Disclaimer: I own no part of the Marvel movie universe.
Chapter 5
They traveled during the days and slept in SHIELD safehouses during the nights.
They had tried to have Tony drive the first night, to get to New York that much faster, but Loki had never settled down.
And then it had taken an hour of gentle coaxing when they all exasperatedly gave in to convince Loki that he had not done anything unforgivably horrible by not being able to drop off in a moving vehicle.
Or, that was, to convince him well enough that he could curl up beside Thor on the floor and get a few hours rest when they did make it to a safehouse.
The floor, because he actively resisted a place on the couch or a bed when it became clear that there had to be someone on the floor.
It was oddly hope-inspiring for Tony that the little damaged ball of chaos could still manage basic math and deduction of such simple facts as being led to one of two available bedrooms when six people needed space to sleep meaning that unless he did something he would not be on the floor and someone else would.
It still spoke badly of his mental state.
Even in Tony's worst moments of never believing anything would be enough for his father - shortly after his graduation from MIT had been a mostly 'well of course he finished early, his hobbies all counted for course credit' quiet affair in private with the public celebration perfunctory as hell - he'd never believed he wasn't worthy of sleeping on anything better than the floor. Sure, he'd woken up hungover on the floor after some drunken private parties over the years, but what else were floors at drunken private parties for, anyway?
But that warped mental state, Tony knew, could be worked with. Given the choice of someone with logic but what seemed to amount to Doormat Syndrome or someone with a decent sense of self-worth but no logic, he'd honestly prefer the doormat.
They'd just have to give Loki some better data to work with.
Like Thor spending the night on the floor with him, an arm wrapped around him as they shared a pillow and a folded-out sleeping bag for a blanket.
Like sticking him in the passenger seat with Thor's hand on his shoulder as they passed through farm country where no one would notice him enough to wonder, letting him have the same turn everyone else was getting.
(They hadn't, however, been fool enough to let him stay there when they got to rivers. Thor had kept his brother's eyes covered the entire time they were crossing the bridges, especially the Mississippi just a little while ago.)
They had stopped at Sharon's a few hours ago for lunch, once Phil 'realized' they were close (or, rather, let Steve know since he and Tony had planned that out from the moment they'd all decided they would need to transport Loki by land). Only for the hour or so it took to eat, for Steve to assure himself the headstone was where it should be on Peggy's grave, and for Phil to pay his own respects, but it had given Loki an hour in a reasonably normal American human home.
Sharon had even let the feeding battle happen in the house, much as the fact it needed to happen at all clearly made her uneasy.
And, since it was taking twice as long to get to New York as they had planned...
Loki's hair was still wet from his apparently-first experience in a Western-style indoor shower. Considering they'd had to manage it by sticking him in the bathroom clothed with the water running, soap in his hand, and clean clothes and a towel on a storage cabinet beside the tub, he seemed to have figured things out rather well.
Thor had sworn their mother was the only one he'd let wash him even in the first days, and given what he'd told them all about Loki begging her to "care for him" in his last mentally-intact moments, it was clear to Tony at least that Loki'd had a fair view of exactly who he was likely to trust after he'd lost his mind.
Which raised some interesting questions about how Loki had viewed Odin and Thor even before he'd had his not-so-little adoption-revelation-induced mental breakdown in Asgard, even before he'd been mind controlled.
"Thor, are you sure you gave Loki enough to eat? I know you were getting worried about Sharon at the end," Steve called back from the passenger seat.
We were all getting worried about Sharon at the end, Capsicle, Tony thought. Two weeks, and she's had to deal with her great-aunt dying, the man who might have been her great-uncle showing up on her doorstep as if literally back from the dead, a quarter of SHIELD having a post-burial wake in her house, and now aliens in her shower and kitchen with nothing but a few days' warning.
It's a wonder she didn't try to resign.
"I was thinking of letting him eat before us this evening," Thor answered back. "It feels wrong that he is always last. As if he might think his basic needs were an afterthought."
"It is wrong, Thor," Natasha said quietly. "And he's not sticking up for himself at all."
"Which means we ought to," Phil finished.
"So, same burger chain as last time?" Tony asked.
"He has not complained any more than he did at home," Thor told him in answer. "Which merely means it does not suit him ill, I suppose. But we were giving him his old favorites at home."
