A/N: So sorry I keep disappearing, everyone! Feel free to send me a PM to nag me if I delay too long.

To be honest, it was a shitty feeling to be abandoning Loki alone in the neurologist's office, looking like a shaken little rabbit as he watched Tony waving his way out the door, leaving him behind. He probably felt he was being given up for experimentation or something (was he? It was a SHIELD doctor after all, oh, shit, better not think about that), and with that, the little building block of acceptance that had come with the car ride had probably crumbled to bits.

But Tony was used to ignoring guilt, and that call was more than enough reason to do so.

At least it had been Cap, not Natasha, he'd gotten his daily dose of heart attack from her that morning, and Rogers, while a Presidential pain in the ass, was good at delivering bad news. And at controlling the situations that constituted it, which had probably saved his building from a second bout of destruction.

He broke through the door at a controlled rush, bracelets slipping around his wrists just in case, doubting they'd do anything about the warzone brewing to life in his lobby. At JARVIS' warning he ducked on entry, a fork lodging itself into the door within an inch of where his head had just been.

"Oh come on! This is my fucking house!" Tony slammed his palm in anger on the ground, his throat aching with the volume it took to be heard over the screaming of his friends. It worked, at least, because most of them went quiet, but one couldn't be bothered.

"HE SHOULD BE DEAD! I don't fucking care what he does or doesn't remember, Thor, your fucking little baby brother deserves to be dead!" Clint howled, voice ripped to shreds in rage, or maybe grief.

God. He might have been an infuriating brat, but that sort of raw pain was hard to stomach, made a little easier as Tony had to hobble over the broken glass of a fifteen-thousand dollar bottle of scotch. No need to guess what had put it there, there were splinters and shards all over the room, and Clint's hand was clenched around the doorknob to his china closet, which had lost its contents along the tile. Fortunately it looked to be his last projectile, because Natasha had her grip locked around his arms, and he was in no state of mind to break away from her.

Thor neither needed nor was susceptible to restraints, fuming with nothing between him and a broken archer but for Cap, looking impossibly relieved at the sight of Tony. The god was a stormy contrast, but he was doing a better job of quieting it, at least enough to turn and acknowledge the guy who just so happened to, you know, own the whole place. Except being the focus of that look was hardly a positive; Clint hadn't stopped screaming, his descriptions of what he wanted to do to Loki outright sickening, and it looked like Thor was about to snap. "Where is my brother, Anthony Stark? You were with him, I know it."

"I got him in to see a doctor, he's safe, all right? And he's going to stay that way, Harvey Birdman, so stop with all… this before you give yourself a heart attack, okay? I'll call it a favor."

Clint's glare turned to him, and, miraculously, he went still, slumping in Natasha's grip. Admittedly, he hadn't expected that to actually work. Maybe he'd just run out of energy, his eyes were much too hollow for any fight. "You know what he did to me. It's not fair. He gets a second chance, and I'm just supposed to swallow it all down and deal with it?"

"Yup, that's about right." Tony, reasonably certain now that he didn't have to fear any more destruction of personal property, made his way a little further into the room, erring away from Thor in case that temper blew its top. "Loki's here to learn a lesson, and I say we leave him alone and let him do it, so we can focus on slightly more productive tasks, like figuring out what new big bad is floating outside our orbit. If you have any complaints about second chances, Barton, then Captain America gets to save the world all on his own, while we all get to being fair to the various people we've fucked over in the past."

"None of us tried to take over the world."

"Yeah? You two didn't have the power to, I practically did, and Thor, by word of mouth- Rocky, correct me if I'm wrong- attempted to wipe out an entire species and/or planet." No correction coming; the god bowed his head in a moment of acceptance, not simple shame, of what had happened, where he'd gone since. "We all had our reasons. We didn't even all know what we were doing, or why it mattered, but do you really think that's going to matter to the relatives of the people we killed?"

"His eyes." There was a realization dawning, slowly, in Rogers' own as he spoke the words. "You think he was under someone's control, just like Clint was."

