Disclaimer: I own no part of the Marvel movie universe.

Chapter 14

They ate in private as a family that night, as they had sometimes found occasion to do in the past.

Thor's welcome home feast would be tomorrow night, after he'd been given a chance to rest a bit. Not from the traveling - the Bifrost made that nearly effortless - but from the weeks of stress of constantly looking after Loki.

Even when he'd taken a day to be with Jane, they had needed to be constantly reachable in case anything changed.

He was sure Heimdall would tell them if there was an urgent need for his return to Midgard, but the moment to moment wondering was off his shoulders.

For everything but the most dire situations, the humans ought to be able to handle Loki's care.

"So, how does Loki fare? In your estimation," Odin asked him.

"He's certainly better than he was. Food is still an issue, and water, but apart from that problem he's doing much better. He doesn't understand language yet, but we've had him doing odd errands within the building so he can feel useful. According to the human sorcerer Dr. Strange, that's a very important thing to him."

"A prince of Asgard, needing to run objects from room to room as a courier to feel useful." Odin rubbed his temples.

"It will stop immediately when he comes back to himself enough to object to it," Thor said quickly.

"I was not saying it was a bad idea, my son. But for Loki to have been brought so low as to feel he need do such things..."

"It is a shameful thing his enemies have done to him," Frigga added.

Thor decided not to mention anything about what had led Loki to this state. At least not with their mother present.

The look on her face right now was bad enough.

"He will have a memory breakthrough soon. Dr. Strange isn't sure how far it will go, but he claims even the smallest possible one will bring Loki back to much of who his former self was, at least in personality..."

"Good," Frigga said with a sigh.

"... but with all the behavioral and emotional issues he has now still in place." Thor cringed in anticipation of the change on his mother's face, and his prediction was entirely correct. "But he'll be in a psychological place where he can start working through them. Right now, he doesn't have the information to understand what's happened to him, and until he can comprehend speech..."

"... there's no way to give him that information," Odin completed with his eyes closed.

Thor had to agree.

"How little does he know?" Frigga asked.

"Mother, please..."

"Thor, we need to know. Heimdall cannot see within minds, only what the owners of those minds do."

Thor had to obey his father, even if he hadn't used his rank as Allfather when making the request. "According to the sorcerer, Loki doesn't have a concept of what 'family' is right now."

Both of them stared at him in horror.

"He was trusting us..." Frigga breathed.

"He remembers that we treat him well. But there isn't an understanding of why. Just that we're safe, and that we are likely to be predictable toward him."

"The reasoning of a very young child who doesn't know very much yet," Odin said grimly.

"As near as we can tell, he vaguely remembers that the human Avengers hurt him at some time in the past, but he trusted me trusting them. Since they haven't done anything else he's found objectionable, he's been all right alone with them for a while. I didn't like leaving him before he understands what's happened to him, but there's no way around it."

"No, there isn't. And I'd rather get this out of the way before he needs us later on." Odin leaned back a bit. "Are there any predictions for when he might remember where he came from?"

"None. It isn't part of the group of memories Dr. Strange thought he'd be getting back next, but it might cascade from them. Or at least that's the term he used."

"One set of memories can provide the keys to another, Thor," Frigga told him kindly. "A memory of fighting beside you could trigger a memory of that dreadful trip to Jotunheim, and that could remind him of everything else that happened that day."

"Or he could remember how he killed Laufey, and only later fill in why he took that action, or even who Laufey was to him." Odin's voice was as grim as it had ever been. "Chances are your brother may well feel a great deal of guilt over what he did before all this happened to him."

Thor nodded. "I understand. I... from what I have been told, I... there were things I did not know I was doing to him, before. Being the oldest. Being the one our people viewed as an acceptable prince. I... I did not realize what was happening, what I was doing to him, and to him..."

"To him, everything was as it had always been. No reason to complain," Odin finished the thought.

"I'm trying to fix it, but he doesn't understand enough..."

"He'll understand you're treating him well," Frigga assured him. "And he'll remember these days later on."

"He thinks the way I treated him before is all he deserves. Most of what he can recall now is abuse."

His mother dropped her fork and raised her hand to her mouth.

There goes dinner.

The tall one hadn't come back.

They were settling in for the night and he hadn't come back.

He always came back. Always always always. First in the afternoons in the other place, when the woman had taken care of him, and then the nights here. He'd spent the night in another room last night, but still nearby.

