Finally Belonging

by Yodeling Prospector

What happens when a brain-damaged Loki who's been abused and unwanted his whole life lands on Tony Stark's tower?

35. Chapter 35

I am SO sorry it took me this long to update! Two weeks doesn't look bad next to more than three :( I'm really bummed it took so long! Real life got hectic with college, so hectic I only managed to write 1,000 words the first week after chapter 34 was posted. Computer Science is especially busy, it feels like we always have some frustrating Java coding assingment to do, since we have at least one set of programs due a week. And then I have other classes too, but that's the worst. I really would've rather been writing instead of doing a million computer science assignments. And it's still pretty hectic.

As if being busy wasn't enough, this chapter was kind of hard to write and I changed it a lot. There are a lot of scenes I started writing and ended up not using, though I'll probably use some of them later. So that made it take even longer.

Again, I'm really sorry (and disappointed) I took this long. I'm really going to try to not take this long again, though. You get a long chapter, though.

As always, a huge, Hulk-sized thank you to everyone for your support on this story! Over 200 favorites now! And this is approaching 500 reviews! If I pass 500 I'll be so insanely happy! I never thought I'd get this many reviews, follows or favorites on all my stories put together, much less on any single story, and when I first started this story, I thought everyone would think it was stupid so I certainly wouldn't have expected it to be this one. I'm glad people apparently don't think that :D

This chapter contains a reference to my favorite part of Age of Ultron. It should be pretty easy to spot. Also there's a slight time jump back after the first POV shift.

Hopefully this is worth the wait and isn't too long or boring... I like it though.

After Kurt and Charles left in the jet they'd come in (Loki had watched their takeoff with his face practically pressed the penthouse's glass wall), Tony had immediately made a cup of coffee to try to curtail the exhaustion from side-along apparition with Kurt. Loki had offered to make it, but Tony hadn't wanted to worry about some strange ingredient being added as a prank.

That had been about twenty minutes ago. Right now, Tony's kicked back his favorite sofa in the penthouse living room, StarkPad in hand and his mug on circular glass coffee table in front of him. The table they'd played Jenga on, the day Loki met Bruce, although Tony has no clue why that popped in his head.

Loki, surprisingly, is still in his Jotun form, although he's not looking at his feet- the only visible blue parts, aside from his own face- so perhaps he doesn't notice he's still blue. He'd summoned the Iron Man gloves onto his hands not long after revealing his Jotun form, so the only parts of the suit missing are the boots and helmet.

He's sprawled on the floor with his Frozen toys out. His Elsa doll is blue-skinned with red eyes, and Loki's Loki action figure is in Jotun form. Just like the real Loki currently is. The Olaf plush he'd had on the Helicarrier, the Anna doll, and the Kristoff and Sven figurines are in one of the shoeboxes Loki had insisted on keeping from their footwear excursion a while back. He sends the box careening off a shelf. It falls to the ground slower and more gently than physics would dictate, almost as if it's a sled traveling down an invisible hill, stopping where Jotun Elsa and Loki are.

Tony grins and turns back to the data collected from the therapy session.

That therapy session was a huge success, as far as Tony's concerned. Heck, ten minutes from that session had been better than the three sessions with Dr. Carlisle, who despite apparently being successful with other patients, from what Jarvis found anyways, really hadn't worked for Loki at all. And she'd seemed to have something against Tony.

Whatever Charles had done when Loki was having a flashback had really seemed to help, although they hadn't done anything else with Loki's mind today.

Tony still doesn't know if something happened to him, if his mind's somehow different than when he was a child, like that child illusion seemed to indicate.

Kurt had been an unexpected but very welcome benefit. Another unexpected but welcome surprise was that Loki had actually intentionally revealed his Jotun form with Kurt there, and hadn't quickly changed it like that one time he briefly changed for Hulk before watching Beauty and the Beast. Loki's still blue, but he might no know, himself, since he can't see his own face and the armor covers up his whole body, except his feet.

The little teleporting game Kurt and Loki had played went way better than Tony thought it would. Admittedly, Loki still seems to have trouble controlling his teleportation, but he'd successfully done it once. The effort doesn't seem to have drained Loki's magic or seemingly endless energy.

Lucky. Tony's still tired from his own side-along apparition with Kurt, although thankfully the nausea's gone now. He'd only gone once and he'd just been along for the ride, although he wishes he could do it himself. He grins. He'd teleported, something he hasn't been able to make his suits do yet. Theoretically, it makes sense that they'd go to an alternate dimension, as he's pretty sure he'd done with Kurt. He wonders if Loki does the same when he teleports.

Tony sips some his as he looks over the data that Jarvis' sensors had picked up in the therapy room. There had been a lot more teleporting today than any other day, and it had given Tony a lot of data. Even though he still doesn't fully understand the energy associated with Loki's powers (and Tony hates not understanding something), he's making progress.

While the energy sometimes seems to screw with Jarvis' sensors, Tony, Jarvis and Bruce are attempting to piece together the non-screwy bits to get the full picture of the electromagnetic waves from the teleportation in the therapy room. Unfortunately, that room doesn't have all the bells and whistles that the lab has. But if Loki starts feeling more comfortable with teleporting, he might be able to get a ton of great data.

He's really curious about teleporting in general, but if he learns enough about it, he could figure out a way to block it and thus have a way to incapacitate Victor Von Doom!

Of course, once he manages to build something to stop teleportation (because it is when, not if- he's going to do it. He's Tony freaking Stark), they're going to have to actually lure Doom out to catch him, since the megalomaniac normally hides out in his nation of Latveria and just sends his Doom-bots to cause havoc, the coward. Or, Tony supposes, they could go to Latveria to get him.

But really, doesn't Doom have anything better to do with his time?

Tony's mind is racing. Once he manages to block teleportation, maybe he can figure out how to make his suits teleport themselves, if he studies Kurt and Loki enough. While flying is amazing and probably a lot more fun than teleporting, the long flights halfway around the world sort of lose their fun after a while. Teleporting would be epically awesome in general, but especially in those instances.

Or, if he can't get his suits to teleport on their own, maybe Loki could teleport him places once he learns to control it.

Tony as been talking to Bruce about all of this, rambling almost nonstop for the past ten minutes. At least Tony's Science Bro doesn't complain about science talk like some other Avengers. Cough, cough, Clint. Steve at least pretends to listen while probably zoning out. Natasha had once spent one of Tony's monologues cleaning out her (rather bloodied) guns and knives, which had been ridiculously creepy.

Bruce seems interested in teleportation, since he's just as curious as Tony, though not quite as excited. Then again, it's not like Bruce has a suit he might be able to make teleport.

"Who's Doctor Doom?" Loki asks out of the blue, interrupting Tony's spiel about various electromagnetic shields.

Tony hadn't thought he'd been listening, and he wonders just how much Loki's actually been listening to over the time he's been here. "Is he a doctor like Bruce? Dr. Drakken's a doctor, 'xcept I don't think he fixes people?" He sounds slightly confused about this. "And Doom doesn't sound good, 'cause being doomed's bad. You don't wanna be doomed, or meet doom."

"Uh, yeah, he's not Bruce's kind of doctor." Tony answers, and Bruce mutters that he's a physicist too, and it's really that kind of doctor. He's technically not a medical doctor, but he's as good as one in Tony's opinion. Less annoying than real doctors, even if he'd insisted Tony stay off his leg when it was broken.

"Doom can tel'port?" Apparently, Loki had been listening in on the whole conversation when fiddling with his toys.

"Yeah, he can. Not that teleporting's bad!" Tony adds the second part immediately, in case Loki gets the wrong message. But he seems to be doing fairly well with accepting that powers can be good and bad. Kurt is certainly a positive example for teleportation.

"And, well, Doom's a villain we fight a lot- or, more specifically, we fight Doom-bots. Those are like his minions." At least he doesn't have to worry about Loki thinking of yellow, goggle-wearing, overall-clad creatures when he uses the word minion, since Loki hasn't seen Despicable Me (Thor has, though).

"You've seen me fighting those robots on TV as Iron Man, with the rest of the Avengers, right?" Tony goes on. Loki nods, recognition flaring in his eyes. There's a picture that Loki had drawn of Iron Man fighting what are apparently Doom-bots on the fridge (though they don't really look like actual Doom-bots).

"Well, those robots he sends out are Doom-bots, since Doom never shows his face. But anyways, Doom's a bad guy who can teleport, and if I can build something to stop him from teleporting, that would allow us to finally catch him. But that doesn't mean I dislike teleporting or anything."

"Isn't that like... magic?" Loki asks hesitantly. "Stopping it? You saids you're gonna make like a force field. Like me and Violet?"

"I was thinking of making some sort of field to stop it, but I'm not sure it's a force field. And I like to think it's science, but we would've called it magic not long ago. And you, my friend, can help a lot." Tony points at Loki, and Loki looks surprised but pleased. "You see, the more I know about teleporting, the more I'll have to work with to stop Dr. Doom. He doesn't exactly give me many chances to scan him, since he always hides behind his stupid robots or simply teleports away if we get too close the few times he actually shows up. So if you teleport, you'll help me figure out how to stop the bad guy."

"I help?" Loki asks uncertainly. "By tel'porting?" Tony nods again, grinning at him.

"Can you make it so I don't teleport in my sleeps?" Loki asks hopefully, before saying quietly. "Don't wanna wake up somewhere different. It's scary, it is, 'specially when I don't mean to go anywhere. Don't wanna go to the Eyepatch Man Fury's petri dish ever again, never!"

"You can't go in the 'petri dish' again. I destroyed it." Tony says, glancing at Bruce, who smiles a bit, although it looks a little forced. Tony wonders whether his Science Bro thinks it had been a necessary evil. Which would be sad, if he thought he deserved a cage. "Nobody here deserves to be caged, and Hulk that includes you. Got it?" Too bad he can't tell if Hulk's actually listening in Bruce's head, or however that works.

Bruce and Loki nod slightly, and Loki hugs Simba tighter. (Since he has the Iron Man gloves on, Simba's not icing over from contact with his Jotun skin. Simba's suit had iced a tad when Loki transformed, before Loki had the gloves on, but it's thawed by now). "I knows I got Simba so you know where 'm at always and can find me, but I don't wanna go at all! But I wanna come back fast if I do!"

Tony rounds on the still-blue god, pointing a finger at him. "Okay Lokes, if you want, once this thing to stop dear old Doom works, I'll make some version of it to stop you from teleporting accidentally. Probably it'll be something that'll prevent you from teleporting unless you choose to turn it off." He pauses and adds. "Although I still say teleporting's awesome. Are you gonna try to do it on purpose more now? Remember, it'll help me figure out how to trap Doom."

"Wish I coulda got outta the petri dish! I tried to teleport backs. I did, really." Loki grabs the still-blue Loki toy and Toy Stark and puts the Loki toy under the circular glass coffee table that Tony's mug is on.

Suddenly, the table has glass around the sides, so it looks a lot like the Hulk cage. Loki sits there, rocking back and forth anxiously, clutching Toy Stark in one fist and hugging Simba with his other arm. "Didn't work, couldn't do it, nope nope nope!"

"You sent an illusion to me. And Hel, and you kinda told us where you were." Tony reminds him, but Loki just gives him an unimpressed look that clearly says Yeah, but that wasn't ME! I didn't get out.

Loki stares at the trapped toy of himself some more and suddenly the Loki toy joins Toy Stark in Loki's armored hands, simply teleporting there by itself. A mixture of emotions plays across Loki's face- worry, happiness, frustration. He's probably frustrated that hadn't happened in real life, that he hadn't simply popped back to Tony.

"I wish it woulda listened in Ass-Guard, 'cause I could've made the guards look dumb likes Esmeralda did when she teleported away. Aladdin made guards look dumb too. And Elast'girl Helen, and Vi and Dash too, they kicked Syndrome's guard's butts. Wish I could do that, 'cause then they couldn'ta hit me if they couldn't gets me or beat me, if I could kick their butts!" Loki flaps his hands, suddenly going from smiling to frowning.

"'Xcept it didn't, I couldn't! Not good 'nough there neither!" Loki smacks his thigh and paces, Simba dangling by a back leg in Loki's left hand. "When I tried'ta run away, the guards, warriors weres faster, an', and when I did teleport on accident I felt weirds and then they got me. An' I tried to tel-eport on purpose, couple times, but it didn't works, nope nope nope!"

His pacing quickens. "And they saw I tried somehow and they gots real mad an' then I was in deep trouble. And when I hit back..."

"Well, they shouldn't have hurt you for trying to keep yourself safe. Maybe you can learn how to really teleport now, and then if anyone tries to hurt you, you can teleport away and make them look like an idiot. Like Esmeralda." Tony suggests, knowing at one point this suggestion would have completely freaked Loki out, but he'd just said he wished he could do it. Thankfully, Loki laughs, as if he's imagining making guards look like morons.

Tony adds that he should be able to teleport in the future, if he wants to (which it seems he does) and practices teleporting. He clearly needs practice, though. He'd only successfully teleported once without Kurt going with him- or, rather, bringing him along for the ride.

Loki nods, as if he'd actually been thinking about practicing teleporting anyways. Maybe Tony's talk about Doom had helped? "You must learn to control it. Fear will be your enemy." He quotes the troll leader from Frozen.

Loki stares at the sofa and Tony wonders if he's zoned out until he leaps towards it. He flickers, vanishes, and reappears almost in the blink of an eye. He'd only teleported a foot or two at most, as if the middle of the jump had simply been missing. It had been like watching a video where someone had cut a few frames, Tony thinks. Loki stumbles when he lands and collapses on the sofa (thankfully it remains standing).

"Nice to see you trying." Tony says, grinning. Loki bemoans that Kurt makes it seem so easy, and then stares as Tony bemoans not being able to teleport at all. Seriously, Loki's got the better deal in that regard. "Hey, while we're on the subject of teleporting, what's it like for you to teleport? Do you go to another dimension or something?" Tony asks. "Kurt and I did, I think, when I went with him."

Loki just sends Tony a confused look and looks at Simba. "Do we?" Obviously, the lion doesn't answer. Tony had offered to fix Simba up with Artificial Intelligence once, but Loki doesn't seem to care that Simba only says a handful of prerecorded phrases.

"Kurt said teleporting's fun, and it kinda is with him." Loki grins, jumping twice, before he pauses and levels a rather accusing look at Tony. "Hey, you never saids you knewed 'nother blue guy before, nope nope nope." Loki shakes his head, long hair flying out. "Or a bad teleporting man. How come you didn't say?"

"I actually didn't know Kurt before." Tony replies, after Bruce tells Loki that knew doesn't have the usual -ed ending for past tense. "Actually, I didn't know Charles existed until about a week ago, and I only found out about Kurt when he showed up on the balcony with Charles."

Tony doesn't mention that the reason he never told Loki about Doom was because he worried Loki would freak out if Tony mentioned he's fought a villain who could teleport, and take it as evidence that teleporting's bad.

"I like Kurt!" Loki nods enthusiastically, bouncing up and down before asking in a worried tone "D'you think he likes me?"