It wasn't exactly helpful to do it, but Tony shook his head, killing that possibility before anger for it could really build its way up. A very large part of him wanted to take Clint's side and make Loki pay for what he'd done, but the rest was sane enough to realize that it was pointless, maybe even wrong. "He didn't have the same symptoms when the Hulk beat him through my floor, and he was definitely serving his own ego up there, not someone's orders. Yeah, his eyes are green now, but my ten bucks says that's because he lost his staff. Back me up here?"

Thor didn't look entirely eager to do so, more like he wanted to break the first thing he could reach whether it deserved it or not. It was a good minute before he nodded, neck strained, fists curled. "You are correct, Anthony, at least in part. Loki was, in such a sense, in his right mind. It was the power that flooded through him from the gem that you saw reflected in his eyes." Something passed over him there, anger, fear, confusion? Hell if he knew, Tony had never been good at reading people and he was getting tired of trying. The god let mjolnir down to the ground with a surprisingly careful 'plink', only pacing on when he had straightened up again, fingers curling tight around nothing.

"If he was controlled in some other way, we do not know. That was not my brother as I knew him- he had been changed before he fell, certainly, but in the year since his disappearance… I know not what madness overtook him, nor what caused it. If you are looking for moral justification for my brother's actions you will find none. I can offer explanation at the most, and that, even, incomplete."

Thor was not the type to shy away; he met Clint's eye with a deep, harsh glare, daring his anger. "In all our thousands of years, I have never known so drastic a change to overcome my brother. There is no excuse for what he has done, but I cannot believe he would have acted as he did without some force of change. If living without his memory for a time may help to reverse that, than I shall not allow you to interfere."

Well, this was comfortable. Silence settled over, an imbalance of power that somebody probably had to pick up on and, well, it was his house. Even if it was in constant shambles. "Right. Welcome home, everybody, glad we've got this out of the way, can we all make a little pact not to fight about the villains who aren't currently relevant?" Tony looked around, amused but not daunted by his less than enthusiastic response of two glares, rolled eyes, and a grimace. About the usual, then. "Thor, whatever you know about those ships, spill it."

"I have told you what I can already. Our concern is not their presence, but that Heimdall is unable to detect them in detail… and thus we have very little information." He shrugged, helpless, annoyed. "They must be powerful, or else very old. But the fact that they cloak Loki as well suggests they have some vested interest in Earth, or have interacted with him previously."

"So that should narrow it down, right?"

"Unfortunately, no. My brother is well known for his escapades across the realms, I can hardly think of anywhere he has not been."

Wow, that was so incredibly helpful, Tony just couldn't believe it. "Okay, well is there any way of just checking? Don't tell me you guys don't have spaceships up there in the land of 'better than thou'."

"Fury's on it," Natasha assured, a little more helpful but a lot more terrifying. "So far we haven't been able to even spot anything up there, let alone get a match on it. Not that we need to- it's relatively obvious, isn't it?"

"We're all kind of hoping it isn't," Cap said. "The Chitauri would obviously be the first choice, but they were bad enough the first time around, and that was a single ship's forces funneling through a narrow portal. If they've actually brought a fleet, Earth could be in real danger."

Still tense, but at least they were all breathing out of sync now, not like they expected the others to spring at any second. Tony deemed it safe enough to sit down- and immediately sprung up, a splinter of his end table sticking out of his upper thigh. "Really? My own fucking house, this is worse than Afghanistan, swear to God… The Chitauri were blasted back to their own little hell last time they messed with us. Since the thing they were looking for is now settled nicely in Asgard, I don't really see why they'd bother with us."

"Revenge?"

"They killed more of us than we did of them." Numbers, names, a memorial as wide as this building. "Unless it's Loki they're after, seeing as he royally fucked up their invasion for them and lost the tesseract."

Tony'd considered it before, of course. He'd considered just about every possible option since Thor had first told them about the ships, and that one seemed the most likely, if you were living in some sort of young adult novel with no imagination. Which he probably was, considering the run of his life so far. (Okay, so maybe not young adult novels, unless he started finding convenient excuses to take off his shirt in front of Cap, but novels nonetheless.) Loki was not only alone, on Earth of all places, but he was powerless, weak, and didn't even know who he was or what he might have done to earn their anger.

