I'm surprised I'm back this quickly, and with a really long chapter, too. But a lot happens and I like it, and hopefully you will too.
As always, thanks to all you awesome readers for your support on this, as well as reviewers, followers and favoriters! I feel like I should put in another disclaimer, so here goes- I don't own any recognizable characters or movie dialogue or song lyrics in this fic. Well, except for Loki's lullaby. I made that one up :) Which probably explains why it's sort of lame.
Oh, yeah. This randomly came up in a conversation I was having with a reader, but I'm sort of curious how many of you would be surprised to learn I'm a guy. I heard somewhere that the vast majority of fanfic writers are female, so I guess I'm in the minority. I'm sort of guessing a lot of people might have assumed I'm female, especially given some of the other fics I've written... But I honestly don't care if you thought that. Frankly, I probably would've thought so too.
Yeah, okay. On to the chapter!
Tony drops everything when he hears the scream and rushes out of Loki's bedroom, with Bruce on his heels.
Is Thor here again? No, Jarvis would have told him if he was...
"Snoopy, what's wrong?" Tony asks, his mouth already moving a mile a minute as he enters the living room. "Is it something on TV? Did you find the playboy channel or something?" Right now there's no filter between his brain and his mouth. Bruce facepalms and tries to get him to stop talking, without much success. "You said you already knew about sex though." So that can't be an issue, but Loki doesn't strike him as the type to watch porn. Not even anime porn, because it seems all he watches is animated stuff.
Loki stares at him uncomprehendingly. He probably doesn't know a lot of those words, like porn. After all, he'd needed Jarvis to explain kinky. That conversation had been hilarious, especially given some of the questions Loki was asking, but Tony was clearly the only one who thought so. Steve's face had been beet red when he left the room less than five seconds into that conversation, and Bruce and Pepper both seemed to find it really awkward. Clint would probably have found it hysterical, though, now that Tony thinks of it.
"No? Not that, I guess... So what is it? Did you find a horror movie or something? Because not everyone can sit through those things, so I don't blame you if you can't. You know, this one time-" Tony's cut off when Bruce jabs him in the side to get him to shut up and points at the screen.
"What the hell is this?" Tony asks, staring at the screen, where there's some little pink rodent creature with two huge buck-teeth, screaming in a high pitched voice. Still, it looks like a pretty mild cartoon, so why on earth would Loki be freaking out?
"The Disney channel show Kim Possible, sir." Jarvis pipes up. "In other words, the show with the theme song you use to annoy Agent Romanoff, because she vaguely resembles the titular character, Kim Possible."
"Oh." Tony says simply, looking at the screen, which changes to something that makes a lot of sense for why Loki's freaking out. There's a girl who looks a lot like Loki in his apparently-fake form, although that's the one Tony's used to. The girl has pale skin (although it's slightly green-tinted), green eyes, black hair, even green and black clothes. Lots of green and black, basically. Her hair is longer, going down her back instead being shoulder-length like Loki's, but then again, Loki accidentally made his own hair reach his ankles once here.
It's not just that she looks like him, though. She has green magic around her hands, just like his magic. "Wow, that would explain it. I mean, that chick even looks like you, Loki. Who is that?"
There's a bit of a pause, and Jarvis says "According to the show, her name is Shego."
Loki screams as he stares at the screen, which now shows Shego shooting a blast of green magic at Kim Possible, barely missing her. "No, stop!" He howls at the screen. "Stop it! They're my friends! Stop tryin'ta hurts'em!"
What the heck is he talking about? He's not friends with Kim and that blonde boy- Ron Stoppable, according to Jarvis.
Tony doesn't even have time to get a single word out before something else happens.
As Loki tells Shego to leave them alone, another Loki appears in the room out of nowhere, and Loki stumbles back in surprise and falls on his butt, clutching Simba tightly. This Loki has his hair slicked back, as if he spends time every morning doing his hair. Tony smirks slightly at the thought, because he hasn't seen Loki comb his hair at all in the month he's been here, but he stops when he takes in the rest of the other-Loki's appearance. For one thing, his hair falls down his back, much longer than Loki's shoulder length hair. Then again, Loki had made his hair grow down to his ankles once. This Loki's dressed in a black and green bodysuit, which seems really weird at first. Sure green is Loki's favorite color, but Loki doesn't wear stuff like that. No, instead he wears stuff like Snoopy shirts and, frequently, that ridiculous star coat that he has on right now.
The Other-Loki holds himself differently too. Loki looks smaller, even though Tony's fairly certain the two of them are the same height. Loki's hunched in on himself, looking somewhat like a beaten down animal ready to flee, while this Loki holds himself with confidence as he eyes his surroundings with a touch of boredom. He gives off an air of power, as if he's not particularly concerned about someone jumping him, because he knows he could fight them off.
This Loki seems so very different from the Loki Tony's grown to regard as a very close friend. Does Loki have a twin that even the god himself doesn't know about or something? Maybe someone from Jotunheim that Loki had never really met, since he'd apparently been whisked away to Asgard as a baby? But then again, the real Loki seems quite powerful too, he just doesn't seem to know it.
Not to mention, this Other-Loki has green magic swirling around his hands. Loki has green magic around his own hands, but he doesn't seem to notice until he happens to glance down at his hands. Loki hastily looks away, apparently trying not to look at either of their hands. So this is probably an illusion, because of the magic around Loki's hands and the fact that Jarvis hasn't reported there being another person in the room.
The freakiest part of the Other-Loki is his face. The other-Loki's eyes are the same green as Loki's own, obviously, but they're so different. These eyes are far from the glassy, wide gaze Tony's used to seeing on his godly alien friend. Aside from that one illusion he'd seen during one of Loki's nightmares of, presumably, Loki as a child, every other-Loki that Tony's seen has had the same wide, glassy eyes. Except this one. This one's eyes are cold and calculating and they seem to rummage through all his innermost secrets as the he stares at Tony before turning that so-very-different gaze on the real Loki.
Loki looks positively terrified, but when Tony goes to swipe the Other-Loki out of existence, it actaully steps away from him to avoid his hand. What the heck? That's never happened with any of the others. Then again, the real Loki had stepped back too. Tony realizes that looking as if he were about to hit the other Loki probably just freaked the real Loki out even more. Crap.
"Stop!" Loki says again, glancing between the Other-Loki and the TV screen. Tony wonders if maybe Loki's talking to him, so he waits.
"And why would I stop?" The Other-Loki asks as a smirk forms on his lips. Tony blinks, because this is the first time any of Loki's illusions has said anything he can understand. The smirk isn't like Tony's own smirks, though. It's cold, mocking. His voice has the inexplicably British accent and everything, just like the real Loki's voice, and yet it doesn't sound anything like Loki's voice at the same time. He sounds a lot more cultured, but also sounds sort of bored and somewhat cruel, like that Shego person on TV. The Other-Loki gives a mocking bow of his head and says "I am a monster, after all."
Then, his smirk turns positively wicked and he starts to turn into his real, blue Jotun form.
"Go away!" Loki screams at the illusion. "Go back!" He lunges at it, and the illusion fades when Loki touches it. Loki barely stops as he flees to his bedroom, and Tony's absolutely positive that he's making a beeline for under his bed.
For a second or two, Tony and Bruce just exchange a glance, both thinking around the same thing. That was really weird.
That Other-Loki was so different that Tony has to wonder if Loki has an evil twin or something. Maybe someone who even Loki himself doesn't know about? Maybe someone who was left in Jotunheim while Loki was whisked away to Asgard. But then how would Loki have made an illusion of it? It was an illusion, because Jarvis hadn't reported any sudden newcomers to the tower.
All the Other-Loki's that have cropped up during Loki's stay here were rather benign, trying to comfort the real Loki when he had nightmares, or they were neutral and didn't really do anything. This is the first antagonistic other-Loki, and Tony wonders if maybe it has something to do
Anyways, they have some things to clear up. Tony heads back towards Loki's room, with Bruce right beside him.
Loki huddles under his bed with Simba wrapped tightly in his arms.
He'd been watching something about Natasha and Clint- although for some reason Clint was called wrong, what's he wrong about? Loki had also been wondering why he'd never seen the little pink creature sticking out of Clint's pocket. That creature seems really fun. Anyways, that whole thing had been quite fun to watch, until he himself had shown up and started being really bad. He sounded different on the screen, but so had Clint and Natasha.
On the screen, as a drawing, he'd been fighting Natasha and Clint, trying to hurt them. They're his friends! He doesn't want to hurt them, but he was chasing after them with magic around his hands and shooting it at them, which just makes it a thousand times worse, because he's not supposed to fight back, especially not with magic. At least he didn't have to watch them overpower him and punish him for it until he was in a world of pain. He wonders if he'd feel it when they punish him onscreen. He hopes not.
