Title: Laughing As I Pray
Rating: PG-13

Author's Notes: Third in the series The Great Subconscious Club, sequel to A Villain State of Mind and directly follows Cover Up the Sun.

Thor is forced to reconsider a number of his assumptions.

When it came to delivering a tirade, Thor thought, Commander Fury certainly lived up to his name.

No sooner had they reached a briefing room on the helicarrier than the storm in Fury's expression broke. Thor had intended to demand more information about Loki, but the sheer force of Fury's anger overrode him and quickly drove him back on the defensive, breaking apart every attempt of Thor's to explain.

"I have done nothing wrong!" Thor found himself nearly shouting. "I learned of a dire threat in the borders of your land and I took action -"

"The hell you did!" Fury interrupted him. "What threat? The X-Men are our allies! "

"Your ally?" Thor was stunned. "I... I didn't know - "

"No, you didn't know!" And now Fury was shouting. "You don't know anything about this land, its history or its politics. And a half-hour radio broadcast isn't nearly enough information to plan a successful assault even if your source had been credible - which it wasn't! You don't know what the mutants are, you don't know what they're capable of - lucky for you it was our allies you decided to attack, since the mutants there don't believe in killing!"

Thor scoffed. Certainly, the weather-witch's power had been unexpected, but Thor had faced fiercer foes in his life before and always prevailed. "I could have taken them," he said confidently.

Fury snarled in response. "Let's suppose, hypothetically, that you could. Congratulations, you just took out the X-Men," he said with scathing sarcasm. "Know what happens next? Now that the X-Men are no longer around to provide a counterbalancing presence, the Brotherhood goes into action, calling it retaliation for the attacks on the mutant community. Attacks, kidnappings, sabotage, murders, whatever other nasty things you can think up."

Fury was a fool if he thought Thor would just stand by and let such things occur so long as he was on Midgard. "If they try, I -" Thor started to say.

"Meanwhile you have been adopted as a banner for the anti-mutant community; that maniac Mannstrom, the Pure Humans group, a dozen other self-appointed militia all over the country," Fury rode right over him. He began pacing back and forth in the briefing room, coat flaring out behind him. "With the justification that the Avengers, in the person of you, have declared open season on mutants, they start targeting and purging every mutant they can find, whether they're dangerous to humans or not!

"There are an estimated four hundred thousand mutants in the United States alone today, and every one of them is going to feel under threat, and God knows how many of them will decide to strike first before somebody strikes them. It turns into a massive civil war, mutants going up in flames all over the country, lynch mobs in the streets attacking anyone even suspected of being a mutant, or family to mutants, or even just a mutant sympathizer -"

Fury stopped and spun to face Thor, raising his hands in frustrated exasperation. "All this would be on our plate to deal with, because some of us can't just swing a hammer a few times and then prance back up to our pretty castle in the skies! Some of us have to live with the fact that actions actually have consequences. "

Never since his early days with Tyr, the battlemaster, had Thor felt so thoroughly torn to shreds. "I was just trying to help! "

"SPARE ME FROM YOUR IDEA OF HELPING!" Fury roared at the top of his voice. "Not every problem can be solved by hitting it with increasingly mighty blows of a hammer. We've got no shortage of 'mighty hammers' ourselves, believe it or not; if we could solve our problems with brute force, rest assured we are perfectly capable of doing so! If we haven't, there are almost certainly reasons why we haven't, so we don't need Asgardian tourists rushing in to 'help' us! All of which leaves aside, by no means should you have planned any assault without coordinating with the local authorities, 'cause this isn't your country, and you have no jurisdiction here!"

That at least Thor would willingly contest; he was the prince of Asgard and he did have authority over Midgard. He had felt it undiplomatic to say so before, but Fury had to be made aware. "I am prince of Asgard, foremost of the Nine Realms, and Midgard is under my personal protection! That is whence my jurisdiction comes. For thousands of years we have stood guard over the Realms, and protected them - cleansed the lands of evil -"

Fury cut him off with a savage slash of his hand. "We didn't ask for your help in 'cleansing our land of evil,' and if this is a sample, then spare us!" he snarled. "If Earth is under your 'personal protection,' then where the hell were your people during Hurricane Katrina? Typhoon Hagupit? The Fukushima tsunami? We sure as hell could have used a weather-controlling god during those crises. If you choose to stand by then, you don't get to come back now and claim some kind of authority over us!"

Thor had no idea what events Fury was even speaking of, but if news of them had not reached Asgard, then that meant they must only have been local events. "We don't interfere with domestic affairs - those were internal - "

"So was this!" Fury countered. "How about in the last world war, when Hydra was rampaging across the continent with weapons built from the trash your people left on our planet?"