"What do you think?" Tony's actually not being sarcastic right now, whereas ninety-nine percent of the time he asks that question, he is.

"Yes?" Loki answers hesitantly. "He's nice, anyways. Like you guys and Pepper an' Tasha and Clint and Jarvis! So's 'Fessor X."

"When you said Charles helped with your flashback, what exactly happened?" Bruce asks quietly.

"I heard him. I heard Volstagg 'n Fandral 'n Hogun ands that servant, but I heard 'Fessor X too and he tolds them they were wrong, he did! Just like you guys!"

Tony knows what it's like to be caught in a flashback, so caught in memories that you don't hear people around you reminding you you're safe. It had probably helped a lot to hear someone telling him that in the memory. In some ways, Tony wishes that could happen when he has a flashback, but that would mean someone knowing, perhaps, what his flashback's about, and he doesn't want that.

Having Charles as a therapist might really work for Loki, Tony thinks.

"I'm glad he helped you." Bruce says, smiling gently. "I think Kurt helped you as well, didn't he?"

Loki nods but doesn't actually say anything.

"I'm proud you decided to show your true colors, literally. You did great today." Tony grins and lays a hand on Loki's shoulder. Loki's Iron Man costume suit isn't even iced over this time- Tony had added the anti-icing feature that he has on his real suits (Obadiah had never fixed that problem).

Loki glances down, grinning at the praise, and his blue feet aren't even in his field of vision. "...'s only fair..." He mumbles, before saying louder "Kurt, he had a tail! Dids you see?" Loki switches topics abruptly and turns around, as if he's trying to look at his butt.

The Iron Man armor covering that part of his body vanishes, reappearing a few feet away and falling to the floor with a clatter.

Loki had actually put on a fair amount of the suit with his powers this time, something he'd been reluctant to do back on Halloween. Even on Halloween, Loki hadn't seemed to like Jarvis putting the suit on, and back then they'd had to encourage Loki to put on each individual armor piece and tell him it wasn't bad.

Earlier today, Loki had simply cast a reproachful look at the robotic arms and summoned parts of the suit onto himself. Currently, other armor pieces join the first on the floor, until Loki's wearing only the torso plates (with the low-powered arc reactor) and the gloves. Tony wonders if he'd left them on on purpose, to avoid freezing stuff he touches.

Loki continues to try to twist around to look at his butt, something Tony finds amusing. The god's eyes close and a weird expression crosses his face as he feels around his butt, rubbing his hands along it. Tony and Bruce both exchange a glance, and Tony's about to blurt out that it looks like he's masturbating when Loki shimmers slightly. While Tony can't see Loki's hands, he assumes there's the usual green energy around them.

Loki's eyes fly open, a somewhat surprised look on his face. The god tries to twist to see his butt so much that he ends up turning around in a complete circle.

This action gives Tony and Bruce a great view of Loki's new tail, which is the same blue as his body is currently.

The tail looks a rather long lion tail- it even has a tuft of hair on the end, although the hair is black to match the uncombed mop of hair on Loki's head. It seems to have a mind of its own as it flicks around, somewhat like Loki's hands.

"You know you have a tail now, right?" Bruce asks, gesturing to Loki's newly grown body part.

Loki nods, still trying to stare back at his tail. Tony gets Jarvis to project a holographic mirror instead, although Loki quickly looks away from the reflection of his blue face with something like disgust. He's still clearly not comfortable with seeing his Jotun form, although his action figure of himself is currently blue.

"Hey, you know what I see?" Tony says, walking up next to the mirror. "I see smart, incredible guy with looks to die for... oh, look, you're here too." Loki glares slightly at him, saying he sounds like Mother Gothel, and Tony tells him that had been the point, although that's really the sort of obnoxious comments Tony makes often anyways.

"Seriously, Snoopy, you look good when you're blue." Tony picks up the Loki toy off the floor. At least Loki doesn't seem to have an issue looking at it in Jotun form, even if he still won't look at his reflection. "And you know, any Avatar cosplayer would kill to be you right now. And no, that's not literal either. Still just an expression."

"Why do looks kill you?" Loki asks worriedly. "You mean like being blue? They killed Jotuns 'cause they were blue." Okay, that is not the way Tony wants this conversation to be going. He explains that saying something is to die for is just an expression.

"I'm Kurt." Loki states as he stares at his tail, although Kurt's tail didn't look like a blue lion's. For a brief second, Loki's face looks like Kurt's, but his hands and feet don't change to match Kurt's, which only have two fingers and a thumb and two toes.

Tony's not sure if he's saying he looks more like Kurt with a tail or if he's actually pretending he's Kurt. If pretending to be someone else with blue skin makes Loki more comfortable with showing his real skin, Tony supposes he can't complain. They're still going in the right direction.

The usual illusion of pale skin spreads over Loki's body and his eyes return to their usual startling green, although the new tail remains blue.

Tony curiously reaches for the tail, and to his great surprise, he actually feels it. He'd assumed it was an illusion. But Loki can actually shift his form- he'd grown shorter when becoming Tony and much shorter when becoming Mowgli, so this isn't that odd, is it? Loki evidently can feel Tony's hand on his new tail, since reacts to the contact.

"Uh, do Jotuns actually have tails that they can hide, like Stitch does with his antennae, spikes and arms, or did you just grow that?" Tony asks curiously, knowing Loki will like the Stitch reference. Tony hasn't seen anything in the myths about Jotuns having tails, and if Loki always has a hidden tail, why would he have expressed a desire for one? Maybe that hadn't been the best question, Tony thinks.

Surprisingly, Loki doesn't freak out at the word Jotun. But maybe he's focusing more on Tony's Stitch reference, since he laughs and grabs the straps between Stitch's hands and feet.

"I dunno. You said I could grow a lion tail. I wanted it an' so it grew, like when I was Mowgli." Loki claps his hands. "That's not bads, right, even though they woulda hated it there? But Odin made me not blue, he lied. And 'Fessor X said he knows someone who's blue and can look like anyones, and I looked like you and Genie can change too! He did it lots! I like him."

Loki seems to be trying to move his tail, though he's clearly not sure how to, since he asks Simba how he does it. Simba's tail starts to move, without Loki squeezing his ear to make him, and his head turns to look at Loki. The god scrunches his face in concentration as his tail continues to flick around randomly, before grabbing it with one hand and waving it back at Simba.

"I'm surprised you didn't grow a horse tail." Bruce says.

Loki grins and uses one hand to hold his long hair back in a ponytail. "I gots a horse tail on my head, Bruce." Bruce tells him it's called a ponytail, and Loki diverts his attention to his new appendage.

"I want... ears like Peter and Tink an' Kurt." Loki's face scrunches up again and he goes to finger his ears, although Tony can't see them under the curtains of long black hair. Are his ears pointed? Loki fiddles with Stitch's ears, Simba tucked under the other arm. Before Tony can find out, Loki's ears grow, becoming large, long blue ears identical to Stitch's.

"This is like watching that donkey scene in Pinocchio." Bruce mutters, and Tony had been thinking exactly the same thing. Even though he was five the last time he'd seen the movie, he still remembers that scene. Bruce looks at him and asks if it freaked him out, and Tony denies it.

Loki laughs, but he looks somewhat confused. "You're weird, Bruce. Why're you talking 'bout asses in... pine nut seed eyes. Makes no sense." Bruce looks confused, but Italian happens to be one of the languages Tony knows, one he'd tested Loki's All-Tongue on, and Pinocchio is sort of made from the Italian words pino, 'pine', and occhio, 'eye'. He assumes All-Tongue had also provided the words 'nut' and 'seeds', though Tony doesn't know where those came from.

Loki singsongs "Pine nut, pine eyes, seeds. Pin-occ-hi-o."

Loki's Stitch backpack moves it's ears up and down and side to side, and like he'd done with the tail, Loki tries to copy it.

"Well, I guess we need to show him that now." Tony says. Bruce points out that it's only 11:00 in the morning, and Tony shrugs. Who says you can't watch movies in the middle of the day? Besides, Loki's got the ears and tail right now, which are what had brought it up in the first place.

"I bet Steve saw this movie when it came out." Bruce says to Tony. Tony quickly checks his phone and sees a release date in 1940, which was before Cap's time as a capsicle. Before he got the serum, even, so back when he was still a ninety pound weakling.

Loki insists on Dum-E watching the movie with them, which means they'll be watching it in the living room instead of the theater.

The movie starts with credits and When You Wish Upon a Star playing, and Loki clearly recognizes the music, since they play it during the Disney opening logo on almost all the Disney movies they've watched. Loki hums along, remembering the melody, even if he's never heard the words before. He clearly loves that it's about stars.

Jiminy Cricket is shown singing the end of the song, before he narrates a storybook opening. Loki confusedly asks if crickets really look like that here, to which Bruce answers that Jiminy looks nothing like a real cricket.

Loki nods, adding "crickets talk with their wings and gots lots of legs like Sleipnir, only they got two less than Sleipnir, 'cause they only gots six, like insects. But my Sleipnir's like a spiii-der." Apparently Asgard has crickets that are basically the same as those on Earth. Then again, they have horses there, too, so there's clearly some overlap with animals between Asgard and Earth, though Tony's heard both Loki and Thor mention something called a bilgesnipe, whatever the hell that is.

The view zooms in on a starry night sky with one star particularly bright, and Loki wonders aloud if it's the Second Star to the Right and whether or not Peter and Tink will show up.

Jiminy stows away in Geppetto's house and finds Pinocchio, still a puppet and unfinished, without eyebrows or a mouth. Loki points at Pinocchio, eyes wide. "Genie switched his head look like that boy's. 'Xcept he had a mouth, and his nose got long, like it grew." Loki nods, flicking his fingers. Tony had actually forgotten about that, but he nods as Bruce tells Loki that was good spotting. Really, Loki had no clue who Pinocchio was when he saw Aladdin, yet he still recognizes him even though it that cameo transformation of Genie's had been a split second and they'd watched Aladdin over a month ago.

"How come he doesn't even gots a mouth? He can't talks with no mouth, nope nope nope! Even me 'n Ariel have mouths-!" Loki's eyes are wider than usual when he abruptly stops, and he starts frantically shaking his head. Hoping that Loki's not going to have a flashback of being unable to speak when his lips had been sewn shut, Tony places a hand on his shoulder and assures him that Pinocchio's mouth just hasn't been painted on yet.

Thankfully, Loki relaxes slowly as Tony's explaining why Pinocchio doesn't have a mouth. Once calm, Loki asks to keep watching, and the movie resumes. Geppetto comes down the stairs with his kitten, Figaro, and paints on Pinocchio's eyebrows and mouth.

"You're kind of like Geppetto, if Dum-E and Jarvis were Pinocchio." Bruce says with a bit of a smile, and Tony quirks a brow, although it's an apt analogy. He honestly considers Jarvis and his bots (especially Dum-E) to be family, not that he tells anyone that. Dum-E gives a cheerful beep and rolls up to his creator, squeezing Tony's hand with his claw. Loki looks between Tony and Dum-E with a wide grin.

"Yeah, 'cause you're their father!" Loki laughs, clapping his hands. "You even called yourself 'Daddy' to Jarvis! 'Daddy's home!' Kinda like how I pretend my monster family's my family, 'xcept I gots you in my Midgard family now too."

"I guess Dum-E, the other robots and myself could be part of Mr. Stark's 'Invention Family'." Jarvis pipes up and Loki laughs, bouncing in his seat slightly.

"Yeah, and his Man of Iron suits!" Tony rolls his eyes fondly, but not when Loki's looking.

Geppetto sings about a 'little wooden head' as he makes Pinocchio dance around the room. The woodcarver winds up tormenting Figaro with his new puppet in various ways, kicking the cat and making him into a hole from a missing floorboard. Loki clearly sympathizes with Figaro here.

Loki also seems fascinated with all of the cuckoo clocks, although he clearly doesn't like the one of a mother spanking her small boy. The fact Gepetto made a clock of that is kind of weird, Tony thinks, as is the one of chopping off a turkey's head.

As Geppetto gets ready for bed, he sees the wishing star and kneels down to make a wish, wishing for Pinocchio to be a real boy. As this is happening, Loki starts mumbling Lilo's wish for a friend, a wish Tony has no doubt Loki had made himself in Asgard. After all, he'd wound up with imaginary friends like eight-legged horses and half-dead girls.

The Blue Fairy comes from a star (Loki loves that, and compares her to Tinker Bell, since she's a fairy, although a much larger one). She decides to make Geppetto's wish come true, and with a wave of her wand, brings Pinocchio to life.

Loki stares. "They can do that? Well, Genie could. How come Genie didn't come if he knows Pinocchio? He turned into him."

"Because you needed the lamp for Genie, and the Blue Fairy came from a star. Anyways, didn't you do that with your Jormungand necklace?" Tony asks rhetorically, although Jormungand isn't doing anything right now.

"But he was already real, just didn't haves a body! They said he wasn't though. 'Stupid freak, he's talking to nothing!'" Loki says as the Jormungand necklace raises its head, saying in a hissing voice that he's not nothing. As always, the necklace looks like a real snake when it appears to come to life, just like how Loki's other friends and Monster Family members look real.

Looking at the Blue Fairy and Pinocchio again, Loki adds. "She's blue with good magics, right? Hey, Elsa wears blue and did that with Olaf too! And Marshmallow, 'xcept he was real when he first started out but Olaf was just a snowman firsts."

"You've sort of done it with Simba and Stitch." Bruce points out, and while the lion and backpack haven't done much on their own, they have seemed to come alive briefly to roar or do other small things.

As if to prove Bruce's point, Simba's head turns and he talks, only Loki hadn't squeezed his ear and what he says isn't one of his prerecorded phrases. Instead, the lion mimics Pinocchio, saying "I can move! I can talk!" Then, he says "I'm gonna be King of Pride Rock."

Tony and Bruce stare. Tony's first reaction is thinking this is creepy as hell, even though basically the same thing happens whenever Jormungand brings the necklace to life. This isn't quite as weird as seeing Sleipnir for the first time had been, but Tony's used to Simba being simply a toy with a couple prerecorded phrases and songs.

Loki's eyes go incredibly wide as he hugs Simba and gives an excited squeal of delight, body practically vibrating with excitement. Clearly, he hadn't done this on purpose, but he seems thrilled at what he'd done with his magic. That's definitely progress.

Simba turns to the guy who's side he's always practically glued to. This time, he's more animated and his mouth actually moves when he addresses Loki. "I like your tail, it's just like mine, only blue." Simba wags his tail proudly, like he'd done when Loki first grew his own less than an hour ago, only the lion seems more alive now. Loki's face scrunches up as he tries to wag his tail back, but it just flicks around seemingly randomly as if it has a mind of its own. Much like Loki's hands, sometimes.

The Blue Fairy tells Pinocchio that he can become a real boy if he's brave, truthful and unselfish Loki's staring at the screen, transfixed, and some emotion Tony doesn't catch flashes in his eyes. The fairy appoints Jiminy as Pinocchio's conscience. After she leaves, Pinocchio and Jiminy- mostly Pinocchio- wake Geppetto up while singing about always letting your conscience be your guide.

