring the highest security clearances.

When they reached the door, it was already ajar. As Loki approached it, he heard the voices of Thor and Tony Stark, speaking quietly. In the aftermath of the dream, Loki found himself suddenly reluctant to encounter his brother. He was preparing to withdraw when he heard Stark say,

"How sure are you that Loki can actually help Steve?"

Listening to the conversations of others, at least of those who are almost certainly not plotting to kill you, is, of course, wrong. Loki had been taught that rule as a child.

He had been ignoring it since he was a child, partly because one of his faults was insatiable curiosity and partly because knowledge, while not always power, was frequently security. Particularly knowledge of what others were saying and thinking about you. He glanced apologetically at Annie, and found her far too focused on the conversation beyond the door to pay any attention to him.

"I am certain," Thor was saying now. "It may take a little time, but he will resolve the problem."

"Because that reaction he had in the forest was a little worrying," Stark went on. "The evil magic-it's not going to stick to him, is it?"

There was a pause. "What do you mean, 'stick to him'?" Thor asked slowly.

"It's not going to send him over the edge or anything? Make him evil too?"

"Of course not," Thor replied, his tone sharply defensive.

"Hey, I'm sorry, but I kind of had to ask. It's not like it would be unprecedented, you know?"

Loki's hands were so cold that he hardly noticed the chill as Annie gripped one of them. After a long pause, Thor said quietly,

"It was… more complicated than you perhaps think."

"Oh, yeah?" Stark replied, more an invitation to provide more details than a challenge.

"'Yeah'," Thor replied. "Stark, I am nearly a thousand Midgardian years old. My brother is about nine hundred. And you are judging his character, and also our relationship, based on actions that occurred in the course of perhaps four Midgardian days. Does that seem fair to you?"

"When you put it that way, not really," Stark agreed. There was a sound that suggested Stark was drinking something. "Care to clear things up for me?"

Thor sighed. "What afflicted Loki was a temporary madness, caused by... a number of things. To begin with... we were very close as children, Stark. But perhaps you do not know what it is to be the younger son of a king."

"Nope. Only child," Stark replied.

"Yes, well, I was the first-born son, so I do not know what it is like, either. I was always the centre of attention, both because of my position as heir and because, frankly, I rather demand to be. Loki was quiet and self-sufficient and everyone assumed he did not mind being overshadowed in everything."

"Uh-oh," Stark murmured.

"Exactly. And as we grew older, I began to collect friends- who are still my friends, and very dear to me- and it seemed a nuisance to have a younger brother tagging along. I am afraid we were not very kind to him."

"When you say, 'not very kind,' is that by Asgardian standards?" Stark asked.

"Yes."

"So by... Midgardian standards, does that mean someone should have called the police?"

"Probably. I did love him, Stark. So did our father and mother. Deep down, we loved him dearly, we do still, it was just that..."

"Based on the way he interacts with the werewolf, the vampire, and the invisible girl, it seems like maybe he'd appreciate some of the love to be a little closer to the surface, where he could actually see it," Stark mused.

"Exactly," Thor sighed. "Matters came to a head when Father, who felt the Odinsleep overtaking him, decided it was my time to become king. Loki felt, and I now agree with him, that I was unready and my reign would be disastrous for the realm. And of course, after nine hundred years in my shadow I think he simply could not bear the idea of me lording it as king. In his defense, I agree I would have been insufferable, and just as disastrous as he feared.

"So Loki engineered a test for me, which I failed, which led to my banishment here on Midgard. He did not mean for things to go as far as they did- he says this, and I believe him. At the same time, he made the discovery that he is not the, the blood child of our father and mother, is not even Aesir by birth. He was actually the abandoned son of our realm's greatest enemy, rescued by our father in the aftermath of battle, and was born a creature we call a Frost Giant and consider to be monstrous."

"Wow," Stark said. "So he pretty much woke up one day and found out he was a werewolf. No offense to George."

