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?

40. Chapter 40

What's this?! An update in three days? Admittedly, I said I'd update soon since most of this was already written, but a couple parts gave me trouble and I was worried I wouldn't live up to it. But I did! I wish I could update this quickly all the time.

Oh, I saw Dr. Strange on Friday, and it was really good. I forgot to mention it when I posted chapter 39 on Sunday.

"Seriously, do you guys need anything? Uh, I don't think the fridge on your floor is stocked, since I had literally no warning that your floor would suddenly have four semi-temporary residents, but Jarvis can fix that. Overnight shipping is great. But I guess you're eating up here tonight." Tony tells Clint and Laura. Clint looks at Laura and then nods.

"So... pizza?" Tony grins, and Laura says that they need some kind of veggie, so Tony tells Jarvis to order a veggie pizza. Apparently, that doesn't count, and Jarvis says something about ordering salads.

Laura is worse than Bruce about what they eat, and Tony's Science Bro certainly seems to care more than Tony about that sort of stuff.

Now that Tony and the others are done talking about the disaster and the Bartons', they head back into the living room.

When they enter, Tony sees a large fort made of three sofas that hadn't been pushed together before, pillows, and blankets from one of the beds draped on top and over the sofa-less side. Tony hopes they hadn't stripped his bed of its blankets for their fort.

Actually, the blanket making the roof almost looks like it's being held up by invisible magic...

Thankfully, there are other sofas to sit on. Coulson and Natasha, instead of leaving, sit with the others on one of the sofas that hadn't relinquished its cushions for the huge fort.

"What? Are you guys bunking here, too?" Tony arches a brow at the two agents.

"No, we were going to leave soon." Coulson says.

Judging from the chattering and laughing inside, the Barton kids and Loki are in the fort. Lila can be heard introducing Loki to a Merida doll, and Angus, Merida's horse. Brave had actually been one of the team's Movie Night movies back before Loki came. Tony had made several cracks that Merida would totally be Clint and Natasha's kid, with the red hair and the archery.

Lila is prattling on about how the witch turned Merida's mother into a bear.

"Like magic?" Loki asks quietly enough that Tony almost hadn't heard it.

"Yeah, it was magic." Lila answers cheerfully. "And Merida and her mom didn't fight as much when she was a bear." Lila goes on to explain that Cheeseball isn't Merida's mother, who turned into a black bear instead of a polar bear, but that she pretends Cheeseball is Merida's mother sometimes. Cheeseball isn't even in the fort, instead lying forgotten on the floor. For some reason, Coulson looks slightly hurt about that.

Tony really hopes Loki doesn't get any ideas to turn him into a bear or something. Or a llama, which is why they haven't watched The Emperor's New Groove yet. Tony knows he's a lot like Kuzco, he does not need Loki re-enacting scenes from that movie and turning him into a llama.

Lila asks Loki about Elsa and Anna, who Loki had tossed back to Stitch when Clint first took his kids into the kitchen. Stitch doesn't spit them out.

Pepper and Laura are looking at a holographic screen, evidently picking out more homey furniture for the Bartons' floor. They completely ignore Tony's totally helpful input- seriously, the what kid doesn't want a huge bed designed to look like a pirate ship? And he's the one paying, right?! Then they have the nerve to let Coulson join them, and, surprisingly, Bruce. Tony's Science Bro puts in a comment now and then, although most of them are also just shooting down Tony's brilliant ideas.

Tony scowls at all of them over his beer. Natasha is picking out clothes for the kids- evidently they didn't pack enough- but she won't let him help pick anything out, either. Even though Lila should have an Iron Man swimsuit, instead of one with Ariel on it (although, Tony has to admit, mermaids fit the water theme of swimming much better than he does, and he hates swimming, although most people don't know that. But an Iron Man swimsuit is still more awesome!).

Clint approaches the fort and pulls a blanket up. Lila's shriek sounds slightly scared but she's laughing at the same time. The little girl reflexively kicks her dad in the ribs with her tiny foot, and it actually manages to connect since Clint is squatting down and leaning into the fort.

"What was that for?" Clint asks, although he's clearly not annoyed as he grabs her foot and then reaches in to tickle her sides. Lila squeals with laughter, letting go of Jessie and Merida.

"Daaad!" Cooper says, holding his Cap shield backpack like an actual shield. Tony really needs to get that boy some toy Iron Man gloves. "You have to come in our fort and be safe. Scar and the hyenas want to come in and eat us!"

Clint looks around the room at the toys scattered everywhere. Tony spies Loki's Scar figurine on the ground. He picks it up, creeps towards the fort, and thrusts it in. "Looking for me?" Man, Jarvis is great at Scar's voice, and Tony's terrible. But Jarvis already has a British accent, so he has an unfair advantage.

"No. Jarvis made Scar, and Ed 'n Shenzi 'n Banzai. Gantu was so big!" Loki says. "And lots and lots of Scar's hy-eee-nas. A army."

"I was indeed cast as all the villains and incorporated the use of holograms." Jarvis says. "We started with Scar, and then moved onto Captain Gantu and a lot of hyenas, as Mr. Loki said." At least he wasn't playing HAL-9000 or something, Tony thinks. He's a little surprised Loki hadn't made Jarvis make a holographic Dr. Drakken or Shego.

Holographic 3d models of Scar and a ton of cartoon hyenas appear. The hyenas are blocking upside-down bins with Loki's toy and origami animals under them. Buzz Lightyear is trapped under a bin as well.

The fort's inhabitants manage to yank the blanket down, leaving Clint outside. He shrugs and plops down on a sofa, where the others join him.

"Nobody's coming in here." Cooper's voice is muffled slightly from within the fort.

"What about my Tony?"

"Our fort only keeps out the bad guys. He's not bad, he's a hero like Dad." Cooper answers. "We need some defenses for our fort, just in case the dumb hyenas come."

Lila adds that they need to rescue Buzz, and Loki insists the animals need it more.

