I still own nothing (very sad, I know :()

Chapter 17

Bruce Banner's Point of View (the next morning)

Bruce watched, fascinated, as the person everyone knew as Tony Stark worked at his station in the lab. If it wasn't for the fact that he was never one for hallucinations – well, unless he was under the influence of some military issue, drug delivery dart, that is – he would have been more than ready to put last night's encounter to the back of his mind and chalk it up to far too little sleep and an overactive imagination. But it hadn't been a hallucination or a dream. It had definitely been real.

He could not believe that underneath the disguise (which was a feat of brilliant engineering in itself) of a wise-cracking genius there was a young woman who had achieved everything the world thought that someone with at least twenty years more experience had.

The whole thing was beyond belief and yet the proof was before him. Now that he knew the secret Bruce was spotting all of her little tells.

She was good at acting the part but now that he knew he couldn't help but spot how she would sometimes forget to walk like a…well…man and the strutting shoulder rolling way of moving she had adopted for Tony Stark would be forgotten. And then there was the moment when they had breakfast that morning.

As they walked from the canteen a group of S.H.I.E.L.D personnel had entered. She had backed herself up against the wall, not allowing them to touch her.

Now that he thought about it in all the time he had spent with Tony Stark he had never allowed physical contact.

As they returned to the lab, Toni munching on an apple, he asked her about it.

"What happens if someone touches you?"

She…he…Toni stopped mid crunch and quirked an eyebrow before finishing her mouthful and swallowing.

"Well, people don't blow up. Although I am working on a slight electric shock but Pip thinks that is taking my antisocial tendencies to a disturbing level that he has refused to condone and he had J.A.R.V.I.S. lock the file for a little while," it was strange hearing Tony speaking in Tony's voice but the words being those of the girl he had met the night before.

They had entered the lab and the door whooshed shut behind them.

"You know what I mean. The disguise," he waved at her…him…this was getting confusing, "It only changes your appearance and does nothing physically,"

He waited now for her to answer him but Toni was firing up her station and didn't pay any attention to him until she had changed some level and checked the readings. He did the same at his own station, running the scanner over the sceptre and logging the number – no changes, and the search was still running.

Once he was finished he looked up to find the genius leaning against his work station and studying him.

"You mean, why don't more people notice something 'off' between what I look like and what I feel like?"

Bruce nodded his head.

"Well, as a rule, I don't allow much contact so that cuts down on any drama that could come from a situation,"

Bruce nodded but didn't interrupt.

"But, on the chance that someone does touch me, it usually isn't long enough for them to think anything but that their minds are playing tricks. The human brain is easy enough to trick for a second or two,"

She stepped towards him and reached out a hand.

Bruce looked down at it.

It wasn't a large hand but it wasn't feminine either. It was definitely a man's hand he was looking at.

"Touch,"

He did so.

Taking the hand in his own.

It was smaller than his he noted as he turned it around and examined it.

But something wasn't right.

His eyes were telling him that he was holding a hand. But his brain was telling him that it felt even smaller than it appeared.

"You see the trick is to not get cleaver," Toni explained, "I could make myself look like Thor but then things would get ridiculous. Tony Stark is only a little bigger than me in height and what have you. To make it seem less suspicious it is better to keep things as fundamentally similar as possible or movement and what have you starts to look a little ropey,"

He nodded his head. It made sense.

He focused his gaze on the reactor glowing brightly in the centre of her chest. He had only stolen a glance or two at it the night before, the positioning of the tech making him feel like he was ogling her chest…which he was…in a way.

He could feel his ears heating up in embarrassment as he remembered walking in on her the night before.

Not one of your best moments Banner.

After getting over the shock the sheer size of the Arc Reactor inside the young woman's chest had shocked him. What appeared to be not much in the bulk of an adult man's chest seemed huge in the small frame of the girl?

Toni's Point of View

Toni blushed slightly as she gestured to her chest area – a part of her that Bruce seemed to be finding very fascinating at the moment.

"You will notice that in the past few years Tony Stark has developed a bit of a…deep chest…in some of his public appearances,"

Bruce blushed slightly and then laughed, she smiled at his reaction.

It was all a calculation when it came to the disguise. Mostly the doubles had to deal with the issue and she didn't have to worry about it. She very rarely was seen in public acting the part of Tony Stark and when she was no one paid enough attention to see the slight differences in height and weight.