Loki hadn't wanted Tony and Bruce to see that when they came out, to see him being bad, but they saw him fighting Natasha and Clint (though people keep talking about some person named Kim and Clint calls Natasha 'K.P.') He doesn't remember ever fighting them, but maybe that showed the future or something? He doesn't want to fight them in the future either, because he likes them. They're his friends. Right? Do they think of him as a friend?
Surely Tony and Bruce are going to be mad at him, now that they've seen him fighting their friends and teammates.
To make matters worse, he'd come out of the screen, still being really really bad. The him from the screen had been really scary and 's like someone shoved someone else's brain into a copy of his body and sent it over here. He wouldn't hurt Natasha and Clint and he doesn't speak like that and it's NOT him.
Who else could it be, though? The other-Loki had his voice even if the tone was different. But he was never mean like that Loki was, not even before people started saying they broke him. But that Other-Loki was right about the monster part, even if Tony and Bruce and the others here don't see it.
This is really confusing.
He wonders why Natasha and Clint are still nice to him if they've fought him before. It's really weird, though, because for the life of him he can't remember that ever happening in his life, so maybe it really does show the future. He wonders why they'd all look like drawings in the future.
"Hey," A voice says behind him, and he didn't even know anyone else was in the room with him. He turns and sees it's Tony, propping himself up on his arms as he lays on his stomach under the bed.
"Do you like the rug?" Tony asks, grinning at him. Loki nods slowly. It's really soft, just like grass. It apparently muffled Tony's entrance, though, because he hadn't heard the man come in at all.
"Let's get this straight right away." Tony says. "I don't hate you, got it? So if you think something changed, nothing did. I still like you." Tony fixes him with a serious stare. "Got it?"
Loki is completely confused. He'd just been fighting Natasha and Clint, Tony's teammates, on that screen, and Tony says he doesn't hate him?
"So, uh, about what happened-" Tony starts, and Loki interrupts him.
"I'm sorry! Sorry sorry sorry sorry! I didn't mean to try and hurt Natasha and Clint or come out of the screen all scary and stuff!" Loki squeezes his eyes shut. Both of those were really, really bad. He can feels his body shaking uncontrollably.
Tony wraps his arms around him and starts singing the lullaby Sleipnir always sang. Loki finds his body slowly stopping its shaking, and by the fifth time Tony sings the song, it's stopped entirely. Loki realizes he's clinging to Tony's shirt and lets go. Tony wouldn't want an enemy clinging to his shirt, and that video was proof he's an enemy.
"I don't wanna hurt 'em, and you're their shield brother and it didn't show you but maybe I fought you too? An' I came out of the screen and was bad." Loki mumbles, wondering why Tony's still being so nice even after he saw him trying to hurt the man's teammates. He really doesn't want to ever fight Tony, ever, because Tony's his best friend in all the Nine Realms.
"Those aren't Natasha and Clint, and I'm definitely not in that show." Tony tells him.
Loki feels his brow crease, confused. "That wasn't Natasha and Clint?" None of this makes any sense. Those are the only people he knows who look like that. Although it's not like him attacking Clint and Natasha made much sense either.
"Nope. Okay, first things first, none of that was real." Tony's presumably talking about the stuff on the screen, but how is it not real? Doesn't it take place in some world mad of drawings? "It's fake, a cartoon. A made up story, with fictional characters. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental."
It's... made up? But it's in that drawing world. If that's made up, are any of the drawings real? What if Simba's made up? That would be really sad. He gazes down at his toy. Simba can't be made up, because he's here and they make toys of him. The Avengers aren't made up, and they make toys of them, too. Why would there be toys of made up things? Loki grins when he realizes that Simba can't be made up.
Tony's giving him a serious look now. "Seriously, those aren't Natasha and Clint, they're Kim Possible and..." Tony pauses, and Jarvis supplies another name, Wrong Stoppable.
"What's he wrong 'bout?" Loki asks. Loki hears Bruce chuckle from somewhere, and he didn't even know that Bruce was in here, too. He looks around and spots the man. He's not under the bed, but is lying down on the floor. Jarvis explains that it's a name, spelled R-o-n, and has nothing to do with him being incorrect. That makes more sense, Loki thinks, although that's a kind of weird name, because it sounds like they're saying he's wrong.
Tony's rummaging around in the green bag, and he pulls out the Natasha and Clint figures. Loki had changed them with his magic, and they almost look like the real people. Tony holds them up next to a holographic image of Kim and Ron and says that they're different. He points out that Clint's face isn't nearly as tall as Ron's, and his ears don't stick up in the same way.
Okay, so maybe they really are different. That's a relief, because at least he wasn't fighting his friends.
"Why was I fighting Kim and Ron?" Loki asks. He doesn't even know them. At least he actually knows Natasha and Clint, even though he'd never want to fight them. "I don't wanna fight them either and I don't wanna by like when I came outta the screen!"
Tony's giving him a really weird look, and says "Wait, you think that Other-Loki came out of the screen?" Loki nods miserably.
"Uh, Snoopy, you know that person fighting them was a girl, right?" Tony quirks an eyebrow at him. "Now, unless you've been hiding something from us, that's not another version of you. I mean, it's not like you can just turn into a girl, so it can't be you... right?" There's a bit of a pause, and Tony continues. "I dunno, can you? I mean, if you can change your appearance... But it's not you anyways. All those characters are made up."
A holographic screen pops up, showing the Loki onscreen. Loki looks away, not wanting to see it, but Bruce gently encourages him to. Warily, Loki shifts his gaze to the screen. It really is a girl. She's not even doing magic this time, which is a relief.
Maybe she'sa female version of him, because everyone says magic is really unmanly and cowardly. But apparently Odin the Allfather can do magic, and he's super masculine and brave and everything. Loki had always heard that only women did magic, but Odin's a man. So apparently he's not the only man who can do it, although up until a few days ago he thought he was. It's still sort of a ton to wrap his head around, but nobody would lie about the Allfather like that, least of all Thor, Odin's own son. Thor likes Odin way too much to spread rumors about him. But aside from him and apparently Odin, literally everyone who uses magic is female, even this female-Loki.
"See, Snoopy?" Tony tells him. "She's Shego, not Loki. Besides, you aren't even a girl, so how could that be you?" Oh. They're not calling her Loki, but then again they're calling Clint and Natasha weird names too. But if Tony says it's not him, it's not him.
Would that even be possible, for there to be a female Loki? Loki vaguely wonders if he ever turned into a girl and somehow went to wherever the people in the screen are. Because if that's a girl-Loki, that sort of makes sense, because other than the whole girl part, she's just like him. Although Tony's acting like the fact she's a girl automatically means she's not another Loki.
So maybe it's not him. After all, the him in the screen (who apparently isn't him but a her) and the him that came out of the screen hadn't really seemed like him somehow.
Norns, this is confusing and contradictory.
Loki glances back at the holographic screen and sees something just as bad, if not worse.
There's a Jotun there, with blue skin and everything. He doesn't have the lines, but he's a drawing and doesn't have too many details. He has one line below his left eye, actually, but that's it. His eyes aren't red, since they just have black pupils, but he's still obviously a Jotun, and he's even got hair sort of like Loki's, if Loki were to push his own hair back.
Now, all that's bad enough, but that's not even the worst part. The worst part, which makes this at least a hundred times worse, is that they're the bad guys. Well, obviously the man is, since Jotuns are evil disgusting creatures, but he still hates seeing the proof as they attack Ron and Kim. Well, maybe they're both Jotuns. Who's to say this Shego person with the magic isn't even more like him and really just disguised? Besides, she'd have to be a Jotun to be willing to be partnered with one.
He hates that Tony and Bruce are seeing this, because maybe it'll make them realize those things are bad, even if they've vehemently told him otherwise for some odd reason. They keep showing him things about good people with magic, which he likes seeing, but this is what it's really like, right?
Loki really wishes that life was like what Tony and Bruce have been telling him, that things like magic or blue skin don't matter, that they're not bad. Tony and Bruce seem to think so (or maybe they don't think so anymore?), but they're wrong. Right? Loki had started to maybe believe them, but the proof against what they've been saying is here, right in front of them!
"I believe those two are the antagonists." Jarvis says.
"Seriously?!" Tony exclaims. "Who the heck made this show? It's like they designed those two specifically to make you freak out. I mean, they've got like every single trigger, and then they had to go and make those two people the freaking antagonists?!"
Bruce mutters to Tony to calm down, and Tony takes a deep breath. "Right, okay. I'm not mad at you, Loki. Not even because there was that illusion or whatever it was. It didn't change how I think of you, by the way, so don't think that it will." Loki doesn't say anything at first as Tony looks between him and the screen and gestures at it again. Loki doesn't look him in the eyes.