"I thought you said you were Gantu, too?" Tony asks Jarvis.

"We beat him! Tony, we won 'gainst him! He tried an' shot me, but he hit my frying pan. Like Flynn!" Loki's voice comes from inside the fort.

"Mr. Loki did a very good job of defending himself with a frying pan when I was playing Gantu, and later hyenas." Jarvis says, and Tony grins. "I even made holographic force fields." Tony at first thinks that's the AI's way of saying Loki made a force field, but when Jarvis sends a video to Tony's phone, the billionaire sees that Jarvis had actually made holographic force fields for Lila and Cooper.

Then again, those were to cover up the one Loki presumably made himself. Loki had lied and told the kids his own force field was a hologram, but he hadn't actually panicked.

This is a big improvement.

"Good job, Snoopy. You were awesome! I am so proud of you." Tony tells Loki, sticking his head in the fort.

Sure it was pretend, but it definitely sounds like it went better than that self-defense lesson with Natasha and Clint after they'd watched The Incredibles. Loki had still been jumpy as a rabbit that time, flinching whenever Natasha punched at him. He apparently doesn't flinch when his opponents are holographic evil hyenas. Maybe it's because holograms don't hurt?

"I beat him too!" Cooper and Lila exclaim at the same time, clearly annoyed that Loki's getting all the credit.

Clint tells his kids he's proud of them, and their protests die down a bit.

"You can totally beat Scar and the hyenas." Tony says, hoping to see Loki in action. He heads over to the sofa and grabs his glass.

"We need guards." Cooper says again, not coming out of the fort.

"No guards!" Loki shrieks loudly. and Tony knows Loki has really only had bad experiences with guards, and way too many of them as well. Disney movies don't exactly help, either. Guards were the antagonists when they went after Esmeralda and Aladdin. Flynn was being marched to his execution by guards at one point, and Elsa was almost shot with a crossbow, even if she did kick ass in her fight against the Duke's guards.

"No guards no guards no guards no guards please no." Loki's mumbling, panicked, probably with his eyes tightly shut. "Guards hurt."

Before Tony has managed to set down his glass without spilling its contents, Natasha, surprisingly, has already moved and is now next to the fort. She speaks quietly through the sheet, seeming to know that Loki actually likes small, enclosed spaces.

"There are no guards here. Just protectors." Natasha says, and of course she'd be able to think of a way to rephrase it that doesn't set Loki off. Tony briefly nods his thanks at her.

"No guards?" Loki asks quietly.

"No guards." Coulson says it this time. Natasha murmurs something to Loki in Russian.

Lila very tactlessly asks Loki "What do you have against guards? Were you ever in jail where you're from? Dad says you're not bad though."

"Lila, just let it go." Clint says. Tony rolls his eyes when Loki starts humming Elsa's song from Frozen (and great, now it's stuck in Tony's head again, stupid song!) but at least Loki doesn't seem to be panicking anymore. He's clearly using Let It Go as a coping mechanism.

"Here, Darth Maul will help us." Cooper announces, probably pulling a toy version of the weird red-and-black-tattooed Sith out.

"No!" Lila protests. "He's scary! And he's a bad guy. He killed Qui-Gon, so he's on the bad guy side with Scar." Lila sounds upset about Qui-Gon's death. It is kind of similar to Mufasa's death, Tony thinks. Darth Maul killed Qui-Gon and was then killed by Obi-Wan, who was the closest thing the older Jedi had to a son. Scar killed Mufasa and was then killed by Simba, although Obi-Wan's revenge was minutes later whereas Simba's was years, after he became an adult.

"But he's so cool!" Cooper whines. "He has a double lightsaber."

Tony sees Loki smirk and switch Woody and Jessie's hats while Lila's busy fighting with Cooper. Tony smirks at Loki's little prank.

"He's a bad guy!" Lila shrieks, hurling a small plastic Sith out.

"No bad guys!" Loki shouts, evidently taking Lila's word about Darth Maul. He runs out of the fort and comes back with his arms full of his Avengers toys, Elsa, Anna, Olaf, and the plush Jiminy Cricket that Tony bought him recently. Jiminy is a lot smaller than when Tony bought it, just like how Loki changed Pinocchio to actually be wooden, and bigger.

To Tony's puzzlement, Loki hands Jiminy to him. He looks at the little plush cricket and then at Loki. "Why am I Jiminy?"

"'Cause you're my conscience." Loki says, matter-of-factly.

Tony snorts. "I'm your conscience?" There would be so many people who would better fit that role than him.

Loki nods. "Always let your conscience be your guide!" Of course... Tony's put a lot of effort these past two months into trying to convince Loki that Asgard's treatment of him is wrong, and that he's not wrong for doing magic or being a Jotun.

Man, he really is Loki's conscience. It strikes him again how different his life has become in just two short months as Loki crawls back into the fort, dumping the other toys on the cushions.

Lila squeals and shouts Elsa and Anna's names, grabbing at the dolls. Loki lets her hold them, surprisingly, but makes it clear they're his.

"Lila, look, it's Dad!" Cooper exclaims. He runs out of the fort, waving Loki's Hawkeye toy at his father, the real deal. "Dad! Dad! Look! It really looks like you!" He's also clutching Loki's Captain America action figure.

Apparently, the kids have temporarily forgotten about continuing their game with Scar, the hyenas, and the caged animal toys.

Coulson looks at the Captain America figure like it's the greatest thing ever. Tony rolls his eyes.

Laura blinks at the sight of her husband in miniature, extremely realistic plastic form. "He's much handsomer than those action figures of you we saw at the store. Even better-looking than that collector toy you showed me online once." She kisses Clint, to a loud chorus of eew's from her kids, and then glances at Tony. "Was it custom-made?"

Tony nods, grinning. It was, but not in the way Laura thinks. Unless she thinks Loki improved it with his magic, in which case she'd be right.

"Auntie Nat!" Lila runs out, holding the Natasha figure as well as Elsa and Anna. She leaps onto the sofa, landing between Nat and Laura. "Why are you looking at tables?" She asks, face scrunched up. "That's boring! Look!"