"What was he like, before?" Natasha asked. "I know you've given me details, but what was he like overall? What was he going to be?"
"My brother is not what both our peoples would consider an inventor, although he is - was - well-versed in the scientific arts, which would be recognized by you as science and technological-magic. He was not skilled in creating new devices - few in our world are, our understanding of the basic rules of the universe has been advanced for so long - but he could look at something another had designed, even something generations' old - even our generations - and think of a dozen new uses for it. How to turn a holographic generator into a combat weapon. A thousand ways to trick the eye using commonplace technologies no one would question allowing him access to. We, ah, discounted him because he was no great warrior by use of strength, but what he was..." A gentle grunt was followed by the tiniest of protests from Loki, and a quick check in the rear-view mirror confirmed that someone had just been hugged too tightly out of what was for him nowhere. "Now that he is different, I appreciate what he was better. I just wish he could know that. And if I had known sooner..."
No one had an answer for that.
He was feeling a little guilty, but otherwise very satisfied.
They were treating him well, despite the memories he had of them. Maybe he was lucky and they understood he wasn't at his best. Whatever his best actually was, since he couldn't remember that.
And he was keeping as well in his place as he could, little as he remembered of what it actually was.
He'd even figured out that little trap the first night with them of trying to get him to accept sleeping out of his proper place, first when they tried to get him to sleep here while they were traveling and then when they tried to get him to displace one of them from a bed.
He hadn't fallen for it. Not for a second.
He'd been rewarded well. The tall one had stayed with him, even let him share a pillow and thick blanket. It was warmer than he'd like, but the others knew what he needed better than he did.
And he'd kept doing it, every night since they'd come here!
He must be acting properly.
Which was where some of the guilt was coming from, because he was still being treated like someone who did as he should and obeyed them properly when he had broken a rule today.
A very big one.
On this world, they washed in something that reminded him of a vague memory of cleaning himself in the wild where a stream dropped over a ledge.
It's called a waterfall. And that was after you and the others hid behind it until your enemies exhausted themselves looking for you and went home dejected and victory-less.
It was his first time encountering such plumbing, but they had trusted him alone with it.
He had realized when he started rinsing off - it was so much easier than the rag-and-unstopped-basin bathing he'd been allowed, for of course he hadn't proved himself enough for the temptation that was standing water - that if he was unmindful of how he positioned himself, he'd get spray on his face.
And so he had been intentionally very uncareful, and kept his lips parted the rest of the time he was in the presence of the water on top of that.
The rule, the rule of rules, and he'd violated it in spirit.
And the tall one and the others had already fed him, and he knew by now it would be hours until they ate again and his turn wouldn't be until after.
He was quite full of water now, even just from the small intentionally accidental drink he'd gotten, but it didn't matter because he'd be empty again before they fed him. They never need know.
But he'd broken a rule a rule a rule the rule of rules and if anyone ever figured it out horror horror horror no no no...
A cup of water no one will ever miss means nothing compared to what you've already done.
They would find out, they always did, they had ways.
The slowing that indicated they would be stopping soon, and the familiar stretching and chatter that accompanied a meal stop.
And he was still full of illicit water consumed against the rule of all their and, worse, his rules.
Panic.
It was only a little later, and well before they stopped, when the woman said something sharply to everyone else.
They didn't feed him that meal. He sat in the van, and the tall one and the woman simply switched who was watching him, probably so the other could go eat. She unbuckled him from the seat and tried to coax him into walking around a little inside, but he couldn't tell if it was a trap or not with the tall one gone and stayed where he was until she gave in and refastened the restraint.
Restraints were good. They told you exactly where you were supposed to be and wouldn't let you be anywhere else.
That night they offered food just before he was supposed to sleep, but when he dutifully turned his head away they left him alone.
He lay beside the tall one that night, feigning sleep, feeling miserable inside from guilt and hunger, and wondering when his punishment would end. Or properly begin, once they or worse they figured out exactly what he had done.
What few times he dropped off were marred by nightmares and he could barely keep awake as he should the next morning when their journey began again after a quick meal that did nothing to fill him, as if they'd realized he wasn't going to make it easy on them to make him break the rules again and had cut back what they were forcing into him.
He'd just have to do better he would he would and no more sneaking anything, not when he could give himself away so easily.
And there was still no contact from them.