"They're the bad guys. And she was doing bad magic an' trying'ta hurt them! They're the bad guys! The bad bad baddies, and I'm like them! Now I'm the bad guy." Loki rambles, vaguely realizing he'd just quoted Mother Gothel with that last line, and he's pretty sure he sounded a lot like her when she said it.
"It seems we have a lot to talk about." Bruce says calmly. "Loki, try to take slow deep breaths like we were just doing earlier. It well help you calm down." Bruce wants him to meditate? Jarvis has also said that taking slow deep breaths helps.
Bruce tells him to try to breathe at the same rate he is, and starts taking deep, slow breaths, in and out, in and out. Loki eventually manages to fall into the rhythm and feels his body slowly relax. Tony's arm is around him, which really helps. Bruce doesn't say anything aside from telling him he's doing a good job. He doesn't even seem to think it's taking too long, he just waits patiently until he's calmer. Loki likes that.
"You better?" Tony asks, his arm still around him. Tony's hugs are even better than Jormungand's. Loki shrugs, because he's still not too happy about all that stuff on the screen. It's like what everyone in Asgard says. The Frost Giant and the magic user are clearly the bad guys, even in this. Which makes sense.
"So, as I said already, Natasha and Clint aren't the people onscreen, they just look like them, and they haven't fought Dr. Drakken and Shego." Tony says. He reaches for Loki's drawstring bag, which is on the unoccupied sofa cushion.
Loki cocks his head to the side. So Natasha and Clint haven't fought them... "So you haven't fought Dr. Dragon or Shego either?"
"Nope." Tony answers simply, before Jarvis adds that it's D-r-a-k-k-e-n, not dragon. Loki thinks Dr. Dragon would have been a better name.
Tony looks in the drawstring bag again, his eyebrows raising in surprise. "Snoopy, you still have all this candy here. Have you eaten any of it?"
"What?"
Tony pulls out a small bar made of dark brown paper-y stuff and hands it to him. Loki looks at the letters on the front, naming them before slowly sounding the words out. "Her-shey's... Milk... Cho-co-late." He frowns in confusion. What in the Nine Realms is a Hershey?
Tony gives him an amused look. "You eat it, Snoopy. It's good." That's weird. It doesn't look very good, but maybe it tastes better than it looks. Loki starts to bring it up to his mouth but Tony stops him. "You have to take the wrapper off first!"
Tony pulls out another piece of candy, unwraps it, and hands the thing inside to Loki. Oh. It's like the boxes food comes in, that you can't eat. Not that he'd known that at first, either. Why is food wrapped in stuff? Midgard is weird sometimes.
Loki cautiously nibbles a corner of the bar Tony unwrapped and grins. It's like the chocolaty drink he has with Tony after nightmares sometimes, only it's not as hot. He doesn't like hot things, aside from sometimes hot food. Hot weather is awful, though. But this chocolate is really good, and it makes him feel a bit better, like hot chocolate does after his nightmares.
He holds the bar up to Simba's mouth, snickering slightly at his own silliness. Simba's not really going to eat it! Loki then quickly stuffs the rest of the bar into his own mouth, relishing in the taste and licking some of the melted chocolate off his fingers. He'd really like another one, but he wants them to last, because who knows if he'll ever get more of this stuff again? Maybe his current stash is all he'll ever have in his life. So he refrains from eating any more.
There's a slight pause, and Tony says "Okay, now for the main part. The fact that they're villains doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Dr. Drakken has blue skin or that Shego has green stuff around her hands."
But they're monsters, like him, only Tony and Bruce don't see a monster when they look at him. For some reason, Bruce seems to see Hulk as a monster, though. Loki wonders if Tony and Bruce see Drakken and Shego as monsters.
He unintentionally asks them this aloud, and he's pretty sure the answer's going to be yes. He doesn't want to hear them say that, but it's too late because he already blurted it out on accident. But it's obvious, since they are monsters, after all. Drakken's a Frost Giant and Shego's a magic-using freak and probably a disguised Jotun like him. Even if Tony and Bruce apparently don't think those things about him, they surely will about these monsters. Although Tony had just said something really weird about nothing changing.
"I wouldn't say they're monsters, even if they are villains." Bruce says. "I'm assuming Drakken has some quest for world domination, but trust me, he's a lot tamer than the villains we've fought in real life. The real monsters." That's weird, because how are they not monsters?
"But he's a Frost Giant." This is really obvious, but Tony and Bruce don't seem to get it. They always say the opposite of everything he knows.
"That doesn't make him bad, though. He's bad for other reasons." Tony protests. "Like, being evil and trying to take over the world or whatever he does. I don't know, I never really watched this show. The point is, him having blue skin has nothing to do with it. He'd be just as bad if he was purple, or if he looked just like everyone else."
Loki frowns in confusion. But if he looked like everyone else, he wouldn't be a monster. Well, unless he was a hidden monster, like him.
"Look, just because one member of a species or a race is bad doesn't mean they all are." Bruce says. Loki feels his brow wrinkle slightly, confused.
Jarvis pipes up. "There are a lot of bad people, but that doesn't mean every person is bad, right Mr. Loki? There are a lot of good people, too, such as Mr. Stark, Dr. Banner, Miss Potts, Captain Rogers and Agents Barton and Romanoff."
Loki claps his hands. Tony and Bruce are good, after all. They're heroes on Midgard, and they were even talked about in Asgard, too, so they must be really good. Especially since most Asgardians don't care about Midgard. Pepper's not an Avenger, he doesn't think, but she's really nice.
"And you." Jarvis adds.
This whole idea is sort of starting to make sense, although it doesn't really apply to Jotuns, does it? So why did Jarvis say he's good, too, especially when he's seen these people like him on the screen who are bad? They didn't say he was bad when they saw his hideous skin or his magic, and they haven't said anything bad about the Jotun or the magic girl yet. He really hopes they don't say that.
"How about one of those Disney analogies you seem to love?" Tony says, glancing at Simba. He snaps his fingers and grins. "Simba's a good lion, right?"
"Yeah!" Loki laughs. "Mufasa an' Nala an' Sarabi are good lions too!" He frowns slightly and adds "But Scar's a bad lion."
"Exactly!" Tony grins at him. "You see? Scar being bad doesn't mean all lions are bad, right? Most of the ones in the movie were really nice." Tony explains. Loki nods. That actually sort of makes sense.
"Scar isn't bad because he's a lion." Bruce adds patiently. "If he were, that would mean all the nice lions were bad, too."
This is all nice for lions and everything, but there's no such thing as a good Jotun, even though Tony and Bruce seem to think he's good. Jarvis just said he was good, too, and he listed him with all the Avengers, the heroes, as if he deserved to be associated with them. It's like when Tony listed all the movie people he was like, characters Loki had never dreamed about being compared to because of what he is.
Loki doesn't know why such important people as the Avengers would bother with him at all. Loki stares at them and Bruce asks who Sarabi is.
"Simba's mother." Loki answers, hugging Simba tightly.
"See, so not all lions are bad. The same thing applies to Jotuns or any other race or species."
"But Frost Giants are disgusting monsters!" Loki protests, regurgitating what he's heard his whole life. "They steal people an' eats them, and they only know how to hurt and kill like sav'ges! They woulda eaten me too when I got ditched there, if Heimdall hadn't got me outta there!"
That sounded a lot better in his head than when it had come out of his mouth. Loki pouts at that.
"Loki, a whole race can't be 'disgusting monsters', as you put it." Bruce tells him. "It just doesn't work that way. Maybe in Asgard they thought so, but here on Earth, that's considered stereotyping and it's bad. Not all Frost Giants can be disgusting monsters. I seriously doubt even most of them are, and I really don't think they're cannibals."
But everyone says all Jotuns are monsters, and this Drakken guy is a monster too. He's a bad evil Frost Giant. But Bruce said Drakken wasn't even a monster.
Tony and Bruce don't think he's a monster in his Jotun form, and they said specifically that the Quasiralda rule applies to him too, and that says not all gypsies are bad and you shouldn't hate someone because they're a gypsy like Esmeralda. Tony and Bruce seem to think that applies to Frost Giants in general as well.
"Frollo said all gypsies are bad and evil," Loki finds himself saying "But Esmeralda wasn't bad and she said Frollo was wrong about gypsies." Could that really apply to Frost Giants? The idea is ridiculous, and Loki has yet to see hear of a single good Frost Giant.
"Exactly. Frollo was wrong, just like Asgard was wrong about Jotuns." Tony says. "Didn't they fight like a million wars against each other?"