"I…" Thor started, but this time Fury didn't even let him finish his thought.

"Face it, Odinson," Fury said, "you've left us to manage our domestic affairs long enough that we've found ways to get along just fine without you, and you're doing us no favors by playing interplanetary traffic cop now! Nobody elected you, nobody appointed you, and nobody asked!"

Thor was beginning to get a headache, and feeling very sullen and put-upon. Regardless of whether he had made a mistake, Fury still had no right to lecture him like a child - it had not been his misjudgment alone that had led to today's debacle. Whether deliberate on anyone's part or not, Thor had been misled - had been set up for a fall - and to turn this into some sort of arraignment on his personal failings was unjust.

And yet - a part of Thor still squirmed under it, because the better part of him knew that he could not pass all the blame off on others. Even if he had been baited, he chose to take the bait. Even if he had been provoked, he should have had enough self-control not to fly off the handle. Just as he had when Loki had faked his death, he had fallen for the lies because they were comfortable and pleasing. Lies that fit in neatly with his notions of how the world ought to be: a world made up of innocent people requiring his protection on one side, and evil monsters requiring chastisement on the other. It had been so easy for him to accept that anyone who was different, who fell outside the natural order of things, was therefore evil and needed to be eliminated.

All the same… "This never would have happened if you had just told me the truth!" Thor shot back. "The truth about Loki, the truth about these so-called 'mutants!' "

"Oh no, this doesn't get put on me!" Fury denied vehemently. "This is your third time on Earth; you shouldn't have needed me to sit around holding your hand! You keep saying you're a prince, and you're hundreds of years old. How the hell did you manage to get along all that time without figuring out that politics is complicated? Is everyone up in Asgard a complete simpleton - or do you just assume that we are?"

"Whoa, hey," a third voice broke in upon their standoff. "Wow, this got real contentious real fast. Let's step back and take a deep breath, count to ten, do some yoga, whatever."

Thor and Fury both turned towards the door, and Thor recognized the short figure leaning insolently up against the doorframe in an instant. "Iron Man," he said in glad greeting, although the iron armor was nowhere in evidence; he was wearing instead a light-colored suit cut not unlike the one Loki had been wearing.

"Stark," Fury growled, clearly not pleased to see him. "What are you doing here?"

"I got a call from Steve," Tony said, strolling into the room. "He seemed to think that the world was ending and it was his fault, so I agreed to try to straighten things out over here."

"If you'd been an hour earlier, you might even have done some good," Fury commented uncharitably, and Tony scowled and flapped a hand towards him as if to wave off the criticism.

"Play nice, Nicky, you had advance warning and you couldn't manage as much either. I know all about the fireworks at Xavier's school - and I have a pretty good idea of what set it off, too. I listened to the podcast version of that broadcast on my way over, and honestly, Thor," he turned towards the Asgardian. "I have to know: what the hell were you thinking?"

Thor growled; he had just spent half an hour trying to explain this very thing to Fury. But perhaps he would get a fairer hearing from his brother-in-arms. "I heard a broadcast from Mannstrom, a wise doctor -" he began to say.

"Whoa whoa," Tony said, putting up both hands palm-out. "Problem number one right there. Milhouse Mannstrom is not a doctor. The closest he's ever come to higher education was a B.A. in Communications at Grace University, Omaha. He just calls himself 'doctor' to try to convince stupid people that he knows what he's talking about."

Thor winced.

" - All the same - in his broadcast, the people of the radio warned of the threat posed by the mutant menace," Thor managed to continue. "He said that they were taking lives, destroying the country, poisoning children. I could not stand by and let such atrocities go unanswered!"

"Okay, uh, Mannstrom's general asshattery aside, that's what we on Midgard call 'hyperbole,' " Tony said. "Stuff like 'destroying America' and 'deadly threat to our way of life' and 'poisoning our children's minds' is just a figure of speech - sure, it's meant to be inflammatory, but why would you think they meant that children were actually being poisoned?"

"Why would I not?!" Thor threw up his hands in frustration. "On Asgard, if a messenger brings reports that a monster is destroying a town and is eating children, it is because there is actually a monster actually destroying houses and actually devouring children! Any messenger who brought such tidings falsely would be stripped of his post, or even exiled! You are telling me it is not so here? Why do you allow miscreants to spread hateful lies on your airwaves without repercussions?"

Tony opened his mouth to reply, then stopped, closing it again. He rubbed his neck, scowling in thought, then shrugged and turned towards Fury. "...you know what, that's actually a really good point. Why do we allow that, Nick?"

"Hell if I know," Fury said.

