Finally Belonging Chapter 31, an avengers fanfic

I'm still actually need to start writing that one-shot I was talking about, since some of you reviewers definitely seemed interested. I'm going to write it soon, I hope, but in the meantime, here's another chapter. And eight days is better than ten, right. It's really long too, over 20,000 words.

As always, thanks to all my amazing readers, reviewers, followers and favoriters. You all rock and I seriously can't thank you enough.

Oh, yeah. For anyone who happened to read ch 30 during the first two or so days it was out, I added a tiny bit to when Loki was in the daycare. So for those of you who missed it, basically, Loki thought Claire was being serious when she handed him a toy cookie to eat, so he actually took a bite. He then tried to pull the same prank on both a teacher and Pepper when she showed up. The only reason I bring this up is it's referenced in this chapter, so if you read it before that was added you'll know what I'm talking about.

This chapter's really long, but I think I put a lot in it.

A holographic screen shimmers to life in front of one of the largest sofas in the main-floor living room. (Tony's decided it's safer to use holographic screens, especially after the incident of Loki throwing pencils at the screen on the jet this morning). The screen shows Dr. Gwyneth Carlisle, and Tony ushers Loki over to the couch.

Loki seemingly reluctantly sits down, though he raises himself to the backrest and puts Simba down on the actual seat, near his feet. He's still wearing the suit he made with his magic, although he has the starry long coat on now, too. For a bit, he hangs upside down over the back of the sofa but then sits up again and flips through a random book he'd grabbed from one of the bookshelves, something Tony has on electrical circuits. Tony, who has joined him on the backrest- because why the heck not?- sort of doubts Loki understands any of the drawings of circuits, but he seems to like looking at them. Tony wonders if he should try explaining it later- Loki had looked fascinated when they put new batteries in Simba yesterday.

"Why do we always seem to have these sessions in a new place?" Dr. Carlisle asks, eyeing the ocean-view background behind the sofa and obviously realizing that Tony's not in New York.

"So you don't stalk us." Tony mutters under his breath, and Bruce sends him a really? look. It seems that comment hadn't transmitted to the therapist, or perhaps she's is choosing not to comment. To be honest, Dr. Carlisle had really pissed Tony off last session, especially when she'd pried into his life. Actually, she'd annoyed him enough for him now to think of her, impersonally, as just Dr. Carlisle instead of Gwenyth. Also, so far, Tony's pretty sure he's made more progress on his own than Dr. Carlisle has. Admittedly, he's spent a lot more time with Loki, but still, these sessions haven't seemed to do anything.

"'We're at Tony's house, not the tower. One of Tony's houses, 'cause he gots lots of 'em." Loki pipes up in a tone that's says she really ought to know that. He doesn't look up from the book as he says this.

Tony's not entirely sure he wanted that information shared, but last time he definitely hadn't wanted the fact he has nightmares shared, and Loki had innocently let that slip.

"Tony, look! a city!" Loki says, pointing to a picture of a circuit board on a different page of the book. "Like, a map or something." He studies the diagram carefully, trailing one of his long fingers along the line.

"Yeah, that does sorta look like a city, doesn't it, Rudolph?" Tony says, glancing at the page. "That's not a map, though I could see how you'd think that. It's actually called a circuit board, and it-" He's about to launch into an explanation about the finer aspects of circuitry when Dr. Carlisle clears her throat a bit more pointedly than needed. Tony scowls at her.

"Do you think you'll be able to talk to me without Tony and..." Dr. Carlisle pauses to glance in Bruce's direction and ask "Who are you?"

"He's Bruce, and he's my Hulk-y too." Loki says before Bruce can reply himself.

Dr. Carlisle doesn't say anything, but for a bit she looks like she expects Bruce to Hulk-out at any moment and is clearly wondering if the somewhat rumpled scientist should be present. Bruce clearly guesses what she's thinking about his big, green alter-ego making an appearance, and he actually starts to get up to leave, but Loki grabs his sleeve and pulls him back onto the sofa, making it quite clear that Bruce is staying. Heck, he's probably hoping Hulk will come out.

Tony glares at the woman on the screen. She almost seems like one of those people who's prejudiced against Hulk, even though he helped save the whole world's collective ass a year and a half ago, with the whole Chitauri attack, and has helped on other Avengers missions since then. Plus, she doesn't seem to think much of Tony himself, either, probably believing a lot of the crap the media says about him.

"Okay, then, do you think you can talk without Tony and Bruce?" Dr. Carlisle asks.

This kind of irks Tony. Loki clearly hadn't been ready last time, so why would this time be any different? Besides, if Loki wants them here, they're allowed to be here, end of story. Loki clearly does want them here, so that's not the issue. Perhaps Dr. Carlisle thinks Loki might reveal more without Tony there. Heck, that's probably what happens with most patients, but Tony thinks the opposite might actually be true with Loki. Loki's revealed more to him and Bruce than he has to Dr. Carlisle (Tony's pretty sure he basically knows almost all of Loki's secrets by now- Jotun, magic, and so on). To be fair, Loki had let the fact he has magic slip during the last session, which had resulted in the god panicking.

"No! Tony stays. And Bruce." Loki says firmly, making it sound like it's a fact and there's absolutely no chance of it changing, and grabbing onto both Tony and Bruce's arms, as if to ensure that they stay there with him. Loki glares at the screen slightly (this is the first time he's looked at it today), obviously not too happy with that suggestion. When he speaks again, he sounds like he's only half addressing what he's saying to Dr. Carlisle. "Tony and Bruce- they're family now. Same for Jarvis 'n Dum-E n' Hulk-y n' Pepper- she said so, she did. An' Tony too!"

Abruptly, the god's eyes widen and he asks "Jarvis, do you wanna be in my family?"

"I would be delighted to, Mr. Loki." Jarvis says fondly, giving the verbal equivalent of a smile.

Loki claps his hands happily and bounces up and down slightly on the sofa, which thankfully doesn't break under his weight. He glances fleetingly at the image of Dr. Carlisle on the screen, but then announces very decisively to the room. "They stay now, 'cause nobody gets left behind or forgotten. They're my family, my ohana." He singsongs this last sentence.

To be honest, Tony's glad Loki objected, in some ways. If he and Bruce had been sent away, Loki could panic again sometime (after all, these therapy sessions probably bring up some difficult topics). Additionally, while it might be a huge breach of privacy, Tony might have ended up spying on the session through Jarvis' cameras anyways. If he didn't, he'd wonder if Loki had brought up something he should know about, on the off chance that would actually happen. Tony's not sure if he knows all of Loki's secrets, but it seems he knows a lot of them.

"So what's happened since I last talked to you eleven days ago?" Dr. Carlisle asks. Wow- it's only been eleven days? Tony's a little surprised. Considering everything that's happened during those eleven days, it feels like a lot longer. Tony pauses, thinking. Thor arriving on Halloween had been after the last therapy session, and even Halloween feels like a while back, despite it really only being nine days ago.

Tony wonders what it's like to live a boring life. He snorts slightly, knowing he'll never know the answer to that. Loki giggles slightly, perhaps thinking the snort was funny.

"So what happened? Something funny?" Dr. Carlisle asks. Bruce looks at both Loki and Tony, clearly wondering what in the past eleven days has been funny.

Tony glances at Loki. Really, he should be the one to talk to her, and Tony should just sort of sit in the background. Trading a look with Bruce, Tony sees that his Science Bro is thinking the same, so both of them wait for the god to answer.

When Loki doesn't say anything for a bit, Dr. Carlisle says "I remember you mentioning you were going to be Iron Man for Halloween."

Loki nods, looking at Tony instead of the screen. Tony notices he seems rather nervous right now, and is starting to wonder if that could be related to talking to Dr. Carlisle. Or maybe that's just him trying to find more reasons to dislike Dr. Carlisle. "I was Man of Iron for Halloween, I was!" Loki says, clapping his hands. "And my Tony was my Hulk-y, and my Bruce was Cap'n... Mer-i-ca?" Loki glances at Tony questioningly, clearly wondering if he'd said that right. Tony gives him a thumbs up and whispers Captain America. Loki nods, and says. "But then..."

Loki gets up, flapping his hands, and paces, no longer in the range of what Dr. Carlisle can see. "Then Thor came, but Tony beat him up in his big Hulk suit and Hulk-y beat him up too, and they said he's wrong 'bout me!"

Dr. Carlisle asks Tony and Bruce with raised eyebrows, her expression clearly asking Really? You beat him up? Out loud, she says "Is it because of how he treated Loki? Because I'm not sure beating him up is the best solution."

Tony glares at her. "Butt out of that. It's none of your business." As he glares at her, he notices Loki doing the same, and wonders if Loki's actually annoyed about it or if the god's just imitating him.

"What did they say he was wrong about?" Dr. Carlisle asks Loki after a bit. Loki looks away from the screen. Even though he's answering her questions, it almost feels like he's talking to Tony or Bruce instead of her.

"Said they weren't faking 'bout liking me, and Thor didn't change that, nope nope nope."

"Did you think they were faking liking you before?"

Loki gives Dr. Carlisle an odd look and says in a voice that makes it clear he thinks that's a stupid question. "Just after first talkin'ta you."

Dr. Carlisle looks really confused, and for a couple seconds, Tony is too, until he remembers the incident during dinner after the first session, which Loki had actually brought up earlier today when watching Lilo & Stitch, where Tony had snapped at Loki under the table.

"Did I somehow give you the impression that Tony didn't really like you?" Dr. Carlisle asks. "If I did, that certainly wasn't what I wanted."

"No, it's just that we had a little misunderstanding after that session." Tony eventually says after Loki doesn't answer.

"Tony said he's never gonna hit me like they did." Loki adds.

"I would hope he wouldn't." Dr. Carlisle says. "Were there any other times you thought they didn't like you?"

Loki doesn't answer for a bit, although it seems more like he's debating whether he should actually answer or not than if he should. Eventually, he nods, although Dr. Carlisle can't see him.

"Thor told 'em I'm a freak... And I thought they thought s then 'cause nobody disagrees with Thor. But they did and said I'm not, even when they saw me." Tony's pretty sure that by saw me, Loki means that they saw his Jotun skin.

"Hell yeah you're not." Tony goes over and squeezes Loki's shoulder and Loki leans up against him for a bit.

Tony's noticed that some of Loki's more recent speech patterns, like having S's added to words and having some grammatical errors from trying to speak without All-Tongue actually aren't occurring now. Either he's getting better or he's using All-Tongue, and Tony sort of guesses it's the All-Tongue. Given his recent habits of speaking without All-Tongue, Tony's surprised he's using it now. Perhaps Loki doesn't feel comfortable enough around Dr. Carlisle to try to go without All-Tongue, or maybe Tony's reading too much into it. After all, Loki had said that going without All-Tongue is hard and that it 'wants' to come back.

"Hel says I'm not, too." Loki whispers with a grin. Tony can hear it but Dr. Carlisle obviously doesn't hear, and Tony wonders if that's why it was whispered. So far, Loki's seemed to be half ignoring the therapist, which makes Tony wonder if these sessions are really best for Loki or not. What if there's someone better? Dr. Carlisle might be good with other people, but Tony's not sure if she is with Loki. Really, if Loki's ignoring her, that's not going to get them anywhere. Tony glances at Bruce, but Bruce is looking the other way and Tony can't exactly tell what he's thinking.

"It must have been nice to hear that." Dr. Carlisle says. Loki nods happily, but he's still looking at Tony.

"And they said I'm still their friend, 'xcept now we're family." Loki adds before he screams excitedly and flicks his fingers wildly. "We're family, we're family, we're family!" He singsongs. Abruptly, he throws his arms around Tony and then Bruce, who at first looks uncomfortable but then relaxes in the embrace.

"I remember you talking about family during our first session," Dr. Carlisle starts to say. Loki seems to tense a bit and glances at the screen.

"Nuh uh. Didn't have one b'fore."

"I remember you saying that, but you still talked about what a family should be." Dr. Carlisle explains. "What makes Tony and Bruce different from everyone in Asgard?" At least the question isn't asked in an accusatory way, although it still kind of irks Tony. He's loads better than all those asses up in Ass-Guard were. He smirks slightly at the wordplay in his head.