The little girl demands their attention as she shows them the action figure to Natasha. "She has red hair, like you and Ariel and Jessie and Mira and Merida!"

"They're all fiery redheads. Pepper, you should totally be in that group. The Spicy Ginger Society or something." Tony grins at Pepper, who rolls her eyes. Lila, meanwhile, is lamenting the fact she doesn't have red hair herself.

"They don't have toys of you, Mom." Cooper says, and Laura just smiles and says she knows. Cooper points at Bruce. "Mr. Banner has a toy and he's not even Hulk right now. I've only seen Hulk toys, not toys of him." Bruce shifts uncomfortably as Cooper goes back into the fort.

"Why does Mr. Loki have an action figure like the Avengers? And why's it have Iron Man clothes?" Cooper demands. "He's not an Avenger! He's not even famous!"

"Did Mr. Stark make it for you?" The boy asks Loki jealously. "Why do you get everything?"

"Nope nope nope. He boughts the 'vengers for me but didn't make mini-me. We don't have a can opener now." Loki says and Tony bursts out laughing. That's right. Hadn't the Loki action figure been transformed from the can opener Loki carted around on his first day here? Everyone but Bruce turns to look at both Tony and Loki really strangely, even the kids. Pepper clearly remembers Loki carting around a can opener the first day, but doesn't seem to get how that relates to the Loki action figure.

"I don't see why you got made into a toy." Cooper mumbles.

Their pizza and salads arrive, much to the delight of the kids (but they're only enthused about the pizza, and clearly couldn't care less about salad). The kids leave their toys in the living room, but Loki brings Simba with him to the kitchen, as always. This doesn't go unnoticed.

"You brought Simba in here?" Lila asks. "Mommy says no toys at the dinner table."

Cooper jumps in with "Why do you bring it everywhere?"

Tony's stopped asking that question a long time ago, and he can't imagine Loki without Simba. Plus, now that Simba's armor acts as a tracker, the lion will help Tony find Loki if he goes missing again.

"He, nots 'it'!" Loki shouts, holding Simba closer and glancing worriedly at Coulson, clearly still under the impression he's going to take Simba if Loki lets the lion out of his sight, which is sort of what happened on the Helicarrier. Simba, as far as Tony knows, hasn't become animate while the kids are here, just like he hadn't moved around other people at the zoo. If someone took him, Tony has the distinct impression Simba would try to get back to Loki.

"Is this like a feast to cel'brate our victory 'gainst Gantu?" Loki asks, and Tony can't tell if he likes the idea or hates it.

"What?" Lila asks.

"After they won the warriors always hads big feasts." Loki's tone makes it clear he hadn't liked those, where he was most likely surrounded by even more warriors than usual who probably were drinking by the tankard. Loki's tone brightens a bit on the next part. "But even you guys eat in victory after fightin' the stupid Doom-bot things." Loki glances at the Avengers who are currently present.

"Well, normally you work up an appetite when you're saving the world." Clint grins, grabbing a couple slices of Pepperoni. He then grabs a salad, probably from the look Laura sends him telling him to set a good example for the kids.

"Or you're just always hungry." Natasha and Laura say simultaneously.

"Hey, have you seen how much Cap and Thor eat? I've got nothing on them!" Clint says indignantly, before glancing at Loki to see if he reacts to the Thor bit. Loki just looks like he agrees.

Laura insists the kids get a salad, like Clint had, and then tells Loki he should get one, too. Loki doesn't seem to mind veggies- most of them are green, after all.

When Loki starts pretending to feed Simba, he gets some strange looks from the kids, who clearly don't notice that Simba actually takes a little nibble out of the pizza slice Loki's offering. Loki doesn't offer any to Stitch, but Tony has a feeling the alien backpack would eat the whole slice in a blink of the eye.

Loki starts muttering and offering the pizza to thin air (probably one of his friends is invisible right now). The muttering gets slightly anxious, and he rocks back and forth. "Can't eat that can't eat that."

The kids start to look a little freaked out. "Mom? He's being weird..." Cooper says, staring at Loki, who indeed looks like he's mumbling to himself.

Tony frowns. Don't kids have imaginary friends? If anything, the adults should find it weirder, right? Laura looks a little unsure, as if wondering a little about Loki's sanity.

Loki ducks his head, clearly worried they'll be angry, and slides under the table. Tony sighs.

Clint and Laura thankfully shepherd the kids out to the living room to give them some privacy.

Tony sighs and ducks under the table.

"'s just like Asgard." Loki mumbles. "Stupid boy! Don't talks to things that aren't there!"

"But one of them was there, right?" Tony asks. "Even if they weren't visible?" Loki nods. Some people might say Loki's imaginary friends are a bad thing, that he shouldn't have them at his age. Others may even think they're hallucinations, but Tony has a feeling they helped Loki a lot in Asgard. And they seem sentient, somehow, even if they're imaginary.

"Sometimes people say things they don't really mean." Tony tells Loki. Admittedly, Cooper had clearly thought Loki was weird at first, but after the Clint's talk with his kids following the lightsaber incident, they'd apparently gotten along really well.

"Cooper liked my Jormungand." Loki says a little unsurely.

"Okay, that I think he meant. He seemed to think Jormungand was awesome, which he is." Tony answers, and Jormungand nods at Loki encouragingly.

The Barton kids can be heard laughing and shouting in the living room. When Tony glances out, he sees Cooper slicing at holographic hyenas with both the green and blue lightsabers, while Lila makes Elsa and Jessie stomp on them.

Surprisingly, Loki crawls out from under the table and holds Simba in front of him while he charges at the hyenas, roaring. Fenrir appears by his side, snarling, and Loki clearly didn't expect his wolf to show up. He looks happy, but also worried about the others' reactions.

Coulson manages to hide his reaction, but Laura, Cooper and Lila all stare, shocked and a little scared.