"But anyway, the point is," Tony said as he turned back towards Thor. "Why the heck did you decide to go for advice to the person who is literally not even from this century? Why ask Steve and not me? I could have gotten you," here he pulled a small flat metallic device out of his pocket and fiddled with it for a few seconds. "21,600,000 results in 0.43 seconds. Seriously, all you had to do was Google that shit and hit 'I'm Feeling Lucky,' it takes you right to MOMA's website, all the information you could want."

"Who?" Thor said, perplexed.

" ' Mothers of Mutants of America, ' " Fury quoted in response to his confusion. "They're the number one pro-mutant advocacy group in the US."

"Here." Tony tossed the square of light metal and plastic to Thor, who caught it on reflex. "Section 2a: What Are Mutants? Should have all the relevant info for you."

Thor frowned and looked down at the device; pages of text were scrolling across it. It was some Midgardian script, not the runes that he was used to. "I cannot read this," he half-complained, half-apologized.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Seriously?" he said in an annoyed tone of voice. He took the tablet back and fiddled with it for a moment, then handed it back. "Thank god for text-to-speech, that's all I'm saying."

Thor glanced back at the tablet as a tinny flat, tinny female voice with strangely dissonant inflection began to read aloud from the miniscule speaker at the base of the screen. "My Child Is A Mutant: What Does That Mean For Us?" it recited.

Congratulations! You are one of the parents fortunate enough to have a child with meta-human-X-gene-expression, or MHXE, as it is known in the medical community. Your child is a mutant! There's no need to be afraid of that word, any more than there is a need to be afraid of mutants. Remember, every mutant is someone's child. And MOMA, partnership of parents of mutants all over America, is here to help during this time of transition for you both.

MHXE has appeared in the population with increasing frequency over the past twenty years, and it is estimated that 1 out of every 100,000 children will eventually express some form of the gene. There are almost as many variants of MHXE as there are children...

Here the text became somewhat more technical, explaining the nature of the "X-Gene" and how it altered the form and potency of those in whom it appeared; hence the name: mutants, the changed ones. Most of the basics matched up to the vague explanation Steve had struggled through the night before, although with much firmer confidence and more supporting detail. Thor knew little enough molecular-level soulcrafting, but the magical theory seemed sound enough, as far as he could tell.

As he listened with half an ear further through the text, certain phrases like "humanity's children" and "the future of mankind" leapt out at him. They were not unlike the speech about mutants that Loki had declaimed to him before the school, and he was startled to find fragments of Loki's thought in this mortal text. Could it be that there were others on Midgard who actually shared Loki's thoughts and beliefs? Perhaps there really was more to it than Loki's delusional madness...

Another fragment of the text caught his attention, and made his stomach feel like it was bottoming out in his chest. ... keep in mind that even if your child's mutation is only just manifesting, this has always been a part of them - since the day they were born. It may seem like everything is changing, but your child hasn't really changed. They are still the child that you loved and raised for all these years. Now, more than ever, they need you; they need you to stand by them, even if no one else will.

"...pretty heavy on the 'Everyone is a special snowflake who is perfect just the way they are' glurge, but once you get past that, they're a pretty good resource," Tony was saying. "Anyway, the point is: Mutants. Not evil."

"So the mutants are not…" Thor fumbled for a word; monsters was clearly unwelcome here. Criminals didn't seem strong enough. He remembered a word from yesterday's broadcast, and grasped for it. "Not all terrorists, then?"

Fury shook his head. "Not only are most mutants not terrorists, most terrorists aren't mutants," he said dryly. "Trust me, the vast majority of terrorists are perfectly ordinary human beings."

"But the man on the radio spoke of killings," Thor said with a frown. "He said there was proof, that your own government knew it to be true."

Tony sighed. "Look, Thor, the mutant community isn't the kind of monolith you seem to think," he said. "Here's how it is. Say there's a hundred thousand mutants in the U.S. today. Of those, maybe one out of a hundred has any kind of mutation that's actually usable in any kind of a defensive - or offensive - capacity. The rest get weird cosmetic changes, or abilities so specific that they're hardly ever useful, like talking to dragonflies or being able to hear radio waves or whatever, or something even stranger than that.

"Of the ones that can actually be classed as 'super' human, they tend to be split into two factions. One is Charles Xavier's bunch - they call themselves the X-Men. Xavier's an idealist, a pacifist, he's committed to the idea of peaceful human-mutant coexistence and his people tend to follow his lead. They protect other mutants from threats, but they fight to protect humans too. That's the group Loki seems to have taken up with, and that's the group you so spectacularly introduced yourself to today."

So Loki had after all allied himself with mutants, but they were peaceful mutants? This was too confusing. "You spoke of two factions. What of the other?" Thor prompted him.