But tonight... he hadn't come back.

It made him nervous.

The big man, the one who looked out for the woman who had traveled with them and kept an eye out for him, was spending the night in the tall one's bed.

Or was it really the tall one's bed at all? He'd been spending more and more time away lately. Maybe it was all an elaborate transition from one set of minders to another.

It wasn't his place to have an opinion, but he hoped that wasn't what had happened. He'd prefer the tall one came back.

But he'd just have to take what he was given, as was right.

He settled into bed uneasily and stared into the dark for a long time, wondering why it mattered so much that the tall one was gone.

He drifted off before the big man's breathing showed signs of sleep.

Thor wished he could get news from Midgard as he settled in for the evening in a bedroom he had not been in for weeks, but he knew if he started asking Heimdall now, he would never stop asking.

And no matter what happened, he could not return until after his father had woken from the Odinsleep. Not unless it was a matter of the safety of the realm, and Heimdall would send for him personally if that were the case.

No, he'd just have to get used to it.

I will not know how Loki has fared until I return and see him myself.

"Thor?" his mother called from the doorway.

It was going to take time to get used to the royal quarter's use of guards and angled hallways in place of the doors the Midgardians used everywhere again.

Home had never felt so foreign before.

"Yes, Mother?"

She walked in with an armful of children's books. "Your father and I had set these aside when your brother finished outgrowing them. In case either of you ever needed them for your own babes someday. I was wondering if maybe they could help Loki now, as stories he might remember without having to read them. Something you could read out loud to him, as a way to start language skills recovery."

Thor took them from her. "That... that could work."

"Spend some time looking through them here. I'm not sure all of them would be things he would remember. You boys would know each other better that way."

Thor put the books down and hugged her. "Brothers who always have each other are still no replacement for their mother," he told her.

"But he doesn't know that I'm his... I told him, I told him when he found out about his adoption that we were his family, that he should know that. And he doesn't even..."

She started crying, and Thor helped her sit down without taking an arm from her shoulders for an instant.

"Mother, even when he was trying to distance himself from me and from father, even in the depths of their control or the madness he fell into here... I've never heard him speak a word trying to disclaim you. And he was claiming Father until he fell from the Bifrost. Hanging on, he claimed him. Deities above, he only called himself a son of Odin to Laufey's face, and if he was ever willingly going to reject you he'd have done it then."

She calmed and nodded, dabbing at her eyes.

"When he remembers, he will claim you again, Mother. And it is only the word he has forgotten, only the obligation you feel to him. You and Father were the first two beings in the world he ever had reason to trust, and there is no sign he ever forgot that first thing he ever knew."

That set her bawling again and Thor simply held her through it.

She'd tried so hard not to cry in front of Loki, since he wouldn't understand and making him fret would only make her feel worse, but now...

Now was the time for letting her take comfort in the parts of her family that were still whole.

He fell asleep, hours later, still wondering how Loki was doing.

Warm arms around him, he wanted to be put down, the swaying was too much for him, a voice was singing something over and over again 'Bay bee brou ther' but it meant little more than nonsense and annoyance to him.

Disapproving eyes, and a sense that not all attention is good attention.

Bathing in a waterfall and joking with each other about something he didn't understand now.

A girl in a corner at a feast, listening to someone prattle on about some basic scientific principle incorrectly. He looked at her, but there were disapproving eyes and a sense of threat behind them so he looked away again.

Her again, older, but the same threat was there. Did he catch a glimpse of her furtively looking at him too, or was it merely the light?

Why did being threatened seem unthinkable and normal all at once?

Cold and dark and fear and falling and hands on him and being too weak to fight anything as as as

He woke screaming, trying to place himself in the dark and there were hands on him and...

Where am I? Where am I where am I where am I?

But he wasn't bound down, and even when the people he couldn't see were holding him they weren't really trying to control him, and...

What...

Someone clapped twice and the lights came on.

He stopped struggling and stared at them, trying to get his brain in gear.

Only he couldn't because it wouldn't and and and

Bound to a table in a darkened lab, something being secured over his head, people talking as if he weren't even there... Pain in his head...

The people around him, familiar from the past he didn't know how long, but there were other things he knew now and he didn't understand how he knew them now and some of it didn't match up deities some of it didn't even make sense...

He sat there, shaking harder and harder, trying to understand, and then he put just enough together to think mind damage and then his stomach was roiling.