Simba comments that Jiminy Cricket is less annoying than Zazu.

Geppetto freaks out when he first sees Pinocchio, (which is how almost everyone would react to a puppet being alive) but he's soon overjoyed that his wish mostly came true. Pinocchio's technically not real yet.

Somewhat strangely, Geppetto sends Pinocchio off to school the very next morning, despite it being his puppet son's first morning alive. Of course Pinocchio gets sidetracked along the way, although it's not entirely his fault. He's lured in by a fox, ironically named Honest John, and a mute cat named Gideon to be an actor, to a tune that Tony's probably going to have stuck in his head for an eternity. Pinocchio's far too innocent, naive and trusting, but to be fair he was born the previous day.

Pinocchio winds up performing in a puppet show for Stromboli, and starts it off by falling down the stairs and spearing a wooden floorboard with his nose. Stromboli angrily lifts Pinocchio until he hears the crowd laughing, at which he lets the puppet go and Pinocchio starts to sing. Loki hops from one foot to the other in time with the music. Simba's head turns as his tail wags, which is something he'd been able to do when squeezing his ear, only it looks more lifelike now.

"I've got no strings

To hold me down

To make me fret

Or make me frown

I had strings

But now I'm free

There are no strings on me!"

Loki has a million dollar smile on his face, and he winds up copying Pinocchio's actions as the puppet sings a second verse before moving onto the third.

"I've got no strings

So I have fun

I'm not tied up

to anyone.

They have strings

But you can see

There are no strings on me!"

Various other puppets sing other parts of the song and Pinocchio winds up getting crushed between the butts of two female Dutch marionettes, and there's a part where Jiminy ogles at some female puppets doing the can-can. Tony smirks at that, but Loki's mind is on other matters.

"Y'know, Elsa's gots no strings, too." Loki says as Stitch spits out his Elsa doll. Glancing at the doll, Tony agrees that she's indeed stringless. Loki sighs and says "She cut her strings. Elsa, she doesn't gotta worry 'bout ice and snow now, nope nope nope. 'No right, no wrong, no rules for me! I'm freeeee!" The last part is sung, and Tony knows it's from Let It Go. He has all the Frozen songs memorized from how often Loki sings them.

"Oh, you mean that metaphorically." Tony says, slightly surprised. After all, I've Got No Strings can be interpreted literally, since Pinocchio actually lost his strings, and he sort of expected Loki would just take it literally.

Loki nods as he snuggles up with Elsa, Simba and Stitch.

"Yeah, and Genie's got no strings... no lamp. He was tied to the lamp and now he's free!"

Going with the metaphor, Tony asks "Do you think you've lost some strings, too?"

"Don't gotta worry 'bout getting beatings now." Loki says quietly, and Tony assures him that he doesn't need to worry about that. They turn their attention back to the movie, which Jarvis had paused.

Not long after the show, Stromboli's true colors are revealed when he traps Pinocchio in a bird cage. Loki's previous happiness during the puppet show has evaporated, much like Pinocchio's himself. This seems like an emotional part for most viewers, but it's only intensified by Loki's recent stint of being locked up in the Hulk cage on the Helicarrier. The betrayal's clearly a sore spot for the god, too, since he'd hated it when Hans betrayed Anna.

Stromboli says that once Pinocchio has outlived his use as a performer, he'll make good firewood. Pinocchio cries out "Let me out" and even threatens to tell on Stromboli to Geppetto. Tony's reminded of what he'd seen Loki do in the footage he'd hacked from Loki's time on the Helicarrier. He'd threatened them with Tony beating them up, although Tony hadn't actually done that (maybe he should have).

Stromboli leaves Pinocchio alone, and Pinocchio frantically pulls on the bars, shouting for Jiminy, before thunder cracks and lightning flashes.

As if the betrayal and cage aspects weren't enough, the thunderstorm, which is clearly a trigger itself, has Loki trying to wedge himself in between Tony and the backrest of the sofa. That would probably work better if he wasn't a grown man, Tony thinks as he turns around, laying a hand on Loki's shaking back. Loki tenses at first but doesn't shake Tony off.

Loki hadn't even reacted this badly to Stitch being stuck in a glass containment dome, but then again, there hadn't been thunder then.

"Shh, it's okay." Tony continues to murmur soft nothings to Loki while rubbing a hand in small circles over the god's back, who's still curled up, leaving Tony perched on the edge of the couch. At least now that the thunder's stopped, since the movie's paused, Loki's not shaking quite as badly as when it had been playing.

It takes a few minutes for Loki to calm down and his shaking to subside. He's no longer trying to burrow between Tony and the cushions, but he's sitting a lot closer to Tony than he was before as he stares at the paused screen with wide eyes,

"Why's Thor mad?" Loki asks in a quiet voice, obviously referring to the thunder in the film. "Pinocchio didn't even do's a thing to him." Tony sighs. It's really inconvenient that, when thunder and lightning are already triggers for Loki, they're always used to intensify dramatic or scary scenes in movies. That's really not the best combination, and Tony's wondering whether they're going to have to stop the movie. Loki had been really anxious during the fight between Gaston and Beast as well, which was also during a thunderstorm, but his reaction to this is even worse.

"Uh, I don't think it's Thor making this thunder." Tony says, and Loki just looks at him like he's crazy, his expression clearly saying that Thor makes thunder. Admittedly he does (not that Tony would've believed that before meeting the thunderer) but that doesn't mean that all thunder's made by Thor, right?

"Do you want to keep watching this, or...?" Bruce asks, looking at Loki before glancing at Tony. Tony can tell Bruce is wondering, like he is, whether the donkey part will freak Loki out. Sure, he'd seemed surprisingly unconcerned when growing his own tail and long, animal-like ears, but well, this movie doesn't exactly portray that in a great light, either.

"Does he gets out of the cage?" Loki asks, and they forgo spoiler alerts and just tell him straight up that yes, he does.

Geppetto, upon realizing that Pinocchio's not back from school, sets out to look for him. Meanwhile, Jiminy finds Pinocchio in the birdcage and goes into the lock, but is unable to open it. Loki looks accusingly at Tony. "You said he gets out. He's still there"

"He gets out, trust me." Tony replies. "Pretty soon, if I remember right. The Blue Fairy frees him."

"Like how you got me outs of the petri dish?" Loki asks. Tony nods.

"I should have been there." Simba's animated again, and Bruce and Tony exchange surprised glances. Has Simba become like Sleipnir and the others? "I won't leave you ever again, Loki." The lion declares with childish determination. Loki grins and hugs his lion.

Well, if there was any hope of Loki ever not carting Simba around everywhere, Tony's pretty sure that's gone now that Simba seems alive.

Onscreen, the Blue Fairy comes and asks the still-caged Pinocchio why he didn't go to school. Pinocchio claims he met two monsters with big green eyes and his nose grows at the lie (although, as Bruce points out, 'Honest' John and Gideon could be considered monsters for selling him to Stromboli, and Stromboli could be considered one as well). Pinocchio goes on to say they stuffed him in a sack and stuffed Jiminy in a little sack.

Each lie makes his nose grow more and more, until it resembles a long tree branch with leaves and a bird's nest- complete with birds- at the end. Although Pinocchio is horror struck by this, Loki laughs. "He's gots a tree nose, Tony, like Gran'mother Willow and my tree Willow-Willowy, 'xcept that'd be their arms! It's a nose arm!" He snickers, holding one of his arms in front of his face as if it's his nose, and adds thoughtfully "I wouldn't mind a tree's-arm nose of my very own, I don't think."

"Really?" Tony asks, surprised. Like with the ears and tail, wouldn't that freak most people out? He'd certainly be freaked out to have a tree branch for a nose, and he doesn't have a bunch of biases against magic from Asgard. Besides, Pinocchio's freaking out onscreen. He'd have bet money that Loki would be, too, since it would mean using magic, but he's glad he would have lost that bet. It means progress.

Tony wonders if Loki's going to make his nose grow, like he made his ears and tail. However, Loki's nose doesn't change.

The Blue Fairy rhetorically suggests that perhaps Pinocchio hasn't been telling the truth, clearly giving the message that lying isn't something he shouldn't be doing. She even says that "a boy who won't be good, might just as well be made of wood."

Loki gives a small cheer when the Blue Fairy unlocks Pinocchio's birdcage, after he promises he'll never lie again, and his nose shrinks back down to normal.

Loki frowns at the screen and looks at Tony with wide worried eyes. "So's lyin' bad? He's bad for lying?" In a scared voice, he asks "She gonna take it away?"

"Take what away? His nose?" Tony asks, but Loki stares into the distance, mind clearly elsewhere. Tony puts a hand on his shoulder, and Loki blinks and turns to look at them.

"Lying's not always bad, especially not if you're lying to keep yourself safe. There's nothing wrong with lying to stop someone from hurting you, and if you need to do so in the future, I want you to, got it?" Bruce says. Loki relaxes at the part about it being fine to lie for your safety, and Tony inwardly seethes. Of course, he'd been guessing that Loki had lied for safety, which is why he'd brought it up, but the fact Loki had to do such a thing is horrible. Well, lying in front of a court to stay 'safe' from jail is another story, but it's not like they're ever going to come to that.

"Besides, people tell white lies all the time." Tony adds.

"Lies haves colors?" Loki asks, sounding very confused. "What're black lies like?"

"No," Tony laughs. "That's not it. Jarvis, you wanna-?"

"Certainly, sir. White lies are harmless lies, usually told to avoid hurting someone's feelings rather than to be deceitful." Loki looks like he mostly gets it, but Jarvis gives an example anyways. "An example would be pretending someone's food is delicious when it really isn't, because you don't want to hurt the cook's feelings."

Loki glances at Tony. "Do you say white lies ever?"

Bruce snorts and says "That requires that you actually care about hurting someone's feelings. If Tony thinks you're bad at something, he'll let you know." To be totally honest though, Tony sometimes tells some white lies to Loki, like when he said his drawings were good when he first arrived. Although it's not like Tony's an artist himself, unless you count engineering blueprints, so Loki's artistic skills (which have definitely improved since he's been drawing a ton) are now probably on par with his own.

"But Pinocchio, he's not gonna be's real if he lies, right? She said he's gotta be braves, truthful an' unsel-fish to be a real boy, and that he's wood 'cause he's bad."

Loki seems very focused on this becoming real thing, and Tony's not entirely sure what to make of it. Does Loki think that about himself?

"There are a lot of people who are none of those those things, and they're still real. I've met plenty of those sorts of people." Bruce says. "Pinocchio was just with someone like that- Stromboli." Loki nods, adding Scar, Hans and Gaston to that list.

"Besides, it's kind of unfair that Pinocchio has to prove himself worthy to become real. Nobody else has to, and he never asked to be real in the first place." Bruce goes on. "Sort of like how it was really unfair for the witch to turn all of Beast's staff into household objects, when they hadn't done anything. I'm not entirely sure Beast deserved it either..." Of course Bruce sympathizes with Beast, Tony thinks.

"Ten years isn't that long." Loki says, and Tony and Bruce share a look of total confusion and ask Loki what he's talking about. "Lumiere, he saids..." Loki starts singing "For ten years we've been rusting, needing so much more than dusting." Tony trusts Loki to correctly remember the lyrics to the song, and he's pretty sure that had been a snippet from Be Our Guest.

"Ten years is a fairly long time here." Tony says, and Loki gets a sad, scared look on his face, the look he gives Tony as if he's suddenly about to drop dead. Tony reassures him he's not going anywhere for a while, and tries to distract him, blurting out what he'd just thought of. "Wait a sec, if they were like that for ten years, then the prince would've been like ten when the old lady showed up and asked to come in. So he was just listening to what his parents told him about stranger danger, and she made him transform into a Beast? Seriously, what the hell's up with that?" They'd mentioned that the rose would wilt on his twenty-first birthday, after all.

Loki seems to consider this but winds up changing the topic entirely. "He's horrible at lying!" Loki snickers, pointing to Pinocchio's now-normal nose on the now-paused screen. "His nose gives him 'way."

"Yeah, he's kinda the worst liar ever." Tony agrees.

"My nose doesn't even grow, like Pinocc's!" Loki says, grinning guilelessly, but as he says this, his nose starts to grow.

Tony stares as Loki's nose gets longer and longer, eventually looking quite like Pinocchio's tree branch nose, with a bird's nest and leaves at the end (but no birds, surprisingly, since Loki clearly loves animals). Tony can tell it's merely an illusion, since Loki's that would surely weigh Loki's head down, yet there are no indications of that. Tony confirms the illusion theory when he reaches out to poke it, although the contact doesn't send the illusion away like it used to, and sometimes still does.

Loki laughs uncontrollably at his tree branch nose, and it's so long that when he reaches out for the nest at the end, he can't grasp it even with his arms fully extended- and since Loki's so tall, his arms are pretty long.

When Loki turns to look at Tony, the illusion-nose goes through his head and he doesn't feel a thing (thankfully). If that had been tangible, he would have just gotten whacked in the side of the head with a tree branch, which would have hurt like heck.

Loki's barely able to get his next words out around his laughter. "G-g-got you! You f-fell for it! Doesn't really grow!"

"I know it doesn't grow." Tony protests with mock indigence, and his stomach suddenly growls, which has Loki in hysterics. "I've seen you lie before, you know, and it never grew then."

"Didn't even grows now, just looked like it." Loki says. Tony would've been shocked if Loki didn't know it was an illusion, since he's the one who had it. "Good thing it never grew there. They wouldn'ta liked that at all, nope nope nope! And then they would know I lied every time!"

"Did you get away with lying?" Tony asks, surprised, then quickly adds. "You won't get in trouble if you did."

"I already did, when they knew." Loki mutters with uncharacteristic bitterness, looking down and wringing his hands together. His Stitch-like ears droop, much like the alien's do in the movie when he's sad. Tony realizes Loki means he already got in trouble. Damn Asgardians.

"Well, you shouldn't have." Tony gets up and stretches, heading towards the kitchen to make a sandwich, since his stomach had loudly informed him of its need for food. It's basically lunchtime, anyways. "Hey, how about a lunch break?"

Dum-E and Loki follow him like puppies, and Bruce soon joins them as well. Tony figures they can eat while continuing the movie, but they still need to make food. Dum-E can't even make sandwiches- actually, he occasionally screwed up something as easy as making cereal, so Tony hasn't had him cook in a while.

Just this morning, though, Dum-E had decided to be "help" and ended up spilling the contents of several drawers, even though Tony hadn't even told him to be in the kitchen. Tony points a finger at his robot and tells Dum-E not to touch anything, and Dum-E lowers his claw. Loki grabs onto it.

"Somestime... sometimes I kinda lied 'bout magic, so I wouldn't get a beating." Loki slowly admits, before whispering "Is that bad?"

"No, it's not bad. You're not bad." Bruce reminds him. They'd gone over this earlier. "What's bad is that you had to lie to stay safe." Loki nods slowly.

"Okay, we've got cheese, various lunch meats," Tony says as he rummages through the fridge, tossing various packages on the counter before snapping his fingers. "Anyone else in the mood for grilled cheese?" He doesn't think Loki's ever had grilled cheese before.