Fury grimaced. "That's where things get ugly. 'Cause not all mutants are big on the idea of coexisting peacefully with humans. They pretty much flat-out hate humans. They want a mutant-only society, or at least a society with mutants on top, with humans safely dead or enslaved or otherwise out of the way. The biggest gang calls themselves the Brotherhood. They're led by a man named Erik Lensherr, and he's got a rap sheet that reads like a natural disaster. The rest of the Brotherhood are more powerful or less, but all dangerous."

"Now I see," Thor said, face lightening as he nodded agreement. "So those mutants are the evil ones!"

It seemed clear enough, but Tony winced and covered his face with his hand, and Fury's scowl only darkened. "You know what?" Tony said, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "Sure, why not. Let's just go with that. Yes, the Brotherhood are evil mutants."

"Hell, no," Fury snapped. "I'm not going to just 'go with that,' leaving him with half an explanation rattling around his brain is what got us into trouble the first time!" He turned to Thor.

"I do not understand," Thor protested. "You just said that these 'Brotherhood' despite and viciously attack humans. How are these not the acts of evil beings?"

"It's never that simple," Fury said. "See, more mutants are being born every year. But the social ethos hasn't exactly caught up with the change. Mutants - even the 'good' mutants, like Xavier's bunch, or the harmless ones who aren't involved on either side at all - are the target of some pretty brutal levels of prejudice."

"It's not so bad in the cities," Tony added, coming in on the explanation again. "And there are a few groups like MOMA, that do their best to advocate for mutant rights. But out in the sticks… it's not unusual for mutants to be targeted by hate groups, attacked or even killed. So yeah, some of the mutants who join up with Magneto's gang probably do it because they really are just psychopaths. There's some in every group, after all. But most of them aren't. They do it for protection, because they're afraid of being hurt… or because it's too late for that, and now they're angry. Really, really angry, and they see it as their only way of getting back."

"But why?" Thor asked, bewildered.

"Why what part of it?" Tony repeated back at him.

"Why are mutants so hated and feared, as you say," Thor attempted to clarify, "if they are truly as harmless as they claim? Why would humans despise them, if not in response to the evil inside them?"

He'd said something wrong again; he could tell it by the way Tony and Fury exchanged another one of those looks. "That's… not how it works, Thor," Tony said.

"Not how what works?"

"Not how racism works," Fury answered.

It was another one of those loaded words again, the ones that Fury or the others said as though the word alone should explain everything, but in fact explained nothing. "I do not understand," he said.

That prompted another double wave of surprised consternation among his listeners. "Oh, hell no," Tony said, backing up a step and raising his hands as if in surrender. "How much do I not want to be having the racism talk?"

"Well, good on you, Stark, that you don't have to," Fury snapped at him, and turned back to Thor. "Ugh. Listen, Thor, do you… you, Asgard, do your people have any kind of… underclass? People who have been historically discriminated against."

"Do you mean, criminals?" Thor asked.

"No, not individuals, whole sub-groups. You know, people that the rest of society treats as punching bags?" Tony suggested. "Either because they talk funny, or have different color skin, or come from the wrong side of the rainbow bridge, maybe? People that you just know aren't as good as regular folks?"

Thor shook his head. "There is nothing like that in Asgard," he said.

Fury's eyebrows went up, and he looked skeptical. "Really," he said.

"Really?" Tony echoed. "No history of systematic oppression, enslavement, displacement, massive immigration from one country to the next causing resentment among the natives, that sort of thing? No reservations or ghettos where some group is kept apart from the rest? Nothing breeds racial tensions like systematic exploitation, y'know."

"Of course not!" Thor said indignantly. "In Asgard, every person is honored and respected in their own right. This kind of injustice would never stand. There is no group of people that is wronged, or hated simply for what they are -"

"What about the Jotuns?" Fury asked.

The question slammed into Thor like a brick wall, and he stuttered to a stop. What about the Jotuns?

It was so simple a question, and yet that was all it took to make Thor feel as though he was turned inside out, all of his confidence and assurances suddenly turned on their head. "That is not the same…" he began to say, but his voice died away as he caught the next words before they fell from his mouth. … because you speak of peoples who are unfairly oppressed, and the Jotnar are not people.

Were they not, though? Was that not the root of his conflict with Loki on the rainbow bridge, that terrible night in Asgard? You can't kill a whole race, Loki! Thor had shouted, and Loki had looked surprised, even laughed like it was funny. Why not? Because it was not just, that was why not. Regardless of what Laufey and his cronies had done, the rest of the Frost Giants were not Laufey, and an entire race of people did not deserve to suffer for the crimes of one.

