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Chapter 23

"You let him not eat?" Phil asked for the tenth time.

"Yes," Tony answered back, already past annoyed. "For one single day, at his own insistence, and ready to intervene the next morning even if it hadn't been enough to make him sick already."

"Dr. Strange told us that most of the interventions possible would have potential psychological consequences for him," Bruce stated evenly. "I wasn't willing to risk that for something as simple as stubbornness over a meal, not when we're trying to train him out of compliance. And besides, I'm the only one around here with enough medical training to even try, and we can't afford him getting scared of me again. As it was, I didn't dare do anything more invasive than an IV, not with him unconscious. Not when we don't know anything about his internal biology. Or how stable it is, now that he can shapeshift again."

"Not consciously," Natasha reminded him.

"Unconsciously's bad enough," Steve reminded her back. "We don't know what he's instinctively capable of when he feels threatened. Keeping him uneasy might not be the only reason he was locked in form."

"And we don't know the details about what that locked form's differences from how his body is normally were," Tony added. "Changing himself back at an age where he can remember what he did and how it felt may make him more capable of conscious shifting than Thor thinks he is."

"And here you were the skeptic," Clint jibed lightly.

"I've seen him shift. If he can make himself look like a species that evolved in a different ecology than the one he was born to, I don't want to find out what else he's capable of. Especially not in a way that can hurt him."

"And there's something else. Something we need to not tell Odin if we can help it and shouldn't let Frigga find out about."

Phil, Natasha, and Clint all stared at Bruce.

"I had his hands bound, just to keep him from pulling out the IV. One was bound near to his waist because I thought that would be a more natural position that might not bother him as much."

"I was sitting with him when he woke up, and he reacted badly and swiftly to it the moment he couldn't raise his hand further up on his body."

Natasha cursed. "That night we stayed with him, when he had the breakthrough..."

"I held his hand and didn't have to work to get him to let me because he was already settling in to sleep with both hands near his face. Which probably means something happened and we have no clue what."

"So what do we do now?" Phil asked.

Natasha answered. "We treat him like someone with unknown triggers, like we've been doing. And I go talk to Frigga later."

"We just said she shouldn't find out," Steve reminded her.

"Right. But I can tell her about me, woman to woman, and figure out what Thor's views of me are likely to be. My background isn't a secret among SHIELD agents now, Steve. It's only a matter of time until the Asgardians find out anyway. And if I should try to figure out what they think of attacked men..."

"You can mention you're just trying to figure out what Thor's reaction should he find out a male human had been a victim. Without mentioning who," Steve stressed.

Natasha nodded grimly. "Without mentioning who."

Loki felt very uneasy as he lay there with his head propped up a bit and a parent to either side.

He didn't understand what was going on.

First Odin and Frigga appeared out of nowhere at the most embarrassing time possible - not that it was his place to get embarrassed about anything someone else did to him. Where was Thor, why had they come?

And then once Frigga had helped him get cleaned up - and it was clear she was still the same motherly Mother she had always been, at least one thing that made absolute sense - they'd brought him back up here and put him in Thor's bed.

Only no Thor. And he still had a tube sticking out of his hand.

The other place had made sense. He had the strap on his wrist to tell him where he was supposed to be - and when that went away the rails on the bed made the same point with less force. He knew they'd let him get himself into trouble, but also that they would save him from it once it got scary.

And Tony Stark had even let him know what was being dripped into him and didn't do anything to him for asking. None of them had done anything to him for asking and when he'd tested his luck and pointed out that he really needed the bathroom soon...

They hadn't punished him, just tried to figure out what he wanted, and when he hadn't been able to hold any longer they hadn't punished him for that either.

They hadn't even given him the exasperated look he could vaguely remember Frigga giving him when he was little - it must have been one of the last times he accidentally wet the bed as a child.

It wasn't the way they had taught him the world was supposed to be. He hadn't done anything to earn any sort of privilege at all. But it was becoming relatively predictable, and the top prediction he could make was that they would not hurt him.

At least not so long as he behaved himself and with no orders from them and no assurance he could even receive orders anymore, that was doable.

This...

He still didn't know if this was meant as a soft prison or not, and if it was it would be a bad thing to let on that he was improving only he'd already given Frigga evidence that he had so there went that anyway. And if it wasn't there was still the question of just how Odin saw him now...

And where was Thor? Had they collected him to take him back to Asgard? He liked this place, at least right now, but then it wasn't his place to express a preference.

The frustrated questioning sound was past his throat before he realized he was making it.

Both of them looked at him with what must have been concern.

Or a search for the clarification he could not provide.

He tried for the first time to say something, desperate to break the anxious hell he was in, but nothing came out, not even garble.