Loki has no clue what that has to do with anything, but he starts to think about how there are good lions and bad lions. There are good genies and bad genies, too, he realizes. Genie's good, because he helped Aladdin, right? But he's blue at the same time... But when Jafar was a genie, he was red and he was a lot meaner than Genie was.
Loki glances at the screen. But Shego's just like him, and she's bad.
"Just because Shego has those powers doesn't mean she's bad, either." Tony says firmly. Loki cocks his head to the side, confused. This is so different, and even though Tony and Bruce have been telling him his magic isn't bad, the fact they're saying it's not bad for Shego either is really, really odd.
"But she's tryin'ta hurt them with freaky stuff. Bad magic!"
"Okay, yes, what she's doing with her powers isn't exactly nice, but that doesn't make the powers themselves bad."
Loki doesn't say anything, but that's wrong, right?
"Loki, it's not about whether the powers are good or not, because they're neutral. It's about whether the person uses them for good or bad." Tony says.
"Loki, your powers are completely neutral." Tony pauses, as if he's considering saying something, and he seems to decide to. "They're like my suits. The suits themselves aren't good or bad. It's all determined by what the person inside them does. That person can either do good things with them, like trying to save people, or bad things, like trying to hurt people. Trust me on this. Some people have..." He trails off, and Loki's confused.
Tony's comparing his suits to magic, as if there's nothing wrong with making something a hero wears sound similar to freaky magic. And he's saying magic isn't bad, even when there's this bad person using it.
"You healed my leg with your magic. That's good. You know that, right?" Loki nods. He knows that healing people is good. "So your magic can't be all bad. Actually, you haven't done a single bad thing with your magic. You protected me with a shield, and you kept me from falling down two stories when I first broke my leg."
But he has done bad stuff with his powers. Tony, as if reading his mind, says "Your powers aren't bad. What do you've done that's bad, because I seriously don't think there's anything."
Is he serious? "I iced the suit." Loki mumbles, because that's clearly bad.
"So what? That's not bad. I bet people would love your ability to ice things in the sweltering summer heat. You know, tomorrow we're going to go see a movie called Frozen about a good person who can make the trailer with the snowman and the reindeer?" Loki laughs. He liked watching that. "Well, there's a character named Elsa who can make ice, just like you."
"Really?"
"Yeah, we're going to go see it tomorrow. She thinks her powers are bad at first, though, but they're not."
"So powers can be good or bad." Bruce tells him.
Genie had done good things with his magic, right? He saved Aladdin from drowning. But Jafar had turned into a genie and he tried to hurt Aladdin with his magic, and that was bad, but they were both genies. And even Genie did some bad things when Jafar was in control of the lamp.
Hulk's sorta like that, too, right? But he's still good overall.
"Like how Hulk-y smashes stuff sometimes and he tried'ta hurt Tony, but he smashes bad guys too?" Loki asks. Smashing seems to be Hulk's power.
"I'm not sure where the good in that is." Bruce mutters something about a monster, and Tony gives him a sharp look.
"Don't, Bruce. Don't put yourself down like that. Hulk's a valued Avenger and he's helped us a lot. You know, I think we have to start working on you, too."
"Hulk-y's my friend!" Loki glares slightly at Bruce. He doesn't like people being mean to his friends.
"Okay, going back to the main topic- we don't hate you, or your magic, or your real form. Drakken and Shego aren't bad because of colors or powers. Actually, they seem like sort of cheesy villains anyways." Tony says.
Loki frowns, thinking all of this over. No matter what, Tony and Bruce have always told him he's good. They don't seem to think he's a broken worthless monster freak like everyone in Asgard did. Even after seeing Drakken and Shego, they still say that. They didn't say, even once, that Drakken and Shego are monsters. It's crazy. And Tony said there's someone good with ice. That's unheard of.
Midgard is so different from Asgard. Loki's noticed that before, of course, but this still strikes him as odd. Because in Asgard, those things automatically make someone bad, and it makes sense.
But here in Midgard, Tony and Bruce tell him blue skin and magic aren't bad, even when they see bad people with them.
It's completely insane, but it seems like on Midgard- or at least here with his Tony and his Bruce and his Jarvis- those things aren't bad at all.
Tony hopes what he said to Loki got through to him. He thinks Loki's starting to get it. Hopefully that's not just wishful thinking.
When Loki starts humming Genie's song, Friend Like Me, Tony takes that as a cue that that conversation is over.
"So do you like your rug? I thought it might make it more comfortable under your bed. It was, wasn't it?" Tony explains, and Loki laughs as he wiggles his bare toes in the fuzz of the rug.
"Hey, Snoopy, you haven't even seen the best part." Tony says as he glances at the round hologram projector that he and Bruce had attached to the ceiling before hearing Loki scream while watching Kim Possible. "Jarvis, lights please."
"Of course, sir." Jarvis says, sounding somewhat pleased to be getting to his part as he shuts off the lights and covers the windows so the room falls into darkness. Then, the round projector lights up, projecting tiny dots all over the ceiling and walls and making more points of light hang in the air. The ones on the ceiling actually are in the same position as the real stars. There's one slight inaccuracy, which is the larger sphere of light that's supposed to be the moon, floating in one corner of the room..
Loki's eyes look like they're about to pop out of his head and his jaw drops.
"Stars!" Loki actually squeals with delight, spinning around and gazing up at the holographic ones near the ceiling. "Look, there's Serpens! And there's Hydra! It's got like a zillion snake heads." He points up at a group of stars as he stands on his bed, holding Simba so that the toy's looking up at the stars too. It takes Tony a second to realize he's not talking about the organization HYDRA and is instead talking about the constellation. Tony didn't even know Loki knew the constellations, considering he makes up his own a lot. "An' there's Hercules!"
Loki flops down on his bed and lays there with Simba, a huge smile on his face as he stares at the ceiling with wide eyes.
"Timon? Loki asks in a somewhat gravelly voice, gazing up at the holographic stars. "Ever wonder what those sparkly dots are up there?"
"Pumbaa, I don't wonder, I know." Loki replies to himself, as Timon. He switches his voice to sound more like the meerkat.
"Oh. What are they?" Loki asks as Pumbaa.
"They're... fireflies. Fireflies that got stuck up there in that big bluish black thing." Loki says, stifling a giggle and waving an arm up at the ceiling.
"Oh, Gee. I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away." Loki replies in his Pumbaa voice.
"Pumbaa, with you, everything's gas."
Loki continues to gaze up at the holographic stars, but when he speaks again, it's in his usual voice. "Pumbaa was right, you know. They're balls of gas. That's what Jarvis said, and that book said so too. Sometimes stars die, you know, and the big ones die quicker 'cause them eat themselves too fast. But we still see the lights from them after they're gone, 'cause they're so far away that we don't see they're gone, nope nope nope. And we don't see 'em in the day but they're still there."
Tony's about to say something and leap into some sort of science thing when Loki continues. "Pumbaa was right!" He repeats. "I like that!" Both Tony and Bruce turn to give the god an assessing gaze. It sounds like Loki's partially talking about something entirely different from Pumbaa when he says that. Does he have some hidden meaning there?
Loki continues talking. "Timon thought he was really smart and right, but he was wrong 'cause stars aren't fireflies! That's silly! An' they're not fairies like Tink even though she looks like a star." Loki giggles at that and bounces on his toes.
"Well, first impressions aren't everything." Bruce says. "People can surprise you all the time with hidden talents. Sometimes people are a lot smarter than they appear at first."
Tony knows that Bruce means Loki when he says that, but whether Loki picks up on it is a mystery, since Loki doesn't give any indication one way or the other, nor does he clear up if there was some double meaning to his Pumbaa statement.
Loki doesn't respond, instead going back to playing his little scene, having his Simba toy say that the stars are the past kings. He giggles at that and tells his lion toy that that's silly, that they're really balls of gas, although then he frowns and mentions that Simba talked to a constellation of Mufasa and it talked back.
"Wanna know what Jarvis said?" Loki asks, turning to Tony. "He said all stars start out as Stellar Neb'las, but that they can either be average stars or MASSIVE stars, and when they die, the average ones become white dwarves and the massive ones are black holes. Isn't that weird, that they start out as the same thing but then some of them stay as stars and the others become dwarves? Dwarves are really, really good at building stuff, like you." Loki looks pointedly at Tony and adds as an afterthought "I don't think they've built a Man of Iron suit."
"You're really good at building things, too, Mr. Loki." Jarvis says, and Loki grins a mile wide at the praise. To be honest, the things Loki's transformed with his magic are pretty incredible.
"So dwarves build stuff? I thought Dwarves mined all day," Bruce says, smiling slightly.