Loki frowns at her and turns back to Tony and Bruce, putting an arm around each of their shoulders. "They're nicer and they like me no matter what. Like how Anna loves Elsa and Lilo loves Stitch, even when Stitch wrecks things or... Elsa made it winter."

Dr. Carlisle seems to think for a bit, and it's silent. "I take it you wanted a family?" There's a small smile on her lips.

Loki nods slightly and says "Before I just had my Sleipnir and the others. But they're good too."

"I remember you mentioning Sleipnir." Dr. Carlisle says. "You said he was your horse, but you couldn't ride him and he sung to you."

Loki absentmindedly starts singing his and Sleipnir's song.

"Was Sleipnir imaginary?" Dr. Carlisle asks.

Loki glares at her. "Sleipnir's real. Just 'cause you can't see him much doesn't mean he's not there!" After seeing Loki turn invisible in the glass cell, Tony supposes there's some truth to that statement. Admittedly, he's still not sure whether Sleipnir is an illusion or not, but he does seem rather helpful. "They're all real and they're my monster family and Hel tried'ta help me get out yesterday!"

Loki clamps his hand over his mouth as if he hadn't wanted to say that. He had glossed over the whole Thor thing, and Tony wonders if he's going to skip the Helicarrier incident, despite inadvertently bring it up. Tony sort of hopes he doesn't, because they should probably talk about that sometime.

"Get out of where? What happened yesterday?" Dr. Carlisle asks, and Tony's not sure if the god's going to answer. Loki hadn't seemed too eager to do so yesterday, and Tony's starting to wonder if maybe he'll be even less eager with his therapist, seeing as he doesn't know her as well.

Loki looks somewhat unsure as he fiddles with his fingers, but he eventually speaks.

"Cap'n Hook trapped Tinker Bell in a wood n' glass box." Loki says, and Tony realizes he's talking about the scene in Peter Pan where Tink was stuck in a lantern. That had sort of been what happened to him, after all, only his captors hadn't been giant like humans are to Tink.

"So he did. That wasn't very nice, was it?" Bruce asks. Dr. Carlisle looks like she's going to say something, but she doesn't get the chance.

Loki shakes his head vehemently. "No! Hook's really mean but Smee's not 'xactly mean, and Hook tricked Tink, he did! She was stuck in there, even though she tried'ta get out, and she couldn't fly 'way, nope nope nope. And Hook asked her all sorts of weird questions like where Peter was, an' names, and how Simba had a Man of Iron suit."

Loki quickly shuts his mouth after he says that, eyes wide.

"Something tells me we're not really talking about Hook and Tink..." Tony says, and annoyingly, Dr. Carlisle says it at the same time. After all, Hook certainly hadn't asked anything about an Iron Man suit

Loki shakes his head, more slowly this time. His head is right by Tony's arc reactor now. Tony's still not sure why he likes it so much. "Stitch was in glass too, twice, and Lilo was the second time, but Stitch e'scaped and got her out too."

"Were you... trapped like Tinker Bell and Stitch?" Dr Carlisle asks, probably not knowing the extent of the similarities, in that Loki was actually trapped behind glass.

"Don't wanna talk 'bout it." Loki mumbles. During this exchange, he rooted through his drawstring bag full of action figures and figurines until he found the small Tinker Bell figurine that came with the Peter Pan set they got. He fiddles with the toy, making it fly through the air before dropping it in Bruce's empty water glass.

He moves the figurine around as if she can't get out. However, all of this is happening out of Dr. Carlisle's view. He makes the fairy repeatedly bump into the edge of the glass.

"How have the dreams been going?" Dr. Carlisle asks, apparently sensing she's not going to get much out of Loki about the previous topic. "Have you still been having nightmares?" Tony can't help but remember that Loki told Dr. Carlisle that he has nightmares, too, and while he knows this isn't the case, his brain is making it seem like she's asking him, not Loki. He really hates the fact that she knows that.

"You're gonna make Tony stiff again." Loki says, glaring through the back of the holographic screen. Tony sputters for a second, as Dr. Carlisle gives him a sharp look. Sure, Tony knows how that can be interpreted and he definitely has a reputation as a playboy, but Dr. Carlisle is definitely not Tony's type, and even if she was, he doesn't like her after both this session and last session.

"You brought it up last time and Tony got all stiff 'cause he doesn't like talking 'bout it." Loki adds, still glaring slightly at Dr. Carlisle.

"Tense." Bruce says gently. "I think you mean tense, right?"

Loki cocks his head to the side and then tenses his body. "Like this." He says as he demonstrates. Bruce confirms that the word for that is tense. Dr. Carlisle still casts a somewhat distrusting look at them again, especially Tony, as if she really thinks he's lusting over her or something. Tony rolls his eyes. Please.

"Have you been telling yourself that you're not bad?" Dr. Carlisle asks Loki, who's back in the area of the room that she can see.

"Tony tells me that." Loki says, not exactly answering her question. "He makes me feel better when I wake up scared." He glares at Dr. Carlisle almost accusingly. "You said you're gonna make the nightmares go away, but you haven't."

"These things take time-" Dr. Carlisle starts, but Loki cuts her off.

"Tony helps me more than you do!" Loki shrieks. It almost seems like he's trying to defend Tony from her disapproval. "We beat up Hans, and he hugs me and helps and you don't! You just ask questions and glare at Tony when he talks!" Loki suddenly gets up and storms away, leaving Tony and Bruce in the living room, looking at the screen with Dr. Carlisle on it.

The screen switches off after a bit. It's pretty sure this appointment is now over.

Loki doesn't think he's slept at all this night. To be honest, he doesn't really want to. After all, he'd recently teleported to the theater in his sleep, and even more recently teleported to the Other Rafters, which led to him being in the glass petri dish cell and seeing the Eyepatch Man, who Tony claims is named Fury.

Loki really doesn't want to teleport in his sleep again, because what if he ends up somewhere worse? Sure Tony would come for him eventually, but what if something even worse happened while he was waiting. Besides, his dreams all stink anyways. Well, sometimes he has nice ones before his nightmares, but the nightmares are always there.

He has his Tony to calm him down now, though, and to hug him like his friends can't. Tony's his family now, but it's not just pretend like he'd pretended Sleipnir and the others were his family. Or maybe that was as real as Tony being family, because you don't actually have to be related, it seems.

He starts thinking back to his session with Dr. C today. He hadn't been looking forward to it at all, because he'd wound up having a flashback the last time, and he'd been worriedly waiting for her to bring something up that would make him have another.

Shockingly, she didn't, but he'd tried to avoid anything that would make him. When the whole thing that happened yesterday had been brought up, he'd tried to think of Tinker Bell and Stitch instead of himself.

He really hadn't liked how she keeps asking to talk to him alone, because he really likes having Tony with him. Tony helps him calm down, and so does Bruce, although not nearly as well as Tony.

He hadn't really meant to snap at Dr. C like he had this afternoon, but she doesn't seem to like Tony or Bruce much, and Loki doesn't like people who think bad things about his family. She always seems mildly annoyed at Tony, and she'd looked at Bruce like he was a monster.

Also, she had said a while ago that maybe she could help the nightmares go away, but she hasn't helped at all. Tony's helped more than her.

Tony had talked to him later, saying that if he doesn't like Dr. C, they can always try to find someone else. That had been hours ago, though.

It's a lot darker here at night than it is in the tower, Loki notices as he ambles past the huge floor-to-ceiling window in his bedroom. In the tower, there are always a million lights from the city outside even when it's dark out, but here, there's not a whole lot of light, not even moonlight. He doesn't even have Simba's arc reactor to light things up, since Tony has Simba's Iron Man suit. Loki has Toy Stark, though, but while his arc reactor glows, it doesn't light a whole lot up.

Loki can see some stars, though, and he grins, looking at them. He's not sure which stars they are, though- seeing as there are only a few, there's not much to compare them with, so it's really hard to tell which they are.

For a while, he watches the stars and talks to Hel, Fenrir, Sleipnir and Jormungand, although Fenrir never talks back. In some ways, it's just like the nights before he met Tony.

The really awesome part about tonight is he actually sees his friends. Most of the time, they're sort of invisible, although Sleipnir had been visible when they were racing.

He thinks back to when he'd made the toy horses run, and how he'd wondered if he could make Simba do the same. He glances at his beloved lion. It would be really awesome if Simba could move by himself, and more than just turning his head and moving his tail like he does now. Most of the time he just stands there like those toy horses, but they had moved.

He imagines Simba moving, but nothing happens. He glances at his hands but sees there's no green tendrils or misty magic around them. In some ways, he's almost disappointed, which is completely crazy.

"Why didn't it work?" He asks Simba, who doesn't answer, and Jormungand and the others, who claim they don't know. Loki sighs. He tries again but only gets Simba's tail to move side-to-side like it always does when he squeezes the lion's ear.

He idly starts humming Let It Go to himself, since he really likes it. He really likes Elsa, too, he thinks as he rummages through his bag and pulls her out. She's a Jotun, just like him, and she did some awesome stuff with snow and ice.

"I'm never going back, the past is in the past." He sings.

After a bit, he says in his best Pumbaa voice "It's times like this my buddy Timon here says: You got to put your behind in your past."

That's the whole point of this therapy stuff, right? To make the memories of Asgard and flashbacks and nightmares go away? Loki wishes it were as easy as just sticking his butt out behind him, but as Timon says, it's 'you got to put your past behind you.'

Elsa did that. She decided to just let her magic go. She almost made snow look like stars. Loki wishes he could do that. He doesn't have the holographic stars in this room, and he really misses them.

Well, he probably could do it. After all, he has Jotun powers, too. Tony's said they're not bad, that Elsa did both good and bad things with them. Loki knows that when Elsa made all those fun things in the beginning for her an Anna to play with, she was doing something good with them. He stares at his Elsa doll for a bit, vaguely wondering what an ice slide her size would look like. He grabs her but doesn't try to make one. Instead, he focuses on how she'd made snow stars.

Loki lays back on his bed and stares at the ceiling, flapping his hands above his horizontal head, so he's looking up at them. He feels his body grow a tad colder, but his blue Jotun skin isn't showing. Although Stitch and Genie are blue, so blue skin can't be all bad, can it? Tony seemed to like that weird blue guy in that floating tank, in that Avatar movie where people actually looked real, in the way people here do, instead of like drawings or somehow different like Elsa, Rapunzel and Boo. Not to mention, Claire said she wanted to be blue, and she wore blue too.

Thrusting his hands towards the ceiling, Loki manages to shoot some snowflakes upwards. He laughs and flicks his fingers, because they sort of do look like stars, like the ones back in his room in the tower. He tries to imagine constellations in them, but they're already falling down, landing on his nose.

After a bit, he does it again.

In Asgard, doing this sort of thing would not have ended well. This isn't Asgard, Jormungand reminds him, but Loki still hates thinking about what would have happened there. He hates all the memories, and he slowly lowers his hands as he remembers the pain that was inflicted after he'd made ice and snow on accident there.

Bruce had said that the King and Queen of Arendelle would have been monsters for hurting Elsa for using ice magic, though. Loki wonders if his Elsa doll can make snow, or if he can make it look like she's making snow, but he doesn't make any move to try.

At some point, he decides not to just lay there anymore and gets up to roam around the house.

He remembers, after one of his nightmares, being too scared to walk through the vast openness, but right now he's too anxious to stay still, and everything is just calm and quiet instead of scary, like after a nightmare.

In some ways, this isn't nearly as fun as some of his nighttime wanderings in Asgard had been, which is a weird and crazy thought. Midgard not being as fun as Asgard?! Loki laughs slightly at that. Midgard is a lot better than Asgard in basically every way. He doesn't have to worry about running into anybody when walking around Tony's house, like he'd had to when wandering around the palace. He supposes he could run into Tony or Bruce, but that wouldn't be a bad thing. The thing that makes this slightly less fun is that, on Loki's nighttime wanderings in Asgard, he'd been able to go to the stables and the field to see the horses. Sleipnir's great- he even talks!- but Loki can't pet him or feed him apples and carrots like he could with the horses in Asgard.

Loki wanders around some more with his friends, stopping to watch the small waterfall by the staircase. He really likes that.

For a while, he just hears the sound of running water until he sits down on the basement steps. Then, he hears a somewhat quiet but pounding beat. It sounds like that awful stuff Tony listens to, which he claims is rock music. Loki just thinks it sounds like people yelling. He likes the songs in movies a lot more.