Right now, Fenrir is slightly transparent, as if he's a hologram, whereas normally he looks quite solid. Tony gets the feeling that's on purpose, because the others assume he's just another hologram made by Jarvis, and Laura breathes a sigh of relief.

Lila bravely approaches the huge wolf, who's at least a head taller than her even on all fours, and lays a tiny hand on his side, although it goes through him. It helps that he's intangible, with the hologram cover-up. Fenrir makes a gentle noise towards her, and Loki grins.

Fenrir and Loki join the kids in defeating Scar's holographic hyena army. Jarvis even shoots out holographic snowflakes for Loki's Elsa- who Loki has reclaimed- Frozone and a holographic fairy (that Periwinkle character Lila mentioned, apparently) as if they're using powers, and then makes it look as if a hyena had been frozen.

Loki laughs delightedly, jumping from foot to foot and flicking his fingers. He accidentally lets out a couple snowflakes of his own.

Lila makes Woody almost save Buzz, until he's cornered by hyenas, and Jessie and Lila (who by now has switched from shooting finger guns to firing an invisible arm laser to doing karate chops) swoop in to save the day and rescue Buzz from under the bin. Tony definitely sees what Clint means about Lila liking strong female characters.

Both kids pretend to use the Force to push the hyenas, and Jarvis obliges by making them fly backwards. That's definitely something Loki's done with his powers for real.

The battle takes about ten minutes, and somehow everyone gets dragged into it. Natasha and Clint are handed the action figures of themselves but told to pretend they're Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable.

Coulson borrows Cooper's Cap shield backpack and reaches for Loki's Cap toy, but it vanishes into thin air and reappears in Loki's hands. Loki sticks his tongue out at the agent, and the kids had been so busy fighting that they hadn't noticed.

Finally, the holographic hyenas stop coming, and Loki makes Simba defeat Scar before he frees all the animals from under the bins, grabbing the Lion King toys to be reunited with Simba. "Now there's no more evil bad sad cages!" Loki shouts, picking up the bins and sliding them across the floor. "You're not gonna be trapped in 'em ever again!"

Cooper, Lila and Loki crawl back into the fort after that, leaving the blanket wall up.

They end up drawing pictures. Loki draws himself, Simba, Stitch and Fenrir defeating Scar, a hyena, and Gantu.

Cooper draws his toy dog in what is clearly supposed to be an Iron Man suit. Apparently Jarvis had made a holographic Iron Man suit briefly go over the toy. He also draws a X-Wing flying over a giant stick-figure boy that's evidently supposed to be Cooper holding an uncolored lightsaber.

While Lila's using the blue marker to color in the sky behind her green and purple butterfly, Cooper asks for it, saying he'll only need the blue for a second to color the blade of his lightsaber.

Lila ignores Cooper and the boy's whining gets more insistent.

Somehow, Loki's coloring Stitch in with a blue marker, even though Tony's pretty sure there had only been one blue in the box, but the kids are too busy bickering to notice.

Cooper tries to yank the blue marker out of her hands while she's still coloring. Lila retaliates by crumpling Cooper's drawing. This devolves into them screaming and hitting each other, while Loki curls up in the corner of the fort with worried eyes.

Tony's really glad he's not a parent, because the screaming is giving him a headache, and that's coming from someone who blasts rock music in his lab at volumes that may not be healthy.

Clint mutters that this is a sure sign it's the kids' bedtime before going to break up the fight.

Laura looks like she's mentally berating herself for not checking the clock. "Bedtime, kids." She sighs, looking rather ashamed of her kids' behavior.

Both kids protest loudly.

"But I'm not tired!" Cooper whines, even though he clearly is. "Ten more minutes?"

"It's nine-thirty. You already got to stay up well past your bedtime. Lila, it's even more past your bedtime." Laura makes it clear they're not going to get an extension.

"Can we sleep here in the fort, please?" Cooper begs, flopping onto the cushions making the floor of the fort. "It'd be like camping inside!"

"Yeah!" Lila shouts, and both kids give their mother Bambi eyes. "Pleaseeeee, Mommy?"

Clint looks like he's going to say yes, because honestly, sleeping in a fort would be awesome. Then Cooper says "Mr. Loki can sleep here too."

Okay, no, that really won't work, Tony thinks. Not when Loki still has nightmares almost every night. Tony shakes his head firmly, and Clint decides to throw Tony under the bus. "Sorry, guys, Mr. Stark says no." He tells his kids.

"Besides, he gave us our own floor. We're sleeping there." Laura adds.

The kids grumble that they're not even tired as they reluctantly crawl out of the fort, even though Lila's eyelids are drooping as if they're weighed down by lead, and Cooper looks pretty tired too.

"You're lame." Cooper tells Tony, who smirks.

"My Tony's not lame!" Loki shouts.

Laura tries to make Cooper apologize, but instead, Lila asks "How come Mr. Loki gets to stay up later than us? Is he gonna get to sleep in the fort?"

"He's an adult, so he gets to choose his bedtime." Tony answers, and Laura sends him a look like she thinks Loki should have a bedtime. Does she mother everyone?

"But he acts like us." Cooper mutters irritably. Clearly someone's grumpy when they're tired.

Lila crawls back into the fort.

"Lila..." Laura warns sternly.

"I forgot my toys, Mommy." Lila explains, and then demands. "Who switched Woody and Jessie's hats? Cooper, stop!"

"It wasn't me Lila!" Cooper shouts back, louder than necessary. "It was Mr. Loki!"

"Was too you!" Lila hollers at her brother. "You always do it!"

Tony's very glad he doesn't have to deal with this sort of stuff.

Eventually, Clint and Laura get the kids into the elevator. Natasha is holding Lila in her arms while Laura shepherds Cooper along. Coulson joins them in the elevator, apparently ready to leave with Natasha.

So now it's just Tony, Loki, Bruce and Pepper in the penthouse, which is incredibly messy, what with the fort and the bins acting as Loki's zoo. The kids have left some of their toys up here, including the polar bear, but Lila had been sure to take her Toy Story toys, and Cooper had grabbed Lucky.

