"I have a gift for her," Loki/Steve explained, sidling past the nurse and heading stubbornly for the room that JARVIS had supplied him with directions to. "Hello, Margaret," he said, walking into the room and sitting at her bedside. "I have something for you."

"Steve?" she asked in awe, taking one look at him and promptly bursting into tears.

"I thought you said the captain frequently visited her!" Loki/Steve hissed into the invisible comm in his ear that was connecting him to JARVIS. "Why is she acting like she has never seen me – 'Steve' – before?!"

"Her dementia; her mind is weak," JARVIS supplied. "The nurse said she was having a difficult day."

The apple would solve that issue, but he had to get her to eat it first.

"Steve," Margaret continued, grasping his hand for dear life as she asked, "Is it really you?"

Loki's conscience winced as he squeezed her frail hand gently and smiled. "Of course… and I brought a gift for you." He pulled the golden apple out of one pocket and a small knife out of the other, commenting, "I hope you're hungry."

She shook her head stubbornly, and Loki/Steve sighed, glancing around the room for inspiration. There was a rolling table at the end of the bed with an untouched breakfast tray on it. Brow creasing, he looked more closely at the woman in the bed. Even by Midgardian standards she was small, frail, pale, weak, and confused… This wasn't the same woman who'd built SHIELD; this was a woman on her deathbed, he realized suddenly. If he had waited much longer, he would've had to use different magic entirely to get her back into her captain's arms.

But Captain Rogers would have tried to get her to eat, wouldn't he? So why, since he was masquerading as Steve, couldn't Loki?

He used his knife to cut a slice out of the apple and moved to sit directly on the edge of the bed, offering it to her. "Please, Margaret, eat the apple for me?"

"I'm tired, Steve," she murmured. "I'm not hungry. Can't I just take a nap? I need to rest before Bucky gets back."

"You need to eat," he corrected, inwardly wincing at her obvious confusion.

She eyed him with cynical exasperation, demanding, "If I eat the ridiculous apple will you let me sleep?"

"Of course," Loki/Steve smiled, moving again so that he could slip an arm around her shoulders and help her sit up.

Still grumbling words that he couldn't decipher, she took the slice of fruit and chewed it slowly.

"Next piece," he commanded firmly, cutting a second bite off and handing it to her once the first was gone.

She rolled her eyes at him as she took it – and leaned against him, thoroughly startling the trickster. Though she was clearly frustrated with him right now, she was completely relaxed… trusting – but only because she thought he was Steve, he reminded himself. It did make him wonder what it would be like to find his own soulmate.

But that wasn't his purpose right now, he reminded himself firmly; Steve's soulmate was.

It was a slow process, getting her to finish Idunn's apple. There was a lot of gentle prompting on his end, gradually half-hearted grumbling on hers, and time taken up. He exercised more patience then he would've even possessed two years ago, but at length the fruit was gone.

Loki/Steve eased Margaret back against her pillows and hurried to shut the door of her room so that no one saw the transformation that was only a second away from occurring. He turned from the closed door to the woman in the bed in time to see a flash of light… and then the light faded away to reveal a pretty brunette appearing to be in her early thirties.

The color of her eyes alone remained unchanged… but the gaze itself was much sharper as she looked down at her youthful form in shock – then turned cool eyes back to Loki/Steve, demanding harshly, "Now exactly who are you, young man? Because you are not my Steve, even if you are wearing his face."

Loki/Steve chuckled at this Midgardian's tenacity, calmly switching back to his Asgardian form.

Her eyes widened as she spat, "You're the alien that destroyed Manhattan!"

"Would you believe me if I said that, technically speaking, that wasn't my fault?"

"No!"

"Somehow I thought not. What if I told you that I'm here to take you to Captain Rogers?" he asked, realizing too late that he'd stupidly left the knife within her reach.

She noticed it at the same time he did and was quick to snatch the weapon up. Though he knew she wouldn't be able to inflict any real or lasting damage on him, he also knew that she'd try given the chance, as she demanded of him, "Now why would you do that?"

"It's a long story… and part of my penance for my crimes against your people. I won't harm you, you have my word."

She stared at him for a long minute, sizing him up, before she came to a decision, sliding carefully from the bed and declaring, "I'll go, but I'll be keeping the knife, thank you."

He barely bit back an amused laugh as he nodded. "That seems fair. This – getting you out of here and back to your soulmate – will go easiest if you take my hand."

"And if I won't?"

"Then we'll be playing prison break some other way, and I didn't bother to plan for that."

She rolled her eyes again, muttering something about the "incompetence of men" as she reached for him with the hand that wasn't clutching his knife. Within the blink of an eye, he'd teleported them to an elevator in Avengers' Tower.

As she got her bearings, the point of his knife was suddenly at his throat as his feisty traveling companion snapped, "Where are we? How did you do that?"

"Teleportation is a magic trick that my mother taught me, and it's brought us to Captain Rogers' residence, Avengers' Tower." He smiled in amusement – he might be able to learn to like this mortal – and put a finger to the hilt of the knife, tilting it away from his throat as he asked, "Would you like to see him?"