"625 grilled cheese and bread." Loki says, and Tony tells him grilled cheese is usually just a shortened form of grilled cheese sandwich, so they're going to be grilling the whole thing, not just the cheese. Loki grins and holds out a plate with two slices of bread on it, looking expectantly at Tony. Tony quirks a brow, somewhat confused.

"Throw it, like the 625 game?" Loki asks hopefully. Oh. Tony's seen Loki playing that 625 Sandwich Stacker game, where he controls the lazy, yellow, sandwich-obsessed, experiment that lives with Gantu and constantly gets on his nerves.

Tony tosses a slice of cheese at Loki's plate, and manages to get it to land on the plate, although it's half off the slice of bread. Loki laughs before glancing pointedly at the cheese again, obviously hoping Tony will repeat this.

Smirking, Tony flips this slice higher, so that it almost hits the ceiling, and Loki dashes under it, surprisingly quickly. "Now you gotta throw junk." If Tony hadn't seen Loki play that sandwich game, he'd have no idea what Loki was talking about right now.

Tony crumples up the bit of paper that was in between the slices of cheese and tosses it up in the air. Loki dodges it, and Tony remembers how he hadn't dodged, or even moved aside from flinching and curling up, when Natasha was working with him on self defense.

Curiously, Tony crumples up another bit of paper on the counter and, this time, tosses it directly at Loki. Loki dodges so it avoids his plate. Admittedly, this is sort of different from having someone punch at him, but at least he actually dodges it. Tony grins at Loki, telling him he did a good job, and Loki excitedly says he won sandwich stacker.

"We need to butter the bread before we grill it." Bruce says, and Tony grabs a stick of butter from the fridge as Tony heads towards the silverware drawer to get a knife. Dum-E really hadn't organized things at all (not that Tony's organized or anything, but even he's better than this."

Bruce pulls out a pan and goes to turn on the stove, but Tony waves a hand. "You know, I could totally use my repulsors to grill this. Anyone want Grilled Cheese a la Iron Man? This is a limited time offer, so get yours today." Tony says, deciding that he's definitely going to grill stuff with his repulsors.

Loki has pulled out a frying pan and is swinging it around as if battling an invisible foe. From what he's saying, he's pretending to be Flynn Rider fighting off the guards before facing off with Maximus. Without thinking, Tony grabs the nearest thing in a drawer- a stainless steel turkey baster, he notices only after he adopts a sort of fencing pose with it. Not that he really knows how to fence.

Loki lets out a sort of sound that's somewhere between a sob and he lets go of the frying pan mid-swing. It sails towards Tony's head, and it's only years of dodging obstacles as Iron Man that allows him to duck out of the way before it brains him. Loki's wide green eyes stare at the turkey baster in Tony's hands as if Tony's planning on ripping out his entrails with it before stabbing him to death. Tony lowers it slightly, staring at Loki in shock, and the kitchen lights overhead make the stainless steel needle-like tip glint.

Loki's backs up, terrified, and Simba actually jumps from the countertop to his arms. Loki's speech gets shaky and even more jumbled and he's practically hyperventilating. "No, D-didn't break it, wasn't there not my fault. Not even lyin' don't beat- No, what's thats?"

Shit. The baster sort of looks like a large needle, and Tony had just waved it at Loki like a weapon. Why the hell had he done that anyways? Sure, Loki was waving around a frying pan, but the god had clearly shown during the defense lesson with Natasha that he's still not remotely comfortable with attacks being directed at him. And Tony had to do that and yank up a traumatic memory like a trout. This is what it would have been like if Loki had shoved Tony into the pool and held him under, rather than Tony falling through the ice.

"No, no please don't- P-please I'll be goods I didn't mean to I won't do it 'gain please no no nononoNoNoNOOOO-OOO-OOO!"

Tony steps towards the god. "Loki, it's me. Tony. Your favorite person ever." But Loki backs away from him, crying, and several other things happen. Fenrir appears protectively in front of Loki, growling low in his throat, and Stitch bares his teeth from Loki's back (and why do Stitch's teeth suddenly look more like real fangs instead of fabric? Fenrir has always looked real, even if he's just air, but Tony remembers Loki saying he'd made water splash. Tony has a very uneasy feeling that Fenrir's teeth aren't just air now).

"Put it down!" Simba says, and it's only then that Tony realizes he's still holding the turkey baster. He throws it in the opposite direction of Loki and starts to approach him again, but Bruce pulls him back and slowly approaches Loki like one would a frightened animal.

Loki's soon reduced to wordless, terrified sounds as he backs away from Tony as if he's some sort of monster from a nightmare. And geez, it hurts way more than Tony would've thought to see Loki looking at him that way, for Loki to be terrified of him.

The god's backed out of the kitchen by now. He stumbles and winds up collapsing behind the bar. Tony groans. That's the worst place in the room that he could have gone.

"If you find the field where the horses roam..." Sleipnir appears and starts to sing Loki's song about horses, and Bruce joins in. His eyes had flashed green, but trying to calm Loki down by singing softly evidently keeps Hulk at bay.

Stitch somehow isn't even remotely squashed under Loki's back, even though the god weighs a ton, and it looks like the alien backpack is hugging the god.

Tony eventually joins the singing as well as Loki. "The silver stallion gallops away, his herd follows him and they start to neigh..."

They're too late. From Loki's completely unfocused eyes, Tony knows Loki's lost the battle against the flashback, but they can try to bring him back.

Tony goes to hug Loki, who's shaking violently and whimpering but Loki suddenly lets out another cry and lurches away from Tony. His bare foot connects blindly with a couple beer bottles on the lowest shelf. The kick itself actually shatters them before they even fall.

"We need to get him out of here before he breaks everything." Tony says, as Jormungand starts to curl around Loki. Simba rubs his head against the god's chest, and Loki doesn't panic at either of them like he just had with Tony, but he's still panicking in general, and he's biting his lip so hard it's bleeding. "Somewhere other than behind my bar."

Bruce gives him a withering, disappointed look. "Really, Tony?! You're thinking about your alcohol now?"

"Gee, I'm glad you have such a high opinion of me." Tony shoots back angrily. Bruce really thinks that?! Sure Tony can be an asshole, and narcissistic, but he's not that bad that he'd actually care more about alcohol when someone else is in pain like this. He doesn't think he'd ever been that bad.

Besides he hadn't even been thinking about his alcohol stash's safety at all. He'd been thinking solely of Loki (as well as himself and Bruce. Now that he thinks about it, getting cut by broken glass would affect him the most. Loki heals insanely quickly and Hulk keeps Bruce from getting hurt from most things). Tony would honestly give up his entire alcohol stash in a heartbeat if it meant he could help Loki or get Loki to not look at him like he's a monster. Hell, he'd blast it himself with his repulsors if he had to.

"No, actually I was referring to the glass bottle he just broke." Tony snaps at Bruce.

Bruce looks down mutters an apology. "Sorry. I know you're a better man than that... even if you don't always show it." Tony doesn't get a chance to respond.

Loki continues to scream blue murder- not that Tony can blame him in the slightest, given the hell he's reliving. The flashbacks of this incident are always the worst, but this sounds like one of the worst things Loki's ever experienced. If he'd experienced something worse, Tony's not sure he even wants to know what that would be.

Loki starts clawing at his his mouth, so that even more blood runs down his face along with the blood from when he'd bit his lip, pooling on the floor. Shit, Tony should have known he'd do that. He grabs the god's wrists and struggles to keep him from mutilating his own face even more. Bruce grabs one of Loki's wrists so Tony doesn't need to struggle with trying to pull both arms away.

The god falls mostly silent, only letting out soft whimpers and sobs, though he continues to scratch at his mouth and they continue to try to stop him. However, fighting to get Loki to stop scratching himself (and they definitely need to fight because everyone from Asgard and Jotunheim is so freaking strong) isn't exactly helping Bruce's temper.

"I'm going to suit up." Tony explains as he lets go of Loki's wrist and sprints to the landing/take-off strip on the balcony. Jarvis has already pulled up the metal ring with a suit at the ready, and Tony lets the metal ring's robotic arms put the Iron Man suit on him. He dashes back inside almost before it's fully on, crouching down next to Loki, and Bruce moves aside to give him access.

With the strength of the Iron Man suit, Tony's able to pull Loki's hands away and stop him from scratching his lips even more. There's already a surprising amount of blood around his mouth and on the floor.

Once he gets a view of Loki's mouth, Tony practically throws up.

Keeping Loki's lips firmly stitched together is a leather cord, still visible amidst the blood. Sure, Tony's seen- and experienced- some pretty horrific injuries, but this is just so disgusting, so wrong. Just as wrong as his own chest being hooked up to a car battery in the caves (No don't think about that).

Tony knows the stitches have to be an illusion, but he has no doubt that, in Loki's mind, his mouth's really sewn shut.

Earlier today, Charles had mentioned something about projecting memories, which Charles had picked up on, and they'd even brought up that time Loki made an illusion of the knife in the nightmare where Hans and Gaston killed the Avengers. And some of Loki's illusions of himself seem to project his nightmares and flashbacks (he's seen them writhe around with Loki a fair number of times). When he'd teleported from inside Tony's workshop to outside the glass wall, apparently dreaming that Tony wouldn't let him in, there had been an illusion of Loki banging on the glass, although Tony hadn't found out until later, since it had been silent and he'd been facing the other way.

But still, Loki hadn't actually made it look like his mouth was stitched shut any of the other times he'd had this flashback. But then again, he'd never had a needle-like thing pointed at him either. Tony mentally kicks himself again.

Perhaps, with all the illusions he's been making recently- making Sleipnir and the others visible, as well as making Simba move (that's probably some sort of illusion, right? Just on an object like the Jormungand necklace instead of an illusion out of air. Or is he actually sort of bringing Simba to life?)

Bruce, once he manages to Loki see around Tony's body, lets out a furious growl that sounds much more like Hulk than Bruce as he sprints for the elevator, which Jarvis already has ready with the doors already open. Ten seconds or so after the elevator doors close, Jarvis reports that Bruce has made it to the Hulk-proof floor. Well, this will at least let him know if the Hulk's anger-management area really works.

Whatever Jarvis says next is drowned out by an enraged roar so loud it almost makes the floor shake. Hulk sounds angrier than Tony's heard him in a while, even angrier than when Thor had shown up the first time.

Loki lets out an even more earsplitting scream that rolls off the walls, and at least once his mouth is open, the horrid illusion of it being stitched together with bloodstained leather is gone. Tony feels Loki's power shoot outwards. He unconsciously shields Loki's body with his own, just as all the bottles of alcohol explode. Except they explode outwards, so most of the glass and liquid winds up spilling into the kitchen, through the shelves that are more like small rectangular holes in the wall between the back of the bar and the kitchen. There's some broken glass near them, however, as well as a puddle from a bottle of scotch that had cost at least five hundred bucks. Not that that's much, for a billionaire.

Hulk's roar seems to have startled Loki out of the flashback, in a sense. Something definitely shifted, but Loki's scream is still resounding off the walls and he's clearly disoriented. Tony's a little surprised Hulk's roar hadn't completely snapped Loki out of it, though. After all, Tony himself had been startled awake from Hulk's roar after falling out of the portal, and everyone thought he'd been dead.

---

Loki stares at the needle in Tony's hand in horror. It's huge, with some weird bulb-like thing at the end. Having that monstrosity pulled through his lips would probably tear half his face off, and he's not sure if his magic could heal that. He tries not to cry, he really does, but he can't help it.

And then, Tony becomes Odin and he's back in Asgard. He backs up, even though he knows he's not supposed to run like a coward, but he'll always be a coward, a stupid argr freak. And then he's on the ground and Odin's practically sitting on him. The needle glints ominously as it's coming towards his face. Then it's stabbing through his lips and the leather cord's dragged through and PAINPAINPAIN.

The bellowing, furious roar is so loud that startling that Loki forgets all about Odin and pulling the stitches from his mouth. It's followed by a piercing scream that seems to go on and on and he wishes it would stop, because it's pounding in his head.

He hopes whoever's roaring isn't going to punish him, but aren't they already? He tries to curl into an even tighter ball, but he's practically as tight as possible. His mouth hurts, but it isn't anywhere near the fiery agony that takes the world away, leaving only painpainpain. But it had been that bad, only seconds ago, before the roar.

He vaguely thinks he must be past the point of feeling his punishment. Some dim part of Loki's brain knows it's probably bad that he's gotten to this point of not feeling, but he thanks the Norns for the small mercy anyways.

Something explodes out of him. There's a ton of commotion but he hardly notices what's happening, but he realizes his back's soaked and his shirt's clinging to it. Blood?! He tastes blood, but his back doesn't feel like there are open cuts in it. But he feels kind of hot, too, so maybe it's just sweat? There's another vaguely familiar scent he can't place.

He opens his eyes and sees countless glittering lights in a puddle of amber. He stares at them uncomprehendingly. Stars? But why are they green and brown? Maybe he's seeing things, like when the pain's bad enough? Or maybe it's his brain being stupid?

He reaches out for them with a shaky arm, but these stars are sharp and they nip at his fingers. These are meaner than the stars he loves and he could never touch those so why can he touch these? And what's all the amber stuff? Blood's not that color, and it's definitely not sort of clear. The brown liquid makes him think of Tony, for some reason.

There's still roaring from somewhere below, and that scream's still pounding through his head.

Something's wrapped around his torso, squeezing him. It's tight and strong but still gentle, and when he sees scales, he realizes Jormungand's hugging him. It hurts to smile, though.

He's not in Asgard. The roar had actually snapped him out of that. Besides, nobody ever hugged him there. Loki had to pretend, while hugging himself with his own arms, that Jormungand was hugging him, but Jormungand has a body now.

A red, metal hand grabs his wrist pulling it away from the biting stars. It looks like Tony's Man of Iron suits, Loki thinks as the red metal arms pick him up. It is a Man of Iron suit, he realizes as he sees the mask.

Tony.

NO! Tony had been holding the huge needle, had pointed it at him. Loki doesn't know what he's done wrong, since he's done so many things wrong. Was it because he'd admitted to lying? Why had he done that anyways? Stupid! Was it something else?

He scrambles out of Tony's arms, crawling away one his knees and one hand while the other hugs Simba to his chest.

In between the loud roars and smashing sounds below, Loki hears something. His lullaby. Loki closes his eyes and focuses the familiar, comforting melody. The gentle pressure of Jormungand's coils, Tony's arms, and his special song helps with making everything seem less scary.

There's a familiar voice, too. No, voices. A voice that's just as often loud and joking as it is soft and reassuring, Loki's favorite voice ever, and a calm voice with an accent very similar to Loki's own. Tony and Jarvis. Except right now, Tony sounds annoyed.

Annoyed voices lead to Bad Things. And Tony had been holding the needle and no!

"Tony's not going to do that." Hel says, suddenly appearing. Loki blinks and cautiously smiles at her. He can understand what she's saying, but not Tony and Jarvis "He'd never do that."