"You needs apples! Golden apples!" Loki says irrelevantly and runs to the kitchen. When Tony follows him, he's hunting through a fruit basket on the table, pulling out the apples. He frowns, realizing they're all green or red, and then a green one shimmers and turns golden. Loki passes it to Tony.

"Is this, uh, still good to eat?" Tony asks, as Simba bats an apple around the counter. He's alive now.

"Aside from the color, none of the physical or chemical properties seem to have changed, sir." Jarvis says. "Although there is residual energy from Mr. Loki, but it is not harmful."

"It's not really Idunn's." Loki mutters, sounding annoyed. "Need a real one."

Loki starts pulling crumbled bits of hamburger- wait, is that the hamburger he hadn't eaten at the zoo restaurant for lunch?- wrapped in napkins out of his pockets, until he notices Tony staring at him. "Stitch would have ate it if I let him eat it." Loki says matter-of-factly, which sounds redundant.

"But why do you have food in your pocket?" Tony asks as Loki unfolds the napkins and carefully arranges hamburger chunks in some sort of pattern known only to him on the countertop. Apparently, neither of them noticed Loki hiding his lunch in his pockets. Then again, he'd been hiding under the table in the zoo's Dancing Crane Cafe.

"How do you gets food to your head... brain?" Loki asks after a bit, rubbing the side of his head with the palm of his hand. Tony blinks at the non sequitor, but there's that whole saying, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Tony's mind jumps around a lot, after all.

"It goes there automatically, through your blood." Tony says. Or at least, he's assuming that's how it works for Loki, too as he seem to have very similar physiology to humans, even when his skin is blue. After the whole palladium poisoning incident, Tony's pretty well-versed with how the body works, although he can't really do anything medical like Bruce can, even if Bruce isn't an "official" doctor. (Bruce does have a bunch of doctorates in physics, but that's entirely different, obviously).

"You didn't have to save your food, you know. You especially didn't have to keep it in your pocket. You'll always get stuff to eat here."

"It's not mine. For my Sleipnir and my Fenrir." Loki says. "Well, not Sleipnir, 'cause horses are... plant-eater animals- oh it's herb-vore, the word! Herb'vores eat plants! But my Fenrir's a wolf and wolves are carn'vorous, so he eats meats."

"Hey, I at least know horses are herbivores. They eat, like, grass and, uh, that yellow straw stuff- hay! Right?" Tony knew basically nothing about animals for most of his life, but has picked up at least some stuff from Loki talking about them, and Tony had read all the signs at the zoo, too. Not that they had horses there, but how different are zebras, really? Loki could probably tell him exactly what makes them different, actually.

Loki's giggling about Tony forgetting the word for hay, even though Loki literally just blanked on the word herbivore for a bit."Hey, pot calling the kettle black here." Tony says, pointing at Loki. Loki cocks his head to the side, and Tony's pretty sure they went over this expression sometime before and Loki thought it was a really strange saying.

"So Fenrir has to get meat an' Sleipnir gets... apples. Or carrots, 'cause there's no grass here. Tony, we need more grass."

"But... aren't they just air? They can't really eat..." Tony points out. Then again, Loki had pretended to feed Simba even before he was seemingly alive, and Tony's seen him trying to feed his sentient imaginary friends before. Jarvis had even mentioned Loki trying to feed Sleipnir after chasing Stitch naked through the penthouse when the alien stole Bruce's snow globe, when Tony and Pepper were at that Thanksgiving charity gala.

Loki suddenly looks really sad, fiddling with the hamburger chunks as he mumbles "I try, I do. Real hard but it never works..." After a bit, he sneers slightly. "Idiot! Don't waste food on things that aren't there!" Loki's voice doesn't sound like his own, and he's obviously quoting someone in Asgard. Maybe many people had told him that, since they'd apparently bullied him for having imaginary friends.

"Hey, you can feed them if you want to." Tony says, gently, not wanting here to be at all like Asgard. If Loki wants to pretend to feed his friends, Tony's not going to make him feel bad about it. "And Jormungand technically isn't just air. Are you going to feed him, too?"

Loki tilts his head to the side, and Jormungand hisses something in the god's ear. "Snake food at the zoo." Loki reports.

"You fed him at the zoo? Okay." Tony supposes it would make sense for Loki to pretend Jormungand ate when he was slithering around the touch exhibit.

"What about Hel?" Tony asks. "I mean, she's like literally bone thin on one side. You think she'd need some food." Loki just shrugs. Apparently it's not an issue for Hel. Maybe it's because she's sort of dead?

The god holds a bit of hamburger meat out on his palm. "Fenrir." He calls softly, and the huge wolf bounds over. The wolf mouths the meat, but it doesn't go anywhere as his teeth apparently pass through it. Fenrir whines slightly, and Loki looks at him, frowning, before popping the hamburger into his mouth, muttering, apparently to the food, "Now go to my brain, to my Fenrir..."

They wait, as if trying to see if it'll reach Fenrir. It doesn't seem to. Why can't Loki feed his imaginary friends? After all, if he imagines them eating, shouldn't they at least look like they're eating? Of course, with the exception of Jormungand, the only tangible one, they wouldn't be able to make the food go away.

Loki then grabs a green apple and holds it out. Loki only seems to use green apples, not red ones, which works out since Tony prefers the red ones, and no, that's not because they're closer to Iron Man colors. "Sleipnir..."

Sleipnir doesn't appear.

He frowns. "Sleipnir?"

Loki closes his eyes and rocks back and forth, dropping the apple so it rolls across the floor. He doesn't say anything for a bit.

"Hey, you alright?" Tony asks quietly, laying a hand on Loki's shoulder and looking at him with concern.

"He's gone..." Loki whispers, so quietly Tony almost doesn't hear it.

"What?"