Loki nods and says "Yeah, they really like metal n' stuff like treasure. But I read they can be kinda mean-like. 'Specially if you try to steal." Tony wonders if he'd read that here or somewhere in Asgard.
"I thought that was just Grumpy who was mean? Isn't there a Happy or something too? And a sleazy or something?" Tony mutters, and the reference flies right over Loki's head. Then again, they haven't watched that Disney movie yet.
"Wait, do they really have Dwarves where you come from?" Tony asks the god.
"Not Asgard. They're in... Svar...t...alf...heim...? I think? I forget." Loki cocks his head to the side. "I've never been there. Just Asgard and Jotunheim and Midgard, and I think Midgard's the best realm ever. Like a billion times better'n the others. A hundred billion trillion times better!" Loki flaps his hands and bounces happily as he says the last part. "And I don't ever wanna leave Midgard. I wanna stay here forever and ever and ever!"
"Well, that's good, because we like having you around here, Mr. Loki." Jarvis says sounding rather affectionate.
"Really?" Loki seems astonished at the idea of people liking his company.
"Really." Tony confirms, and Loki gives him a million dollar smile. Tony once again wonders what will happen when Loki outlives them, but there's no need to ruin the moment.
"Why are the stars all here?" Loki asks. "It's not nighttime. Is it?" He chews softly on his bottom lip. "But it's dark, even outta the window."
"Actually, the windows are just covered." Tony says. "The stars are holograms. As for why they're here, you like stars, right? So I figured you'd like this. Plus, it sort of fits the rug. You know, like your song. 'The moon and the stars will give you light, To sleep in the grass in peace tonight." Tony's privately rather proud that he thought of that.
Loki lets out a very shrill exclamation of delight. "Our song! Sleipnir, it's our song! The silver stallion gallops away,"
Loki starts singing the other part of his lullaby, and as he does, a silver horse starts galloping across the walls.
Tony blinks. He hadn't planned that, so it has to be Jarvis. That addition is brilliant, Tony has to admit. But he'd still come up with the original idea, so he's even more brilliant, of course. The silver horse is followed by a bunch of other horses.
"It's real!" Loki screams way too loudly in a state of pure happiness. "It's real, it's real! Our field is right here and we were gonna run away to find it!" He gallops around the room beside the images of the horses, which continue to gallop around the walls.
Suddenly, there's an actual horse running in the room, and it has eight legs and Tony can't help gawking. The horse starts singing the song with Loki, and Loki stops and stares. Tony notices Loki has green stuff around his hands.
"Sleipnir...?" Loki whispers, as if not believing his eyes. He rubs them and looks again, eyes widening in shock when he sees he's still there. So that's Sleipnir. Loki's drawings really hadn't done him justice.
Tony's almost positive that Sleipnir's another illusion, but Loki's acting like he'd almost never actually seen Sleipnir. If he can make illusions of his imaginary friends, wouldn't he have done it in Asgard? Then again, that probably wouldn't have gone over well there.
Loki laughs and runs up to hug the horse illusion, which surprisingly doesn't go away immediately. It is an illusion, right? Oddly enough, Loki's not saying a single word, but Sleipnir continues singing.
An eight-legged, singing horse has to be one of the strangest things Tony's ever witnessed.
The horses running around the wall fade, and as they do, Sleipnir does too, but Loki still has a big grin on his face.
"So that was Sleipnir? He seems fun." Bruce says, smiling slightly.
Loki turns and looks at them as if suddenly remembering there are other people in the room with him. "...You saw him?" His body stiffens warily, as if he's thinking they wouldn't like that.
"Yeah. I think you called him out or something. It was pretty awesome." Tony says, grinning at Loki. He definitely doesn't want Loki to think he's mad about that. Especially not after that whole other-Loki fiasco that started this whole conversation.
Loki frowns, flicking his fingers and frowning thoughtfully down at Simba. "But I almost never really see them. Well, I see'em in my dreams, but never awake." He sounds understandably confused. "And nobody else sees them, ever, nope nope nope... you saw him?" He gives Tony a suspicious look. "You're not joking?"
"I'm not joking. I think you sort of made him." Tony explains, wondering if Loki might freak out at that. Just like Loki, he finds this situation a little strange. That seems sort of like more than just an imaginary friend.
"Oh..." Loki looks at them somewhat warily. "You don't care?"
Tony asks him why they'd care, seriously not being able to think of a single reason. Loki doesn't answer, but he's probably thinking of reasons in his head.
Bruce smiles slightly. "He seems like a very good friend."
Loki laughs, clapping his hands. "He's really really fun and super nice, and he plays games with me, and we'd go talk to the horses, 'cause he's a horse but he's a monster horse." Loki says the monster horse part surprisingly cheerfully. "And he sang my song when I was scared, and sometimes we sang it when I was happy too, but he hasn't done that in a while, 'cause they all had to go away. 'Xcept for now. He just sang it." Loki grins and starts humming his lullaby.
"Well, I enjoyed seeing him." Tony says. Okay, part of that is because he's just interested in Loki's magic, but seeing the look on Loki's face as he'd bumped into an old friend was like a kodak moment of sheer happiness on Loki's part.
Loki frowns thoughtfully. "They don't have'ta go aways here?"
"No." Tony says, after a slight pause. There are probably some people who would discourage this whole imaginary friend thing, but they seem a lot less imaginary than normal imaginary friends. Perhaps they'd helped Loki in Asgard, kept him from going completely insane or out of depression or something. Besides, if the Asgardians made Loki feel bad about having imaginary friends there, they definitely shouldn't do it here. Tony's about to ask if maybe Loki can show them his other friends, but doesn't get the chance.
Loki laughs excitedly, flicking his fingers and gazing at Simba. "And you guys are my friends too!" He actually sounds pretty confident about that.
"You bet we are." Tony says. That comment made it seem like Loki's not planning on drifting off into his own little world and giving up on real friends.
Loki nods, still grinning. He gazes up at the stars and says "They look like Tinker Bell."
Suddenly, there's a chiming little ball of light darting around the room. Wow, Jarvis is really going all out, Tony realizes. There's even a holographic trail of Pixie Dust. Loki excitedly chases the holographic Tinker Bell around the room as it ducks behind furniture in a game of hide and seek.
This lasts for a couple minutes, and eventually the Tinker Bell hologram stays still long enough for Tony to see it's not just a ball of light. There's literally a three-dimensional model of the Tink, although perhaps Jarvis only adds that when the hologram stays still long enough.
Eventually, Jarvis shuts all the holograms off and raises the window shade. Loki and looks around the room curiously. "What happened to them?"
Tony explains that the horses on the walls, the stars, and Tink were holograms. Hopefully that doesn't ruin Loki's enjoyment of that in the future.
Loki shakes his head. "No, not them. They came outta that, and Tink's dust didn't make me fly so it had'ta be a hologram." Loki points at the ceiling projector, and Tony's slightly shocked.
Loki pulls Tony in for a spontaneous hug. "I like it. Thank you."
Tony asks what he was asking about, then.
"Kim and Ron. What happened to them? Did they die?" He asks this in a worried voice. "I hope the little pink guy didn't die. I like him!"
"Rufus." Jarvis supplies a name, presumably for the pink thing. "He's a naked mole rat."
"Do you want to watch the rest of the episode?" Tony asks, surprised. He'd have thought, after the whole disaster with seeing Dr. Drakken and Shego onscreen, that Loki wouldn't want to touch it.
"I like Rufus." Loki says.
Tony's eyebrows raise. "Okay, Jarvis. Start it up, I guess."
The holographic screen pops up, and Tony sits down on the bed next to Loki. He figures he should stay here for the rest of the episode, in case whoever made this show somehow threw another trigger in there that would freak Loki out.
As he watches the show, he realizes that Kim Possible is really a good fit for Natasha. He grins. Even though Natasha threatened him the last time he'd done it, he's decided to keep playing the show's theme song whenever she enters the tower.
He's reasonably sure he won't actually follow through on that threat, since he's an Avenger and all. Besides, Loki will probably really get a kick out of the theme song playing when Natasha comes. He definitely seems to like the fact that Kim and Ron look like Natasha and Clint now.
When Drakken and Shego go on the screen again, Tony decides to remind Loki that they're not bad because of blue skin or green magic.
Loki doesn't even freak out at seeing them again, and Tony can swear that Loki nods almost imperceptibly when he tells him that.
Tony makes a small adjustment to the innards of what's going to be a prototype of the improved version of Clint's exploding arrows. Setting his extremely-thin-tip-pliers off to the right side side of his workbench, he turns and grabs a bag of dried fruit, popping a few pieces into his mouth and beginning to chew before turning back to his project.
