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

Chapter 31

Frigga hadn't gotten off her horse in the stables for five breaths when she was rushed by Sif and the Warriors Three.

Sif asked, "Is Loki doing any better at all?"

"Better, and worse," Frigga told them tersely. Her arrival had done nothing for her mood - Heimdall had not even met her eyes.

"How could he possibly be doing worse?" Fandral asked with obvious concern. "He was... when he left..."

Volstagg looked like he wanted something he could put a blade in. Preferably something that could bleed.

Copiously.

She felt like joining him if he found such a thing.

Hogun as usual found the few words that would fit. "It seems impossible he could be doing worse, given how bad he was when we came to see him."

Frigga nodded. These men had come to see Loki quite a while before his departure. And Sif had never been. They didn't know how well he had already been doing. "He is doing better. And with that has come a better sense of how damaged he is and how abused he was by his enemies."

The four shared a look and Sif cleared her throat nervously. "We were wondering if a visit from us might do him some good."

She thought for a moment.

Now was possibly the least good time they could pick to wish such a thing. She doubted Loki would wish to see any of them any time soon - them or anyone else from Asgard outside the royal family.

Particularly what he'd just remembered. If he'd felt ashamed with just family and people who until recently been strangers around, what in the world would he think with the Three around, of all people? None of them were at such risk, for all knew what the other two would do to anyone who offended against the other.

But then, they also could be exactly what Loki needed.

He was the second prince, and had always known that growing up. He was royal. And while Loki did care in general what Asgard thought of him, often quite intensely, the actual list of people whose opinions truly mattered to him was rather short.

The family. Others with clever minds, many of whom hadn't paid him much mind once it became clear Loki did more fooling with the inventions of others than he did making new discoveries himself and had no intention or inclination of ever changing that. A certain young woman he'd barely missed meeting eyes with a few times in Frigga's recollection, and whom she was sure he'd not actually spoken with even once. Thor's closest friends, these four.

And of those people, it was these who would matter the most now.

Family could not help but accept him, and understood his weaknesses enough to know he'd had no chance of self-defense. Those of clever mind would have rejected him immediately the moment the damage to his mind became apparent - most of them had little use for him to begin with and he had responded having just as little use for them anyway, so there would have been many bridges to mend before any of them could begin to be useful for his healing now.

But these four...

These four had a choice. And they'd continuously exercised it. Often not in the ways Frigga would have preferred.

But now...

Now Sif was as on Loki's side as she could be. And all four knew where he'd been born, so that was done and dealt with.

She sighed. "Have you spoken to Odin about this?"

"Yesterday, my lady," Volstagg told her. "He said he thought it would be good for Loki, but that he was letting your decision be the final one."

"He's had a shock today, remembering more of what happened to him, and it's already evening there by now."

"So tonight would be a bad time, then," Volstagg mused.

"Indeed," Fandral agreed. "But then when would be a good time?"

Sif stared at the stable wall. "He needs time enough to figure out what he thinks about whatever was done to him, now that he remembers. Before he has to deal with us."

"How bad?" Hogun asked gruffly.

"Bad enough for him to feel that any warrior worth the word would have found a means of defense," Frigga told them after a long moment's thought of how not to reveal anything Loki would wish kept secret.

Blood drained from Sif's face.

Hogun looked very grim.

Fandral barely reacted. Frigga doubted he'd put everything together yet; he was usually the last to do so.

Volstagg warmly answered, "Well then, we much remind him his strengths always lay in places more useful in battle than in captivity. No shame in Loki not being able to reply with force."

To their credit and Frigga's silent thanks, neither Sif nor Hogun struck him.

Frigga was still an emotional storm when she made it into the palace proper.

No one stood in her way. No one dared to.

Odin was waiting for her in the privacy of their quarters.

"You knew," she accused. "You knew what they did to our boy and..."

"...And there was nothing either of us could have done for him then, whether to stop it or rescue him or take the tears away, Frigga. Nothing."

"You should have still told us..."

"To what purpose? It would have done no good in Thor's quest to bring him back to Asgard. And would you have had his moment with us focused on this instead of on being a family again?"

She stood for a moment, arms crossed, just breathing.