None of his friends have any idea what's down there.

Curious, Loki heads down the steps. Fenrir stalks in front of him like a bodyguard. Loki appreciates the gesture, but Tony's house wouldn't hurt him, right? He's got Jarvis looking out for him, after all, as well as Tony, of course. Loki hasn't been to this part of the house before, and the thumping beat grows slightly louder the further he descends down the steps. He sees light coming up from whatever's down on the lower floor.

When he gets to the basement, his eyes grow wide. "Oh, wow."

"Bruce, I'm telling you this Professor X guy is the answer!" Tony exclaims. He's in his lab with Bruce, and it's rather late at night- technically it's morning already.

"Tony, you don't even know him." Bruce sighs.

"Yeah, but I mean he runs a school for mutants with strange powers. He'd probably be awesome with Loki, I mean, a lot better than Dr. Carlisle, and..."

"And you don't know if he'd even want to talk to Loki in the first place." Bruce asks, giving Tony a level look. "What were you thinking of doing anyways? Hiring him as a therapist?"

Well, yeah, that's exactly what Tony's thinking. The man seems a heck of a lot more suited for all the magic-y aspects of Loki than Dr. Carlisle, since she's just an ordinary psychologist.

These X-Men are fascinating. Charles Xavier, a.k.a Professor X, is apparently a telepath, with some sort of mental powers, although Tony hasn't found too much about what exactly those powers actually are yet. He'll probably have to hack some more to get those files. Still, he has to wonder what those mind powers are. Mind reading? That would be more than a little creepy, and Tony certainly wouldn't want this guy reading his mind. Still, that sort of thing would be pretty dang useful for a therapist.

He sort of wonders whether Charles Xavier/Professor X and these other X-Men know that S.H.I.E.L.D has information on them. He certainly wouldn't be surprised if it turns out they don't know about it. Tony had also found information on himself and fellow teammates, including ways to deal with them if they went rogue, though he'd already known they were on threat watch. Although, the things they had planned to counteract his Iron Man armor wouldn't have even worked. Idiots.

This whole idea of this telepathic man helping Loki just started out as a passing thought but had lodged itself firmly into Tony's brain and his mind won't let it go.

As he thinks the words let it go, the song from Frozen starts playing in his head, and Tony groans. That gets stuck in there way too easily, especially with Loki singing it all the time.

Tony sees Bruce smirking at him and realizes he's humming out loud. Tony glares at him and stops humming, muttering "Shut up."

"I didn't say anything." Bruce replies, still smirking. Tony sighs and turns back to the files about X-Men.

They don't have too many files on people other than Charles Xavier, although there's apparently a whole society of mutants. There are some files on a guy named Logan (no last name listed), who goes as Wolverine. He apparently has regenerative abilities that allow him to heal far more than an average human, which sounds a lot like a certain someone living with Tony. S.H.I.E.L.D clearly hasn't roped this Wolverine guy into healing agents or anything of the sort, though.

He really needs to meet these people, out of sheer curiosity, and it could help Loki a lot too.

Bruce is looking at Tony almost as if he's a telepath reading Tony's thoughts. Or maybe it's just obvious what he'd be thinking in this situation.

"Let me guess. You're going to figure out some way to find these people, even if they don't want to be found?" Bruce asks mildly.

"Well, yeah, wouldn't you?" At Bruce's look, Tony sighs. "No. I guess you'd leave them alone like a considerate person. Anyways, we need Charles Xavier. From what it sounds like, he's perfect- he works with troubled people with all sorts of powers. I'm no therapist, and Loki needs someone besides just us. But I think it's kind of safe to say that Dr. Carlisle's not exactly working out." Some people would probably say that Tony's narcissism made him dislike Dr. Carlisle since she didn't like him, and that's the reason he's thinking they should sever ties with her. But that's not it, really. Okay, he doesn't like her, true, but Loki doesn't seem to like her much either. Some of that might be based on Tony's attitude towards her and her attitude towards him, but Tony's pretty sure that having a therapist you don't like isn't going to help much.

"Tony, you don't even know if Professor X would be willing to work with Loki. Besides, do you even have a way to contact him?"

Okay, so Bruce has some valid points. It would pretty annoying if this Charles guy didn't want to talk to Loki, although Tony could probably pay him handsomely for it. And he really doesn't have any contact info for this guy yet.

"Well, I guess I'm gonna have to hack some more until I find his number or email or something, and then hopefully he'll agree to talk with Loki." Tony says. Bruce sighs, probably thinking that's far-fetched. He leaves around seven minutes later, muttering something about trying to get some sleep.

A half an hour or so later, Tony's alone in his workshop blasting rock music. Jarvis, at first, had thought it was funny to put on the Iron Man song by Black Sabbath, even though that joke got old really quickly years ago. Or, rather, it's old when Jarvis makes it, Tony thinks, but it's still hilarious when he himself does it.

Right now, it's currently around 1:30 in the morning and Tony's running on coffee, mostly. There's alcohol in his system, too, because well, he's Tony Stark, but he hasn't drunk enough to make him stumble or make his vision blur.

Tony knows that Pepper will probably kill him tomorrow for not sleeping before an important meeting, but what else is new? Besides, he's reading up on these X-Men people. Or, rather, he's now having Jarvis read stuff to him while he tinkers on Simba's Iron Man suit.

There have been a couple times where Loki has been without his phone but has still had Simba- take his little elope to the daycare at Stark Industries earlier today (well, yesterday, if one wants to get technical) and even the little journey to the Helicarrier, although they'd taken Simba from him there.

Still, Tony's decided, instead of trying to get Loki to carry a phone around, why not just work it into Simba's armor? Sure, he could just strap the Stark Phone Loki owns now to Simba's back or something, but that would be lame. So instead, he's equipping Simba's armor with Jarvis, which isn't too different from a Stark Phone, really. Besides, Tony's real Iron Man suits have Jarvis in them, and even Loki's costume suit does, so this is sort of like a little nod to that. He's also placing a tracker in Simba's suit as well.

"Sir, you have a visitor." Jarvis suddenly announces with a somewhat amused tone. Tony looks up and sees Loki staring at him through the glass wall between the stairwell and his workshop. He's in his Iron Man pajamas. Since Tony's currently tinkering on the armor, Simba's currently naked, like he'd been when they recovered the lion from the Helicarrier.

Loki frowns as opening the door turns out to be a failure since the door is locked. Loki gets a somewhat panicked look on his face, and it suddenly dawns on Tony that Loki had been stuck behind glass only yesterday. It's clear Loki's thinking about that too, judging from the look on his face.

Without even asking, Jarvis cranks down the music and unlocks the door while Tony motions for the god to come in. Loki runs up without a word to hug Tony, practically crashing into Tony's lap so that the rolling chair Tony's sitting in rolls backwards with both of them in it. Loki's a fair number of inches taller than Tony, so Tony has to crane his head upwards to see Loki's face. Tony doesn't particularly enjoy being shorter, but he's gotten used to it and Loki never seems intimidating, really.

The hug lasts longer than usual, to Tony's sort-of dismay. He's never been a huge hugger, himself, but he's gotten pretty used to hugging and receiving hugs from Loki. Still, Loki sitting in Tony's lap is new. Tony's had people sit in his lap before- usually women, and it was always for an entirely different reason than seeking comfort, like Loki obviously is doing now. The god clearly enjoys this sort of physical contact and comfort, as opposed to the abuse he suffered in Asgard.

"Sorry if, um, not being able to get through at first brought up some memories." Tony says somewhat awkwardly, not sure how to phrase it without Loki freaking out. "Um, can you please get off my lap now? I'm starting to lose feeling in my legs, because you're really heavy." Tony vaguely wonders if he should have said that, but his mouth just went off without him. Loki either doesn't care or doesn't notice, though.

Loki gets up but grabs onto Tony's hand, pacing back and forth so that Tony has to either pace with him or get dragged along. Tony supposes this is preferable to the disproportionately-heavy god cutting off a circulation in his legs, but right now, pins and needles are going through his legs due to that.

"Are we gonna be able to get outs now?" Loki asks in a worried voice, eyeing the glass wall with intense distrust. "Didn't lets me in b'fore for a bit, 'till now."

"Yeah, we're going to be able to get out. That wasn't the glass, that was the lock. Generally I keep my lab private, so you're one of the exclusive few who are allowed to enter in here." Tony notices that Loki still doesn't look entirely consoled, and figures Loki might not trust locks either, especially not ones he can't even see, like electronic locks. "Even if the lock failed for some reason- which isn't going to happen since it's my tech- that glass door's not the only way out of here. And if worst came to worst, I could always blast through it with a repulsor, or fly through the ceiling or something. But that's not going to happen." After all, he has that tunnel that he uses to exit the mansion in his suits (or the many cars down here).

Loki finally looks convinced that they're not going to be trapped in here, and he looks around at the lab, scowling slightly at the cars. He really doesn't seem to like them. Or, rather, he's come to associate them with seat belts after only riding in cars a handful of times.

"So, Bambi, did you have a bad dream?" Tony asks, because that's not an unlikely assumption in the slightest. That's most likely why Loki came down here in the first place, where he then sort of freaked out about the glass wall with the temporarily locked door. "If you want, I can kick the villain's butt again, like I did with Hans."

Loki just pinches himself, as if he's testing whether he's awake or not. Tony's glad he hadn't slapped himself in the cheek like he'd done before, apparently remembering what Tony told him on the plane about how beating himself up wasn't necessary. Loki finishes this off by saying "No dreams."

"Oh. Well, that's good I guess." Tony says automatically, knowing how rough nightmares are, and then asks "Wait, so you weren't sleeping all this time?" He takes a swig of coffee.

Loki shakes his head. Tony raises a brow and smirks. "Insomnia's got you too, huh?" He can certainly sympathize with that, and with the nightmares.

"In..som..." Loki tries to sound out the word and Tony really should have thought of that.

"It means you can't sleep."

"Oh." Loki nods. "Yeah, that. Can't sleep, nope nope nope."

"Why not?" Tony asks curiously. Loki's never seemed to have this issue before. Well, he almost never goes to sleep after a nightmare, but that's different than not sleeping in the first place.

"Don't wanna," Loki says. Really, at the rate Loki has nightmares, Tony's surprised he never seems to protest the idea of sleeping before now, especially since he seems to be able to function perfectly well with only three or four hours of sleep a night on average. Heck, if Tony's going to be honest with himself, he's avoiding sleep, and bad dreams, too. Maybe Loki suddenly doing this as well has something to do with Dr. Carlisle bringing up the fact that he's still having nightmares?

Before Tony can think too much on that thought, which might be a bit of a stretch, Loki says, rather randomly "Go 'way agains."

"You want me to go away?" Tony asks, confused. Loki normally loves being with him. Also, there's no way Loki's kicking Tony out of his own lab.

"Noo!" Loki groans, exasperated. "Me! I don't wanna go's way again."

"You don't have to go away. You can stay in here as long as you don't screw anything up." Tony says, and as soon as the words leave his mouth and he sees Loki's frustrated expression, it clicks. Loki's talking about going away when he's sleeping. Just a couple nights ago, Loki had that nightmare where he wound up teleporting to the theater. Perhaps he's worried he'll teleport somewhere in his sleep again, and it's not like he wound up somewhere fun the last time he'd teleported. No, he'd wound up in the Helicarrier, and then got locked in a glass cage and interrogated. Looking over the footage, Tony's realized that Loki actually teleported to the rafters in the Helicarrier's training room, which are identical to the ones in his tower's training room. Tony seriously doubts that's a coincidence.

"Oh. I get it." Tony says. "You don't want to wake up somewhere weird, right?" Loki nods.

"Hey, you're wearing your watch, right? Tony asks, and Loki holds up his arm to show the watch fastened around it. Tony had been debating about strapping it to Simba instead- after all, Simba helpfully goes everywhere with Loki, even the Helicarrier. But now that he's upgrading Simba's armor, he can just put a tracking device straight in that. "Good." Tony grins at him, and reminds him "Y'know, if you do end up somewhere else, that'll tell me exactly where you are." Loki smiles slightly at that.

"When's Simba gonna gets be the Iron Lion again?" Loki asks, and Tony smirks.