He reaches off to the right, snagging the pliers which suddenly seem to have thicker handles. Tony realizes he's holding a can opener instead, and they'd been right where he put the pliers mere seconds ago. What on earth is a can opener doing here? And where the heck are his pliers? He doesn't see them anywhere on his workbench.
It has to be either Dum-E or Loki, and Tony's pretty sure it's the former.
He suddenly realizes there's someone standing behind him, which he hadn't noticed when he'd been absorbed in working on the arrow. He turns to see Loki holding the pliers he'd been going for. Huh, he didn't actually think it was Loki. Loki grins guilelessly at him and holds them out. Then, seeming to remember that Tony hates being handed things, he slides them them back onto the workbench and gives him another grin, looking quite innocent.
"I don't need this, but thanks buddy." Tony hands the can opener to Loki, thinking that perhaps the god had been offering it to him as a tool. Dum-E does random stuff like that all the time. Crazy robot. Actually, that's probably where Loki had gotten it.
"You're not mad." Loki says, making it sound half like a question and half like an observation.
"Why would I be mad?" Tony asks, confused.
"Not mad." Loki murmurs to himself, nodding slightly. He glances at Tony, as if asking for confirmation, and Tony reassures him that he's not mad.
Loki wanders off with the can opener in his hands and Simba tucked under one arm, humming the Kim Possible theme song to himself. Well, that was strange. Tony shrugs, watching Loki typing something down before doodling on a piece of paper. Loki mumbles something Tony can't hear, and he's not sure if Loki's talking to Simba or his other imaginary friends. He's definitely heard him mutter stuff to Hel and Jormungand. Considering he talked to Simba before, Tony doesn't think letting him talk to the others is necessarily a problem, although he does look sort of crazy doing it.
Loki looks completely ridiculous. He's wearing the Iron Man suit, since he'd been pretending to be Iron Man around an hour ago. He'd actually used his magic to put it on again, which is a definite plus. However, he hadn't put on the gloves, boots or helmet, and his exposed hands and feet look rather strange next to the armor. He's not wearing that ludicrous long coat right now, though.
However, Loki's wearing the newest addition to his collection of bizarre clothes he's made with his magic, although this is technically an accessory. He'd made it yesterday, a couple hours after the whole Kim Possible incident.
It's a rather fat necklace resembling a snake that had morphed from a rubber tube Loki had been fiddling with. Tony had rushed forward to intervene when Loki started wrapping the tube around his neck. He's still not entirely sure if Loki really hadn't meant to kill himself that one time on the balcony or not.
However, before he'd even reached the god, Loki had magicked it into a necklace. The necklace makes it look like the snake is wrapping itself around Loki in a hug, with its head is at the bottom, near Loki's chest. Dangling from the mouth of the snake are three figurines- a wolf, a horse with eight legs, and a girl that looks almost like a skeleton on one half.
Tony worked out that they're supposed to resemble Jormungand, Fenrir, Sleipnir and Hel- Loki's imaginary friends.
Tony turns back to the arrow, grabbing the pliers.
About ten minutes later, Loki's back. He holds up a drawing for Tony to look at. It's of him, in the Hulkbuster suit, and Hulk fighting Thor.
"This looks great." Tony says, as Loki places it on top of a pile of other drawings. Really, Loki's drawing has improved a lot since he first came here. Admittedly, it's still not excellent, but it's definitely better than it was.
Tony flips through some other drawings Loki's left around. There are a couple of Tinker Bell, who he's drawn a lot since watching Peter Pan. Tony suspects the reason Loki's drawn to her is because she flies, and maybe because she resembles a star.
Tony sees yet another drawing of him fighting Thor, and a couple drawings of Loki and Hulk hugging. There's also, buried deep in the pile of drawings, a bunch of shreds of paper, obviously torn up. Most of them are missing, but Tony catches what looks like half a face, with blue and red as the primary colors...
He glances over at the god, who's typing something. Simba's standing in front of the keyboard, as are the Natasha and Clint action figures, which Loki's seemed to occasionally use as Kim and Ron. Had Loki actually drawn his Jotun form? That seems like progress. Then again, given the drawing was ripped into tiny pieces, perhaps it's not much progress after all.
"So, what'cha writing there, Snoopy?" Tony asks, sauntering up behind Loki with his hands in his pockets. "A rousing speech? Sappy love poem? Fanfiction? You know, people apparently write fanfiction about us Avengers, which is sort of weird, because we're real. I made the mistake of reading a certain one and.. yeesh. Even I wouldn't do that stuff that author had me doing." He leaves it purposely vague, but really, some of those sex scenes had just been plain messed up. Although, he had found it very amusing when, around nine months ago, he sent a rather smutty (but not quite as perverted) fanfic to Steve, imagining the super-soldier's face turning beet red. It had the opposite effect on Clint, who thought it was hilarious.
Loki's giving him a look that clearly says he thinks Tony's lost his marbles, and he just says "No."
"Well, mind if I have a look?" Tony asks. Okay, so his curiosity might be bordering on nosiness, but oh well.
Loki doesn't answer, but he doesn't look too perturbed when Tony pulls the document up in front of himself. Frankly, Loki's sort of lucky Tony even asked. There was a time when he wouldn't have even bothered doing that and would just shamelessly invade Loki's privacy. But now that Tony's thought of it, what if Loki's writing a suicide note or something. He shakes his head. That might be a stretch.
Tony scrolls through the first couple pages, which all contain information about various animals. He briefly skims through the text, which looks like it was copied from somewhere, probably that huge animal book Loki's been reading. Horses, wolves, snakes and lions being the most-written about, although there's a small bit about zebras near the end of a part about horses, and there are some bits about apes, hawks, spiders and chameleons.
Hawks and spiders... Hawkeye and Black Widow? Is that just a coincidence?
There's also a fair amount of information about stars, mixed in randomly with the animal stuff. Some of it is stuff that Loki had said earlier in his bedroom. Randomly thrown in the middle of that are the words naked mole rat.
Then, the long paragraphs cut off. The next line, which is at the bottom of the page, is a single word.
Monsssssssdsssssateeerrrrrrrrttrrrrr.
Okay, so it has a bunch of added letters and what looks like a couple mishit keys, but it's still recognizable as monster. And Tony doesn't like seeing that word there at all.
Hoping it will switch to something happier, Tony scrolls down. To the next page.
Remember what I taught you, Quasimodo. Is written on the next line. Loki apparently hasn't grasped the importance of quotation marks yet, but who can blame him? He just started writing maybe two weeks ago, if that. There's a picture of Quasimodo pasted after it, presumably pulled somewhere from the internet (perhaps from Jarvis since Tony doesn't think Loki even knows about the internet).
Frankly, the fact Loki's written this much, even with some misspelled words and presumably copied paragraphs about animals and stars, is astonishing. Especially when taking his somewhat bizarre speech into account, with what seems to be All-Tongue glitches.
Once again, Tony's reminded that Loki is clearly no idiot. Far from it, actually. Even though sometimes he gives the other impression, he's proven this fact before, like with the Rubik's cube and retaining all the star knowledge he'd spouted in his bedroom yesterday.
The next part is all spelled correctly, but Tony realizes it's lyrics from one of the Hunchback of Notre Dame songs. Maybe Loki asked how to spell all the words, or maybe he copied and pasted it. Tony's not sure, but as he reads the lyrics, he starts to get a sinking feeling in his stomach.
"Out there they'll revile you as a monster. I am a monster. Out there they will hate and scorn and jeer. Only a monster. Why invite their calumny and consternation? Stay in here. Be faithful to me. Be grateful to me. Do as I say, obey, and stay in here."
"Jarvis, get Bruce down here, will you? Tell him it involves you-know-who." He casts a look at Loki, who's drawing something on a piece of paper.
The fact that Loki chose that scene doesn't sit well with Tony at all. He doesn't know if he should confront Loki about it or not.
Tony's about to ask Jarvis why he didn't inform him of this, until he realizes this document must be on Loki's server. Jarvis generally keeps those things private, but Tony would have preferred he didn't keep this private.
"Hey, Jarvis?" Tony says quietly so Loki won't hear him. "If you see worrying stuff like this, let me know in the future, okay?" He pauses and thinks. "Actually, if you think something needs intervention, you don't need to ask me first. Just do what has to be done."
Maybe that can be Jarvis' reward for telling Thor off for his treatment of Loki. Jarvis would probably like that a lot, actually.
"Of course, sir." Jarvis says, equally quiet. He doesn't say anything else about the document, though.
As he's waiting for Bruce to come down, he scrolls down again and sees more song lyrics, and he remembers Loki singing them after the whole Thor confrontation two days ago on Halloween.