Odin had said he had done the right thing, even though the price of derailing Loki's murderous scheme had been the destruction of the Bifrost. Everyone agreed that the damage inflicted by the Bifrost upon Jotunheim was sufficient punishment for what the Frost Giants had tried to do, and that there was no need to do any more. The matter was over and done with, finished and put aside.

But there was a great stride between accepting that the Jotnar had the right to continue living, and the great injustices that Fury and Tony were speaking of. Frost Giants were not set apart merely because of some cruel whim of the Aesir. The Frost Giants might be people, but they were savage, brutal and bloodthirsty. They had greedily tried to take what was not rightfully theirs, and so they could not be allowed to roam at will among the Nine. It was not discrimination to think of them so, because it was true.

Yet even in his own head these truths rang thin and hollow, and Thor felt a great uneasiness about them; he did not quite dare to speak them before the others. "Where did you hear that name?" he asked instead, and his voice sounded weak even to his own ears.

Fury was watching Thor closely, like a cat watches a mouse that might bolt at any moment. "You forget that Loki was our guest for almost a month last year," he said. "While he was here, he told us quite a bit about frost giants."

"I would hope you knew better than to trust anything he said on the subject," Thor said, even as he wondered with sudden unease what else Loki had said during that time. And about whom.

"Well, of the two of you, he's the one who's actually a frost giant, so I'd think he'd know more about them than you would," Tony pointed out.

Fury gave a little shrug, as if conceding the point. "Frankly I found it much more interesting how he said it. And what he didn't say."

Before Thor could demand to know what Fury meant by that - even assuming he would have explained - a red light began to blink from a device on Fury's wrist. He slapped at it with a growl, then peered at the display there and sighed. "Great," he said disgustedly to the room at large. "I've got to take this. Xavier's finally willing to talk to me, and we've got to try to work this out. I don't want a war with the mutants this week."

"Why not?" Thor asked. "From what you say, you outnumber them a thousand to one, and most of them are not even warriors. Surely you cannot fear that you would lose."

"Well, that's the thing about fighting wars against your own people," Fury told him. "All the casualties are yours. So even if you win, you still lose."

He strode out of the briefing room, the door hissing shut behind him. Thor stared after him, feeling a little lost.

Tony did not follow Fury out of the room. When Thor looked back at him he was playing with something small and metal in his hand, that flashed a blue light at the top. He glanced up and met Thor's eyes. "Great, we can talk now," he said, slipping the device into the pocket of his shirt. "Was hoping we'd get a chance without old Cyclops present. Don't worry, they can't listen in on us."

Thor hadn't been worried. "Why did you want to talk without him?" he asked.

"Because SHIELD treats information like Scrooge McDuck treats dimes. They never let a single piece out of their hands without a fight," Tony told him. "I figured you'd have some questions, questions that Fury wouldn't answer. I told Steve I'd try to get you straight on the facts of the Loki issue, so here I am. Ask away."

The reminder of Steve brought Thor back to the topic at hand, back to all the questions Steve hadn't had answers for last night. "Steve said that you were there, with the party that went to confront my brother. He could not tell me any more - but perhaps you can?"

"Sure, buddy," Tony said with a nod. He hopped up on the edge of the railing, putting him at a comfortable height even as his feet swung below.

"So, Bruce and I were down in the lab, having one of our science marathons, when one of the special alarms went off - I have JARVIS set up to monitor the news channels for anything really bizarre, and some tiny podunk station in New York had footage of a dragon over Fallsburg that qualified. We got Black Widow on the line, she brought the jet around, and we went to check it out.

"We did some snooping around on the flight over, and we came up with a bunch of very weird, mostly conflicting information," Tony went on. "First, enough people had seen the dragon - and caught it on video, too - that we knew this wasn't a prank, or some redneck's UFO hallucination. But we'd also gotten enough info to learn what the dragon was chasing after - a military issue covert ops helicopter. That was enough to make us a little wary of what we'd be running into."

Thor took this in. "But surely, you would naturally go to the aid of your kingdom's fellow warriors?" he asked.

"Well, yes and no," Tony said after a brief pause. "See, here's the thing - us Americans are actually pretty picky about what soldiers can and can't do to citizens on U.S. soil. Unless they've been specifically asked by the local police departments to conduct a joint intervention, the military is not generally supposed to be conducting offensive operations in the middle of civilian populations. And there'd been no mention of anything like that on any of the police channels. So we knew something was hinky even before we landed."

"I see," Thor said, although - like so much else about Midgard - it seemed strange and unnatural to him. Why would civilians not trust the warriors entrusted to their own defense? "Please tell me more."