"Iron Lion?"

"That's what Son of Coul saids." Loki nods before looking like he hadn't wanted to say that. Tony figures that Son of Coul means Phil Coulson. It seems Loki had picked that up from Thor, although maybe that's just the way everyone in Asgard would say it. Still, he's a little surprised that Loki said Iron Lion instead of Lion of Iron, like he does with Man of Iron. Wow, that thought had too many iron's, even in his head.

"Definitely by tomorrow evening." Tony says, looking down at the armor he's been working on. Loki grins.

"What did you think of Coulson?" Tony asks curiously, because in the footage he'd watched, the agent hadn't seemed too mean to Loki at least. He's hoping bringing this up won't be a problem, but then again, Loki was the one to bring Coulson up.

"Better thans the Furious Eyepatch Man." Loki says.

"Yeah, he's a lot nicer than Fury." Tony agrees. "Not that that's hard, really."

"You know them...?" Loki asks, and tilts his head to the side, eyes unfocused as he thinks about something. "I heard Thor saids once that Son of Coul was gone, dead, but he didn't look dead. Maybe that was a..." Loki seems at a loss for words and simply switches to something else. "Ands Thor said something 'bout a d'rect'r who's furious and has a..." Perhaps being unable to think of the word, Loki simply covers his left eye with his hand.

"Eyepatch." Tony supplies the word he's looking for.

"Eye...patch? Yeah, that. I thinks so?" Loki frowns and then nearly whispers "Odin gots one too, but on the other eye."

"Um... yeah, Point Break might've mentioned them." Tony says, unsure of how to tell Loki that he sort of works for Fury, even if he doesn't totally let Fury boss him around.

"Ands they acted like they knowed you." Loki adds, and Tony decides not to correct his grammar right now, because that's really the least important thing he could do. Still, part of him is tempted to delay this. How will Loki react to knowing that Tony's worked with the people on the Helicarrier? Tony then reminds himself that Loki's known basically the whole time that Tony works with Thor as an Avenger, yet that hasn't ruined anything yet, not even in the beginning when Tony first met the god.

"Um, yeah. I know them. I work with them, but that doesn't mean I'm not angry at them for what they did to you. I'm furious at Fury- pun intended- for deciding to lock you up like that. You didn't deserve that, got that?" Tony gives him a steady look, and while Loki nods, Tony's not sure if he actually means that or if he's just nodding to appease him. "You didn't deserve it. Just like how you didn't deserve any of the shit you went through in Asgard." Tony tells Loki, hoping that's the right thing to say. "By the way, I think Thor, Odin, and all their fellow Space Vikings are dicks for treating you like they did. They really put the ass in Ass-guard." Tony purposely mispronounces Asgard, and Loki snickers slightly.

"And Fandral 'n Hogunn 'n Volstagg?" Loki asks. "They hitted me even after Thor didn't." He's definitely trying to go without his handy dandy translator, which only makes it all the more obvious that he'd used it when Dr. Carlisle was calling.

"Glad to hear Thor stopped hitting you eventually." Tony mutters, knowing Loki's mentioned this before. "When did he stop?"

"After his corno-ration and Midgard." Loki says, and Tony briefly decides to tell him that hit is the past tense, not hitted, and that it's coronation. Loki accepts the corrections far easier than Tony himself would have, which most people would probably say is a good thing.

Tony suddenly remembers something he'd put on one of the workbenches in here. He grabs it and shows the thin, flat thing to Loki. "It's a circuit board, like in the book you were looking at." He explains, pointing at the tiny lines. "You see these things here? They're capacitors, and they store energy." He winds up giving a basic explanation of how the individual parts work and how the circuit board works as a whole. Loki seems fascinated.

"I made a circuit board when I was four, by the way." Tony finds himself saying. Okay, maybe that comes off as a bragging, but he is known for being a narcissist.

Loki just gives him a sad look, and Tony wonders if he's thinking about how their lifespans are so different. Tony's going to remember to ask Thor about that when he sees the Thunderer again. Loki had mentioned Idun's apples, too.

For a couple minutes, Loki just watches Tony work on Simba's armor. To break the silence, Tony explains what he's doing, not entirely sure whether or not Loki's listening, since a lot of his attention is focused on the actual suit.

"I made snow stars earlier." Loki says quietly. "Like Elsa. 'Cause I don't gots my stars here like in my room in the tower. Is that good?"

Tony shrugs. "It probably looked pretty cool, didn't it."

"Snow's cold." Loki says as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. "But the cold never bothered me anyway." Tony laughs and explains that cool can mean awesome or neat, too, not just cold as in physically cold. Loki nods and falls silent for a bit, watching Tony work on the armor some more.

"I saw your snow stars, Mr. Loki, and may I say they looked very nice." Jarvis says, and Loki grins even more. They fall into silence some more.

"Was I right?" Loki asks suddenly, wringing his hands together and hugging Simba tightly.

"Were you right about what?" Tony asks, feeling very confused. Loki's given him basically nothing to go with, there. Are they still talking about Loki making "snow stars" as he calls them?

"Whens... I was in petri dish cell, I thought that... that you'd says to es-cape." Loki nods, and Tony's surprised he brought this up again. But it's probably a good thing, he thinks, as Loki continues. "You know, 'stead of just sitting theres. And I tried'ta punch through the glass but it wouldn't break, nope nope nope! Which was real weirds 'cause it was glass! It's supposed to be real easy to break! So then Hel saids I should try to te-le-port outta there, and I tried but it didn't work!"

In some ways, it sort of did. Loki had sent illusions to Tony, which is at least something. Admittedly, it's not what Loki had been going for, though. Loki continues to ramble. "Couldn't get outs, just like Tinker Bell 'n Stitch 'n Lilo. Xcept Stitch got out of the glass the second time ands then he got Lilo out, but I couldn't 'n neither could Tink, 'til Peter letted her out, and Stitch had to gets Lilo!"

Tony blinks as he processes this long rambling, which is starting to make his head hurt. "So you tried to get out?" He asks. Loki just gives him a slightly annoyed look that clearly says Yeah. Weren't you listening?

"You're right." Tony says. "I would have told you to escape. Although normally captors don't like that very much." He smirks slightly, but it's a humorless smirk.

"They put in... air that mades me feel slow annnnd... tired." Loki slows down his voice as if to emphasize what he's saying, although from the recording Tony watched, Loki hadn't spoken that slowly when sedated.

"Yeah, I know, and they shouldn't have done that." Tony mutters darkly.

"What if I go's back?" Loki asks fearfully.

As much as Tony wants to promise that's not going to happen, he can't, really. Wouldn't it be worse to promise it, when there's a small chance of it happening if Loki teleports again? Then it would be like breaking that promise, even if it wasn't his fault.

"You're not gonna let 'em hurts me, right?" Loki asks before Tony's figured out what he's supposed to say twisting his hands together.

"If they try to hurt you again, they're going to be very sorry. I'll make sure of it." At least Tony can promise that.

"I hated it when they held me down, and they had metal things and they were really scary! Buts it didn't hurt like in Ass-guard." Loki snickers as he copies Tony's mispronunciation.

"I'm glad to hear you weren't hurt." Tony replies. Really, he is. "And I can get that it was scary. Trust me, I'd hate being held down too. But those metal instruments were just measuring tools. They weren't going to zap you or anything." Loki looks somewhat relieved.

"You gots me out." Loki says, and he now has Toy Stark and the Loki action figure in his hands. Toy Stark still has the pattern of Lilo's dress on him, though, and the Loki toy is still blue like Stitch, or indeed Loki himself, although it's a different shade of blue than Loki's natural skin.

Loki, looking at the Loki toy, mumbles "He kinda looks like me." Well, obviously he does- Loki's Avengers toys and figure of himself look like miniature versions of the real people, thanks to Loki's magic, but Tony almost feels like Loki's actually referring to the blue skin.

"I'm curious, can you change them at will? Say, if you wanted to make Toy Stark's armor green, could you do that?" Tony asks. At least Loki never freaks out about changing his toys anymore. Tony makes sure that all the scanners in the room are on, both Jarvis' scanners and the various other ones he has stationed throughout.

Loki cocks his head to the side and says irrelevantly "Making Simba move 's harder. Can't get him to do much." Then, he stares at Toy Stark until it looks like he's almost going to go cross-eyed, and Tony fights the urge to laugh.

Eventually, Loki starts muttering stuff about being green and after a bit, Toy Stark's armor changes from red with white leaves, like Lilo's dress, to green with gold accents. Loki smiles slightl. Tony, encouraged, challenges him to make Toy Stark similar to Loki's night-sky long coat. That, somehow, takes less time and soon Toy Stark looks like he'd blend in if held up to a starry sky. The glowing dot of the fake arc reactor even adds the the effect.

After getting Loki to change Toy Stark to his Tony form instead of Iron Man, Tony suggests that Loki turn him blue, like a Jotun, he adds. Loki gives Tony a very strange look for actually requesting to have the toy version of himself look like Loki's true form, and Tony shrugs. "I dunno. I'm kind of curious to see what I'd look like on your planet. Or as one of those Avatar people, because they're really close enough."

Loki's staring at him and says "Claire saids she wanted to be's blue ike Cootie Monster." Tony has no clue what a cootie monster is.

"Or Stitch." Tony remarks, smirking when Loki's face lights up at the mention of the alien. Yep, it's been less than a day since Loki saw the movie, and he seems totally obsessed.

Eventually, Loki does manage to turn Toy Stark blue, and Tony looks over the toy. Really, it looks pretty dang good. He tells Loki so in basically the same words, and the god gives him a shocked but pleased smile.

"Oh, yeah, Jarvis found something you're gonna love." Tony says, before telling Jarvis to bring up the video. Said video starts playing, looking a lot like the beginning of The Lion King, with Circle of Life playing. Loki laughs and hugs currently-naked Simba tightly, singing along to the song.

However, instead of Rafiki holding a baby Simba above the cliff, he holds up Stitch. Loki lets out a surprised cross between a shriek and a laugh, flicking his fingers.

"Hey, that's not Simba." Timon says, standing on Pumbaa's back. Loki seems slightly confused, since Timon and Pumbaa hadn't been in that part of The Lion King, but then again, neither had Stitch. Rafiki drops Stitch, and the blue alien clears his throat as he stands on the rock above all the animals, where he proceeds to roar at all the animals gathered below. Loki is laughing uncontrollably by now and jumping up and down almost maniacally.

There are other Lilo & Stitch parody trailers where he sabotages other Disney films. One shows Aladdin and Jasmine riding the magic carpet and singing A Whole New World, only for Stitch to fly up in his stolen red police cruiser and steal Jasmine away. There's one where Stitch loosens the chandelier in the ballroom while Belle and the Beast dance, and even one where he's surfing and wipes out Ariel with a huge wave. Loki seems somewhat confused by that last one, as they haven't watched The Little Mermaid yet. They had watched The Jungle Book last night.

"By the way, Mr. Loki, there are several sequels to Lilo & Stitch, as well as a television series." Jarvis pipes up. Loki cocks his head to the side in confusion. Tony explains that a TV series is like Kim Possible in that it has short episodes that are around twenty or thirty minutes, instead of an hour and a half like a lot of the movies they've watched.

Loki looks very excited, but then says thoughtfully. "I thinks Bruce needs some green movies."

"Green movies? Like, environmentally friendly? I'm pretty sure Bruce is all for that stuff already, and I don't even know what movies that would include. Like, nature documentaries or something?"

Loki shrugs, looking somewhat confused. "Stitch is blue, so maybe Bruce needs green like Hulk-y."

"Oh, you mean literally green." Tony says. It's actually not a bad idea, although it probably won't work for Bruce as much as it seems to work for Loki. Still, it can't hurt to try.

Loki stays in the lab the rest of the night with Tony. For part of the time, he watches some episodes of the Lilo & Stitch series Jarvis had mentioned. Apparently, Stitch has 625 cousins, which is a lot larger than Loki's own monster family is. Lilo and Stitch work to get them before Gantu and find the one true place where each one belongs. Loki likes that idea a lot. Just like Stitch himself, Stitch's cousins start out bad but become good, while still using their powers. It's like Tony said, they use their powers for good and bad things.

There's a purple experiment named Richter, who makes earthquakes, and his one true place is a shop where he shakes drinks called "Quake Shakes" for people.