All-Tongue won't tell him the words Tony and Jarvis are saying, so it's just a jumble of sound. Or maybe it's his brain? He hates it when this happens. Normally it's not quite this bad.

Hadn't All-Tongue used to work better, before everyone started saying he became even more of an idiot? Hadn't his mouth used to work better, for that matter? Fandral said he used to have a Silver Tongue instead of a Stupid Tongue, but Loki doesn't think his tongue's ever been silver (although he thinks that would look really awesome. Maybe he can turn it silver later).

Well, both of them are broken now. His All-Tongue has issues and his mouth is a traitor. Sometimes it says stuff he doesn't want it to, and sometimes it goes the opposite way and doesn't say what he wants, and most things come out different than how he wants them to, even when he's trying to speak in English without using All-Tongue, although he can never fully shut it off.

Reading in English is, he thinks, harder than figuring out how to read in the first place had been in the Asgardian library. He hates that too.

Loki smacks his thighs in annoyance. He hates thinking about this most of all!

Tony's approaching Loki and Loki looks at Tony's hands. It doesn't look like he's holding the needle, but maybe it's hidden somewhere. He shies away from Tony even though Tony's tone is soft and reassuring, when he'd normally lean into Tony for comfort.

Hel keeps whispering that the needle's gone, and Tony glances at her, nodding as if agreeing. He looks worried and almost guilty, Loki thinks as he briefly glances at Tony's face before looking at the man's hands again, to make sure there's no needle in them.

He eventually catches the words should go from Jarvis, and he frowns. Are they saying he should go? But Tony's said he can stay here, and Loki's his family, right? Like how Stitch is Lilo's even if they're not actually related, and you can't just send family away!

Alcohol. His brain blurts out of nowhere, and maybe his mouth blurts it out too. That was the smell (he can still smell it) that was the amber liquid pooled on the floor. He's seen Tony drink it often enough.

He casts a look at the bar and his eyes go wide. The shelves, which are always filled with glasses and bottles, are now empty. And the shiny things aren't stars. It's glass, shattered everywhere. Some of the bottles must have gotten knocked into the kitchen from the shelves that are like open windows between the kitchen and the bar. He can even see the brown liquid seeping over the kitchen floor.

Tony's going to be furious with whoever wrecked his alcohol stash. Dum-E's broken glasses, but he's never wrecked stuff this badly, at least as far as Loki knows. Loki realizes with horror that must have been him who'd wrecked it, when his magic exploded out.

He's starting to panic again.

Tony must not know. Actually, Tony's not even here anymore, though he'd been here a minute ago. Jarvis speaks to him in a calm, reassuring tone.

"It's all right, Mr. Loki."

"Did I do it? Break alls his drinks?" Jarvis sees everything, after all, Loki thinks as another loud, furious roar sounds from below them.

Jarvis confirms his fear. "I must admit that you did, Mr. Loki-" Loki doesn't hear the rest. Surely Jarvis is going to tell Tony that Loki had destroyed his alcohol collection. Tony's going to be furious when he finds out! This is way worse than dropping a mug or even hitting the wall with a star, and Loki can still hardly believe he hadn't gotten in trouble for those. He's definitely going to get in trouble now, though.

Tony's said he's not going to beat him, but there are other ways to punish him. Tony could make him clean the entire tower, or drink all the alcohol and laugh at how he's even stupider than usual. Maybe even make him lick it off the floor to clean it up and drink it at the same time?

Yet even as he thinks this, some part of Loki knows the idea of Tony making him lick spilled drinks off the floor is completely ridiculous. He'd never even had to do that in Asgard, though they did make him drink enough to laugh at him. Volstagg especially loved doing that, and it was apparently "worth wasting fine mead on the Jotun" to see him act like even more of an diot than he already is. But that never made any sense, because how could it be considered wasting it and worth it at the same time?

He briefly wonders if he should lie about breaking all Tony's alcohol, like he had when he'd first smashed a petri dish. But no, that's a stupid idea. He knows what happens if he gets caught lying. But Tony had said he'd known Loki had broken the petri dish, when he'd said Bruce did it, yet Tony hadn't even been mad and had let him smash more petri dishes.

But those were petri dishes, while this is Tony's alcohol, and clearly the alcohol means much more to Tony than petri dishes.

"... do for you?" Jarvis is asking.

"Tony's gonna be so mad..." Loki mumbles worriedly.

"I assure you that Mr. Stark is not mad at you, Mr. Loki." Jarvis says smoothly.

"But I broked it an' he really likes drinks a-and..." It doesn't make any sense that Tony wouldn't be mad at him.

"Stitch blew up Lilo's whole house." Simba pipes up from Loki's arms, and from Loki's back, Stitch nods and says ih. Hel and Sleipnir voice their agreement that this definitely isn't as bad as that, and Stitch is still in Lilo's family.

Loki looks back at the bar. Dum-E's attempting to wipe up the spill with a rag. Dum-E shouldn't have to be cleaning up his mess. That's really not fair. Loki walks over, grabbing the rag, but it's already soaked and really isn't going to do anything, he knows. But he doesn't have anything else to work with.

Maybe... maybe he could use his magic to get rid of the mess? He actually did something like that a couple times in Asgard when the servants and slaves were saying he might as well pull his weight around there instead of being a useless, stupid burden. When he had accidentally used magic -normally when they were berating him for being slow- they'd made sure he knew what he did was disgusting, but they'd also said that at least he finally wasn't pathetically slow either. Sometimes they even hit him, but never with their hands, always with some sort of object. Unlike the warriors and guards, they seemed to think touching him would give them some sort of disease. Which at least meant it never hurt as much as the beatings he got from bored guards or Thor and the Warriors Three, or when Odin punished him.

He's used a lot of magic today, he thinks, and he realizes he still has his blue lion tail and Stitch-like ears. He'd teleported and Simba came alive, except sometimes Simba had occasionally done something life-like before, like roaring. The worst thing Loki had done with his magic, though, is wrecking Tony's drinks.

He stares down at the mess, and the rag isn't doing anything to clean it up. Dum-E whirs behind him, and Loki tries to imagine the amber puddle going away.

"I made hot chocolate," Tony's voice suddenly comes from behind him, and Loki startles and whirls around. He hadn't even heard Tony's footsteps, even though the floor's hard. The man's still in his Man of Iron suit, though without the helmet, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. "What're you doing there, Bambi?"

"I'm sorry, I'll clean it, make it better!" Loki promises looking anxiously at the man.

"You don't have to do that, Loki."

"But I made the mess, and-" Loki starts and then realizes that he'd just admitted it. Well, he'd decided lying would probably not be the best idea, but he hadn't meant to blurt it out like that. Stupid mouth.

"-and it would be really hypocritical of me to make you clean it up, when I've handed so many messes off to Pepper in the past." Tony finishes, and Loki stares at him in confusion. "Okay, they were more figurative messes, but I normally leave the physical ones to the bots. Like Dum-E, and my upgraded Roombas, which are way cooler now than when I first got them. And it looks like they're about done in there, so here they come." Tony gestures down from where he's leaning against the kitchen doorframe. A small army of metal, disk-like things comes whirring out of the kitchen, and while Loki recalls seeing one or two of them occasionally, he never thought there were this many. The 'Roomba' things start whirring over the puddle and broken glass.

"'m sorry." Loki says again, knowing that Tony really likes his alcohol.

"Hey, you should be thinking about yourself, not my alcohol. Drinks can be replaced. You can't." Tony says, as if Loki's actually more important than alcohol. He'd always wanted someone to think he was important, to think he mattered. And Tony's acting like he matters more than alcohol.

"But I broke it."

"Yeah, and Hulk's smashed up my floors before, and I'm not holding him responsible. Actually, right now his cool-off floor's getting a nice test run. And I didn't make Clint pay me back when he put a Wii remote through the eighty-inch TV I'd gotten only the week before. Hell, I've done way more damage to my stuff than you have."

"But it's your stuff."

"This is your tower, too. Our tower. Last I checked, you live here too." Tony asks.

Loki stares at Tony in surprise. That sounds really nice. Their tower, their home. He's not holding the huge needle, which is at least a good sign. Tony seems to sense what he's thinking, since he holds up both hands, palms out.

"What 'bout... you had the-" Loki doesn't even want to say needle. "And pointed it, an'..."

"That was actually a turkey baster." Tony says firmly, though that means nothing to Loki. All-Tongue won't tell him what turkey or baster mean, although he feels like he probably should know turkey, at least.

"What's that?"

"I actually have no clue what it's used for with cooking, other than that you use it on turkey, but there's another thing people use it for..." Tony trails off and Loki frowns. It's used for cooking? But what's the other thing? He hopes the other thing it's used for isn't for sewing...

As if reading his thoughts, Tony says "No, nothing like that. Uh, sometimes women use it for insemination, like getting pregnanat. Except I actively avoid getting women pregnant." He smirks a bit, and then beckons Loki to follow him into the kitchen, which Loki does somewhat reluctantly, wondering what Tony has planned for him. Tony had mentioned hot chocolate, but at first that seems ridiculous until Loki smells it.

Sleipnir follows, sticking close by Loki, but he's intangible right now. Loki's a little surprised he's still here, but Sleipnir always seemed the most reluctant to leave him behind, often almost seeming scared, explaining that he doesn't like the dark. He says that's where he goes when he's not with Loki, but sometimes he imagines he's in their field. Sometimes Sleipnir would be the scared one, and Loki would try to make him feel better. Like his Tony and Sleipnir do for him.

Loki notices the frying pan embedded in the wall where Tony had been standing before the flashback, and he tenses. Great, he'd broken more of Tony's stuff, like when he'd scorched Tony's wall with a star. Only Tony hadn't seemed to care then, or about the alcohol now. Loki goes and wrenches the pan out of the wall, looking at it.

Tony puts a hand on Loki's shoulder, but Loki remains tense under it. "Hey." Tony says. "If I had been attacking you- which I definitely wasn't, chucking a frying pan at my head would have been a good defensive move. It wasn't bad when Rapunzel and Flynn beat people up with it, right? Although you might've wanted to hold onto it, now that I think about it, because when you threw it you kinda gave up your weapon. So, no harm done."

Set out on the table are Mrs. Potts and Chip, as well as a mug that Tony's probably going to be using. Loki smiles slightly at the fact Tony remembered about Chip and Mrs. Potts.

There's another enraged roar from below them and what sounds like something huge pounding at the walls.

"Our favorite big green guy in angry mode. He flipped when he saw-" Tony cuts himself off for some reason, and Loki looks at him in confusion, asking what he saw. Tony looks at him for a bit. "We should probably get the dried blood off your face." Tony says.

Right. He'd been bleeding. Loki goes to the sink and tries to wash the blood off, glad there's not a mirror, so he doesn't have to see it.

But why had he been bleeding, if he hadn't been getting punished? "You bit your lip, and scratched it hard enough to draw blood." Tony explains. But Hulk has to have seen blood before, right, so why would that make him mad? And Tony seems more disgusted than when he'd scratched his face before. Is Tony disgusted with him? Loki wouldn't blame him.

Once again seeming to read his thoughts, Tony says "When you were having your flashback, well, you kinda made it look like it actually happened." Tony says slowly, watching him for some sort of reaction.

Does that mean they saw him with his lips shut, saw how pathetic he was then? Loki wonders as he sits at the table. Well, he's still pathetic, he always will be, as everyone told him in Asgard. But Violet, Frozone and Elsa aren't pathetic, even if they're not super strong like Mr. Incredible.

"That was really horrible." Tony goes on. "You should have never had to experience that- nobody should have to. Hell, you're one tough guy, for making it through all that shit." Him? Strong?

He finds himself wishing 'Fessor X was able to tell him it was all a memory and that the way he was treated is wrong when he'd been having his flashback not long ago, like he'd done earlier today with the one about the Warriors Three and the servant, The flashbacks always seem so real, and he really thought he was back in Asgard again.

With Simba somewhat curled on his lap, rather than standing stiffly like he always had before, Loki pulls Chip towards him and slowly takes a sip.

He used to drink hot chocolate with Tony after nightmares, when he first got here, but for some reason they haven't been doing that much lately. He kind of misses it.

"I know I really suck at saying this, I'm... sorry. Really. I didn't mean to scare you like that." Tony scratches his neck. "I wasn't thinking, and believe me you're not going to hear me say that very often, so enjoy it while you can."

Loki doesn't say anything, or react aside from glancing down at Simba, who actually smiles a bit more at him. His eyes are still embroidered on, but they somehow look more real now, and they move to look at him instead of staring straight ahead. Loki grins slightly back.

"Are you scared of me?" Tony asks, and Loki glances at him. He'd been really scared when Tony had been holding the... turkey base-ter thing,

"Maybe bit." Loki mumbles, and Tony looks at him, almost like he's disappointed to hear that.

"You know I'd never hurt you, right? And I'll certainly never do what those bastards did to you, hell no!"

"She said no." Loki replies. "Said you weren't gonna do that. Jarvis too. And you haven't, and family's not s'possed to do that, anyways nope nope nope!"

"Well, they were right. I'm not going to hurt you and anyone else who tries is going to regret it." Tony rambles on. "Hey, remember when Sulley scared Boo when she stood next to that robot boy he was roaring at? Remember how he really didn't mean to scare her, that he wasn't actually roaring at her? Well, this is like that. I didn't mean to scare you and I certainly wasn't going to attack you or anything. But I guess maybe it seemed like that to you, like how Boo thought Sulley was roaring at her."

Loki nods slightly. Is this really like that? He hopes so. He remembers Tony saying he's only a monster like Boo's a monster (in that other people seem him as one when he's not). He doesn't say anything as he sits there running a finger over the chip in Chip's rim. Chip's broken, sort of like he is. Only Chip's broken on the outside, and it's only a little bit, whereas he's broken inside.

He wonders if Pinocchio ever becomes a real boy, like how Chip had become human again after being turned into a teacup.

"You know, you're a lot quieter than usual." Tony remarks. "Please tell me we haven't gone back to square one. I mean, I know I screwed up, but hopefully not that badly."

Loki's pretty sure he's not talking about actual squares.

"You know what?" Tony says, getting up and heading towards the counter. "We're going to destroy this, together." He picks up the need-like turkey thing and Loki tenses. "Hey, it's all right. When we're done with this thing, it'll be beyond recognition." Tony's saying something about energy blasts, and while Loki remembers shooting stars, just like Tony does.

Loki glares at the thing in Tony's hand.

"Or we could give it to Hulk and he could smash it into smithereens." Tony offers, before adding, as another roar sounds from below. "But maybe when he's a bit calmer."

At least he knows the stupid thing won't be dragged through his lips now, but he still glares at it with hate. He wishes it would burn to a fiery crisp before being cast to the deepest depths of Helheim.

Suddenly, the not-needle thing bursts into flames, and Tony stares at it in shock. "Good thing I'm wearing my armor." He mutters, before glancing at Loki. "You know, I'm not even surprised you can do this, when you can make repulsor-like energy just like me."