Somehow, he didn't think the Chitauri would consider that an excuse.

Thor moved those big blue eyes between the four of them and finally lowered himself to seating as well, relaxing back into Tony's favorite armchair as if it were his own throne. "If that is the case, they will undoubtedly come through your people in order to do it. We hampered their conquest far more than did my brother."

"Doesn't matter." Clint had extracted himself from Natasha by now, melting down to the floor like a criss-crossed snake (really, they were all sitting in turns now? God). "He… talked about this. Once or twice. I don't think he ever really knew he was doing it, but he kept me at his side twenty four seven until Germany, I picked up on a lot."

Barton had been briefed, psycho-analyzed, threatened even in Fury's attempts to figure out what had happened under Loki's commands, but as far as Tony had been informed the efforts had borne about as much fruit as a dying lemon tree. There was a whole depth of hatred and fear down there, he didn't want to hear a word of it, those demons weren't his to deal with. Selfish. Well, duh. It was him after all.

Everybody else had settled down to listen though, so he couldn't exactly bolt out of the room on some excuse. Not without looking like as much of an asshole as Rogers obviously thought he was, and there was just no fun at all in giving him any sort of satisfaction. Well. Maybe one, but he doubted he'd be getting that opportunity. So story time with the unbalanced archer it was, then. Fun.

Clint's face was twisted up, knotted, like a grimace was in combat with a smirk or a grin, and his eyes wandered between tears and pure rage. "Son of a bitch…" He closed his eyes, and for a moment it all went away; when they opened again, something like satisfaction remained. "He'd get nightmares. I think. I wasn't supposed to leave him alone for more than a few minutes, and I kept finding him sleeping in the weirdest places, or just sitting there with his eyes shut. When he slept, he'd scream, and when he didn't, he'd spend the rest of his day flinching at any noise. I made a point of listening in, I was actually fucking worried about him. I think he told me to be, and I just was."

Cap waited, Thor frowned, Natasha murmured something, and Tony fidgeted like a five year old, skin crawling with the need to change subject. He could listen, sometimes that was supposed to help, but he wasn't a sometimes sort of guy. "Loki hated whoever he was working with, but he was scared of him, too. He'd mutter something about wanting to hurt them, then do nothing but whimper until he woke up. He actually cried at least once, but he spent an hour yelling afterward. He was afraid of failing, and that pissed him off." He let out a huge huff, more frustration than sigh, and fell back to lie on the floor, tossing his arm up to cover his face. "His boss could be coming. I say, let them take him."

"I will not. Even if Earth were not clearly in their path of harm, I would never abandon my brother to torture," Thor growled, actually growled, a great big wolf defending its pack. "No more to this threat than I did to your Director."

"Fury wanted t-" It was a problem when even Cap looked at you like you were pitifully naive, even if he did it with a bit of disapproval beneath. "Yeah shouldn't be surprised, you know what, I'm not, makes perfect sense. Not like Fury's done anything even remotely ethical since he was born. Can we just… Loki, torture, big bad in the sky. He say anything about who he was worried about? Second reminder of the day, but I probably blew them up."

"I don't know about that, maybe. Not like I sent over a message to check up on him, you know?" Clint grunted, peaking out from beneath his arm. "There were two names. One just annoyed him, that's the Other, but he was scared of the second one, Thanos. So, they've been blasted to kingdom come, who car-"

"Not if Thanos is indeed the name you heard." Thor's face had gone like rock, as hard and quiet but just as grey. "He would have escaped the explosion with ease, though I doubt he was on the ship at all. I… must speak with my father."

Okay, what, they were leaving with that? Thor moved quickly for all his bulk, halfway to the door before Tony's voice caught up with him. "Hey! I know it's easy to forget it, but us little mortals like to know what's going on with our planet, too. Before you run back to Asgard, how about sharing with the people actually in danger?"