"I knew I'd never know. That warm and loving glow. Though I might wish with all my might. No face as hideous as my face was ever meant for friendship's light."
Tony frowns slightly in confusion. He knows that friendship hadn't been the word in the movie. It had been Heaven's light in the actual song. The slight edit makes him pause because that seems even worse than the original message, if he edited it to say he does't deserve friends. Tony doubts that Loki had ever heard the word heaven in Asgard, since well, those people are in Norse mythology and were once worshipped as gods. Not that Tony's ever really mentioned it here. He casts another look at Loki, still unsure whether to confront him or not.
That thing is a killing masheen. Machine? Apparently, Loki hadn't had help with that word, yet he'd managed to sound it out pretty well. Tony's impressed, really. There's a picture of Boo there.
But under the picture of Boo is another, more positive phrase. You know, I don't think that kid's dangerous. Tony wonders if Loki had copied and pasted that one. Still, that makes things seem a bit less drastic. Maybe. Perhaps there's no double meaning to any of this, and Loki's just writing movie quotes?
Bruce arrives, looking confused but looking like he realizes that whatever they're going to be discussing probably won't be a happy topic. He's right, of course.
"Have you actually looked at what he's written?" Tony murmurs. Bruce replies that Loki writes about animals, and Tony gestures to the holographic screen in front of him. "Look again."
Bruce reads scrolls through it and Tony reads next to him, after enlarging the holographic screen. Bruce looks rather worried to see those song lyrics, and both of their worry just increases as they scroll down further.
The words that Loki was presumably called continue, and Tony automatically reads them in a snide voice in his head, probably matching Loki's bullies. Almost all of them are misspelled, which tells Tony that Loki hadn't had help writing them, and probably hadn't copied them. So he'd sounded them out on his own, apparently.
Savige. Freeeek. Idiot (Ironically, that's the one spelled correctly).
Garbaje. Baby. Worfles.
Worfles? What the heck is that?! Worf... worth? Worthless? Oh, that makes sense, although Tony really wishes it were something else.
Tony feels somewhat disturbed as he looks over all the things Loki must have heard countless times in Asgard.
Week. Pafetik.
There's one word, spelled correctly, that stands out even among all the other jibes.
Broken
Tony stares at that word for a while, halting the scrolling, and notices in his peripheral vision that Bruce is staring too. Tony can't stop looking at that one word as the implications roll over him. It can't mean physically broken, can it? Loki heals insanely quickly, and it's next to a bunch of taunts.
"Loki, why did you write this?" Tony asks, trying to keep any negative emotions out of his voice, knowing that sounding angry won't help things at all. Loki's said some things, like one flashback where someone said something about his brain being messed up, that make this seem worse. And then there was the time Loki mentioned how getting hit on the head with a frying pan wasn't as bad as Flynn Rider made it out to be...
Loki walks over, glancing at the screen curiously and scrolling through it. He'd been in the middle of playing a game and is holding the Hawkeye action figure. Simba is over on the floor, with Loki's other toys scattered around the lion. Perhaps Loki hadn't bothered switching which toy was in his hand.
"Write what?" Loki asks. Tony scrolls to the part and points at the word broken. That's the most worrying, although there's plenty of other worrying stuff too.
Loki doesn't answer, rocking back and forth on his toes.
Sure, Tony has always noticed that Loki's very well, different. Tony recalls, with some shame, that one of the first things he thought about his friend was that something was wrong with him. Not wrong, he's realized. Just different. Every so often, he also reveals a rather startlingly intelligent mind.
"They thoughts I was a hyyynn-a!" Loki says out of the blue, and his voice rises to a weird screech at the end. He stares into thin air, eyes focused on something unseen. He makes it sound like it's a perfectly reasonable answer, but Tony can't see an ounce of sense in that. He also wonders if the thoughts was another All-Tongue glitch.
"Come again?" Bruce asks.
"A Hy'ena. Like Ed."
"Ed...? Oh, a Hyena?"
"Yeah, like Ed n' Shenzi n' Banzai. But mostly Ed." Loki says, letting out a rather hyena-like laugh. He jumps up and down, shaking his head wildly as he laughs. It makes him look sort of insane. More than sort of, actually. Tony tells himself that perhaps Loki's pretending to be the hyenas. Still, that answer really didn't help at all. Who's Ed?
"Why did they think you were a hyena, Snoopy?" Tony would be lying if he said he wasn't wondering whether or not there's any sense at all behind this, because he can't see any. Loki gives him a look as if that's a dumb question that he really shouldn't have asked.
"It's clear from your vacant expression. The lights are not all on upstairs." Loki says in a somewhat deep voice. It dawns on Tony that Scar had sung that to the hyenas in The Lion King.
It's true that Loki's glassy eyes don't always give the picture of intelligence. Though Tony's still rather surprised to hear Loki say that. Apparently, there was some sort of logic behind that.
"Jarvis says that means they're dumb and that it doesn't have anything to do with lights or stairs." Loki says, wrinkling his brow. "You Midgardians say some really weird things."
"They thought you were dumb?" Bruce asks quietly.
Loki answers something else instead. "They thought they were always right, but they weren't 'cause they said I'd never have friends. But you guys are still my friends even after Thor and Drakken and Shego, so I can't never have friends like they said, so they were wrong? And they can't even say you're not real like they dids with Sleipnir and the others, nope nope nope."
"Yes, they were wrong." Tony says, glad they've at least made progress in that regard. "They were wrong about other things too, you know. Like-" He's going to go on, and say that Loki's not any of the things he'd written, but Loki's talking again.
"They said only cow-ards do magic, but the Allfather Odin did magic and he's really brave. And Lady Frigga's not scaredy-lady 'cause she's brave too. And Thor said she hid me with Odin, they hid my blue. They always knew better'n me, like Timon did for Pumbaa, but we weren't friends like Pumbaa and Timon were. And they were mean like Scar and Frollo and Mother Gothel!"
"But you said people thought Pumbaa was dumb but he was right about the stars." Bruce points out. "Loki, you are not a coward."
Tony frowns slightly. In some ways, Loki is a coward. Tony thinks about the frequent running and hiding, curling up on the floor, screaming and crying...
But then he thinks of the fact that Loki hasn't given up on life or happiness after everything he's been through, way more than Tony himself ever has. He thinks about how, even when he thought all his friends hated him, he wasn't contemplating taking the drastic way out. At least, so he says.
Loki's only response is saying that he likes Pumbaa, and Tony goes back to his earlier train of thought as he looks at the word broken yet again.
Sometimes Loki's almost like a little kid, but Tony sort of assumed it was a result of his abuse, perhaps spurred on by his natural personality. There's no way to tell if it's nature or nurture (or in Loki's case, the complete opposite of a nurturing environment). That was never a really pleasant thought, but now an even more unpleasant one occurs.
Tony thinks of that Other-Loki they'd seen earlier, with the non-glazed eyes. Even though it was only a magical illusion when Loki mistook Shego for himself, it had somehow radiated an air of great intelligence. Possibly genius level. But that had been what Loki interpreted Shego as, right? He'd acted like Shego had popped out of the screen and become that Other-Loki. After all, the threatening, somewhat bored personality fit the cartoon girl, too.
As Tony thinks of the other-Loki with clear eyes from yesterday, he remembers that one child-Loki illusion that popped up weeks ago, with eyes that weren't nearly as glassy, just sad and scared. That one hadn't been a fake-Loki that Loki misinterpreted, right? If that was indeed what Loki looked like as a child, than clearly some sort of change had taken place...
When Loki curled up like he's expecting to be beaten (which Tony's noticed has decreased over his time here, thankfully) he always covered his head. That's probably a natural reaction, but what if he hit in the head too many times? That thought couples unpleasantly with that remark Loki had made a while ago about getting hit on the head with a frying pan. Clearly, he'd sustained some head injuries from his time in Asgard.
How often had he been hit in the head? Too many times or blows that were too hard could be... problematic.
What if that caused some of Loki's issues, like his somewhat weird speech and movement, his odd behavior?
Tony glances at Bruce, but Bruce doesn't even look particularly surprised, like he's been thinking about Loki's brain being damaged for a while.
He'll have to talk to Bruce about that sometime.
Tony rubs his head, where the beginning of a headache is forming. Thinking about that is almost worse than thinking about the abuse Loki suffered. Because there's no way to fix a broken brain. That's sort of a permanent thing.
Loki's been banging on the keys for a while, and Tony looks up to see about a solid page of NONONONONONONONONO.
Tony really hopes that's Loki telling himself those hateful jibes are wrong.
Loki suddenly starts typing else, and Tony peers to read the words over his shoulder.
Not al Lions r bad.