Each double had to have cuffs programmed to his own build and readings and then the programme calculated where the alterations to appearance were made to make the disguise as convincing as possible. Of course all of the doubles were roughly the same height so when it came to them switching there was very little alteration in height.

But, if someone ever got it into their heads to study media photos there would be a lot of questions as to why Tony Stark would grow or shrink an inch or two in the same week.

The conversation wound down naturally as they both focused on their work.

It was frustrating all the waiting around and computer babysitting. That was all this had turned into now after the initial set up. Now it was only a case of twiddling dials and adjusting scales.

Then again, it did give her time to think things over as she did tasks that she could do in her sleep.

The scans were picking up nothing except for a slight trace from Loki which had been put down to a residual affect from his using the device. J.A.R.V.I.S. was still running scans on the systems and needed more time to find a back door in…or a window that she could break. She wasn't too fussed at this point in time. S.H.I.E.L.D. was hiding something and she was going to find out what before Fury pointed her and her suit towards another target.

Thoughts of targets brought her mind back to Loki and the plan of action she had thought up as she had gotten ready this morning.

None of them knew the completely unhinged god. None of them but Thor and he had not been so biased as to go off alone with his brother and not trust them – which in all fairness he had every right to do.

She needed to talk to him.

"Bruce, I need to do something. Can you…"

Some time later

Tony sat opposite Thor at one of the cafeteria tables as the Thunder God chugged back his third cup of coffee in a row.

Huh, she dared Pip to complain about her coffee intake ever again and even Toni very nearly balked as he lowered the cup with a huge grin and proceeded to fill it again from the flask that had been left at the table by one of the staff.

"Tis a wonderful invention this coffee," he announced, going in for the kill on a third cup.

Toni had no idea how he was doing it. She loved her caffeine in a take a deep breath a savour it kind of way but this was something he else. The dark liquid was hardly touching the sides of the mug before Thor was swallowing it down.

"Umm Thor, I hate to interrupt your little coffee love fest but I have some questions if you don't mind," she tried to get his attention.

Thor lowered the mug and met her eyes.

"Forgive me, Man of Iron,"

Man of Iron? Oh for –

"Just Tony is fine," she told the god.

"Very well, Tony," Thor inclined his head in a way that could only come from a royal – it seemed they all picked up on some things no matter what planet they came from, "Ask your questions. They are about my brother are they not?"

Toni nodded her head. She had felt a little awkward approaching Thor and asking him if he was free to talk but there was no one else who could answer her questions and myths were only so accurate. She was a little worried that talking about Loki might be a touchy subject but she would just have to play it by ear and see how he reacted.

She took a small sip of her own coffee before beginning.

"I was wondering if you could tell me a little about him. I mean, he couldn't always have been-" she slammed an end to what she was going to say, not wanting to insult Loki, no matter how lightly, to his brother's face – "this way," she ended lamely.

Toni tried not to fidget as Thor looked at her and for a moment she panicked that he could see through her disguise.

"You wish to know about the Loki of the past?" he finally broke the awkward silence.

"Yes," she nodded her head, "yes I would,"

Several hours later

Toni changed into her borrowed S.H.I.E.L.D. issue finery in her room thinking over the past few hours.

Once Thor had began to speak about his little brother there was no getting his to stop – she was glad she had told Bruce that she didn't know how long her errand would take - and it was obvious to her that under his strong exterior he was distraught over his brother's actions.

Loki it seemed had always had a flare for trickery and the dramatic ever on a few occasions aiming what was obviously his natural talent towards achieving payback but Thor was adamant that his brother had never before shown such a blatant disregard for life or such a viciously cruel and twisted streak.

So the question then arose. What had changed the usually so level headed brother into a world dominating nut-case?

"My brother received some…shocking news during my banishment,"

Thor shifted in his seat and played with the once again empty mug. Toni doubted the guy was ever going to get some sleep in the next week with the amount of caffeine he had put away.

She stayed quiet. Not something someone would expect from Anthony Stark but Thor was new to earth and the cafeteria was nearly deserted so she didn't had a persona to act up to at the moment.

"You are aware that my brother is adopted?"

She nodded her head. She had learned that when she had caught up the bits of the meeting she had missed out on.

"My brother only learned of this upon my banishment just before my father fell into the Odinsleep,"

Harsh.