Tony nods off sometime around early morning, simply falling asleep with the side of his face pressed into the workbench. There are several empty mugs around him that smell like coffee, as well as a couple glasses with what appears to be some alcoholic drink in them.

Loki knows Tony always drinks that coffee stuff in the morning, but Tony's asleep, so he can't make it.

Loki grins. He could make it. After all, it doesn't look that hard, and he's certainly seen it done by Tony and Bruce often enough, and he'd even seen Dum-E do it once or twice. Loki rather misses Dum-E, since he's still back in the tower, and he's really fun to play games with. He wonders what Dum-E's up to right now.

So, Loki's pretty sure he could make coffee. Basically, they put some beans in a machine that's super loud about chopping them up, and then they put the ground-up beans in another machine with a pot under it, add water, and ta-da! The brown liquid that is coffee seeps out from a paper thing that's vaguely shaped like a super-flimsy bowl and lands in the glass pot below. Or something like that.

Frankly, he still cannot fathom why in the Nine Realms Tony and Bruce drink something that tastes so horribly bitter, or why coffee even tastes so bitter when it smells reallygood. It's odd- normally something tastes good if it smells good, like waffles, and tastes nasty if it has a gross scent, but coffee seems to disobey that rule.

Loki heads up the stairs, which are at least familiar since Asgard certainly didn't have elevators, and walks to the kitchen. The kitchen is much like the kitchen they use most in the tower- there are sleek chrome cabinets and countertops, coupled with a lot of metal and a lot of machines and appliances. While he knows which machine is which in the kitchen in the tower's penthouse, thanks to watching Tony and Bruce use them countless times, and he knows where the bean things they use are. Here, however, everything is new, but he does recognize a machine quite similar to the one with the glass pot in the tower, that he knows the coffee slowly streams into. That's probably the same thing, right?

"What are you doing, Mr. Loki?" Jarvis inquires mildly, and Loki thinks that's sort of a weird question, because isn't it obvious?

"Making cof-fee." He replies as he hunts through the sleek metal cabinets for something resembling the beans.

"You know Mr. Stark does not expect you to make coffee for him, right, Mr. Loki? As we went over a while ago, you are not a servant."

Loki nods. He knows that, because the servants in Asgard made it quite clear that he wasn't going to get paid like they were when they made him help. He was below even servants and, in a way, even slaves. Not because they owned him like a slave, but because everyone in Asgard said Frost Giants were the scum of the universe, needing to be taught how not to be savages. This apparently meant helping with things like laundry.

Loki still has no idea how laundry is supposed to help Jotuns, especially when they wouldn't let him anywhere near other chores, like anything in the kitchen. They seemed to think he'd poison their food or infuse it with magic or something, although for some reason didn't seem concerned with clothes being infused with magic. Still, it seemed awfully convenient for the servants and slaves to have an extra set of hands sometimes. Perhaps it was inconvenient, though, considering how they constantly belittled him and bemoaned about how long it took him to master things like folding shirts, saying he was even stupider than the average Jotun, which is apparently as dumb as a rock. But Elsa wasn't dumb, and Tony's said he's not dumb, so he can't be dumber than Jotuns, right?

But Tony hadn't told or even asked Loki nicely to make him coffee, so it's not like in Asgard. Besides, Tony's done so many nice things for Loki and Loki knows he'll never be able to repay Tony for everything he's done- even fixing his leg hadn't come close to everything Tony's done for him.

But Tony's probably going to like it if he makes coffee for him.

"The coffee beans are in the leftmost cabinet near the bottom." Jarvis says helpfully, and Loki grins, flicking his fingers. He pulls that open and sees a bag before hunting around for the thing that'll chop them up. "You'll want to put three scoops in the coffee grinder- no that's the blender, Mr. Loki, The thing to the left. Yes, there. Very good, Mr. Loki." A couple seconds later, Jarvis remarks "You could just let Mr. Stark or Dr. Banner make their own coffee."

"No. I'm doing it fors them." Loki nods, hoping they'll appreciate it.

He manages to get the beans through that machine (the thing Jarvis calls it a coffee grinder) without any issue, and Jarvis is a big help with helping guide him through how to work it. Then, he moves the ground-up beans to the coffee-maker, puts in a flimsy paper bowl thingy (a 'filter', according to Jarvis) and lets the coffee slowly fill the pot. It smells really good, and there's probably enough for both Tony and Bruce, at least for a bit. Sometimes Tony goes through multiple pots. Bruce has to, on occasion, though it's happened far more often with Tony.

Loki slowly fills up a mug that looks like a Man of Iron mask, thinking it's kind of funny that Tony has it. Tony has Man of Iron pajamas just like the ones Loki's wearing now- they'd gotten them at the same time.

Loki looks at the full mug of coffee and smirks as an idea starts to form in his head. Maybe he can trick Tony like Claire tricked him into eating that disgusting... thing. He's forgotten the name of it, but it was something like cootie. He'd tried to pull Claire's prank of giving someone gross food on both that random lady and Pepper, but neither had fallen for it.

He gets another idea and hides the coffee pot behind a fake plant (it certainly doesn't feel real), before turning to the mug of coffee and wondering what to do with it.

He's not entirely sure what he should do to Tony's coffee. He could spit in it, but that would be gross and maybe a bit too mean. He looks around in some of the cabinets and finds a whole lot of spices in little glass jars. He's not sure what most of them are, or if they have any equivalent in Asgard, but he recognizes a couple of them from cooking with Bruce, and there's one called Cinnamon that smells like hot chocolate, so maybe hot chocolate has that.

Loki grabs that jar and shakes a bit of cinnamon in the coffee. Then, his eyes land on another jar, with Oregano written on it. It's a greenish color, and he cautiously sprinkles some on his tongue. It's not that weird, so he sprinkles a little bit into Tony's mug, though it's a lot less than the cinnamon he'd added.

There's still almost a whole pot of normal coffee, though, so Tony can still have that after he's been pranked.

"Don't tell Tony." Loki whispers to Jarvis, snickering slightly.

"Mr. Stark is actually on his way up here." Jarvis replies. Loki though Tony had been sleeping, but this is even better.

He starts snickering again, as he goes to set the mug on the table. However, to his horror, it slips out of his fingers, crashing and shattering on the floor as coffee splatters on the tiles. "It's not a problem, Mr. Loki." Jarvis starts to say, but Loki only half hears it.

Loki stares at the spot on the ground, where everything's ruined, as words from the past echo through his head. "You're hopeless. Can't you do anything right?" No, it seems, he can't. He can't even do something as easy as making coffee right.

He snaps out of his trance and realizes that Tony's going to be really mad at him for breaking a mug and spilling coffee on the floor. Dum-E had done that, once, and Tony had gotten angry. Tony had said later that he wouldn't hit Dum-E or him, so at least he doesn't have to worry about being beaten like he was whenever he broke something back in Asgard.

Still, Tony's going to be really angry. What if he decides that he doesn't want Loki in his family anymore, Loki thinks, panicking. Hel reminds him that it doesn't work that way, that you can't just kick someone out of your family for breaking a mug. After all, Stitch blew up Lilo's whole house and he's still in Lilo's Ohana. Elsa froze the whole kingdom and Anna still loves her.

Loki dimly hears Jarvis speaking in a comforting voice. It's easier to listen to Hel than Jarvis.

Still, he makes out Tony's voice.

"Loki, what do you think you're-" Tony starts to say but then he stops. Loki flinches and tenses. Tony sounds really annoyed, as he should be. After all, nobody likes having their stuff broken. He falls to the floor and crawls under the table, waiting for Tony's displeasure to rain down on him in some way, but at least it won't be through punches and kicks. Still, he's undoubtedly going to yell at him like he'd yelled at Dum-E.

"Hey, it's okay." Tony says softly right next to him, perhaps sensing what he's feeling. Tony's hands rub circles on Loki's arms, and then Tony hugs him, which makes Loki wonder if maybe Tony's not as mad as Loki had first thought.

"...'m sorry, sorry, so sorry sorry sorry." Loki rambles. "I didn't mean'ta breaks it." Loki's voice comes out soft and somewhat choked. "It fell. I swears I didn't mean'ta. It was a acc'dent."

"Trust me, I know you didn't." Loki looks at him in surprise, and Tony smirks a little, though his eyes are still kind. "Besides it's not like I haven't had Thor fling about a million mugs to the ground when he wants another drink. I'd say he's far worse about mugs, wouldn't you?"

Loki smiles a bit, even letting out a tiny giggle. Yeah, Thor is worse! That habit of most Asgardians always seemed really stupid, because they'd break their mugs and then have to wait until a servant fetched them a new one. Plus it was just plain weird, even though they all did it. Although they did it all the time, they hadn't liked it much when he did it, but Loki supposes that's fairly obvious.

"You're not mads?" Loki asks, trying not to get too hopeful.

"Nah. Accidents happen. Remember Dum-E doing that?" Tony asks, and Loki nods.

"So we's still a family?" Okay, that hadn't come out quite how he hoped, and Tony's giving him a shocked look. Maybe he'd said something really wrong without All-Speak. Had he said something rude?

"You thought we weren't going to be a family because you accidentally dropped a mug?" Tony asks incredulously.

"Hel saids that Stitch broke stuff and was still in Lilo's Ohana." Loki mumbles. "Said this is the sames. And Elsa frozed Arendelle, but Anna didn't casts her out. "

"Well, Hel was right." Tony says. "I'm glad Hel told you that. You should listen to her when she tells you stuff like that."

Loki nods, because Hel normally does give pretty good advice.

"I was trying to tell you the same thing, Mr. Loki." Jarvis says, and Tony smiles slightly, telling Jarvis he did a good job, too. "Seriously, Rudolph, literally nothing you've done so far is even close to having me even begin to consider kicking you out."

"Really?" Loki asks, and Tony confirms it. Loki throws his arms around the man. Tony hugs him back for a bit and then goes over to the brown puddle on the floor, putting a finger in the spilt coffee.

"Uh, Snoopy? What's in this coffee exactly? There are... specks of stuff."

Loki shows him the two bottles of spices he'd put in. Tony quirks an eyebrow and asks "Okay, Cinnamon I can get, but Oregano? Why would you put Oregano in there?"

"It was a jest." Loki explains, grinning slightly. "So's it'd taste all weird."

Tony laughs slightly and says "I'm going to have to watch my back around you. You're sneaky, you know that?" Tony looks at him almost fondly. "You probably would have gotten away with that too. I suppose I should be thankful you didn't decide to dump tabasco sause in there, or pepper or something. By the way, those were not suggestions. Please don't put pepper in my coffee, ever."

Loki frowns. "Pepper wouldn't fit in... those, Tony." He points to the mugs, unsure of the word. "She's real tall."

Tony bursts out laughing. Loki's not entirely sure why, but at least Tony never makes him feel stupid about stuff he says. Tony seems to find a lot more of what Loki says funny than Loki himself does, and Loki's never actually trying to be funny. Tony explains that pepper is a spice, and even shows it to him on the spice rack. Loki hadn't noticed it before.

Loki goes to pick up the broken pieces of the Man of Iron mug, but Tony stops him, saying that Bruce would have a fit if he let him pick up sharp things with his bare hands. Tony then calls out some sort of cleaning robot that looks a lot like M-O, the cleaning robot in Wall-E. Tony remarks that he'd actually gotten the idea from that, and Loki grins, watching as the little robot cleans up the spilt coffee like he'd cleaned up Wall-E's mud tracks in the movie. Part of Loki really feels like he should be helping, but Tony insists he doesn't have to. So once the robots done, Loki pokes it curiously while it stays in one spot, beeping. He loves this robot.

"I made real coff-ee toos." Loki says and Tony looks around. Loki gets up and reveals it from behind the plant, explaining that this was another joke, too. Tony raises a brow yet again. Loki thinks he's seen Tony do that single-brow-raise more than he's seen it on anyone else's face before in his entire life.

Tony takes the coffee pot and pours himself another mug. He lifts it up but then looks at it suspiciously. "Loki, did you put any surprises in this?"

"No." Loki answers truthfully. Tony stares at him for a bit, as if trying to figure out if he's lying.

"Jarvis?"

"It's perfectly safe, sir."