Tony shrugged. "Anyway, by the time we caught up with them, the chase was already over," he said. "The helicopter was a pile of wreckage on the hillside, and there was no sign of the dragon. What there was a sign of was your brother - although we hardly recognized him at first; his skin was completely blue, so that it was only JARVIS' facial recognition software that ID'd him at all. This is a Frost Giant thing, I'm assuming?"

"You are correct," Thor said, a little stiffly.

"Anyway, so there he was, standing over a downed helicopter surrounded by the bodies - just unconscious, we found out later, although we didn't know that at the time - of US soldiers," Tony continued. "It didn't exactly look good. I went down to read him the riot act - fully prepared to bring out the Hulk if we had to, to get him to cooperate - before we caught sight of what he'd been protecting. Or rather, who."

Thor thought he had a few guesses, but he couldn't be sure. "Who, then?"

"There were a couple of mutant kids in the helicopter," Tony explained, presenting the turn in the story with a certain dramatic relish. "Y'see, it turned out that what the goon squad had actually been up to was a hit-and-run raid on Xavier's school. God knows what they wanted them for - super-soldier conscripts, maybe, or maybe just lab animals."

"They wouldn't dare!" Thor was nearly speechless with fury.

"You know, I'd really like to believe they wouldn't," Tony said. "But it's not like it hasn't happened before. I'm telling you, it was damn surreal, seeing a couple of little kids hiding behind the invader of New York, clinging to him for protection from us. Felt weird not being the good guys, for a change."

"Aye," Thor said, momentarily sunk in gloom. He wondered if the girl who had interrupted his battle with Loki had been one of the ones Loki had rescued that night - if so, it would certainly explain her astonishingly fierce devotion, and determination not to be separated from her savior. Although, Thor would have thought that a pupil of Loki's in magic would need no rescuing, so perhaps not.

"Well, anyway, we were still standing around arguing when Fury and Charles Xavier showed up," Tony concluded. "That made it official - Loki's living with, and apparently working with, the X-Men now, and had been for the past six months. Xavier vouched for him, and Fury signed off on it, so I guess that's that."

"This Charles Xavier," Thor said, frowning. "He is trustworthy?"

"I guess?" Tony shrugged. "I'd never met him in person before, but he does good work, protecting the public from threats like the Brotherhood and doing his best to help mutants and humans get along peacefully. He's one of those MLK types, believes in nonviolence and harmony, although I guess that sort of idealism is easier to hold onto when you've got a power that can sense an assassin at five miles out and freeze an army in its tracks with a thought."

"He can do such things?" Thor said, alarmed and intrigued, but whatever reply Tony was going to make was interrupted by the warning hiss of the door.

"Well, there's good news," Fury said, re-entering the room. The crackling tension that had suffused him before had ebbed slightly; he still seemed irritable, but not snarling or striking out savagely in all directions. "Xavier says he's talked to Loki, and they've agreed to regard this as a family matter, a spat between brother and brother."

"Oh," Thor said. "That is… good, I suppose?"

"Sure it's good," Fury said. "He could have chosen see this as the opening salvo in a war between the X-Men and the Avengers, whom you represent. Or between the mutant community and the United States. Whom you also represent. Or between Earth and Asgard."

Thor was taken aback. "But I never meant it to be that!" he protested. "I acted only on my own behalf - I never intended to start an act of nations!"

Fury gave him a piercing glare that reminded Thor overwhelmingly of Odin. "Are you kidding me?" he growled. "You are the prince of a sovereign realm. Everything you do becomes an act of nations. Why do you think you can just do whatever you want with no repercussions?"

"Oh," Thor repeated, smaller this time. For the first time, the true scale of what had happened - what he had almost caused to happen - truly sank in upon him. He should not have needed Fury to remind him of his position; he had spent enough time in the past month preoccupied by his duties as Prince Regent. Yet still he had clung to his 'prince' title, refusing to be named King - as though by doing so he imagined that he could put it down when he chose, go back to being 'just Thor,' the warrior and adventurer who could travel and carouse and pick fights whenever he pleased. And yet - had he ever been so free? Or had the weight and obligation of his station just been invisible to him before now, unseen and unfelt like a fish in water?

One thing was clear: He had fumbled badly in his duties both as prince of Asgard and ambassador to this new kingdom, the kingdom of mutants. "I must go back," Thor said, mind already racing ahead. "I must go back to make amends - speak with Loki again -"

"Oh hell, no," Fury said vehemently, interrupting Thor's train of thought. "You are not going anywhere near Xavier's school, not anytime soon, possibly not ever. Consider this an interdiction. You've caused enough trouble there as it is, and while you may not have kicked off a war, the mutants have made it emphatically clear that you're not welcome there."