"He's gone!" Loki shrieks, eyes flying open as he looks around wildly. "He's all goooone! Where?! Where! He's nowhere! Sleip-niiiiiir!"

Loki becomes rather incoherent after that, darting around the floor and searching for Sleipnir as if he'll pop out behind a doorway or show up under the furniture, even though he's really in Loki's head.

"Mr. Loki, I am sorry to report that I do not see Mr. Sleipnir anywhere in the tower." Jarvis is truly apologetic, as opposed to some of his snarky apologies to Tony.

Loki stops in his tracks, rocking from side to side. "Nowheres?"

"He normally doesn't come out without you explicitly wishing it, right?" Tony tries to suggest that Loki just try imagining him (that's what he does, right? Although Loki's friends do seem strangely sentient), but Loki just calls out Sleipnir's name more and doesn't respond.

Bruce tries to tell Loki that he should take deep, calming breaths, and that it might be easier to find Sleipnir in his mind if he's relaxed. Bruce sits down and tries to get Loki to join him, but Loki pulls away, crawling around on the floor and sobbing out Sleipnir's name.

"Fenrir? Where's Sleipnir?" Loki asks tearfully. "You're in The Dark with him, in my head?"

Fenrir just gives a sad little whine that somehow seems to indicate that he's thinking 'not anymore.' What does that mean? Are Loki's friends not in his head when they're out like this? That makes no sense, though.

"Jormungand?" Loki asks, not bothering with the actual question of where Sleipnir is.

Jormungand hisses that he doesn't know, because he's here. In a way, since he's a necklace or belt or scarf (depending on his size), he seems separate from Loki's head all the time now, whereas Loki's other friends aren't always present and are presumably in Loki's head when they're invisible.

Loki always acts like they're not in his head when they're visible.

Loki crawls into the fort, Jormungand wrapped tightly around him as the god's body shakes with sobs.

Tony, Pepper and Bruce crawl in the fort, all trying to offer reassurances and just calm Loki down. Pepper hands Maximus to Loki, who gives them a look that says quite clearly that Maximus could never replace Sleipnir, yet he hugs the toy horse to his chest with Simba all the same.

Fenrir follows them in, and Hel appears, saying that he's not in her Realm of the Dead or something. Right, isn't that Loki's story about her? He's definitely mentioned that Hel rules dead people, and asked her to make sure Tony doesn't die. It's pointless, of course, but it seems to bring Loki comfort.

"You gonna leave too?" Loki asks the them frantically, burying his head against the huge wolf. When Tony brushes a hand against Fenrir, he swears he feels fur, but his hand passes into Fenrir all the same. Maybe Loki's illusions are getting even more extraordinary.

"Don't leave me, please! Please don't!" Loki might be begging this of Tony, Bruce and Pepper as well as his Monster Family, and Tony assures Loki he's not going anywhere. He can't make any promises about Loki's friends, though.

Tony finds himself singing Loki's lullaby over and over, until he's barely aware of what he's singing anymore as his eyes start to droop closed. Loki keeps asking his other Monster Family members not to leave.

"Mayb'll find him 'n my dreams." Loki mumbles, slurring the words, and soon he's asleep, his grip on Tony's shirt loosening.

---

Bruce is a light sleeper, which was a very useful quality when he'd been on the run and the military sometimes decided to strike in the middle of the night. Well, then the Other Guy would take control, but if Bruce hadn't been awake in the first place, they would have just taken him.

Anyways, Bruce feels movement beside him and he wakes up to see the blurry form of something falling and block out the small amount of light that had been there. The thing that fell had been the blanket acting as the entrance to the fort Loki and the kids had built, and the light must have been coming from the penthouse or Simba's arc reactor.

It seems Bruce had fallen asleep in here when trying to calm Loki down.

Bruce's eyes adjust to the dark, and he sees Tony and Pepper cuddled up together, Tony with his arms wrapped around Pepper, whose body is blocking the light from Tony's arc reactor. Apparently they'd all fallen asleep in here, which isn't too surprising, Bruce supposes. After all, it had been a long day today, with the zoo trip and then Clint's family moving in. It's still a little weird, thinking about Clint being a family man. He never seemed like the type.

Bruce wonders how Tony and Pepper would react if they woke up and found themselves in the position they're in now, something that was probably fairly normal when they were dating and actually slept together. Not that he's going to wake them up.

It's a pity the fort blocks the view from Jarvis' cameras, so Jarvis can't get pictures.

Bruce suddenly realizes that Loki is nowhere in the fort. Simba is gone, too, of course.

Bruce crawls out, but there's no sign of Loki in the living room, either.

"Mr. Loki is in his bedroom, Dr. Banner." Jarvis says, quietly enough to not wake Tony or Pepper. "He appears to be dreaming, and at least at the moment, it does not seem to be a nightmare. But it is... odd."

Well, at least he hadn't wandered far, Bruce thinks, before frowning and wondering what Jarvis means by odd.

From the holographic starlight in Loki's room, Bruce soon finds out.

Loki is crawling around on all fours, tossing his head so the mane of his horse head mask flies around. Loki seems almost eerily like a horse. Even with the awkwardness of a humanoid body being nothing like a horse's, Loki is trotting around on his hands and knees with more grace than Bruce would ever be able to manage, probably more than anyone would be able to manage.

Bruce thought Loki's lion impression at the zoo was good. This trumps all his other animal impersonations at the zoo by a mile. It's like he's literally a horse in a human body.

Fenrir, Hel, and Jormungand are all crowded around Loki, and it's clear Loki doesn't want to lose contact with them.

Simba is alive now, running around and pouncing on Loki's calves, which are conveniently at floor level when he crawls around. "Rawr!" Simba roars playfully. Loki rears up on his knees, waving his arms.

Bruce blinks when Loki's feet morph into hoofs, and his legs slowly become more horse-like. It kind of reminds Bruce of Lampwick turning into a donkey on Pleasure Island, or that guy with goat legs in the Narnia books, Tumnus. Then again, Bruce has seen Loki grow a blue lion tail and Stitch ears before, as well as turn into other people, so this really isn't that strange in comparison.