"That is exactly how George phrased it, when he tried to explain to me how shocking this revelation must have been to my brother. He had no one to turn to for reassurance- our parents were the ones who had told him the lies, my friends had resented him from childhood, and even if I had not been banished it is very doubtful he would have trusted me to take his part. He had spent nine hundred years believing himself to be... a security for the dynasty-"

"The heir and the spare," Stark murmured. "I would actually think, if you'd been abandoned as a baby, you might need quite a lot in the way of reassurance anyway, just in the course of everyday life."

"Based on our experience with Loki, I would think you are right. As it was, since he did not believe himself to possess the affection of anyone, he assumed the worst of our father's intentions for and feelings about him. Father succumbed to the Odinsleep before he could make anything clear, Loki ended up on the throne, my friends began to scheme for my return, and between grief and shock and anger and betrayal on all sides-"

"He went bonkers," Stark completed the sentence.

"In short, yes," Thor said. "And, in his madness, he did things, terrible things, that probably seemed rational and indeed necessary, but ended in disaster. He was formally banished from Asgard, but had already left us by letting himself fall from the realm. I am sure he expected to die. In the meantime I, who had murdered hundreds of these Frost Giants and so provoked war, was welcomed home from my banishment, the favoured son once again. I did learn a great deal from my exile, brief as it was, but one of the things I learned was to notice how unfair that is."

"Did... did Loki ever get things straight with your dad?" Stark asked hesitantly.

"Yes. Circumstances recently conspired to return him to Asgard, where Father finally explained to him that he is as loved a son as I am, and apologized for not expressing it in ways Loki could comprehend." Thor hesitated. "I think Loki believed him. I visited him on Midgard, and we spoke as well. I hope he knows... I hope he believes in his heart that I do love him."

"Well, if it's any comfort, when we had him locked up he kept asking for you. He seemed totally confident you were going to show up and help him."

"That is indeed a comfort," Thor said, although he did not sound entirely reassured. "At any rate, Stark, you may rest assured my brother is not mad, evil, or plotting to take control of this realm."

"He doesn't mind living in that scruffy little house instead of the palace at Asgard?" Stark asked skeptically.

"With friends who show him open affection? After nine hundred years of yearning for exactly that, I suspect it would take more than a few months for him to tire of it or begin to take it for granted. No. What happened in the forest was unfortunate, but not deliberate on his part." Stark said nothing. It was unclear whether he noticed Thor seemed to be trying to reassure himself as much as his companion.

There was a sound of chairs moving, and Annie tugged at Loki's hand, snapping him out of his trance. The two fled silently down the corridor in the direction from which they had come, rounded a corner, and Loki pulled Annie to a halt.

"He doesn't trust me," Loki said, without preamble.

"Stark? I don't think he trusts anyone," Annie said.

"No. Thor. You heard heard his voice when he protested my innocence to Stark- he is afraid I am not as blameless in that forest incident as he wishes to believe."

"But that isn't true," Annie said firmly, looking squarely into Loki's eyes. He looked squarely back, trying to find words to explain himself.

"I truly did not attack Coulson, and I have no designs on control of the realm or anything similar. I was king for two days in Asgard and that was sufficient. But... I would be lying if I said the sensation of all that magic passing through me again was not welcome. It was..." He flexed his hands and let his words trail off helplessly.

Annie did not address the issue of Loki's willingness to tell lies, since she knew he did not lie to her, or George and Mitchell, at least not without a very good reason. "Well, you are a sorcerer," she pointed out. "And it must feel very weird to you not to have background magic all around you. It must be like visiting a place with different gravity would be to me." She smiled at him reassuringly. "It doesn't mean you're going to go bad, like..."

"You-Know-Who," said Loki, who had been exposed to the stories of Harry Potter by his housemates. He tried to smile.

Annie laughed. "Exactly. You're not Voldemort. For one thing, you have a whole nose. And for another, you're really not evil. Really." She took hold of his arms above the elbow and looked into his face. "Not evil."

"Not evil," Loki agreed, the knot of anxiety in his chest beginning to loosen. He was not evil, and not about to become evil. If Annie believed it, it must be so.

Annie suddenly reached up and kissed him swiftly, her lips stinging-cold but comforting on his. "Go back to bed, and don't dream anything nasty," she ordered, and vanished.

Loki, alone in the corridor, reached up and gently brushed his fingertips against his mouth.

Then he did as Annie bade him.