"But my intent is entirely peaceful!" Thor protested. "I must apologize, explain -"

"Uh, I'm actually with Fury here," Tony said. Thor turned towards him, crestfallen, and the inventor held up his hands. "Look, Thor, nobody is doubting your intentions -"

Fury grumbled a disagreement, but Tony ignored him. " - but good intentions may not be enough, here. I mean, I've never had a sibling, but even I can tell that there's a whole lot of charged history between you and Loki. And Loki himself isn't exactly what you call stable. If you go to confront him again, there's a distinctly non-zero chance that you're going to end up fighting. Again. And you can bet your hammer that the X-Men are going to come in on his side."

"Again," Fury grunted.

As much as Thor hated to admit it, Tony was right; no matter how determined he remained to... to make things right things between them, Loki had always been able to turn his intentions awry. His brother used words like surgeon's tools, testing and probing and digging until they find a sensitive spot that, no matter how Thor tried to hang on to his calm, never failed to rouse his ire.

"But then what should I do?" It came out more plaintive than Thor would have liked. He wanted to fix things - with the mutants, with Loki, with the trust he inadvertently damaged - but no one seemed to want to tell him how.

"One thing's for sure," Fury said, and swept around a finger to point at him. "No more wandering around on your own. Obviously, you need more baby-sitting than I can supply." His one eye moved to Tony. "Stark -"

"Oh, come on," Tony protested, and Thor felt more than a little insulted. His presence was not that much of a burden.

Tony glanced at his face, and something of his offense must have shown, because Tony hastened to apologize. "Nothing personal, Thor buddy. It's just that I'm really not the, uh, most responsible of people to begin with. I have enough trouble even keeping myself out of trouble, let alone anybody else."

"That's true enough," Fury commented.

Tony snapped his fingers, expression brightening into a sudden epiphany. "I know! I am a genius. Why don't you," and he turned back to Thor, "go and see that sexy-brained girlfriend of yours? Doctor Foster, Jane Foster wasn't it? She is way more responsible than me, I'll bet if anyone can keep Thor in line, she can."

"I had wanted to see Jane again," Thor admitted. "But I was hoping to be rid of my business with Loki first, that I would not bring danger behind me when I went to visit."

"Great! That's settled then. Told you I was a genius," Tony said cheerfully, clapping his hands. "I'll give you a lift. Is Dr. Foster still out in that West Virgina lab you think we don't know about, Nick?"

Fury sighed and rubbed at his brow. "Yes, she is. You know what? Let's just do that. The sooner I have you out of my hair, the better."

"Capital." Tony strolled towards the door, and after a moment of indecisive hovering, Thor followed after.

"Look, Thor, there's something else you need to know," Tony said, stopping in the corridor and turning to face him. His expression, normally sardonic and playful, was unusually solemn. "Something came up during the confrontation with Loki and the mutants that's pretty important to the events of last year's invasion. And you need to know it, and I got a feeling nobody else is going to tell you."

"And what is that?" Thor asked, though a cold dread was beginning to creep into his spine. Little good ever came of 'something very important you must know,' in Thor's experience.

"So it wasn't exactly as smooth and hassle-free as I made it out to be earlier. To be blunt, we were standing around arguing, mostly wanting to know why the hell we should just Loki walk free after everything he'd done. Then it turns out that Fury had given custody over to Xavier way back when SHIELD was holding him right after the invasion; and he said that someone had used psychic surgery to do a number on Loki's mind."

"What?" Thor demanded. He nearly reeled backwards, bowled over by the force of the revelation. "Is this true?"

"How should I know?" Tony grimaced. "Look, I'll tell you what I do know, and then you'll be about as well off as I am. Xavier's a telepath, a psychic himself, and the people who keep track of these things all agree he's pretty powerful. He's probably one of the few people on Earth who's actually qualified to know these things. Now, humankind per se isn't necessarily Xavier's number one priority, but he is a defender of earth, seeing as his people live on it. So I can't really see why he'd have any motivation to help out the Chitauri or their leader. And Fury backed him up on it, so I'd say that it's probably about as confirmed as we can get it at this point."

Thor sat stunned, torn between conflicting feelings. How did Loki always manage to do this to him, even when he was not present? If this was true, then all his hopes were answered: Loki was not lost in darkness, had not committed irredeemable acts of evil. Loki could be forgiven - no, not even that, would not need to be forgiven.

But -

If true, it also meant that Thor had done him a grave injustice. Had accused him, manhandled him, attacked him on every meeting since Loki's fall. If true, how could Loki possibly forgive him?

It was at once too wonderful and too terrible to contemplate. Thor grasped instead for equivocation - uncertainty. "If my brother truly was being... controlled," Thor began, "why would he not tell me so?"