Simba nudges the frying pan towards Loki, and Loki grabs it. The bas-ter thing has stopped burning, and Tony drops it. Loki proceeds to beat it with the frying pan, like Boo beat Randall with that wooden thing, trying to make it so it'll never hurt him again. He gets a little carried away, so the frying pan ends up sort of mangled too and the kitchen floor even gets damaged.

And it hadn't even been an accident. Breaking things on purpose is worse than on accident, right? Tony said he could break the not-needle, but not the frying pan or the floor.

Tony just stares at him, almost amused. "Wow, you've really took it out on that, huh? Geez, I'd need my suit to be able to smash it like that. Can't say I blame you, and I honestly think it's a good thing. Glad you didn't take it out on me, though. Don't worry about the damage, by the way. After all, it's nothing next to what Hulk's done."

Loki stands there, staring at the smashed remnants of the needle-like thing. He's not at all sorry to see it broken, but he's sort of disappointed about the frying pan. Sleipnir stomps on the pieces, but his hooves don't do anything.

"Wish you had a real body." Loki mumbles to him. Sleipnir says he does, but Loki shakes his head. It's not the same if he's just air, right? Sleipnir seems to think he's not.

"Do you ever forgets?" Loki asks after a couple minutes, back at the table and taking another sip of chocolaty warmth.

Tony arches a brow. "Forget what?"

"Where you are, when you haves a memory... flashback." After all, Tony had a flashback in the pool, Loki thinks. It'd seemed like it, anyways, and he really doesn't seem to like water.

"Uh... yeah, let's just say I didn't think it was you and Jarvis grabbing me there." Tony says. Had someone hurt him in the water? Humans apparently die if they're underwater for too long, but Tony's not dead and Bruce doesn't seem to have a problem with it.

"Dids you get hurt in water?" Loki asks, and Tony gives him a scrutinizing look. The man stares into his mug for a bit.

Tony nods jerkily. Loki pauses. Tony had mentioned having 'his own personal Hell' before, and while Loki had at first thought he meant a friend like Hel, Hel said he really meant something like Helheim. A bad place where you get hurt a lot, like Asgard. Tony had mentioned a cave.

"Was it in the cave?" Loki finds himself asking, before he can stop himself. He doesn't like talking about the needle, after all, so Tony wouldn't like talking about this. "Sorry." He mumbles.

Tony gives him another one of those scrutinizing looks, before glaring at the ceiling. "Jarvis, if you told him-"

"I did not, sir. I would never betray your trust like that." Jarvis replies smoothly.

"Hel saids you meant a pers'nal Helheim. Bad place. Said it was a cave." Loki explains. Tony stares at him for a while.

"Yeah, I've had some bad experiences with water." Tony says, and while he doesn't say anything about the cave, he doesn't say it hadn't happened there.

"Like Aladdin?" They'd tied Aladdin up and thrown him into the sea, and Genie saved him. Like how Jarvis and Loki helped Tony. Tony nods stiffly.

"Yeah. You've seen the results. Don't tell anyone." Tony says sternly. Loki nods.

"'Fessor X didn't make it so I totally forget when I had one 'bout the servant. 'Cause he wasn't there when it was real and he was today, and he told 'em they were wrong. Wish he was now. Maybe... maybe he'd help you too? If you forget?"

Tony quickly changes the subject.

"You know that them doing it to you was wrong, right?" Tony asks, and Loki isn't sure if he's referring to the servant and Warriors Three or Odin. Both, probably.

That hadn't been the only time they made it so he couldn't talk, where the'd stopped the StupidTongue, as Fandral called him sometimes. They'd used a metal sort of muzzle to silence him sometimes, but that pales in comparison with the other way.

"Nobody's gonna do it to Odin, when he lied like me." Loki says. After all Odin's the Allfather, so he can do whatever he wants, especially to people like him. But Loki doesn't know if he could really wish that agony on anyone, and he's pretty sure he'd never actually be able to do that to someone himself.

"If anyone would deserve that, it would be Odin." Tony says. "Although that's not really how we do things here. We sort of abandoned the whole 'eye for an eye' thing. So even if someone's tortured someone, we generally don't torture them back. Same goes for murder. Although sometimes there are, well, exceptions." Tony stops for a bit, seeming to remember something, before he focuses back on Loki. "Like if anyone tries to mess with you, I'm gonna make them pay. I don't let people hurt my family."

My family. The words echo in Loki's head. He's Tony's family, even if they're not related, like Lilo and Stitch aren't related. Loki finds himself wondering who his family by blood is. Sometimes he pretends Elsa is his sister, and that he's Sleipnir's mother. He glances at Sleipnir, giggling slightly. That's a really silly game they play.

Tony walks over to the counter, reading a the thing in his palm charging up and blasting at a metal sheet. A couple minutes later, he comes back with two plates, setting one next to Chip and another next to his own mug. "Here we go, Grilled Cheese a la Iron Man."

Loki takes a bite, and it's really good, even if it makes his finger slimy. He holds it out to Simba, who actually bites it this time.

"You can eat?" Tony asks, looking at the lion. "I mean, you don't have a stomach or anything. Or, you know, a way to poop or pee." Tony pauses thoughtfully. "Is it like when Stitch eats Loki's toys?"

"It's better than bugs. They're satisfying, though, even if they're slimy." Simba says, and Loki giggles. Volstagg hadn't thought so.

"Nice to know how my cooking rates in your eyes." Tony mutters.

---

Tony still feels really guilty for screwing up like he had. Loki doesn't seem entirely normal around Tony again, and Tony's somewhat disappointed. Not that he can really blame Loki, since Tony had kind of majorly triggered him.

Loki apparently wants to finish Pinocchio with Bruce, so they need to wait until Hulk's calmed down.

Tony hadn't expected the little flashback talk, and he never tells people about his own, but Loki had apparently worked it out on his own (even the cave part, somehow, although Tony only mentioned the cave once around him). He's more perceptive than Tony often gives him credit for, and Tony has a feeling that Loki would have known if he'd lied about getting hurt with water. After all, Loki had seen him have a flashback in the pool.

Bruce can't be too far behind in figuring out the truth.

Surprisingly, Sleipnir's still around, though Hel and Fenrir had disappeared a while ago, and the Jormungand necklace is back to being lifeless.

After finishing the hot chocolate and grilled cheese, Tony starts working on the teleportation-blocker some more, but he talks to Loki almost the whole time as well. He finds himself telling stories to Loki. Surprisingly, he even briefly tells Loki about his own biological family (though Loki does ask for some reason), mentioning that he wasn't particularly fond of his father.

Loki asks whether Tony's dad beat him or whipped him, as if he honestly expects the answer to be yes. At that, Tony almost has to elaborate a little more just so Loki won't get the wrong idea. He tells the god about how his father was never around, always looking for Captain America, and how Tony was never good enough for him. He doesn't share this with many people, but honestly, Loki feels more like family than his father ever had.

Loki, in response to the part about looking for Cap, asks "But he coulda asked you, 'cause you're a 'Venger and so's Steve so you woulda known where he was, right?"

This leads to Tony telling him a general history of Iron Man and the Avengers. He's told Loki a lot before, but never all in one go. Loki's already heard about the Chitauri attack (had even heard of it from Thor in Asgard, apparently) and Tony goes into detail about that battle, mentioning how Hulk had caught him when he fell.

That fact alone should prove to Bruce that Hulk's not a monster, but they're still working on that, sadly.

Loki in turn tells stories of his own. Some of them don't exactly make sense since Tony has to be missing the context. Loki mentions his real father is a king on Jotunheim (which Tony already knew), and Loki even admits that he likes to imagine Elsa is his sister.

Sleipnir and Simba even join in on the conversation, which feels sort of strange (mostly with Simba). Sleipnir says, with the air of someone who's been puzzling over something for a while, that Loki grew a lot when he was in the dark, so why hadn't he grown too? Tony remembers Loki saying something about his friends having to go away.

Loki had also bashed the turkey baster with the frying pan some more.

Tony knows that simply breaking a turkey baster and petri dishes isn't going to magically solve all Loki's problems, but it's got to at least help, right?

After two hours, Hulk finally seems to have calmed down, but according to Jarvis, he hasn't turned back into Bruce. Tony suggests that they finish the movie with Hulk, and Loki seems delighted with the idea.

Anyways, now that Hulk's not having a little rage party downstairs, Loki seems to really want to visit him, and Jarvis says it seems like it would be safe.

They head down to Hulk's floor. The place is a mess. The furniture is strewn around, and some pieces have pieces missing, but for the most part they'd been Hulk-proof, like they're supposed to be. The punching bags are no longer hanging from the ceiling, but are scattered around and hadn't fared quite as well as the furniture.

Hulk looks over at them, almost with concern. "Hurt Nice Man... Loki okay?" He lumbers towards them. "Loki hurt?"

Loki leans up against Hulk, shaking his head slightly. "Better nows. Tony says you gots mads 'cause you saw my 'llusion mouth." Hulk gently puts a massive hand on Loki's back, even as he growls slightly.

"Who hurt Hurt Nice Man Loki? Thunder Man Thor? Hulk smash Thor!"

"Allfather Odin dids it." Loki mumbles.

"Hulk smash! Hulk rip Allfather to shreds!" Hulk roars, and Tony's wondering if maybe they should leave. But shockingly, Hulk's still hugging Loki, even if it looks slightly less gentle due to his anger. Loki doesn't seem to care, though.

"Gotta takes deep breaths, Hulk-y. It helps." Loki says, and Tony snorts at the idea of Hulk meditating like Bruce.

Hulk seems slightly less angry, though, and he looks at Sleipnir and says simply. "Horse. Lots of legs."

"Hi!" Sleipnir says brightly, and Simba greets Hulk as well. Hulk looks at Simba in surprise. "Toy lion talk? Toy lion alive?"

"I'm Simba. And I can talk for real now." Simba says.

"We were going to finish Pinocchio." Tony tells Hulk. "I don't know if you were watching before, but..."

"It's 'bout a puppet who came real and he might be a real boy someday! And the mean Strombli guy locked him in a cage, but he got outs after the Blue Fairy came and he lied and his nose grew!" Loki supplies. "And there's a cricket that's not even like a cricket." He giggles.

Hulk doesn't answer, instead turning and looking around the room. He grabs the Hulk-sized sofa and uprights it, although it leans slightly. He sits down and looks at them. Tony feels like a little kid, sitting on such a huge couch, and Loki actually clambers into Hulk's lap, placing Simba and Stitch on his own lap. Sleipnir lays down on the floor.

Jarvis pulls up a holographic screen, and the movie starts again.

Honest John and Gideon are shown drinking in a pub and celebrating the money they got from selling Pinocchio to Stromboli. The coachman offers them even more money to gather bad little boys and take them to Pleasure Island. With a very demonic smile, he says they never come back as boys.

"Yeah, and this totally doesn't make you seem like a pedo." Tony mutters under his breath.

"What's that? Like a flower?" Loki asks, and it takes Tony a second to realize Loki thinks he said petal.

"Uh, no." He hadn't even thought Loki would hear him when he's a bit away, much less that they'd have this conversation.

"What'd you say then?" Loki asks expectantly. Ordinarily, Tony has no problem blurting out uncomfortable things, but how is he supposed to explain this? He's kind of surprised to realize that he wants to shield Loki from some of the uglier aspects of the world. Loki's seen plenty of horrors already.

"Jarvis? What's the word Tony said?" Loki asks.

"Do you really want to know, Mr. Loki?" Jarvis asks. Loki nods, and Jarvis sighs. "Very well. A pedophile, which Mr. Stark shortened to 'pedo', is a person who engages in sexual activities with children. Pedophilia is both very wrong and against the law."

Loki scrunches up his face in disgust. "That coach guy does sex with those boys?"

"Thank god, no-" Tony starts to say, but he's drowned out.

"HULK SMASH PUNY COACH MAN!" Hulk roars and leaps towards the holographic screen, smashing a fist into it (somehow, Loki manages to hang on to Hulk when he does this). It disappears, and Tony holds up his hands.

"Whoa, big guy! He doesn't do that, but he kinda seems like the type who might." Tony replies, before rambling on. "I mean, it's nice to know you have the right opinion about that matter. I didn't know it made you angry."

"Bad." Hulk states, and Tony turns to Loki.

"I hope nobody ever did that to you." Tony mutters.

Loki frowns, as if he's not sure if they're still talking about sex. When he doesn't answer after a bit, Tony clarifies with "Forced you to have sex, I mean. Especially if you were a child. Or anytime really. You don't really seem like the type of guy who'd really want to have it." Honestly, Loki still seems sort of like a child, even though he's not, and Tony doesn't exactly think his mind's just a child's mind either. There's more to Loki than that.

"Never had sex." Loki says, before he cocks his head to the side, clearly thinking. "Y'know my dreams where my Sleipnir came outta me, likes a baby?" Sleipnir looks up, and Loki grins at him and sinks down on the floor next to the horse. Hulk watches, a very confused expression on his face.

"Uh, you mentioned it, yeah." Tony says. "Wait, dreams, like you've had it more than once?"

"Yeah, and sometimes I dream I'm a horse an' I'm in my field with other horses under so many stars and I'm really really happy!" Loki laughs, flapping his hands and singing his song with Sleipnir.

Loki frowns, obviously thinking, before saying slowly. "If my Sleipnir came out, someone had'ta put him in, right, 'cause that's how babies work. Lady Frigga saids so. Need to do sex for a baby, ands the guy puts the baby in the girl tummy but it seems like he's gonna pee in her." Tony bursts out laughing at this, figuring this is Loki's way of saying the man puts his penis in. Loki stares at him, apparently not seeing the humor. "'Xcept I don't r'member any dreams 'bout someone putting him in, nope nope nope! Just he came outta me."

Loki had mentioned that he was a mare the other time he brought this up on the plane, but that would mean he could switch his biological sex or something, like a hermaphrodite. Really, how the hell would that even work? Actually, Tony doesn't even want to know. As Loki seems to have just realized, it would involve having sex with a horse.

"But that was a dream, right? This is all hypothetical?" Tony asks, silently begging Loki to say yes- and be telling the truth, of course.

Loki nods, twisting his fingers together. "Yeah, just a dream. Think it mighta been my first dream of my Sleipnir? I forgets, but I shared it when we was pretending we're my Monster Family."

"He's my mummy!" Sleipnir says, rubbing his head against Loki's chest.

Loki probably just had a crazy dream about his imaginary friend, and now he and his imaginary friend pretend it's real.

"Feels reals, but all my other dreams do too. Like, even Hans and Gaston killing you guys felts real but it's not, 'cause you're not dead. B'sides, nobody ever teased me 'bout it and they woulda if it's real."

Tony sighs in relief. If that wasn't a dream...

He's not entirely sure he wants to know if Loki can switch biological sexes. He can clearly switch ages, like when he'd turned into Mowgli, so it's not as farfetched as it could be, but the idea is somewhat weird to think about.

"I'm real." Sleipnir says and Tony's been starting to think Loki doesn't control his friends anyways. Sleipnir's normally not around for this long, but he'd always seemed reluctant to leave.

"What happens when you're not with us?" Tony asks the horse curiously.