Tony nods and takes a sip. He swallows and asks "Did you have a job back at an Asgardian Starbucks or something?", although Loki has no clue what a Star Bucks is. He can't remember there being a star named Bucks in the charts he'd looked at that named a lot of the stars.

Tony grins at this. "Seriously, Bambi, you make a mean coffee. Uh, by mean I mean good. It's an expression."

Loki nods and goes back to the floor to play with M-O, who's almost as fun as Dum-E. As he plays, Loki wonders what tabasco sauce is from when Tony mentioned it earlier. Tony had never said anything about not putting that in his coffee. He'd just said not to put pepper in there. Loki vaguely wonders why Pepper chooses to name herself after a spice, since she said her real name is Virginia when they first met, that first day Loki had been on Midgard.

Even though he's been here for somewhere around forty days (or so he's heard Tony say), Loki still thinks that Midgard can be a very odd place.

"Hey, Loki, are you out here?" Bruce asks, walking out of the mansion. Tony had left a couple hours ago, bemoaning the fact that he has to leave while Bruce and Loki get to stay in the mansion. Loki had seemed disappointed that he and Bruce weren't going to work with Tony again and equally disappointed that Tony was leaving in the first place. He'd asked about seeing Claire, Mark, Jacob, Carlos and Annie again, although he's talked about Claire the most. Bruce hadn't been sure what to say, since he probably can't go back there, especially after hurling a plastic hammer through a wall.

The god had gone outside after breakfast, and had presumably gone to his tree, so Bruce heads in that direction. From a distance, he can see a vague form of Loki sitting in one of the branches in the middle, and he can just make out the sound of Loki chattering happily, which grows steadily more distinguishable the closer he gets. Bruce wonders if Loki's talking to the tree, to Simba, or to his imaginary friends, who may be less imaginary than most.

When he gets to the trunk of the tree, Bruce sees that Loki has actually brought some books up with him. He's lounging in a branch with his back against the tree, and Simba standing on top of a book in his lap while he holds another book. He's somehow reading and talking at the same time. Bruce sees that Loki has Toy Stark up there with him. Loki has taken to carrying Toy Stark, in addition to Simba, around with him constantly now that Tony's gone to work. It's almost endearing, actually.

"Hello, there." Bruce says, smiling slightly. "I'm looking for a man named Loki, but I see I've found a monkey instead."

"I'm not a monkey, Bruce." Loki tells him, giggling, as if Bruce had actually been serious about that, looking down at him from the branch. "But you humans are almost monkeys, you knows? Well, apes, 'cause you're like real close to chimps an' gorillas. That's what the book saids. You're more like 'em than all the other aminals."

"So we are." Bruce admits. "We share about ninety-seven percent of their DNA, if I recall correctly.

"Ninety-nine chimps ands ninety-eight gorillas." Loki rattles off, and Bruce realizes he's referring to the percentages of DNA shared between them and humans instead of something about ninety-nine chimpanzees. Suddenly, Loki asks. "When's Tony get back?"

Loki has asked that question a couple times during breakfast alone. He's clearly used to having Tony around, and Bruce is pretty sure that Tony would rather be here than at whatever meeting or business-related thing he's in now.

"Sometime later this afternoon." Bruce replies. "Or maybe this evening, I'm not sure. He is coming back, though."

"Okay." Loki acquiesces, looking slightly disappointed at the news he has to wait. He swings down to another branch closer to Bruce, quite like a monkey really, and turns the book he's reading around so Bruce can see the pages, one of which shows a photo of an octopus and the other is filled with tiny text that Bruce certainly can't read from that distance. "These octo...pus aminals are real cute, don't you think?" He points to the picture and laughs. Cute isn't the word Bruce would have chosen, but he doesn't say that. Loki continues. "Pleakley hads one on his face, and he saids that dolphins are nicer than sharks. Dids you know they live in water?"

"I did know that, actually. And by the way, it's animals, not aminals." Bruce says, smiling slightly. "I was thinking maybe we could hit the beach, or you can stay here if you want."

He notices Loki's looking at him, shocked, and he realizes what Loki must be thinking. "I didn't mean actually hitting the beach. It's an expression, it means going somewhere. I was thinking maybe we could go to the beach, not hit it."

Looking slightly less confused now, Loki nods. He expertly climbs up to his previous perch, even with a book in his hands. Once there, he gathers Simba, the books, and Toy Stark in his arms and jumps from the tree. Once again, the tree's branches follow him down, and Bruce reaches out to poke at one of them curiously. It wiggles slightly and withdraws, and Loki says "She's ticklish."

"Oh, um, okay." Really, how is one supposed to respond to being told a tree is ticklish? As if to demonstrate, Loki goes up to the trunk and tickles under a low branch, like tickling under an armpit. The whole tree quakes, as if with silent laughter, and one of the lower branches snakes forwards and tickles him in the stomach. Loki practically squeals with laughter and the tree stops its tickle assualt.

Bruce realizes his mouth is hanging open and shuts it. Really, of all the bizarre things Loki's done, this isn't that odd.

"Did you carry all that stuff up in one go?" Bruce asks Loki, looking at the books, Simba and Toy Stark. Surely Loki must have taken multiple trips to carry all that stuff up... However, Loki just nods as if it's no big deal, and Bruce is seriously impressed. He certainly can't climb like that.

The two of them head down towards the beach at the bottom of the cliff where the house is perched. Loki's holding Simba, Toy Stark, and a couple random figurines he'd grabbed from his drawstring bag. The figurines include Goofy- even though Loki's never watched anything related to Mickey Mouse as far as Bruce knows- as well as one of the gargoyles from The Hunchback of Notre Dame that Bruce couldn't possibly name but Loki undoubtedly can, and his Elsa, Anna and Olaf figurines (not the dolls and the small plush).

Once they're on the beach, Loki ignores the water for now and focuses on the sand, which is rather shady since the cliff's shadow falls on it. He wiggles his toes and then tries to bury his feet in the sand simply by moving them.

Loki sticks his figurines in the sand and starts burying them and then digging them out with his bare hands. For a brief period of time, he re-enacts the beach scenes of Olaf singing In Summer from Frozen, but then he falls silent as he continues to bury his figurines.

For a while after that, Loki seems to be playing some sort of game as he runs around the beach. Bruce catches snatches of it. Loki seems to be saying spare mint a lot, although Bruce has no idea why. He also repeatedly talks about earthquakes and mentions Lilo, Stitch and Gantu a lot. Sometimes, it even seems like he's pretending to be Stitch as he curls his hands into claws and jumps around, showing more teeth than usual.

At one point, Loki asks Bruce if 'Hulk-y' can make earthquakes by punching the ground. Bruce says that he can crack the ground, but that's not really an earthquake.

"Hulk-y should come out sometime." Loki says. "How 'bouts now? He can't fight with Tony or wreck ups his house or anything."

Bruce sighs. It's really actually better if Tony's there, because then if the Hulk's set off for some reason, Tony can be suited up and keep the Other Guy from hurting anyone. Bruce wonders if Tony somehow brought that huge Hulk suit with him or not. He assumes Tony has some normal Iron Man suits here in case anything comes up.

"I gotta tell Hulk-y he's in my family, now. Ands I gotta do something else, too." Loki nods.

Inside Bruce's mind, the Other Guy seems almost hopeful.

"When Tony gets back, I might let him out." Bruce says, and Loki grins from ear to ear.

It actually hasn't been that long since he let the Other Guy out. It had been after Dr. Carlisle's second session, which wasn't even two weeks ago. Normally, Bruce would hate the idea of letting the Other Guy out that recently. Now, though, a certain part of Bruce- the large, green, angry part- really wishes he'd gone to the Helicarrier and smashed things up. Really, the Other Guy can't be a total monster if he feels so protective of Loki. The Other Guy hasn't even done anything to hurt Loki, either, apart from shoving him once. And Loki, for reasons Bruce can't begin to fathom, adores the big green guy.

Eventually, Loki's eyes are drawn to the water.

Loki deposits Simba on the sand. "Jarvis says Simba can't gets wet, 'cause then he won't talk, nope nope nope." The god explains, and Bruce has to agree he's probably right about that. After all, taking a stuffed animal with batteries into the water is never a great idea. Simba hasn't been wearing his Iron Man suit since Tony was doing something to it last night.

Leaving Simba with Bruce, Loki rushes off to the water. To Bruce's shock, the god winds up stripping completely naked on his way over there, showing absolutely zero self-consciousness about his body.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Bruce calls out "Loki, put your clothes back on, please."

"Why?" Loki asks curiously, turning around and inadvertently flashing Bruce without a second thought. Maybe nudity in Asgard isn't viewed the same way as it is here. Bruce remembers Thor saying he finds it weird that 'Midgardians' are so modest about their bodies.

"Because here, when you go swimming, you wear clothes. Well, special swim clothes, but they're still clothes." Technically, there are nude beaches, but there's no way Bruce is going to go into that. He can imagine Tony suggesting they all go to a nude beach, though perhaps not seriously.

"That's weird." Loki laughs like crazy at the idea.

Bruce thinks for a bit and then says "Hey, Lilo, Nani and David weren't naked, right?" Hopefully that'll get the point across.

"But Stitch didn't weared clothes in the water, 'n Olaf didn't, and Simba neither." Loki counters.

"Stitch didn't wear clothes, yes." Bruce disguises the correction, but he sees Loki gets it. "Yes, you're right, Stitch, Olaf and Simba didn't wear clothes in the water, but they never really wore clothes. They're not people."

"So?"

Bruce has to actually think of an answer for that. "Did animals wear clothes where you came from?"

Loki giggles. "No. 'Xcept for whens they were dressed up. But that almost never happened, nope nope nope, 'xcept I put a real little colt in my shirt once... I puts my shirt on it." Loki frowns slightly as if he hadn't liked what he said. "But then I didn't have a shirt."

"Um, okay." Bruce says, not exactly looking at Loki now either to try to give him some sense of privacy, although clearly Asgard's view of privacy vastly differs from Earth's. "Anyways, the point is that people, or... non-animals wear clothes, even when swimming. Um, except Olaf was a snowman, so he didn't. But seeing as you are neither a snowman nor an animal, you should wear clothes."

Loki just stares at him, so Bruce goes on. "Like how David was wearing shorts when he was surfing, and, uh, even Mowgli wore clothes." They'd watched The Jungle Book last night, and admittedly it wasn't realistic at all for Mowgli to be wearing red underwear in the jungle when in real life he definitely would have been naked. The red underwear-loincloth hybrid he'd been wearing was just to keep the G rating, but still, Loki should follow that. "So, if you could please, uh... get dressed." Bruce gestures vaguely at the pile of clothes laying on the sand.

Loki sighs and puts on his shorts but leaves his shirt off, and he hadn't been wearing shoes in the first place, even in the tree. Apparently, he's decided Frigga's supposed rule of wearing shoes when going outside doesn't apply here. He dashes into the water until he winds up falling when he's knocked over by a wave. He laughs and dips his figurines in and out of the saltwater. His Jormungand necklace seems to come to life and slithers in the water around the god. When Loki's other friends (and pretend family, too) are visible, they're apparently just illusions in the air, except for Jormungand who seems to morph from the necklace and thus is the only one with an actual tangible body. Loki seems delighted as Jormungand swims around him and he tries to swim with the snake.

Loki makes a weird face as his wet shorts cling to him, clearly not liking it. Then again, they're normal shorts instead of swim trunks. Bruce makes a mental note that he'll have to ask Tony to buy Loki some swim stuff sometime, since he seems to love the water. Bruce watches as Loki splashes around in the water. After about ten minutes, though, he goes surprisingly still and just sits there, chest deep in water, facing towards the beach so the waves don't hit him in the face. Jormungand wraps himself around Loki, and Loki smiles.

Even just outside in general, Loki somehow seems more at peace, but the difference is especially noticeable in the water. He's actually not moving around constantly anymore, and he hadn't been too hyper in the tree. Bruce approaches the god, thinking that this is probably the best he's done at meditating, and that hadn't even been the intent.

"It's very calm here, isn't it?" Bruce asks, and Loki nods slightly, making his Goofy figurine rise from the water.

"Have you really gones to In...dia?" Loki asks, clearly unsure of if he's pronouncing it right. Bruce tells him that he said it right and confirms that he has in fact gone to India, which is where The Jungle Book takes place. Bruce had mentioned it in passing when watching the movie last night and hadn't even known Loki was listening then.