She did not admit to conceding the point. "What did they do to him?" she asked. "The human Natasha thought..."

Odin took a deep breath and looked away. "It was less a matter of what they did to him and more what they forced him to do. For their purposes, including making him fear the limits of what their control of him could be used for, making him a participant in his own degradation was more useful. He had no way to fight it. Do not ask me to recount the details, they are better left unsaid."

She nodded. "It's best that way. Better his mother only know what details he's willing to tell her."

"Best if it could be the same with his father," Odin noted darkly.

"Thor."

Thor stirred in his sleep.

"Thor."

He slipped towards wakefulness, disturbed.

"Thor."

It was like Loki's voice, but not. All it did was bring pain that he would never speak the same again and that it had already been so long since his last words that all Thor's brain could send him in dreams was this warped parody of his brother's voice.

"Thor." A pillow strike to his head. "Thor."

That got him awake. He twisted in bed, opening his eyes. "Uhn?"

Loki was sitting next to him, the little device that had caused so much trouble yesterday securely held in one hand. He was grinning. One finger poked down at the screen. "Thor."

Thor felt his eyes go wide. "That's what it does?" he breathed in disbelief.

Another even wider, almost manic, grin as Loki clearly recognized what he'd said. In spirit, if not in words. A set of pokes. "Yes."

Again the word was warped from what Loki's own voice could create, but...

"Oh, Brother," Thor breathed as he sat up and hugged him.

He patiently sat there as Loki poked through everything, showing off the communications tool.

Tony had even made sure Loki couldn't get lost in the building and could even always find out where they all were so long as they were inside.

If he needed Thor, he could find Thor. And Thor suspected the information came from JARVIS, in which case he would surely be notified Loki was looking for him.

Without, apparently, Loki having a clue about it since everyone was still keeping quiet about JARVIS around him and he apparently didn't remember there was a house AI in the building.

Being the one with information Loki did not have was strange and unfamiliar, and it made Thor uncomfortable to have such an opportunity for pranking Loki back.

Especially given...

Loki sobered when he was done showing off. He was different now, but it might just be that he was out of the second childhood the damage to his mind had thrust him into and back to a mentality closer to his physical age.

Which, if Thor was being honest with himself, wasn't entirely unwelcome.

Adults could mainly take care of themselves, even if Loki did have some specific special needs that required others in routine contact with him and probably always would to some extent, and with the capacity to communicate most of his basic needs...

He breathed a sigh of utter relief. No more every second minding required apart from a few quick and simple guided errands. Loki had a bit of independence and Thor no longer had to think like a constantly on-duty caregiver.

Loki looked at him quizzically.

Thor hugged him. "This is good, Brother. This is very good."

Loki headed down to the lab with Tony and Bruce after breakfast.

And this time, he actually requested it himself.

The books Thor had brought were an interesting idea, and he was almost certain he remembered some of them well enough that they would be a near immediate help with his recognizable vocabulary... presuming someone would read them to him without making him feel like a small child.

Admitting the need for Halvard The Bilgesnipe had been embarrassing enough. Admitting the need for his old bedtime stories was going to be outright demeaning, even if they weren't being used as bedtime stories.

Lab talk, however, that was different and something Loki was dearly interested in understanding again.

He could take a thousand years to build back the vocabulary recognition he'd had the way he'd gotten it the first time. Six hundred years, and he might manage to understand the words in his first published work so long as Thor read it to him. Maybe five hundred, if he kept getting basic conversational words back at his current rate.

Or his memory might slow and he'd never get it back unless he got it back now.

And being in the lab with them... it was good. Familiar. That was just from the short errands he'd run. Then, yesterday.

He'd understood very basic science terms, in context. Enough to know they were dealing with an air scrubber and CO2, and enough to remember that Midgard currently had a bit of a CO2 problem. Simple to fix, he remembered without remembering how, but they were apparently still working on the technology.

He also remembered that Asgardians were allowed to expose the Midgardians - or any other less-advanced realm - to anything that could be created with the knowledge they already had. Put the pieces together once they were on the table.

And Tony had obviously given he and Thor refuge. And had given him a voice again, however limited.

It would be interesting to see if whatever they had already cobbled together shook anything loose...