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

Chapter 29

Things stayed relatively calm for the rest of Frigga's visit, to Tony's relief.

Loki was currently capable of making enough trouble on his own - more than enough - simply by the level of care he still needed. Add in Queen Frigga, and the situation was an incident waiting to happen.

An incident Earth simply didn't have trained diplomats for, yet.

He'd be glad when they finally did. He certainly wasn't suited to that, and he wasn't thrilled with having that potential disaster hanging over his head in his home, either.

He liked the Asgardians, personally. It was simply the fact that if things went really wrong while Frigga or Odin was present - after the Chitauri invasion, Tony didn't feel the same about Thor's presence - there would be no defending against the response. He hadn't known that before he'd ribbed Thor about his cape, and he could quietly admit to himself that knowing better probably wouldn't have been enough to still his tongue.

And so he distracted himself by speeding the work on one of his current projects.

Frigga ran her fingers through Loki's hair as he leaned against her.

She would be leaving this afternoon, and he'd been informed well enough to show clear signs that he did understand that her visit was at an end.

She would be happy when he could communicate more than simple need, simple contentment, and basic confusion. It was clear, oh so clear now, that her little Loki was operating at a much higher level than that now. And even if he couldn't bear to tell them what had been done to him yet, she could tell there were things he needed to say.

Physical gestures had never come particularly naturally to him. Words had. He had spoken before Thor and they had never been certain if it was Loki being a Jotun with a different developmental timeline or Loki simply being Loki.

Tony Stark stuck his head in the doorway. He looked nervous. "I have something for Loki," he told her. "It took me a bit longer to put it together than I thought it would."

"Thor is sparring with Steve," she told him. "Whatever it is, it would be better if you demonstrated it to him than to me."

Tony walked fully into the room, carrying a handheld Midgardian device. That wasn't odd at all, for he was always transferring bits of tech around his residence. Loki had always been much the same with the physical components of his sorcery, a thought that nearly brought tears to her eyes.

Loki wasn't going to be that man again, the man who always had hologram generators tucked into pockets even in his own quarters in the evenings even after he pared down his blades into the least self-defense a warrior and prince of Asgard could dare carry.

"Actually," Tony told her with more confidence, "it's not for you or Thor to use. It's for Loki's own use. And I think he'd prefer to start using it while you are still around."

"What is it?"

"Hopefully a communication device he can use," Tony told her. "It's icon based, so it won't be a problem that he doesn't seem to be trying to read again just yet."

"We left that sort of technology behind, long ago," she breathed after a moment's shock.

They were so used to communications technology based on direct mind interfaces, ones that absolutely required an intact mind even if the biological substrate to it was disturbed, that making a device for Loki had been out of the question.

The possibilities of the older technologies simply hadn't crossed their minds. Normally, they simply weren't useful any more even with the basic components required all over the realm.

Loki would have figured it out in the old days if it were some other resident of Asgard who had been harmed in this way.

"Then why hadn't you tried something else?" Tony asked her calmly with the barest touch of accusation.

"Because our current technology can deal with brain damage or deterioration but not harm to the mind. It's all based on direct sensing of the communication centers in the brain. Even if we knew about what normal structure is for someone of his genetic background... He'll be too far from anything nature alone creates, even from disease, for that to work."

"Loki isn't eligible for Asgardian communication devices, then."

She shook her head. "We knew it would fail and there were no signs he would even get far enough along to be able to use assistive technology at all, so in the beginning we didn't try. And I don't think he'll ever be able to use our current technology."

Tony grinned. "Then let's see what he does with ours."

Loki was incredibly confused.

Tony was acting strange, his mother was acting strange, and he had no clue what was going on.

But then, he still wasn't sure he ought to know what was going on.

Tony had some sort of primitive technology in his hand. Primitive for both peoples, Loki could somehow remember.

The humans had graduated to clear screens and holographic displays, he knew, and their components were nearly as small now as most used on Asgard - the smallest user-serviceable by anyone that lived on their physical scale - even if they were nowhere near as powerful, fast...

This was a chunky handheld device with an older screen technology.

Tony was better than this. That was another of the things he simply knew. Everything they had allowed him to access about Tony Stark's abilities had showed he was on the absolute forward edge of the planet's computing tech and had been that way since childhood. Both in designing and in utilizing.

And then Tony handed him the device.

It had been quite a while since he had been allowed true access to technology. He had true control of the staff, and more importantly anyone touched by it. And they had known better than to allow him anything that was not locked down completely, even after he had stopped fighting.

He stared down at the little device in his hand. Incredibly primitive, and yet familiar.

And then, he knew. He had seen this technology before.

The screen was displaying a few - a very few - brightly colored icons. One had a symbol he thought he should recognize. Another had the head-and-shoulders emblem that he somehow knew was nearly universal among bipedal species that used the basic body plan Asgardians and humans shared.

He remembered this. It had been in materials he couldn't quite make sense of now, but he could make sense of that part of it all.

Historical communications devices. Such as Asgard had used before their technology had advanced far enough that this device had no purpose anymore, the replacements were so much more useful. He couldn't make much sense of what he knew about the recent technology, though. Something about direct mind interfaces...

Oh!

Mind damage. Of course he couldn't use Asgardian tech. And Tony Stark...

Tony Stark had made advanced-for-his-planet battle armor in a cave with a box of scrap metal and limited amounts of rarer materials. That much Loki remembered about him. Of course Tony Stark would put something like this together for him, since communicating seemed so important to Tony.

He knew from the person icon that this had to be a category screen. There was no reason for Tony to consider the concept of 'a person' important enough for its own symbol.

He pushed the symbol he thought he recognized.

Everything shifted, and here was a group of icons that seemed to all be things that one of the humans might make requests about. The image of a made bed. A glass of water. A plate of food. Even something that looked like a simplified interior of human bathroom, and another of the plumbing the water for bathing came from.

Things a man could feel the need to ask for, Loki realized. If he'd had something like this only a few days ago, he could have requested a trip to the bathroom instead of being limited to a generalized request for a non-specific something.

Tony Stark meant him - Loki - to be able to request these things from him at the very least, possibly from all of them. Not just the bathroom requests he'd felt safe making so far.

He could ask to bathe, he realized. Just simply ask, just because he wanted to feel cleaner. There was no way for him to offer a reason, so Tony must not have been expecting him to give one.

And then there were those other icons, the ones that drew his eye even when he fought to look anywhere else.

It was a dangerous idea and he knew it well, knew it in the pit of his stomach as deeply as he knew high heat was dangerous.

He could ask for water. Any time, and these humans and his brother and his mother until she left as well would know. And even more daringly, he could ask for food.

There was no promise that he would get anything, but he could ask.

He hadn't even tried to ask for water since that day when he had...

When he had eaten and been... caught. And... punished.

And that, then, was what it took to remember.