Finally Odin makes an appearance. Before anyone asks, yessss, Loki will have contact with the Avengers soon. Review!

"Tony?" Bruce came in quietly once they were gone. Clint limped behind him, cradling a paper bag in the nook of his bad arm while he used the other to stay up against the door of the room. Tony lay on the bed, the thin hospital pants had been pulled down and there were new bruises and cuts covering his legs. Bruce flinched but moved forward and began to clean him, trying to look at him as a patient rather than his friend. Even unconscious, Tony let out a soft, pained groan as Bruce closed his legs, his body was stiff and aching from the abuse and it showed.

"They took him from the front today." Clint noted as he saw the smaller bruises on the back of his legs and walked over slowly to sit by him and helped Bruce clean his stomach. "Why don't you let him wake up and do it himself?" he asked him, not complaining just curious.

Bruce cleaned the cuts slowly. "You were gone a little longer than us." He told him "it just… it makes it easier for him to pretend it didn't happen." He bandaged the worst cuts and they helped him look as normal as he possibly could in the hospital clothes. They shifted him on the bed and waited until it he began to wake up.

"Hey" Clint said and put the paper bag on his chest. "We got you your in-flight meal." He smiled gently and they watched Tony sit up, neither bothering to offer their help because they knew he would refuse it. He managed to sit up, the strain on his thighs and backside was the main reminder of what happened. He tore into the bag as he kept his eyes on the ground.

"Did you guys see him?" he asked them. "Loki, I mean." Tony's eyes stayed trained on the ground as Bruce and Clint exchanged a look.

"No" Clint said honestly. "I think they're probably making sure he won't pass by here if he doesn't know us." He told him. Tony glanced at him, looking at him for a second before looking back at his sad looking sandwich.

"He's smart, we know that. He'll come back to see us." He was certain of it. The man was too curious, too hyper aware that he knew Tony. Loki would be their way out, and their way back to the way things were before. "He'll get us out." He muttered to himself.

The walls of his apartment were beige. His sheets were beige; even his floors were a darker shade of the same beige that seemed to cover every god-forsaken inch of his tiny apartment. Loki milled around restlessly in his room every night, picking up each book that had been carefully placed in his shelf and then chucking it into the garbage bin, the stories feeling dry and uninteresting. The music on his phone was too loud for him, too fast and confusing, and everything in his closet seemed like an ill-fit.

Work was the only thing that got his mind off his crumbling life. He hardly cared for the patients he got, transferring from one ward to the next as they needed him, but it seemed curious that every time they moved him it was further and further from Ward M, which now had guards at its rusted entrance.

It didn't take more than a month before he was in Fury's office again. "I want to transfer wards." He said and the man frowned at him. The scars he had seen on him in the first day were gone, better covered up Loki assumed.

"Where to?" he asked him and got out the list of wards so he could change it on Loki's roster. Loki leaned over to look at it, almost as if contemplating where he wanted to be.

"Ward M." he said "I feel like I'm babysitting." He told Fury. "I applied to this job so that I could make a difference in the lives of patients." He lied, not really knowing why he applied to some place like this "I just don't feel like I'm doing that and I'm wondering if this is the right job for me." Loki looked him in the eyes, the threat of him quitting hanging in the air. He wasn't sure if it was because the hospital was understaffed, or people just didn't want to work in a loony bin, but he knew Fury wanted him there.

Fury gripped his clipboard. "You wouldn't know what to do with those patients; you'd need to be trained" He told him "and we don't have the time for that." Loki gave him a pleasant smile.

"I'm a quick learner." He said "besides there should be other nurses in there that I can use for guidance." Fury grit his teeth.

"Fine." He said finally. "Give me a few days to do the transfer." Loki blinked.

"Fine?" he asked, not thinking that it would be that easy.

"Are you deaf or something?" Fury asked. "I said fine. I'll page you when you can transfer over." He looked over to the door. "You can go."

Fury waited until he left and sighed. He walked over to the mirror behind his door and took out the contact from his bad eye, and grabbed his patch, slipping it on and leaned back in his seat as he thought. He made a few plans of things to change in the ward before Loki went in there and waited for his visitor.

It didn't take long before Odin stepped out of the shadows of his office. "What news do you have for me of my sons?" he asked as he sat down in the chair that Loki had been in.

"Thor is working the way you wanted." He said and turned on the screen to watch the ward. "He and Stark don't leave the door unless they're in their rooms." Odin nodded.

"I don't care for the mortal." He reminded Fury. "Dangling Loki in front of Thor should be enough. Thor's love for Loki should be more than enough to make him question where his loyalties should lie." He said. "If he believes he can get his brother back by allying himself to you and turning against his friends, he will." Fury nodded and watched him as he stood.

"I don't like locking them up." He told Odin. "I wouldn't do it if I didn't think I had another choice." Odin looked at him again.

"The lives of a few mortals is a small price to pay for the protection that Asgard will give you." He assured him "when I have my sons back, Loki's head cleared, and Thor's heart back in Asgard and ready to become king, I give you my oath that no harm will come to Midgard." Fury nodded. "Believe me, director; you are picking the less of the two evils."

Let me know what you thought! Liked it? Didn't like it? Is it too slow (sometimes it feels a bit slow for me, idk.)