"Didja meet Mowgli?" Is Loki's next question. Bruce chuckles and says that no, he didn't.

Loki falls silent for a bit, and Bruce joins him in sitting in the water, not caring at all that his own shorts are getting wet. He tells Loki to focus on the sounds of the waves, and for a few minutes, Loki actually really seems to be meditating, even if he laughs when a wave hits him.

Then, the silence is broken again by Loki asking "Bruce? Why are cooties so gross?"

Bruce laughs, wondering if Loki had heard about cooties from the kids he'd been playing with in the daycare yesterday. He asks Loki to elaborate, not entirely sure what Loki had heard though.

"Claire gaves me food and she said it was a coo-tie, buts it was real gross 'n nasty and she said she likes 'em. She saids Cootie Monster eats cooties too, but why can she like them if they're so gross?"

"Cootie Monster?" Bruce asks, wondering what that is- and since when was a cootie a food? Suddenly it hits him. "Hey, Loki? Was this Cootie Monster blue with eyes on the top of his head?" Loki nods, and Bruce grins.

"It's Cookie Monster, not Cootie Monster. And you don't like cookies?" Loki likes candy, after all, and he certainly has a sweet tooth for the maple syrup on waffles, so how can he not like cookies?

Loki shakes his head. "It had nothing in it, and she said it was pr'tend."

"Oh." Bruce says. "Um, Loki, I don't think that was a real cookie. I think it was a fake cookie, like a toy. Real cookies are amazing."

"Really?"

"Yeah. You should try them sometime. Actually, we might be able to make them..." Bruce muses, noticing that Loki perks up with interest. "I'm not sure if Tony has all the right ingredients, and I don't even know how to make them off the top of my head, but I'm sure we could figure it out." He grins and asks "After all, we're too smart to let cookies defeat us, right?"

"Yeah!" Loki laughs, clapping his hands. "We're real smart!"

The two of them head into the house, changing out of their soaked, sandy clothes into fresh ones before they reconvene in the kitchen. Loki comes back wearing both his Jormungand necklace and a lei he found somewhere, or maybe he'd made it with his magic. He sets Simba on the table with Toy Stark on his back.

It turns out, Tony has all the necessary ingredients for cookies, even chocolate chips, surprisingly. Most of them have probably kept for a while, but it seems like Jarvis had thought ahead to have things like milk and eggs in the fridge for when they arrived yesterday.

Bruce gets Loki to be in charge of reading the recipe, and it's perhaps a more fun way of helping Loki to read (and speak) without All-Tongue, although to be honest, Loki seems to like reading in general. He also seems rather excited about using an electric mixer, and Bruce has to make sure he doesn't turn it on the "explosion setting". Figures that Tony's kitchen appliances have bizarre settings with equally bizarre names that Tony undoubtedly added himself. Heck, Bruce is surprised that Tony hadn't supped up any of his appliances with AI. He almost would have expected a sentient toaster or something. Then again, there aren't any of those in the tower, either, just robots.

Some time later, the cookies are finally done, and Loki very hesitantly takes a bite of one, perhaps worried it will be like the fake cookie Claire apparently told him to eat.

The worry instantly vanishes when he tastes the real chocolate chip cookie, and he practically crams the rest into his mouth with the same gusto that Thor usually saves for Pop Tarts.

To Tony's great annoyance, it's already starting to get dark when he finally gets home. According to Jarvis, Bruce is reading something on a Stark Pad in the living room and Loki is outside.

"Hey, I was going to have Jarvis order some takeaway food." Tony says. Maybe they can eat Shawarma again. Tony's rather fond of the stuff, perhaps because they ate it after their victory against the Chitauri in the internationally famous Battle of New York. Maybe he'll open a bottle of scotch too.

"We made cookies." Bruce says, nodding towards the kitchen. Tony grins and heads over, snagging one and cramming part of it into his mouth.

They eat dinner a bit later, and Loki finishes early, darting out the door.

He starts to head out the door to find Loki, figuring the god's probably in that tree he loves so much. As Tony steps out of the house, he sees the fountain is lit up, and he wonders if Loki noticed it.

As he approaches Loki's tree, Tony can make out the vague forms of several figures. Getting closer, he realizes that Fenrir and Sleipnir are relaxing in the grass by the trunk of Loki's favorite hangout. Fenrir lets out a friendly bark, running up to sniff him, just like a real dog would. Except he's a huge wolf instead, although he's pretty nonthreatening right now.

As he lets Fenrir sniff his hand, Tony almost feels something instead of the usual intangible air that Loki's friends are normally made of. Granted, Fenrir's still not solid, but Tony's hand definitely feels something when it's near the wolf. Fenrir pads back over to his spot near the trunk, walking in a circle before laying back down in the grass with a low chuffing sound.

At the base of the tree are a couple books, one of them about animals, and the other is that circuit book Loki had been looking at yesterday. Also at the base of the tree are Loki's long coat and what looks to be a lei. Tony vaguely remembers having some sort of party involving leis here a while ago, so maybe Loki had found one of the leftovers from that.

"Loki, are you up there?" Bruce, who has followed Tony out here, calls up to the branches of the tree.

"Not Loki" A voice calls back down, straining to be a higher pitch and with just the faintest trace of a British accent as if the speaker's trying to cover it up. "Mowgli."

"He said I'm the baby elephant!" Sleipnir chirps brightly in a childlike voice. "I'm not an elephant, but I'm gray, see?" He stomps two of his eight hooves on the ground and prances around.

"I see." Bruce says to the horse. "So, Sleipnir, tell me about yourself." Tony's sort of wondering if the horse will even answer.

"I like to play games!" Sleipnir says happily. "And I like to run."

Tony notices that Loki's attention isn't focused on Sleipnir at all, so if he's controlling Sleipnir without focusing on him, that's sort of impressive. But don't people need to think about what their imaginary friends do? It doesn't seem like Loki is.

"All right, so I know Loki's mentioned that you tried to attack people." Tony points at Fenrir, who barks, and Tony rounds on Hel next. "What are you, emotional support?"

"Basically." Hel replies.

"I sing to him." Sleipnir inputs, and Tony grins. This is freaking cool.

Tony goes to look at the last friend, turning to gaze up into the branches where Jormungand is. "Playing Jungle Book, Lok- I mean Mowgli?"

"Yeah. It has parts for all of us. I'm the girl at the end." Hel tells them, lounging with her back against the tree trunk.. "You know, the girl from the man-village, so I just sing that song, but my cue hasn't come yet. Fenrir's the wolves that raised Mowgli." Hel seems like the opposite of Loki- she looks to be a teenager at most, possibly younger- Tony has never been good with ages- yet in some ways she seems older. She has a somewhat haunted look in her eyes, but perhaps that's just because half of her looks like some sort of zombie, meaning the eye on that side looks sort of dead. Yet here she is, playing the part of a young girl for Loki.

None of Loki's friends share Loki's somewhat idiosyncratic speech (which has gotten even more bizarre recently). Not even Sleipnir, who appears to be a young horse, a colt, probably, and sort of matches Loki's childishness. Additionally, they all seem to be acting separately from each other, and indeed from Loki himself. Almost like they're not imaginary friends that he's controlling. Then again, Sleipnir and Fenrir had sort of done their own things after Loki had that nightmare with Hans and Gaston killing all the Avengers.

Tony thinks it's really cool that all of Loki's 'imaginary' friends are in the same place. He's pretty sure this is the first time that's happened, unless you count the fake charms on the Jormungand accessory. Glancing around, Tony doesn't see the necklace anywhere, but he does see a large snake up in a tree. "Go to ssssleep." Jormungand (the snake is obviously Loki's friend and apparently a living version of the necklace) wraps himself around Loki. Tony recognizes this as a re-enactment of a scene from the movie.

"Hey, um, Mowgli." Tony calls up into the branches. "Are you wearing clothes?" Looking at the heap of them on the ground, Tony would guess he's not. Bruce facepalms at the idea of Loki being naked in a tree. Tony, on the other hand, smirks, because it's kind of a funny thought.

"Not naked, nope nope nope." Loki says, hooking his knees over a branch and hanging upside down. Tony sees that Loki's wearing something that resembles red underwear, like Mowgli had on in the movie. "And I got my watch on, like you says." Loki adds, looking at Tony.

"I'm glad to hear that." Bruce says. To Tony, he mutters "We had a bit of an Asgard-Midgard culture clash today. Apparently there, it's perfectly acceptable to go swimming completely nude."

"Well, you know, there are beaches that let you go in your birthday suit." Tony remarks, smirking. Bruce just rolls his eyes and mutters that he knew Tony was going to say that. Tony wonders if he's really that predictable. He sure hopes not.

Jormungand has wrapped himself around Loki, and Loki looks decidedly relaxed, breaking character and murmuring something about a hug. Bruce tells Loki that Kaa the snake was not hugging Loki, but rather trying to squeeze him to death, and makes Loki promise not to let himself be 'hugged' by any snakes but Jormungand. Jormungand hisses something about never hurting Loki.

Tony smiles at Loki's little Jungle Book game. Jormungand is saying something to Simba, and the toy lion actually starts to move like Loki's friends do. Loki squeals in absolute delight when this happens and scoops Simba up in his arms. After hugging him for a bit, Loki deposits Simba back on the branch. Apparently, Simba's been cast as Bagheera the panther, and Jormungand, who's Kaa the snake, is trying to hypnotize him. Jormungand's eyes actually start to swirl like the cartoon snakes's in the movie.

Loki shoves Jormungand off the tree and laughs. "Look Bagheera, he's got a knot in his tail." Jormungand doesn't though, and he curls up on the grass.

"Aren't you around two feet taller than Mowgli?" Tony asks Loki curiously. He's not trying to ruin it or anything, but at a fair deal over six feet tall, Loki has a hard time passing as a child, unless you count that he still does stuff like carry around toys and play pretend. Still, he has no hope of physically passing as a child.

"You're weird, Tony." Loki laughs. "I only gots two feets, see? If you want two more feets, ask Fenrir. He's got four, so he's got two more than me an' Mowgli, and Sleipnir's got twice the feet Fenrir does!" Loki wiggles his bare feet in their direction and Tony laughs. As if on cue, Fenrir sits on his hind legs, and holy crap, he's almost as tall as Tony when he does that! The huge wolf raises two enormous paws and barks happily, tongue hanging out of his mouth.

"No, here- well, at least in the States- we use feet as a way to measure things, but they're not actually feet, or the length of feet, because everyone's feet are different lengths. Basically, twelve inches equals a foot and three feet equals a yard."

"Most of the world uses the metric system, which is a lot more sensical." Bruce adds, but that probably only confuses Loki more.

Loki looks understandably confused, and Tony wonders if he should go inside to get a yardstick or something. "Basically what I'm saying is that you're a lot taller than Mowgli. Not that it matters."

"So it's not 'bout feets?" Loki frowns in confusion. "English is weird."

Bruce laughs again. "I'll have to agree with you there. By the way, the plural is feet, not feets. But English is weird. It has a lot of odd rules and a lot of exceptions to those rules, like i before e, except after c, or ending in ei as in neighbor or weigh." He shrugs and says "I learned that way back."

"So how tall's Mowgli then?" Loki asks.

Tony holds his hand a little below his arc reactor, around elbow-height actually. "Somewhere around here, maybe?" Honestly, he has no clue, but nobody objects.

Loki crouches down and says "I thinks I mighta been this tall once, but it's so weird now, 'cause it seems so short."

As he's talking, his body slowly starts to shift before their eyes, until he actually is that height. He looks like a child, a little like Mowgli actually. His hair has gone from shoulder-length to chin-length, like Mowgli's.

His eyes are still wide, green and slightly unfocused and glassy. Tony thinks back to that one child Other-Loki, the one that hadn't had glassy eyes, and the difference between that Loki and the one in front of him now are even more stark. Something definitely happened to the god, unless that illusion was lying. Tony's going to have to ask Thor.

Tony and Bruce stare. "Congratulations." Tony drawls. "You just broke the laws of physics yet again."

Loki looks down at his own body in confusion at first, though it quickly changes to horror. He curls into a really tiny ball, given his tiny size, and starts shaking. He's clearly having a panic attack right now.