Loki gets up on his new hoofs and somehow manages to stay balanced, even though his feet cover less surface area now. How does he manage to not fall over?

Loki lets out a whinny that also sounds very realistic, but then says, from under the horse mask, "Bruce?"

"Yeah, it's me."

The god lets out a snort with a toss of his head, like a horse might Bruce thinks. Or maybe it's just a snort and he's reading too much into the horse thing with the mask and the legs- are they real or an illusion? The snort sort of sounds like he's scoffing that of course he knew it was Bruce there. Bruce smiles slightly.

"Have you been a horse before?" Bruce asks as Loki moves around on his legs- which have knees that bend the opposite way- as if it's nothing new to him. Bruce pokes one, and it feels hairy and inhuman. Definitely not an illusion, then.

Loki cocks his horse-masked head to the side. "In my dreams. But... can't turn into animals, you stupid boy, stop talkin' nonsense!"

"Whoever said that was clearly wrong." Bruce raises an eyebrow. "Uh, you know you have horse legs, right?" How would Loki not know? But he hasn't actually acknowledged his new legs yet.

"They feels nice." Loki says dreamily, plopping down to the grassy rug and kicking his hoofs in the air before trying to grab them with his hands. Bruce doesn't think he'd agree with that, if he had horse legs. They look kind of awkward, especially since Loki has half the number of legs a normal horse would and there's probably a reason horses don't go around walking on their hind legs all the time.

"Did you have a bad dream?" Bruce asks. Loki does have nightmares almost every night, although Bruce is no stranger to nightmares himself and he's pretty sure Tony has them too. Actually, probably all of the Avengers have them.

Loki's voice is quiet, but it steadily grows louder and more agitated. "There was a really bad zoo withs awful cages, with nothing in 'em 'xcept the animals!"

Wait, is Loki describing a dream, or is he just talking about the pretend game he'd played with the kids? Bruce sort of thinks it's the latter.

"But you let all the animals out, right?" Bruce asks. "And, I mean, the cages were just bins, right?"

"My Sleipnir got out, but then he went 'way towards the light an' he didn't come back when I called him..." Loki's voice is choked, as if he's about to cry, and he snuggles up close to Fenrir and Jormungand, clearly trying to ensure they're still there. One hand scratches behind Fenrir's ears like one would do with a dog, instead of a large wolf, although Bruce can see that Loki's fingers are actually sticking into the wolf's head.

That light part sounds like what some people believe going to an afterlife is like, and what some people who'd had near-death experiences have reported. Bruce isn't sure he buys into it. Loki, meanwhile, seems to believe that Hel rules Helheim and decides what happens to people when they die.

Has Loki's imaginary friend somehow died? But Hel is just another imaginary friend, right? And can imaginary friends die? Well, most kids who have imaginary friends stop imagining them, and then they sort of fade, but Sleipnir seemed like more than an imaginary friend, and Loki said he'd had to go away in Asgard, whereas he's been showing up a lot here.

"Hel hasn't seen him." Loki says, almost as if he's reading Bruce's thoughts, or maybe it's just a coincidence. He had been asking his friends if they'd seen Sleipnir earlier, and Hel said she hadn't.

"Oh. Um, hopefully he turns up." Bruce really hated seeing Loki that sad. He still seems sad.

Loki pauses, as if he wants to ask something and is searching for the words. Instead, he starts singing "If you find the field where the horses roam, and you need a place to call your home, the moon and the stars will give you light, to sleep in the grass in peace tonight."

"This is my happy place, like my field." Loki says, and Bruce can't see his expression from under the horse mask. He hums the next bit of his song but sings the final two lines. "Their hoofs beat to the stars and the moon above, just follow them to find the one you love."

"He's still not here!" Loki exclaims tearfully as he kicks his horse legs in the air, so as to avoid kicking any of his remaining pretend Monster Family.

"Sleipnir." Bruce guesses, even though there's really no other answer.

"Can you ever not finds Hulk-y in your head?" Loki asks as Simba wriggles onto his stomach,

"Uh, no, he's always there." Bruce answers, slightly taken aback by the question. In his mind, Hulk grunts 'Hurt Nice Man Loki sad.'

"How d'you talk to him if he doesn't?" The rubber horse head turns to face him briefly before gazing up at the holographic stars. It's really weird, trying to have a serious talk while someone's wearing a horse mask.

Usually it's the other way around, and Bruce tries to ignore his green counterpart.

"Maybe horse mad?" Hulk says in Bruce's mind. Bruce pauses, surprised. "Um, Hulk wants to know if Sleipnir's mad at you." Bruce relays the message.

Loki rocks slightly, but he seems to look inward, almost like he's meditating. He's more focused than he'd been during their actual meditation lessons.

"Maybe 'cause the food doesn't get to him?" Loki asks unsurely, looking at Fenrir. "Are you mad 'bout that, Fenrir?" Fenrir gives a little whine and nudges Loki with his nose, so it looks like he's sticking his snout into Loki's side.

"I don't think Sleipnir's mad about that." Bruce tells him gently. After all, Fenrir's usually the angriest one, and he's clearly not mad.

"Then why's he gones?"

"Are you doing something different with them?" Bruce asks after a bit. Why does Loki expect him to know the answer anyways. "Maybe he's just sleeping or something?"

"'s like... doors, kinda. Monsters open doors." Loki says, and Bruce has no idea what he's talking about. "Love is an open door, an' I loves my Sleipnir and I think he loves me too. He was the first I ever r'member loving, like how I love my Tony and you an' Hulk-y now." He cocks his head to the side.

Bruce smiles at that, his chest filling with warmth. In his head, Hulk actually seems happy to hear that Loki loves him.

"My Fenrir's and my Hel's are open now. My Jormungand... maybe doesn't really gots a door now? I dunno. Jor, where's your door?!" He asks, confused, as he strokes Jormungand as if to ensure he's still there. Maybe it has something to do with Jormungand sort of having a body?