"Uh, duh?" Tony gave him a weird look. "I mean, I'd imagine that whoever was remote-controlling him wasn't too interested in giving away the game."

"No, of course not." Thor waved this away impatiently. "I mean after. If he was on Earth, under the protection of this Xavier - if this abomination was discovered, and my brother freed - he came to me on Asgard after that! Surely at that time, his mind must have been his own. Why would he not tell me that it had been enslaved?"

Tony shook his head, then appeared to change his mind and gave a little half-shrug. "Well, far be it for me to psychoanalyze the crazy alien," he said. "But if I had to take a guess, maybe because he thought you wouldn't believe him?"

Thor opened his mouth to hotly deny it, but then shut it again. As much as it stung, he could not entirely say Tony was wrong. If Loki had come to him with this news right on the heels of the Battle of New York - alone and unsupported by the word of any others - Thor likely would have thought it nothing but a clever-worded excuse. After all, what proof could Loki offer but his own word, when his own trustworthiness was what was in doubt?

The truth was that after his banishment, Thor had lost all certainty and trust - not only in Loki, but in his own understanding of Loki. He had gone for so long, so many years, blithely thinking all was well. Right up until the Warriors Three appeared on Earth with news of Loki's treachery, Thor had sensed nothing wrong at all. If such a great black storm of pain and anger and madness could brew right under Thor's nose for so long, how could he have any faith at all in his own ability to read Loki's reactions? How could he hope to explain his brother's motives to others, when it had become clear that he had never known Loki's motivations in the first place? He did not know where the break had begun and so he was forced to assume that all he had known of Loki was wrong, that for the hundreds of years of their brotherhood he had never truly known Loki at all. When Loki reappeared in New York - wild, crazed, grinning and snarling and spitting venom - Thor had not known what to make of it; he had no choice but to take this Loki to be as real as any Loki he had ever known.

But what if it was not so? What if those three days on Midgard were the lie, the aberration, an untruth forced upon Loki from the outside? Then... then maybe all Thor knew was not a lie; maybe the brother that Thor remembered was still within him. Maybe they could put this awfulness behind them and go back to Asgard, go back to the trust they once had been.

"You are saying my brother is innocent," Thor said, wonder in his voice.

Tony grimaced again. "Am I? I don't think I am, Thor," he said. "There's still too much we don't know and haven't been told. I don't think it's that simple. But I guess that's what I'm saying - that it's not simple. That there's not just a toggle of 'good' and 'evil' and you can just slot Loki into one or the other."

Thor deflated a little. "I suppose not," he said, feeling suddenly weary. There was too much murkiness, too much uncertainty - had been, ever since he had come back to Midgard once more.

He needed some time to think, to sort everything out - to gain some kind of clarity. He longed to see Jane again, for her bright cheer and eminently sensible outlook had done more to calm and ground him than little else he'd ofound.

Jane. Soon he would get to see her again, touch her again, smell her hair. Technically he had spoken with her briefly a few times since his return to Asgard, through her micro-portal generating machine. But those had been a poor substitute for life, the picture grainy and flat, the sound distorted and degraded. Midgard and Asgard were not in temporal conjunction right now, and the disjoint and lag between their worlds made conversation almost impossible; the best he'd been able to do was to pass on a few most vital messages. He'd last talked to her a week ago, telling her of the progress being made in rebuilding Asgard; of course, he'd told her when the siege was broken and Malekith defeated. When Loki had fallen.

Now it seemed he must recant his words, and tell her that his brother was not dead at all; to think that he had been on Midgard all this time, and Thor had not known! Jane might have been in danger, all unknowing - but it seemed not. Loki had made no move to harm her... perhaps he never had meant to. Jane had been safe, with no need for protection by Thor.

A fragment of Loki's jeering voice drifting back to him, coming with clarity through the heated blur that had been their argument. Congratulations, Thor, you officially have it all.

Loki was wrong, Thor thought in a burst of rebellious resentment, if he thought that rulership of Asgard was the pinnacle of Thor's desire. He had long since outgrown the childish desire for crown and glory. But in a sense, Loki was also right, in ways he never suspected. Everything in Thor's life was going right. Midgard was safe - without needing any great deeds from him to make it so. Loki was alive - and Loki was not evil. Thor never thought he could have hoped for such a blessing. And now he was going to be reunited with his beloved, Jane.

So why - Thor wondered - why, if everything was going so well, was he left feeling so desolate?

~to be continued...

Author's Notes: We're just going to ignore the fact that Thor was able to read the text on the door a few chapters ago but can't read the text here. Just assume that he was narrating to the audience what he saw without being able to decipher meaning from it...