Tony gathers the now small god in his arms and whispers to him that it's okay, that he's not in trouble, that what he just did was so freaking awesome and really no different from what he does to Toy Stark. Then again, doing it to himself might be sort of scary, or maybe he got punished for it in Asgard.

Although Loki's small now, he still weighs a disproportionate amount to what his skinny body would suggest. Honestly, this is what Tony would have expected the tall, adult Loki to weigh.

Eventually, little Loki calms down and looks at his small hands. He dashes over to the pool and tries to see his reflection in the water, but seeing as it's lit from below, that's sort of impossible. Tony instead pulls out his Stark Phone and takes a picture of the god. He turns the phone around and show it to Loki.

"I'm Mowgli!" Loki laughs, flapping his hands. Really, it's only the hair and the skinniness that makes Loki resemble Mowgli, as well as the fact he's currently dressed like Mowgli, wearing only a red loincloth sort of thing.

Suddenly, it seems they've skipped to the end of the movie in Loki's pretend game as Hel heads over to the pool with what looks to be an illusion of a jug, as the water doesn't seem to be going in it.

Hel starts to sing in a slow sort of floating melody. "Myyy own hoooome, myyy own hooome, myy own ho-oo-oo-oo-ooome."

"Can Hulk-y be blue?" Loki asks, looking up at them. It's weird, since normally Tony has to look up to see Loki.

"You want him to be blue?" Tony asks, confused.

"B'loo." Loki stresses. "The bear... Baloo. Like the bare necessities. Bruce, you's said he can come out when Tony's here."

"To be fair, Loki did just change." Tony points out to Bruce.

Bruce sighs and tells Tony to get his Iron Man suit, also stating that they're going to be doing this out here. Once Tony's suited up, Bruce slowly closes his eyes. Loki suddenly shouts "Wait!" and runs in his small body to grab something from the base of the tree. It's the lei that he'd apparently found somewhere in the house. The small god tries to put it around Bruce's neck, but he has a hard time reaching.

Bruce shoots a questioning look at Loki as he takes the lei from the small god. "Stitch didn't breaked things when he wear it." Loki says, clearly thinking it'll be the same with Hulk.

"Thank you." Bruce says. He puts the lei around his neck with a slight smile, but then seems to get slightly annoyed at something, presumably to turn into Hulk. Loki keeps talking, pointing out that he'd said wear instead of weared, like Bruce told him to earlier. Tony tells him that the past tense of wear is wore, sort of doubting that Bruce had told Loki it was wear. Loki pouts slightly..

By this time, Tony's put himself in between Loki and Bruce, trying to do it casually. Since Loki's actually shorter than him now, it probably doesn't look quite as stupid than Loki hiding behind him when Loki's taller. Tony really doesn't think Hulk will hurt Loki, but there's no guarantee about when he first comes out. Sometimes he's a little confused then. They watch as transforms, growing bigger and greener.

Hulk looks around, seeming slightly confused until his eyes land on Tony in the suit. "Hulk smash?" He asks, apparently wondering if there's an enemy they're supposed to be fighting. He looks briefly at Loki's friends, but they disappear. Well, except for Jormungand, who becomes a lifeless necklace again.

"No. Please don't smash." Tony winces slightly at the thought of his poor yard getting demolished by huge green hands. At least his mask's down and nobody sees. Hulk actually seems to relax a bit, and Tony only just notices that the flimsy lei didn't break during his transformation, when it really should have. "Um, Loki wanted to see you, although he looks a bit different."

Loki suddenly darts towards his drawstring bag and pulls out the enlarged tiara from either Anna or Elsa, Tony can't remember which. He hands it to Hulk, grinning, and tells him to put it on. Hulk actually does so, and Tony bursts out laughing.

He whips out his Stark Phone and snaps a ton of pictures. He'd really wanted to see Hulk in a tiara, and the lei is just icing on the cake. He had actually forgotten about it but is really glad Loki remembered. Seriously, this just made his day, and he tells Loki that he's amazing. Loki grins a mile wide.

"I'm Mowgli!" Loki says, now sounding slightly happy about it. He looks up at Hulk in awe. "Wow. You're lots bigger now. So's Simba. I almost can't gets my hand all 'round his leg, see?" He holds the lion up and indeed, he can't wrap his hand fully around Simba's leg.

He trots up to Hulk and drags him into his game for The Jungle Book. Loki sings Bare Necessities, while Hulk just stands there, clearly unsure of what to do. Once that song's done, Loki looks over at Tony.

"You know, it's a lots like Hakuna Matata!" Tony has to admit, the forget about you worries and your strife line that Loki had sung not long ago is a lot like how Hakuna Matata is about having no worries.

Tony drags Hulk down to the beach and tries to get him to help make sand castles, telling him he should make something instead of wrecking things all the time. Tony gawks in amazement as Hulk clumsily makes a mound of sand with his huge green hands, Loki's small child hands looking like flies next to his.

Then, he starts singing something else, from Lilo & Stitch.

"There's no place I'd rather be. Then on the seashore dry, wet, free

On golden sand is where I'd lay, and if I only had my way

I'd play 'til the sun sets, beyond the horizon

Lalala i kala hanahana

Me ke kai hoene i ka pu'e one..."

Tony asks Loki if he knows what they're saying in the parts in Hawaiian, figuring that surely Loki knows because of All-Tongue. After all, they'd tried him out on a lot of languages, and while it didn't seem to work perfectly, he normally seemed to get the gist of stuff. Tony has to wonder how much of what he says in general actually translates in Loki's head. Loki mumbles something about laying in the sun with waves hitting the sand.

"Look, Tony, I'm making your house!" Loki exclaims, showing very short, flat mount of sand stuck on top of a huge mound, much like the house in the cliff above them. Tony had noticed Loki glancing at it a lot.

Hulk grunts as he tries to make an actual castle, getting frustrated as it keeps falling apart. He smashes a big green fist in the sand, but it's only a halfhearted gesture. Tony suggests that he get the sand wet first, which Loki seems to have already figured out.

Loki and Hulk probably spend a good forty five minutes building, as Loki says "Sandy houses" Loki even tries to make snowmen out of sand.

Tony recalls what Loki had said last night- okay, technically very early this morning- about Bruce watching movies with a green character. Hulk had watched Beauty and the Beast with Loki, so perhaps another movie is in order.

Tony sets up a Stark Pad and gets it to project a large holographic screen on the front lawn and shepherds Loki and Hulk there. Loki curls up in Hulk's lap, hugging Simba tightly, as Tony starts up Shrek. Loki makes a comment about it being in the Spirit Realm, which confuses Tony for a bit, until he realizes that like Spirit, Shrek is also made by DreamWorks. Apparently, Loki takes the different companies to mean different worlds, or realms, as Loki says. Tony doesn't bother correcting him.

Hulk seems very annoyed in the beginning when a mob of villagers goes to attack Shrek, but to Tony's astonishment, he doesn't try to hit the holographic screen. Perhaps it's because Loki's with him. Hulk seems to quite like watching Shrek scare the villagers off.

Loki practically screams when Tinker Bell makes Donkey fly, although he doesn't seem to understand most of the other fairy tale characters. Admittedly, this Tink is really just a ball of light and looks nothing like Disney's Tink, but Loki doesn't seem to care. Tony finds some of the references rather funny, and they also sneak in some jokes that seem to fly over Hulk's head, but Loki surprisingly laughs at a few, like when a rhyme stops when it's pretty obvious it would say ass.

Hulk seems to love watching Shrek and Donkey beat up a ton of guards before being sent to find Princess Fiona. Fiona is rather comically rescued by Shrek and Donkey from a fire-breathing dragon, who actually loves Donkey.

At one point, the group camps for the night, and Shrek and Donkey are looking at the stars while Princess Fiona is off in her own private shelter. Loki seems to really like when they're stargazing and talking about the stories in the stars.

"They ain't nothing but a bunch of little dots." Donkey says after a bit.

"You know Donkey, sometimes things are more than they appear." Shrek tells him.

Shrek and Donkey start discussing how Shrek's planning to build a wall around his swamp. Donkey says that's just a way for Shrek to keep someone out, and Shrek claims that he wants to keep everyone out.

"What's your problem Shrek?" Donkey asks as Fiona secretly listens in. "What you got against the whole world anyways?"

"I'm not the one who's got a problem." Shrek protests. "It's the world that's got a problem with me!" Hulk makes a rather sympathetic grunt. Tony looks at him, slightly surprised, and Loki looks rather sympathetic too. Shrek continues talking. "People take one look at me and go 'Aaah! Help! Run! A big, stupid, ugly ogre'..." He sighs. "They judge me before they even know me. That's why I'm better off alone."

Later in the movie, after Fiona makes an effort to be nicer to Shrek and they actually start to like each other.

Donkey enters the hideout where Fiona's camping on another night, only to discover that she's an ogre too. It's apparently a curse that a witch cast on her when she was a child, so every night, she becomes "this horrible, ugly beast." Said curse can only be broken by true love's kiss, and Fiona is convinced her true love is Farquaad, even though she hasn't met him.

Donkey points out that she doesn't have to marry Farquaad, and that she and Shrek actually have a lot in common. Shrek winds up overhearing Fiona asking "Who could ever love someone so hideous and ugly? Princess and ugly don't go together!"

Shrek overhears them and thinks she's talking about him. The two are annoyed at each other and go separate ways, Fiona going to marry Lord Farquaad, the man who sent Shrek and Donkey on the quest to rescue Fiona in the first place, and Shrek dejectedly going back to his swamp.

The wedding between Farquaad and Fiona is crashed by Shrek, and, since the sun is going down, Fiona inadvertently reveals that she's an ogre just like Shrek. Farquaad then sees her as a monster (which makes Hulk furiously roar at the screen) but Shrek doesn't.

The two of them kiss, but instead of becoming a human again, Fiona remains an ogre.

"I'm supposed to be beautiful." She says, confused, and Shrek tells her she is.

"Green not bad." Hulk concludes decisively when the movie ends.

"No, big guy, it's not. Neither is blue." He says to Loki. It's only now that he notices that Loki's shifted back to an adult.

"Hulk not bad." Hulk says, actually smiling. Loki grins at Hulk.

"You don't smiles much." He remarks. "You should. Smiling's goods." He claps his hands. "Hey, Hulk-y, we're family, right?"

"Family?" Hulk asks.

"Yeah! It means we never forget 'bout each other or leaves each other b'hind, ands we don't hate each other, ever. Nope nope nope. 'Xcept I think families can fight a bit sometimes. So you're in my family with my Tony an' Bruce and Pepper an' Jarvis an' Dum-E, right? We're Ohana. We ares a family."

"Family." Hulk says with a grin, and Loki claps again, remarking that Hulk's smiling. Shockingly, although Hulk normally hates hearing any mention of Bruce's name, he doesn't get annoyed about it this time. Instead he just sits there fingering the lei, which is still somehow intact.

Loki crawls into Hulk's lap and casts a couple glances back at the tree he climbs so much. The tree that's female, according to Loki.

With an absolutely devilish gleam in his eyes, Loki proceeds to mercilessly tickle Hulk. Hulk does something Tony's never seen him do before.

He laughs.

Hulk absolutely howls with laughter as Loki continues to tickle him. He tries to wriggle away and shouts "S-stop!" in his loud booming voice, although it sounds less angry than normal. Really, who knew huge green rage machines were so ticklish? Or maybe Bruce is just ticklish, Tony thinks as Hulk slowly morphs back into Bruce.

So, yeah, this was a really long chapter. I was actually debating about cutting it off somewhere, but really wanted to have the last scene in this one.

I sort of didn't like how Dr. Carlisle was turning out, and, well, not every therapist is a great fit. To be honest, I didn't really like her much in session number two, either. That's not to say that they're just giving up on therapy, though...

So I hope you enjoyed this chapter. By the way, they watched the animated Jungle Book movie, since the live action one isn't even out when this story's taking place in 2013. I haven't seen it yet, either.

Wow, this things over 300,000 words already? Wasn't it just over 200,000 on like chapter 25 or something? I hope people don't think this is too long, and I hope it's still interesting.

I don't have too long until I go back to school, and I'm not sure how this will affect my update times. I actually did better last year than most of this summer.