Not even a squeak.

The same constriction that forced what questions came out higher than his voice had ever been kept all the words in.

Frigga stroked back his hair as she and Odin conversed seriously for a moment.

And then Odin, as serious as Loki had ever seen him to the point it was scary but without more than a touch of anger, slipped one hand under his back and the other under his neck and lifted just enough to take most of Loki's weight on his arms.

Then, Odin spoke.

Loki couldn't make out the words, but he knew the pattern well enough. He had no memory of Odin saying the familiar construction, but he'd witnessed it often enough in court over the centuries that the connection came easily and he knew exactly what Odin's words were.

"I, Odin Borson, take this child as a son to me."

He did not revisit the also-familiar patterns of the full naming ceremony and that would have been inappropriate for an adult's adoption - or re-adoption - anyway.

It took a moment to think through the implications.

That Odin had made space for Loki in his own bed during the worst early days had its own implications. What made this different?

And then Loki got it.

Odin didn't need to go through the ceremony to acknowledge the familial relationship remained that he had established with whoever Loki had been before them.

But it wasn't a ceremony he would have gone through with a son who was being punished.

This was not a soft prison, no matter what being here was really meant as. And not only was it not a soft prison, but Loki had to be in fairly favorable position at the moment.

He gave a little questioning chirp, meant as 'Did you mean that?' after Odin let him settle back onto the bed and pillows.

That earned him another concerned look, followed by some inter-parental discussion he couldn't begin to understand, followed by Odin easing down next to him and holding him close.

Which was as good as a 'yes'.

And then he recognized that there were two forms of the ceremony. One for adoptions of infants, and another used for older children - or adults, sometimes, when there was need - who already had names. And Odin had used the infant form.

Which implied some things, including a lack of immediate parental expectations and an understanding the adopted person was going to need a lot of support for a long time.

That was when he went from vaguely feeling like he was nearing the edge of tears to flat-out bawling into Odin's beard.

Strong arms held him close and someone's hand patted his back.

And when he'd calmed down a bit, something else hit him.

This scene was never going to repeat with Loki in a different role.

Even if he recovered from whatever had happened as much as was possible - and given how he'd spoken when with Farbauti and Laufrey in whatever place that had been, he wasn't holding much hope of that - for the first he was biologically incompatible with any woman he had so much as a vague interest in and for the second he was likely to never be sound enough to be in true authority over anyone much less a child as helpless as he himself was now.

There were certain to be Thorsons in Asgard within the next millennium - their people wouldn't let Thor get away with that even if it meant him adopting young adults as a single father.

But there wasn't ever going to be anyone using the name Lokison.

It was something Loki knew implicitly he'd never had to think of before them, and their imposed rule meant such things worked differently. But now, with them silent and knowing the damage...

Something that had been a core assumption of his youth - there would one day be a woman he'd wed and there would be first-cousins called Lokison and Lokisdottir for the Thorson heir and his siblings to practice weaponry with and go on quests with and hopefully listen to him on strategy with... and then drive Thor crazy together after he gave them a few subtle hints here and there of just what would push him in all the right places.

And now, that simply wasn't going to happen.

Even if/when he got home and years went on and Thor settled down to the responsibilities of the royal heir or perhaps by then king, he wasn't going to be anything more than strange, damaged Uncle Loki.

One of Grandmother Bestla's older brothers had lived just long enough for Loki to vaguely remember, now that he was thinking about it, being ordered to keep him company at feasts after his mind began to flee from sheer age and he had started smelling funny.

Spending the rest of his life at feasts as Great-Uncle Geirr was a lot less attractive than the memories he had of lurking at the edges, trying to catch the eye of...

He couldn't remember her name.

He could remember everything else about her, but not her name.

Not that it really mattered, there was no hope for her notice now and none back then before them either because what Asgardian would want to court a Jotun no matter his rank and yes he would have been honest when a relationship turned serious because he couldn't have stood not being himself in him own rooms and...

The tears welled up again as hard as ever.

When Odin said something that sounded like a question, all he could think to do was trace a chevron on the back of his hand, where the marking would have been if he'd grown up on Jotunheim, just so he could let them know that yes, where he came from was part of it.

They kept him company while he wept, and twice Bruce Banner came through to change the drip bag on the pole for a new one. The first time, Loki tried to be as still and quiet as he could, but then Bruce nudged his shoulder to get Loki's attention, shook his head, and made just enough hand signals that Loki figured out Bruce was telling him not to worry about it, his emotional outburst wasn't about to trigger anything from Bruce.

Loki didn't exactly trust it, but with Odin there he felt just safe enough to stand following the request to not react when Bruce came back the second time.