"Asgard is in danger. If the Mad Titan is seeking to extend his reach, we all are." That was hardly an answer, but Thor shook his head before Tony could demand anything else, mouth twisted as if in pain. "I apologize if it seems I am withholding anything from you, but I know very little myself. Odin does not fear, but Thanos is one of the few beings that my father has ever regarded as a threat. Why he never said, so I shall return to him to find out, and relay later what I have learned. Is this acceptable?"

Acceptable? Maybe, barely, where was the firsthand account? If Thor could travel back and forth between realms at the drop of a dime, so could his dad, so could they. In the interest of honesty, the concept of seeing Asgard was ninety percent of the reason he might have complained, but still. It was getting to be exhausting, so much back and forth without doing anything, the constant itch of danger at the back of his neck that he could do no more than talk about. Tony hated having his hands tied.

"Yeah, that'll work," Cap assured. Nobody seemed to have any idea when he'd become the leader of their little gang, but nobody was questioning it, either, so he'd look like too much of an ass to complain. Maybe later, when he hadn't had more than his fair share of fuck-up for the week. "Just… hurry, Thor. This is more of a head's up than we had before, but we need all the time we've got."

"I know." Something had sobered Thor up since he was last here; he was quieter, more accepting, more… unsettling. "I will return before dawn. Do what you can here, but do not make contact with those ships until I know more. And... I cannot watch after him from Asgard, I beg of you to keep my brother safe," he whispered, barely, looking toward none of them in particular., and not waiting for an answer. In keeping with his dramatic fashion of the day, Thor swept out of the entry, leaving a harsh bang! and sudden silence behind.

"Well, that's great." Tony kicked aside a few broken bits and pieces of his living room furnishings, the sad remnants of probably a combined fifty thousand bucks. "Comes down, gets everything stirred up to peak fuckery, then leaves. You know what? Screw him, I'm ordering pizza, and we're going to stuff ourselves sick so he doesn't get any leftovers. JARVIS!"

"I am already on it, Sir. Do our guests have any particular preferences?"

Cap started to say that "Tony, this really isn't-" exactly as Natasha requested "Extra cheese and mushroom", and Clint shouted something behind his muffling arm that sounded vaguely like 'wings'. "Oh, what the hell. Pepperoni's good, thanks JARVIS. Are you sure we can't get something for Thor?"

"He gets to go to space while we're stuck eating takeout in my living room."

"I was thinking pineapple and jalapeno, maybe with extra white sauce."

Tony stared, response buffering in the wake of the fact that Captain America was now flashing him a cheeky grin, obviously quite proud of himself for suggesting they feed Thor crap on bread. Or else proud of how clearly he hadn't expected it. "You finally got that flagpole out of your ass, huh? Congrats. Throw one of those in the order, JARVIS, and- do I have anything to drink in this place?"

"Excepting the bottle of Macallan that Mr. Barton unloaded upon the floor, no."

"Then whatever liquids they've got, too." It wasn't that Tony didn't understand people- he would never have gotten this far in business if he didn't- but what he did understand he usually didn't like. Pizza, soda, maybe a terrible movie if he could find one while he got everyone settled in… it was easier than learning that they all hated each other any more than this. "We may as well waste time somehow, yeah?"

"Clint, when's the last time you ate?" 'Tasha was slowly forcing the archer up to his feet, studying him as closely as a mother bear while they rose.

He staggered, and Tony could see it wasn't all from protest. Their banter might have loosened something, but there was an empty burn in his eyes, as if something in there was still holding room for Loki to return. It was chilling, even with a fading spark of humor. "How long ago did that paper come out?"

"Jesus Christ, Clint."

"Yeah."

"I think we can safely say this isn't a waste of time, then. If Fury calls, we're in the middle of important business, and your AI can take the message." She navigated easily to the couch, despite the junkyard's worth of debris in her way and the agent slumped against her, ordering Hawkeye down to sit. "Right, JARVIS?"

"Ignoring phone calls from Director Fury is second nature, Miss Romanov."