"My brother is of another race. He is a Frost Giant. My father defeated them in battle long ago when I was a boy. He found Loki abandoned on Jotunheim and brought him home…" Thor sighed and seemed to age before her eyes as weariness settled over him.

"Frost Giants are the beings Asgarian children are told stories about. They are the creatures that will come in the night and carry you off if you do not behave. The ones who will eat you if you wonder too far from home. We are raised on tales of the monsters that our realm defeated. I was raised on such tales…my brother was raised on such tales,"

Toni's heart lurched a little at the hitch in his voice

Toni sighed as she finished padding up the reactor to hide the glow. Thor's story explained a lot. But not everything.

She felt sorry for Loki to learn of the lies that had been fed him for his entire life (and he was a god, that was a long time) and more than a little angry at Odin and his wife for allowing Loki to grow up thinking of the Frost Giants as monsters all the while knowing that he would have to find out eventually what he really was.

Tony entered the room containing the Hulk-proof killer goldfish bowl of doom for the second time and with a little less nerves than she had before. Of course she still had Loki to face (which was slightly more terrifying than it was the day before now that she had an experience to go off of – the dude was unhinged and she decided that to be not at least a little frightened was just stupid) but as she didn't have the guards to deal with she wasn't quite as jingly. To not have to worry about a trigger happy S.H.I.E.L.D agent using her for target practise was definitely a weight off her mind…she was sure they weren't packing water pistols…unless they were planning on defending against the Wicked Witch of the West. Heck, Thor, God of Thunder and all things butch was on the ship in the flesh, so anything was possible.

She smiled at the straight faced and straighter backed guards on duty and didn't even receive a blink on acknowledgment as she swiped her completely legit card over the sensor. She felt a little guilty remembering the guards who were on duty during her first sneak in and hoped she hadn't got them into too much trouble. In her mind's eye she could just imagine Fury ordering them to walk the plank…or throwing them outside the front door to suffocate.

The room was just as it was the day before all shadowy and gloomy except for the almost eerie brightness of the cell. She wondered if the god imprisoned within had even got any sleep with the lights being on constantly. A voice that sounded just like Pip's sounded in her head, reminding her that this guy was in the cell for a reason and that reason was that he was a Bad Guy!

The sole occupant glanced up as she walked down the steps and he smiled that freaky, Grinch-like grin before turning away from her as she took up her seat in front of the cage, crossing her arms across her chest and getting comfortable.

So, he knew she was here but he was going to ignore her. Well, she was perfectly fine with just sitting because she had no idea just what she was going to say to him.

Tony just sat and watched him as he purposefully ignored her in favour of studying his hands.

If I had a bigger ego I'd be offended, she thought dryly, never taking her eyes from him.

He was still pale, his skin shinning with a layer of perspiration that could not be healthy. But none of the scans had picked up on anything wrong with the alien being – as far as they knew anyway – so no one seemed to be too worried about it.

The silence finally got to her enough for her to clear her throat and shift slightly in her chair.

"Why do you hate your brother so much?"

Loki moved his head with a serpentine languidness, his almost fever bright eyes gazing at her as though he would see all the way through her.

"Ah, you disturb me today to ask of the golden son. How-" he paused, appearing to think, before sighing heavily, "-predictable you people are,"

Okaaay…

Toni refused to be played by the alien trickster and shimmied forward in the seat.

"Sorry," she smiled, not feeling sorry in the slightest, "must suck to be putting up with all the predictable mortals in this place,"

He tilted his head.

"Besides, I wasn't asking about Thor, if I wanted to know about him I would get it straight from the horses mouth, so to speak. I was asking about you," she pointed at him, "and why you don't like him,"

Silence fell and Loki stood and strolled towards her, his hands behind his back.

"Do I need a reason?" he asked, smiling that insane, chilling smile of his.

"Oh, sure you do," she stood, not liking him peering down at her - even if the Hulk proof window was between them – and made her own little stroll toward him. She stopped a foot or so from glass, "everyone needs a motivation. Even you,"

Expressions she couldn't read flickered across the pale face so rapidly she could hardly register them.

And she waited.

Dun dun dun.

Hi everyone. I hope you have enjoyed this chapter. It didn't go quite as I had planned but after trying several ways of putting it across this was honest to goodness the best way out of the bunch :)

I hope you are all having a nice weekend.

:)