"I go back to the dark." Sleipnir says quietly. Tony wonders what the dark is. Probably that's where he is in Loki's mind is when the god isn't making his friends, but Sleipnir sounds like he doesn't like it.

Loki looks like he's heard this before.

Tony shakes his head and has Jarvis turn the movie back on. They're interrupting this one a lot more than usual, especially with the long break in the middle.

Honest John convinces Pinocchio to go off to Pleasure Island, and he meets a boy named Lampwick on the coach with the messed-up coachman. At Pleasure Island, the boys run wild, smoking, drinking and engaging in various other illegal behaviors like vandalism (including drawing over Mona Lisa). Tony can practically hear Pepper saying he would have fit right in there a couple years ago, although he's never smoked.

Jiminy is shocked when he finds Pinocchio smoking and playing pool, and Lampwick scoffs the cricket, shooting pool balls at him. Jiminy storms off when Pinocchio says Lampwick is his best friend, not Jiminy. However, the cricket notices the coachman and various shadow-like guards caging a bunch of donkeys to be sold off to the circus or salt mines. Once of them can still talk, and cries for his mother before the coachman cracks a whip and yells at them to shut up.

Loki tenses, leaning up next to Tony.

Lampwick continues to mock Jiminy after he's gone, and he grows ears and then a tail, the reverse order of what Loki had done earlier. Lampwick screams in horror once he realizes what's happening and sees a donkey face in the mirror.

Stitch spits out Loki's horse mask, which has changed frequently from looking like Maximus to looking like Spirit. However, Loki has trouble fitting it over his Stitch ears.

Lampwick begs Pinocchio to help him, before he transforms entirely, running around braying and kicking things. Tony glances at Loki, hoping he won't freak out- the movie certainly portrays this in a negative light. Loki merely looks confused as Pinocchio grows his own tail and donkey ears. "Why don't they like being donkeys? Donkey doesn't mind being a donkey." At first, Tony thinks that's redundant until he realizes Loki's talking about Donkey from Shrek. "Donkey can talk." Loki says, as if talking donkeys are the norm instead of the other way around. "Why do the boys hate it?" He asks again.

"They probably don't like being donkeys because they're used to being people." Tony answers, and Loki follows up with asking why the don't just change back. Apparently he thinks all the boys have magical abilities that enable them to shift. Tony says it's probably something external (the island maybe) is turning them into donkeys, not the boys themselves, so they can't turn back. Loki nods uneasily.

The god pauses and says, apparently back to the topic of Shrek "There was someone like Pinocchio, 'xcept he looked different! An', and maybe Donkey was a boy once?" Honestly, Tony thinks Donkey is supposed to be a reference to the donkeys in Pinocchio, and a different Pinocchio did appear in Shrek.

"Maybe. Do you think you could totally turn into an animal?" Tony asks, glancing at Loki's ears and tail.

"Can't becomes a animal, you stupid freak." Loki says, but he's clearly repeating something he heard rather than calling Tony a freak. Loki flicks his fingers, frowning. "'Xcept I do in my dreams, like whens I'm a horse. And I dreamt I was a bird once and flew 'way from Asgard too."

"Or what about turning other people into animals? You could probably do that, too. Just don't turn me into a llama or anything." Tony says, before realizing Loki won't get that Disney reference. If they ever watch that one, though, Loki will undoubtedly compare Tony to Kuzco and perhaps try to pull that llama trick in a game. Or as a prank.

Loki just nods as if asking not to be turned into a llama is perfectly normal.

Pinocchio flees Pleasure Island, leaving Lampwick, who he'd just claimed was his best friend, behind as a donkey. That sort of seems like it's going against the criteria of being brave and unselfish, Tony thinks as Pinocchio throws himself into the water. He could never do that.

Geppetto, it turns out, has been swallowed by Monstro the whale, although why exactly he was looking for Pinocchio at sea is a mystery to Tony. Pinocchio learns this from a dove, who's really the Blue Fairy. Pinocchio and Jiminy search underwater for Monstro, somehow managing to survive without breathing underwater. Well, Pinocchio's a puppet, so he probably doesn't have to breathe, but Jiminy would.

They eventually join Geppetto, Figaro and Cleo inside Monstro, and Pinocchio declares that they're going to get out by making a fire to make the whale sneeze. This is followed by their desperate attempt to flee Monstro on a raft, and Geppetto almost drowns.

Tony doesn't exactly like these drowning scenes. They bring up memories of being waterboarded in Afghanistan, although they don't exactly cause total flashbacks like some scenes do with Loki. There are a surprising number of drowning scenes in the Disney movies they've watched, though: that one scene where Aladdin was tied up, gagged and thrown in the water, that time Eric had almost drowned before Ariel rescued him, it'd even happened in Lilo & Stitch.

The scene in The Incredibles where the plane Helen, Dash and Violet got shot out of the sky and they landed in the ocean was enough that Tony tried to shut it out by fiddling on his StarkPhone. However, the scene in Tangled where Rapunzel and Flynn were in a cave with rising water may have been the worst for Tony, since there was the whole cave part as well as the water. He'd managed to not let on any of his thoughts those times, and he's hiding them now, too, but Loki stares at him.

Right, Loki knows he hates water now, since he'd seen him have a flashback in it. Loki actually snuggles up close to Tony (the first time since the whole turkey baster incident). Tony tells himself that Loki's looking for reassurance and comfort, but he knows the truth in the back of his mind- Loki's really trying to offer it to him.

Tony doesn't actually push Loki off him.

Pinocchio saves Geppetto from drowning but ends floating face down, unmoving, Loki frowns, looking quite worried for Pinocchio but seeming confused at the same time. "But, he breathed underwater, like Ariel 'n me, so why's he... dead? Is he?"

"Maybe he hit his head." Tony suggests, and Loki stares at him with an odd expression on his face.

As Geppetto cries over Pinocchio's lifeless body back at home, the Blue Fairy declares that Pinocchio's been brave, truthful, and unselfish. Pinocchio wakes up as a real boy, no longer with donkey ears or a tail, and Tony notices that Loki's Stitch ears and blue Simba tail are gone now.

"He's real!" Loki says, as if it's the most amazing thing in the world. The god flaps his hands, yet he sounds almost jealous.

Tony's about to ask Loki if he thinks himself unreal or something, but stops himself. He's done enough damage today.

As Jarvis turns the TV off, Loki chews on his lip and stares at Tony. "That's it?"

"What do you mean?" Had Loki liked the movie so much that he wants more?

"What happens to the boys that becames jackasses?" Loki asks anxiously. "They still donkeys? And in cages? What 'bout Lampwick?" Huh, the movie had kind of skipped over that.

"I don't know." Tony admits, and Loki smacks his own thighs anxiously.

"An' what happens to Honest John 'n Gideon? What 'bout the guy who had the coach and Stromboli?"

"What about them?"

"They gots away, like the Warriors Three an' Odin dids. Didn't even gets beat up like Thor." Loki says quietly, dejectedly. "Didn't get in trouble. Shouldn't they? They weres bad."

Oh. Tony hadn't even thought of that, but in every other movie they've watched, the bad guys had faced some sort of consequence for their actions. And Loki's right. This movie doesn't provide any explanation of what happened to the villains or donkeys.

"Yes, they should get in trouble. What do you think should happen to them?" Tony asks, and he's asking about the 'Warriors Three' and Odin, but Loki apparently interprets the question to be about the fictional characters.

"Hulk smash puny bad warriors!" Hulk rumbles, but he doesn't shout it.

"The boys can be boys again, but they can be donkeys when they wants." Loki nods slightly. "Bein' a donkey wouldn't be bad, I don't thinks, 'specially if you can talk like some of 'em can. Like Donkey." Tony figures he's talking about the one in Shrek again.

"So what should happen to the villains?" Tony asks.

"Stromboli wouldn't like bein' in a cage. He'd be sorry if he was in a cage like he put Pinocchio ins."

"Going for the poetic justice approach?" Tony asks, smirking. Loki doesn't answer as Stitch spits out a figurine- one of the characters, the antagonist in fact, from Loki's Mickey Mouse figurine set (Tony thinks his name is Pete, but he's not sure). Like Stromboli, he's pretty fat. Loki holds the toy in a fist and tries to make a cage around it with his fingers.

Loki glares at the figure substituting for Stromboli and says "You can't even tel'port outs, nope nope nope. You're gonna stay in there for being bad."

"How about the coachman? Would you make him turn into a donkey? I mean, he was already a complete ass, but now he'd really be one."

Loki shrugs, snuggling up next to Hulk. Despite being only early afternoon, he actually looks really tired, which is rare since he somehow goes from energetic to asleep without really having a middle ground most of the time, except there's one now. Loki's clearly able to go without much sleep, and he's usually full of energy.

Then again, Tony has a feeling all the magic he'd used today had worn him out. He'd used way more than Tony expected him to, although most of it seemed accidental. And then there had been the whole flashback. Frankly, Tony's surprised Loki's still awake, all things considering.

"Can you..." Loki sighs sleepily as he speaks. "If you ever see 'em, will you make them sorry's?"

"The coachman and Stromboli?" Tony asks, about to say he doubts he ever will see them since they're fictional.

Loki shakes his head no, his speech getting even more muddled as his eyes start to droop closed. "Warriors Three. Likes you and Hulk-y did with Thor... Do that to them?"

"If I ever see them, they're going to be very sorry for how they treated you." Tony says as Bruce nods, eyes flashing green. "If we can beat up Thor, we can beat up his little gang of friends."

"Odin?" Loki's practically asleep by the time he's gotten the name out. Odin's really the one who should pay the most, since he seems to be the instigator for making Loki's life a living hell. Equally unfortunately, he's the most powerful person in all of Asgard, or, if one believes Thor, all the 'Nine Realms'. Not exactly a smart guy to pick a fight with, because to be honest, if Thor really wanted to end them all, he could, easily... and Odin's supposedly even more powerful. Them beating up Thor had really been reliant on him not retaliating and smiting them all with a huge lightning bolt.

"We'll make him pay, somehow." Tony promises, though he has no idea how.

Loki falls asleep leaning up against Hulk, who carries Loki over to the Hulk-sized bed. After righting it (it had been upside down), Hulk lays Loki down, before laying down next to him.

---

When Bruce wakes up the next morning he blinks at the light amount of light. Once he's adjusted to the light, he realizes the ceiling looks... soft. Rubbing his eyes, he opens them yet again to see that's still the case.

He's in the Hulk's floor, on a huge bed. Jarvis informs him he's been asleep for almost sixteen hours.

He remembers seeing Loki's mouth stitched shut, but then he'd Hulked out and doesn't remember what happened after. He supposes he fell asleep after transforming back.

However, he hears snickering, and rolls over to see Loki and Tony are in here too. Had they been here when Hulk was angry? That would be suicide.

On the floor, Bruce sees a drawing of Pinocchio with his donkey ears and tail next to Loki with his Stitch ears and blue lion tail (although he no longer has them).

Loki's drawing over Tony's face with marker, snickering like mad. He's added a crazy mustache, over Tony's real mustache, and has drawn stars all over Tony's forehead, in practically every color imaginable. On one cheek is something like the embroidered patch on one of Simba's paws, which Loki explains is Rafiki's painting of Simba.

Tony vows to get his revenge when he wakes up and notices. Jarvis, sounding very amused, says he's gotten several photos and video of this, and refuses to delete them when Tony tells him to (Bruce and Loki both protest at that idea).

After showering to get the ink off, Tony spends the day in his lab, working on the teleportation blocker. Loki and Bruce spend most of the day in there too. It helps that Loki's actually trying to teleport now. Meeting Kurt was definitely a huge help, Bruce thinks, as Loki attempts to teleport to the other side of the lab.

They find out, after Loki accidentally freezes part of the floor, that it's easier for him to teleport when he's sliding across ice. Bruce suspects this is related to the fact Loki teleports when he thinks he's flying.

However, Loki still needs a lot of practice, and he's only been able to teleport to places he can see. He's clearly capable of teleporting to places he can't see, though, since that's how he ended up on the Helicarrier in the first place, and there had been those times he'd teleported in his sleep. That still clearly terrifies him.

Loki makes Bruce watch The Lion King with him and Simba. Loki and the lion act out basically the entire movie, and Simba actually acts himself now. Loki uses his other Lion King figurines (though none of them come to life, although they move a bit occasionally) and Jarvis provides Scar's lines, while Loki plays various other characters.

Simba comments that Loki looks the most like 'Uncle Scar'. Both are lean with green eyes and dark hair (or a mane, in Scar's case). Loki seems to find the part near the end of Timon and Pumbaa doing the hula particularly hilarious, perhaps because he'd seen Lilo and Stitch do it. The god winds up making a hula skirt with his powers, and wears it happily. Tony points out that usually girls wear it, but Loki counters with the fact that Stitch, Timon and Pumbaa aren't girls.

Stitch even moves a couple times (which had happened before yesterday, just like with Simba) and even Loki's Elsa doll moves a bit. Loki seems disappointed that they don't seem as lively as his 'Monster Family' or, now, Simba. Bruce wonders if it'll stay like that or if Stitch will act alive more.

Bruce thinks, if they ever show Loki Toy Story, that Loki will bring all his toys to life. That would be really chaotic.

Around four in the afternoon, Jarvis informed Tony for, according to the AI, the fifth time, that he has some party for some charity Jarvis had donated to in Tony's name, to help make sure poor or homeless people get something to eat. Jarvis claims that Tony had ignored the first four reminders, while Tony denies he'd ever gotten them.

It's only then that Bruce realizes that Thanksgiving, which is on November 28th this year in 2013, is quickly approaching.

Bruce hasn't celebrated Thanksgiving in years. While he was on the run, he was never in the USA and thus never in a country that actually celebrates Thanksgiving. That, and he never really had enough money to buy a huge feast, or anyone to eat with for that matter. Even last Thanksgiving, after the Chitauri incident, he'd been back in more remote places in the world, although he wasn't exactly on the run anymore.

Bruce had suggested inviting some of the other Avengers, since it's not like any of them really have anywhere else to go, with the exception of perhaps Thor who has family in Asgard (and who doesn't even celebrate Thanksgiving). But Bruce wouldn't have thought of inviting him anyways.

Come to think of it, Bruce isn't not sure whether Natasha celebrates it either, since she grew up in Russia.

In the evening, Tony goes out to that Thanksgiving charity event (or a party for some charity event) with a bunch of other rich people, and Bruce is glad Tony hadn't gotten some insane idea to drag them along like he had that time they went to Stark Industries. Bruce really isn't a party person.

"Your turn." Bruce says, glancing at Loki. They're playing Scrabble again. Loki frowns at the letters in front of him. He'd insisted on having random tiles in Scrabble like Bruce and Jarvis do, which Bruce finds slightly admirable, especially since this would be a hard game to play even with a translator like All-Tongue in his head, since Loki needs to produce English words with random letters from an alphabet that was completely unfamiliar two months ago.

Loki and Bruce are currently sitting on Bruce's bed- which is even larger than a king size bed, like all the beds in the guest rooms. Bruce still isn't really used to all the luxuries life at the tower provides. Heck, his bathtub is practically a small swimming pool, and the closet in his bedroom is bigger than some of the places he'd stayed at while on the run.