Tony only shrugged, the glances his way far from surprised. "Throw that order in there, then, buddy. As big and as many as you can, I have a feeling it's gonna be a long night. Four sodas, minimum, extra tip if the guy wants to pick up some scotch on his way over that hasn't seen the bottom of my floor, a bucket of chicken for birdm-"

"I am terribly sorry to interrupt, Sir, but there is an incoming call for you of top priority." Wonderful. Last time this had happened… well, this had happened, and it hadn't even been a whole fucking day.

"Fine, god, fine, just put 'em through."

Click. "Ah- hello? Is this Anthony Stark?" Fucking hell, this could not have gotten worse, could it? Clint went rigid, the near calm Natasha had worked him towards crushed by a few little words, his gaze set hard on the ceiling. Loki. Loki was calling Stark? Loki had his fucking number? "You asked me to call, if there was trouble, and… I thought I would. Do I have the right number?"

"Yeah, you're fine. Uh, JARVIS, switch this to my personal-"

"No way." His voice; he hadn't heard that voice in weeks, but a part of him thought it must have been years, wished he'd been hearing it ever since… Fuck this. "No, no, let him continue. We'd all love to hear it."

"Who is that?" Loki sounded nervous, and Clint immediately supplied an image of his hands flexing, just so, like they always had when he was anxious. God, he wanted to break those fingers one by one. "If you are with someone, I could call back."

"It's fine." Clint wasn't going to let them talk over him, he wasn't going to have this taken away. "Yeah, we're all old friends, we all work for the same people. To help you."

"SHIELD." Loki let out a long breath, trembling away the moments. "Well… all right. I suppose. I spoke with your neurologist- he is not there, is he?"

"No," Stark said quickly, shooting him a scowl that fell incredibly flat. "So, he prove that I'm certifiably paranoid, or what?"

"He proved nothing, really. He said… by all respects, he does not think there should be anything wrong with me." Eyes narrowing, lips tightening, shoulders down and back. "You said I was to meet someone else, yes? I was wondering if she could give me a second opinion. Is she there with you?"

"Ms. Foster?" Cap ventured, frowning. "It's probably best she doesn't come."

"I do not mean to be rude, seeing as I have never met you, but why not?"

"Because you're not safe to be around," Clint growled, all too ready to let Loki know how his big brother, the only person with any reason to give a damn about him, didn't trust him around his girlfriend. It wasn't like he thought he'd get the chance, with his "friends" already jumping in to stop him, but it was nice to try, maybe a word before 'Tasha's hand clamped down on his mouth.

Loki paused on the end of the line, and Clint could imagine his expression perfectly, every quirk of bemusement, the soft downward turn of his lips that was more warning than everything. He shoved backward, shoulder in, but he was far from his physical peak at the moment, and she dodged him easily.

"Did I hear that correctly?"

"Nope. Anyway, Foster might be a bit tricky to get ahold of, but I do, ah… I've got a friend who can probably give you a second opinion." Stark winced, as if sensing the vicious gaze at his back. "Tomorrow night, I can introduce you guys over dinner."

"Their phone number would suffice, I do not wish to impose. I have bothered you enough already."

Like hell. If it wasn't Nat, he'd have bitten her damn hand by now, Clint needed to talk, to tell this fucker just what he could do about that head of his, put an axe through these delusions they were letting him live. "No, really, I'd rather be there."

"Ah. Well, all right. I hope they're not somebody who will be upset to see me," Loki sighed. "I do not much like having people I do not know hating me."

"It'll be fine. So, my place or yours?"

"You live either in California or the middle of a restoration site, and May would murder you with a spatula if I let you through the door. How about that lovely Mediterranean place on fifth?"

"Great, perfect, eight o clock?" Stark's voice had an edge to it, constant glances back to make sure Clint had not escaped yet. He was rushing, making farewells halfway through Loki's agreement of the terms, urging JARVIS to hang up while they were still being returned, fumbled and confused.

Genius he may have been, but Stark didn't have a way for reading people if he thought there was still a reason to worry. Oh, no, Clint was happy to wait things out now; after all, Loki had just given him a far better idea. When Natasha pulled her hand away (he knew that was just how they were, but couldn't she apologize once for this sort of thing?) he rolled his neck, shrugged. "So, pizza? I have a feeling this is going to be a great night."