"Not... all Lions are bad?" Tony asks, for confirmation, feeling a budding hope in his chest. Had Loki actually taken that all in yesterday?
Loki grins and nods. "Simba's a good lion and so's Mufasa. Scar's a baddie."
Loki scrolls down a bit and stops at a picture of Rapunzel. Under that is the quote A gift like that, it has to be protected.
"Rapunzel does good magic and Genie does good magic, 'cause he kept Aladdin from dying in the water. But Jafar was mean and did bad magic as a genie, and he made Genie do bad magic too." Loki blurts out.
"You do good magic, too."
"But ice..."
"Hey, there's nothing wrong with ice."
Loki cocks his head to the side. "You said the lady makes ice, right, but that she's good?"
"...Elsa?" Tony realizes. "I think so. I know it has a happy ending, so keep that in mind when we see Frozen later today."
Pepper had managed to arrange for the four of them- Tony, Loki, Bruce and herself- to be able to see Frozen before it's release, in a private theatre viewing in Times Square. They're going later today, and Pepper had asked to be sure the movie has a happy ending. Tony had wanted to just watch it in the tower, but he does grudgingly understand why Disney would want to avoid the possibility of it being pirated. Apparently they'll be able to pause and rewind if they need to, which might help.
Hopefully, it'll help Loki instead of making things worse.
Loki scrolls down again and stops at a paragraph, which Tony eventually recognizes as the second part of that Heaven's Light song Quasimodo sang. Loki frowns as his eyes roam over the words, and then he starts tweaking it.
Loki backs away as if he's finished it, and Tony and Bruce both lean forward to read it. There are some spelling errors which Tony mentally corrects in his head as he reads Loki's version of the song.
But suddenly my best friends have smiled at me
And touched my skin without a trace of fright
I dare to dream that they might even care for me
And as I ring these bells tonight.
Tony Stark's tower seems so bright
I swear it must be friendship's light.
Tony leans back, shocked but pleased, and he can't help but smirk a bit at some of Loki's alterations.
The tweaked lyrics from earlier in the song, about no face as hideous as his face ever being meant for friendship's light, had been so worrying. Tony had wondered if Loki had gotten the wrong message from the movie, but now there's this.
It's like Loki's using the Disney movies as his own sort of therapy. Sure, Tony had shown him some of them to try to make him change his views about things, but this is still really shocking. And great, in terms of Loki's progress.
They really do seem to be making progress after all. Although, they've made a lot more progress by themselves than with Dr. Carlisle, who Tony has to pay. Granted, they've only had two sessions with her, but Tony's not entirely sure if it's worth it. He grins at Loki, who grins back.
Also, Tony notices as he looks at Loki's altered lyrics again, Loki had stuck with the correct number of syllables. For some reason, that strikes Tony as another demonstration of Loki's intellect.
Tony starts tinkering with the arrow for Clint. He makes another adjustment and puts his pliers aside again.
The next time he goes to grab the pliers, Tony finds that they've been replaced with the can opener again. He blinks.
"Use that to fix it!" Loki says right behind him, and Tony didn't even hear him come up. "Use it use it use it!" Tony frowns, because surely Loki doesn't think that will help. As he looks at Loki again, about to tell him so, he sees there's something mischievous in Loki's eyes.
Bruce looks amused, too.
"It's not gonna woooork!" Loki singsongs, bouncing on his toes and laughing somewhat maniacally. Huh. Guess that advice wouldn't have been necessary, Tony realizes. "It's a cans op'ner! It can open cans! It's not gonna work on that, nope nope nope!" Loki says this as if Tony doesn't know it already, and he can hardly get the words out between his snickers and giggles, especially at the can open cans part. Maybe he'd liked the pun, though Tony has no idea if it was intentional.
Tony blinks. Did Loki just... prank him?
It seems so unlike the god, but that's the impression he's getting. Then again, it's a very rudimentary prank. Tony's not even entirely sure if it counts, but the way Loki looks right now, it's like telling Tony to use the wrong tool is the best joke in the world.
"Well aren't you Mister Mischief today?" Tony quips and fights the urge to roll his eyes. As far as pranks go, that's pretty lame. Still, he's astonished Loki actually did that, considering he seems worried that he'll suddenly be hated a lot. Actually, Tony has to wonder if the god even intended it as a prank the first time, or if it was purely on accident and he had thought it would be funny to repeat the incident.
Still, it's a side of Loki he hasn't seen before, and for some reason Tony feels this is a positive thing. Although that might just be because he likes tricking people sometimes.
Loki once again replaces the pliers, swaps them out with the can opener another time immediately after, and then puts the pliers on the work bench yet again and slips the can opener into his drawstring bag.
Loki stares at him and murmurs "They told me to."
"Uh, sure." Tony says, guessing that Loki's probably talking about one of his imaginary friends or something. He's still confused about the idea of Loki pranking him. This has to be a good sign, though. Perhaps something about Loki being even more comfortable around him. He'd seemed a little worried when Tony first turned around, but apparently that worry had gone away enough for him to do it again.
"So did you prank people in Asgard?" Tony asks conversationally. When he thinks about it, he's pretty sure the answer is no. Considering how Loki was treated, Tony doubts the god would have been able to prank anyone without being punished. However, Loki doesn't answer, instead grabbing Simba, hoisting himself up on a table, and sitting there, simply staring at Tony.
"Volstagg was gonna eat a grape but it was a bug." Loki almost whispers after a bit before hastily saying that it was an accident. Tony's not sure if Loki had used his magic on that or just replaced something, or even if Loki had been the one to do it at all. Perhaps there had just been a bug in a bowl of grapes?
Still, he can't help but laugh at that. "I wish I could have seen that!"
Loki just squeezes his eyes shut and tenses his body, rocking back and forth and twisting his hands together. "He was all angry." Loki shudders, as if remembering the aftermath. Which, judging from what he's heard about Asgard, probably involved some form of corporal punishment. Still, he doesn't totally freak out, so perhaps that was a relatively minor incident.
Still, the idea of the implied punishment being minor doesn't sit well with Tony, because he's got a pretty good feeling it involved physical pain somehow.
Bruce urges Loki to breathe deeply. It takes a couple minutes to get Loki in the rhythm, but eventually he manages and his body slowly relaxes. Tony has his arm around Loki's shoulder the whole time.
Tony clarifies what he said. "I meant I wish I could watch him eat a bug. I'd pay good money to see that, actually."
To his astonishment, Loki snickers. "It was a really big, juicy one like Timon and Pumbaa eat, 'xcept I don't think he though it was sats'fying like Simba did. He was like..." Loki pauses and pulls a disgusted face. Even if the aftermath of that event doesn't seem to pleasant, Loki seems to like remembering the look on Volstagg's face. Maybe he'd liked the prank?
Loki looks down at Simba and asks the toy "Are bugs really not gross?"
"So did he actually eat it?"
"He tried'ta spit it out, but it crawled back in." Loki says with a surprising smirk.
Tony finds himself laughing again. "Aren't you something?" Tony grins. "Seriously, Snoopy, that sounds pretty funny."
"It was... 'till they hit me." Loki says softly.
"Well, I have no doubt Volstagg deserved it." Tony mutters. Loki blinks at him in shock, mouth downturned in a confused frown.
"I don't even know what he did, but he deserved it." Tony repeats.
"He was being mean." Loki murmurs, although Tony's has a feeling Loki's not exactly talking to him sometime.
"I bet he was." Tony says and Loki doesn't respond.
"You know," Tony says, when the silence gets to be too great. "I don't think you're ever going to stop surprising me, Snoopy."
Yay for Loki progress! I hope you enjoyed this. I really enjoyed writing it. And I like the idea of him sort of still being mischievous, since Loki is the god of mischief.
I was sort of imagining the illusion Loki in this chapter to be like the Loki in the movies, even though I had Loki think that Loki was Shego. They actually are pretty similar, except for the gender difference. But can't Loki shapeshift into a woman (or a horse, or a mare) in the myths? I don't know if he's going to do that in this story.
Hopefully I'm not the only person who liked the fanfiction reference I snuck in here :) And no, I was not trying to insult any type of fanfic, but a lot of people seem to think all fanfics are sex fics.
About the dwarf part, I can name all seven dwarves in Snow White off the top of my head: Happy, Dopey, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Bashful and Doc. I swear I did that entirely by memory. We actually did that in a psych class for recall vs recognition and I was one of the only people who could do it. Yay for Disney nerds!
Is anyone else excited for Finding Dory? I saw an article about it hitting home for parents of kids with special needs, and I want to teach Special Education. Plus I love Pixar and Disney, as you can probably tell.
Why on Earth am I this chatty in this author's note?
Ok. Hopefully I can update soon, and see you then. Let me know what you thought! :)