Bruce isn't entirely sure why they're playing games in his room instead of the living room, but they'd wound up in here.

Bruce's floor is scattered with rectangular wooden blocks. They'd broken out Jenga for the first time since that day Bruce had met Loki. That hadn't even been a full two months ago, yet it seems like he's known Loki for longer, and they're a lot closer than Bruce ever thought they'd be. Bruce had first seen proof of Loki's magic when it had kept a Jenga tower that really should've fallen over standing up and ignoring the laws of physics and gravity. Loki had totally panicked back then.

This time, however, Loki had smirked when the tower remained standing when it really shouldn't have, before bursting out laughing when it toppled as soon as Bruce touched it. His magic had clearly stopped holding it up as soon as it was Bruce's turn. The god had actually been rather devious, using this trick to win every single game, but Bruce hadn't cared. Seeing Loki laugh while using magic made Bruce's heart soar, because they really havebeen making progress.

They're playing Scrabble now. Loki frowns at the holographic board, and at his tiles. He asks Simba what he should do, but the lion isn't much help. Apparently, Simba can't read.

Loki slowly arranges his tiles to spell 'gzvrx'.

"Uh, that's not a word." Bruce points out.

"Is too!" Loki protests, crossing his arms and wiggling his bare toes. Simba echoes his statement. It's somehow weirder to see Simba talk than when he'd first seen Fenrir show up out of nowhere.

"It doesn't even have any vowels, although I admit your hand stunk if it was all consonants. Every word has at least one vowel." Bruce argues, and Loki rattles off all the vowels in a singsong voice, before saying that it's a word again.

"Oh really? Care to give a definition, then?" Bruce arches an eyebrow, and Loki giggles, saying Tony does that a lot. Bruce certainly can't argue with him there.

Loki appears thoughtful, and Jarvis somewhat ironically starts to provide the definition of the word definition, though Loki interrupts to say that he knows what it means.

"It's..." Loki starts, and Bruce thinks he's going to prove he knows what definition means though when he continues it's obvious he switched back to talking about the questionable word he put down. Despite there being words like Mjolnir and Bilgesnipe in Asgard, Bruce seriously doubts Gvaxrzrk is a word. "It's a gzvrx."

Bruce rolls his eyes, although the fact Loki actually pronounced that makes Bruce wonder whether or not he's actually lying about this, and he asks Loki for a definition again.

"Gzvrx is a animal in Asgard Ass-Guard! It's gots big gold horns like," Loki's hands trace imaginary curved horns that would be coming out of his forehead, and for a brief second, long golden curved horns are visible. "and it plays tricks when you're not looking. Like, it'll steal your stuff so you thinks you losted it but then it gives it backs 'xcept it looks different an' sometimes it gets broke."

Bruce briefly tells him that lost is one of those weird exceptions, like knew, saw or ate, that doesn't have the usual -ed ending for past tense. He also reminds him that you use an before words that start with a vowel, instead of a. Loki wrinkles his nose, clearly not liking how crazy English is as a language.

"I get twenty six points!" Loki exclaims excitedly, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction and grinning a bit too innocently at Bruce. "One for all the letters in your alp'bet. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, 'bomination, blasphemy."

Bruce smiles at Loki's song. It starts to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which Bruce had shared with Loki a while ago, since it's how he learned the alphabet as a child (thanks to Sesame Street). The second bit Bruce recognizes as the alphabet scene in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He also notices with some surprise that it even rhymes and has the same number of syllables. Did Loki come up with that on the spot in a language he's still new at, or had he used All-Tongue?

"Okay, okay. Twenty-six points for you. Looks like you're winning." Bruce says before grinning. "Not for long, though." Smirking, he lays down his own nonsense word jubyaz. Okay, it's cheating, but the opportunity's too good to pass up.

Tony must be rubbing off on him, Bruce thinks. This seems like the sort of thing he'd do in retaliation.

"Let's see... twenty-seven points for me."

"That's not a word!" Loki says with a wild giggle, flicking his fingers before tilting his head with a questioning expression. "Is it?"

"Of course. It means payback."

"No it doesn't." Simba says suddenly.

"All-Tongue says you're lying." Loki says after a bit, staring at Bruce intently. "And Simba."

"Okay, okay." Bruce holds up his hands. "You got me. What does All-Tongue say about Gzvrx?"

"That it's a word." Loki says, although Bruce is almost certain he's lying, since he can't quite stop the grin that spreads across his face.

"Can Hulk come out?" Loki asks hopefully. Bruce sighs. He's not at all surprised Loki asked that- it's the fifth time tonight. But he's still not big on letting the Ot- letting Hulk out, he thinks, glancing at where the Hulk plush Tony and Loki got him is sitting on his bed (Beast and Shrek are now on Hulk's floor). Bruce still doesn't trust Hulk not to flip out about something and, while he has that Hulk-proof floor now, Loki would still be in danger if he was on the same floor.

"Not right now." Bruce says. He's still tired from last night, when Hulk had come out without Bruce wanting him to. At least he'd made it to the Hulk floor. Right now, Hulk seems annoyed in his brain. Yeah, definitely not letting him out when he's annoyed, although that only makes Hulk more annoyed. Bruce manages to force him down with some meditation.

Loki, sulking slightly, has wandered from their Scrabble game. He sulks slightly less once he's curiously looking at the snow globe sitting on Bruce's dresser, next to a clay pot he'd gotten as a gift from a grateful couple in India for providing medical care for their baby while on the run.

The snow globe is something Tony had given him, and inside the little glass sphere is King Kong climbing the Empire State Building. Bruce is fairly certain Tony was making some comparison between Hulk and King Kong with that gift, where some people viewed King Kong as a monster and hunted him down, while others didn't see a monster at all.

"Bruce, look, a go-ril-la." Loki says, pointing at the small King Kong. "Hey, that tower... it's outside, right? I think it's outside the windows? Or is that a different one?"

"No, that's the same building. Nice spotting." Bruce says, glad Loki's distracted from asking about the Hulk. "It's called the Empire State Building. And the gorilla's King Kong." Bruce gestures to the snow globe and tells him to tip it over.

Loki does so and his eyes widen as the fake snow swirls around in the glass sphere. Apparently he hadn't noticed it resting at the bottom. Laughing, Loki shakes it up and holds it for Bruce to see. The god loses himself in staring at the swirling snow for a while, shaking the snow globe periodically.

"If that's that building, then he's gotta be real big, right?" Loki asks after a bit, presumably referring to King Kong. Bruce nods and confirms that King Kong is indeed huge.

"Bigger'n Hulk-y, right? Ands even bigger than Tony's Hulk suit? 'Cause that Empire building's huge. Hey, could Hulk-y climb that building? I wanna watch."

"How about we watch a movie, instead?" Bruce recommends, although they'd already watched The Lion King. Bruce just wants to distract the god from continuously asking about Hulk."Tony recommends How to Train Your Dragon. Do you know about dragons?"

Loki nods, clapping his hands. "They can fly." He says enviously. "An' sometimes they breathes fire. I made the stupid bast-er thing catch fire yesterday but Tony didn't care."

"So do you want to watch it? Or we could watch King Kong, but that's not animated..."

"Tony's not here. We always watch movies with Tony." Loki says, although Tony had been working on the teleportation-blocker when they'd watched The Lion King earlier today.

"Uh, you could find something to read. Actually, I know the perfect book. Tony's got to have it." Bruce beckons Loki to follow him and heads towards the living room. Tony's books are surprisingly organized, and judging by the state of Tony's lab, it hadn't been Tony who organized them. Bruce isn't sure who did, not that it matters. Not seeing what he's looking for on the living room's shelves (although those mostly hold DVDs), Bruce and Loki head to Tony's library, which is a floor above the penthouse. Loki excitedly runs up and down the shelved rows of books, running his fingers along the spines and staring at the books. He stops, pulls one off randomly, flips through it, and puts it back.

Bruce hunts the shelves, which, like Tony's DVD collection, are surprisingly organized, until he finds the book he's looking for. Calling Loki over, he hands it to the god, who slowly sounds out the title. "Ha-rry Pot-ter and the... Sor-cer-ous Sss-tone."

"Sorcerer's Stone" Bruce corrects gently. "The original British version's called the Philosopher's Stone."

"What's brit-ish? And what's phil-oso-pher? Like Hakuna Matata's our problem free phil-oso-phy?" Loki seems to stop caring about receiving answers to his own questions as looks at the cover, which shows Harry on his broom, trying to catch the Golden Snitch. "That boy's on a broom, Bruce!" Loki laughs, clearly finding the idea ridiculous, before he glances back at the cover. "He's gonna fall."

"No he won't." Bruce smiles slightly. "It's a flying broom." Loki giggles before giving him a dubious look that clearly says brooms don't fly. Bruce shakes his head. Honestly, Loki should be the least concerned with logic like that, since he could probably make a broom fly if he wanted to. He's made Toy Stark and Tink fly, after all, and Simba's gone airborne once or twice.

Loki gleefully points out the horse on the cover, and Bruce tells him it's a unicorn, and has to explain what a unicorn is. Loki asks if they can go to his own room room, and, clutching Simba tighter than usual, closes his eyes and leaps forwards. Bruce blinks. Is he trying to teleport there? He's been practicing teleporting since Kurt's visit a few days ago, and Bruce is thrilled Loki no longer loathes every time he teleports. Granted, Loki still absolutely hates teleporting accidentally.

Maybe he just feels like jumping, Bruce thinks, or he might even be trying to fly. Loki leaps two more times without anything magical happening, until Bruce stops him before he leaps into a wall.

During the very short elevator ride, Loki frowns, muttering about how 'it' won't do what he wants and won't listen. Apparently he was trying to teleport after all. Bruce tells him it's good he tried, and Loki smiles slightly. The way Loki talks about his powers make them sound like a disobedient child, Bruce thinks with a grin.

As they enter Loki's room through the usual means of walking, Jarvis turns on the holographic stars and the horses trotting along the walls, as well as the mural Loki had painted back in Malibu of yet more stars and horses, which now floats above Loki's headboard. The holograms provide some light, but not enough to read by. Loki protests when Bruce flicks on the light switch, as it dims the stars above them, so Bruce flicks it off again. Loki stands on his bed, reaching out to try and grab the stars. Loki's really tall, but the ceilings on this floor are at least twelve feet, if not more.

Jarvis solves the solution of not having enough light to read by making the holographic Tinker Bell appear to shine light on the book. Loki laughs and looks at Tink, which is a surprisingly accurate 3d model of the Disney version of the pixie. Jarvis probably could have gotten away with just having a floating ball of light, but he clearly went the extra mile. Jarvis makes Tink hover above Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and chime as if to say 'read it'.

Loki, with Simba, Toy Stark and Stitch next to him, opens the book and flips to the first chapter, carefully reading aloud "The boy... who... lived." although he pronounces lived like how someone would say alive. Bruce gently corrects him. The god pauses with a confused expression, mumbling that it would be a boring story if it was just about a dead boy, since he wouldn't do anything. Unless he was a ghost, Loki points out, contradicting his own point, and Bruce tells him it's not about a ghost. It's about magic. Loki looks at him skeptically, but Simba turns his head to the back cover and says "Loki, look."

Loki apparently hadn't known about book blurbs on back covers, but he reads this silently, eyes growing wide with excitement. Bruce is assuming it at least mentions Hogwarts and magic, and Loki announces "Hogwarts... I heard that before. Where?" He asks himself. "Oh yeah! Tony, he saids I won't get in trouble for doing stuff you learn at Hogwarts, nope nope nope. It says here it's a school of witch-craft and wi-zar-dry." Bruce doesn't remember Tony saying that, so perhaps it was from before he moved in.

"Witch, Wizard... It's magic? Like me?" Loki asks, looking at Bruce with awe. Bruce smiles and tells him to read the book and find out, since it would ruin it to just tell him. Loki nods, asking if this is like when they work on English. Bruce hadn't even thought of that, had just thought that it'd be a good book to read, but Loki announces he's going to read it to Bruce. Bruce doesn't object.

Loki proceeds to read aloud slowly. Sometimes, he seems to be sounding out the words first, which leads to a fair number of mispronunciations, and sometimes he stays silent for a bit, apparently as he sorts out the words in his brain, perhaps with All-Tongue, and then he repeats what he read.

He reads about Vernon and Petunia being proud to be normal and completely dotting on their son Dudley. The Dursleys want absolutely nothing to do with the Potters, despite Petunia and Lily being sisters. Most of the chapter is about the strange day where Mr. Dursley passed a stern cat sitting on a brick wall. They read about how owls were flying everywhere in broad daylight (although Vernon didn't notice during the morning since his desk faced away from the window) and how Vernon was annoyed to see people in cloaks.

When the book mentions Vernon working at a drill company named Grunnings, Bruce needs to explain to Loki both what a company is and what drills are. Bruce uses Stark Industries as an example of a company, although he gets some help from Jarvis while the concept.

They go on to read about how Dumbledore arrives at Privet Drive and talks to Professor McGonagall (whose name Loki seems to have trouble pronouncing, but he'd mispronounced Dumbledore at first too). He really loves that Professor McGonagall turns into a cat, and observes that she doesn't seem scared of it like the boys who turned into donkeys in Pinocchio. Bruce is glad to hear him give this example of good and bad sides to powers (although the boys weren't really magic themselves, it was more the island they were on). Loki continues to read, relaying how Dumbledore leaves baby Harry on the Dursley's doorstep after his parents were murdered, how Harry survived the Killing Curse when his parents didn't. At the very end of the chapter, it briefly mentions that Harry will spend the next few weeks being pinched and prodded by his cousin Dudley.

Bruce wonders how Loki will react to the Dursleys and their treatment of Harry, although Bruce is certainly going to make sure Loki knows it's wrong, just like how Asgard's treatment is wrong.

They seem to be getting closer to him actually believing that.

Hopefully you enjoyed this.

Did this thing really go up another 100,000 words in like 5 chapters? Is that too insane? Is this getting boring?

Next chapter might include a scene with Thor in Asgard. Also, if I have a Thanksgiving scene (and I'm aware not all you readers are in the USA, but the characters are), at least it'll be closer to the actual holiday than the Halloween chapters that were in May.

Also, I got both Avengers movies out of the library and saw the first Avengers for the first time since seeing it in theaters four years ago (wow). I remember not really liking it that much then, but this time I loved it. Maybe seeing that will help with that one-shot that I'm still not even close to done with. I'm starting to feel kind of inspired for that again, hopefully that feeling doesn't go away before I actually write it...

So hopefully I'll make progress on the one-shot, and if I finish it, it's going to be its own story instead of a standalone chapter in this, so I guess anyone who's following won't get a notification if it's up.

I'm definitely going to try to at least get back down to two weeks for updating this, although if I'm juggling it with the one shot, I'm not sure how it'll work. Plus I'll still probably be really busy with school (especially Compsci, bleaugh).

I'm probably going to watch Age of Ultron tonight.