"My Sleipnir's door... why's it closed now? Stuck, I can't open it! Like befores!"

Loki makes tugging motions in the air, as if trying to yank open an invisible door floating in the air above him.

"You said this happened before, right?" Bruce asks. He knows he's mentioned, repeatedly, that his friends had to go away in Asgard, and they only returned a little ways into the time he's been here with Tony.

"Yes! What if they puts it through the door ripper 'gain? Make it all torn up like before?" Loki asks anxiously, flapping his hands and kicking his hoofs. "No! No little pieces, not like Boo's door!"

Bruce can't tell if Loki's imagining a door currently being shredded, and what's this about it happening in the past? He puts a hand on Loki's shoulder and decides to roll with the Monsters Inc analogy. "Hey, remember, Mike put Boo's door together for Sulley, and then he could visit Boo again?"

Loki nods, hope dawning on his face.

"Well, Sleipnir had to go away before, but he returned, right? So who's to say he won't return again?"

Bruce really hopes he isn't screwing this up.

---

Tony hadn't realized he'd been asleep until he wakes up... sometime. He doesn't open his eyes, so the billionaire feels rather than sees a female body pressed up against him. He doesn't think he'd snagged a one-night-stand last night, and he smells a very familiar scent. Pepper. The body in his arms is familiar, another reason he's certain it's not a random hookup. Tony snuggles closer, breathing in her sent.

From his arms, Pepper lets out a sleepy sigh.

It's only now that Tony realizes he's in the fort from last night. He must have fallen asleep when comforting Loki.

Pepper had evidently fallen asleep in the fort, too, and somehow Tony wound up snuggling her in his sleep. It wasn't uncommon by any means for them to wake up like this back when they were dating, but now...

It's only now that Tony wakes up enough to remember that they haven't been together for some time. Pepper seems to reach this realization at the same time he does, and they hastily separate.

Oh no, they're inevitably end up talking very thoroughly about this. What if she thinks he's doing this on purpose? He is a playboy, after all, or was, and he really can't deny that it felt really freaking good to have someone in his arms again. He hasn't done anything of that sort since Loki arrived just under two months ago.

But he and Pepper are in the past.

Pepper's not looking at Tony, but past him. Loki is sitting in the corner of the fort, surrounded by toys. He's playing with his Quasimodo figurine, and Quasi's three imaginary gargoyle friends. Bruce, however, isn't in the fort.

"Hey." Tony says, as Loki stares at them.

"Why'd you stopped your hugs?" Loki asks them. "Hugs make you feel better likes you were happy, but then you were..." Loki's face adopts the expression Tony's face must have had when he realized he and Pepper weren't together anymore. "Why?"

"Uh..." Should they even tell Loki they were dating once? "How's Sleipnir?" Tony blurts. "Like, did you find him yet, or...?"

Loki shakes his head sadly, fiddling with an origami horse and curling tighter into the corner of the fort. "I don't want broken doors! But Bruce says maybe he'll come backs, 'cause he came back b'fore after he went away there so maybe he'll come back now too."

After that very repetitive statement (and what's the thing about broken doors), Loki says, surprisingly nonchalantly after what he just said two seconds ago. "Jarvis made waffles with me." He nods in the general direction of the kitchen and smiles a bit. "They were really good, but I almost made them get stuck, but he reminded me to spray it. What happens if they get stuck? Are they just there forever?"

Tony decides not to mention that he once did buy a whole new waffle maker (he's assuming that's what Loki was talking about) because he forgot to spray it and his waffle was hopelessly stuck and he didn't feel like cleaning the waffle maker. As in, he couldn't just stick it in the dishwasher.

When Tony crawls out to get breakfast (his back is a little sore) Loki stays in the tent.

"Good morning, sir. It is 8:32 AM, December 1, 2013. I trust you had a restful night?" There's a slightly amused tone in Jarvis' voice, as if he knows how Tony woke up with Pepper. Tony glares at one of the cameras. "Your charity event yesterday definitely caught the media's attention, although this time it wasn't to report that you showed up drunk." The press had loved tearing him apart when that happened, and he'd been thoroughly chewed out by Pepper.

Holographic articles of the zoo event pop up, and Tony skims through one as he has Jarvis start some waffles. Maybe that'll get Loki out of the fort.

"'It is unknown as to why the billionaire has decided to support this cause. He seems surprisingly passionate about it, having given a speech rather than passing it off to an employee'" Tony reads aloud. "Blah blah blah, seriously, they don't just consider maybe I'm against child abuse? "He left the zoo after his speech.' Wow, that disguise seriously fooled everyone? That is actually tragic." At least the tabloids hadn't run across Loki, though.

He scrolls down some and finds a bit about that Augmented Alternative Communication app he'd programmed, which he'd mentioned before that interview with Marla Simhan went to the dogs. There's a brief blurb about one of SI's employee's daughters using the app, along with an eye-tracking device, to communicate when her Rett Syndrome has left her unable to speak, walk, or control her hands' movements. There's also a photo of the girl, with a non-holographic Starkpad mounted on her wheelchair.

Jarvis says the Bartons are asking if they can come up, and that the kids are clambering to go to the pool. Sure enough, when they arrive in the elevator, Clint's spawn immediately dash towards the fort. They're wearing their swimsuits- Lila's is a one-piece, blue swimsuit with Ariel and Flounder on it, while Cooper's swim shorts have sharks on them. Cooper isn't even wearing a shirt at the moment.

"That's Ariel." Loki points at the picture on Lila's swimsuit. "I don't like her father! Didja know Stitch hit her with a wave once?"

"No he didn't!" Lila laughs.

Apparently, they've already had breakfast on their own floor. Lila chatters to Loki about how big and bouncy the beds here are, and bemoans the fact her mom made her stop jumping on them, and Cooper nods in agreement. The girl bounces a bit on the cushions acting as the fort's floor to compensate.

It hasn't quite seemed to sink in with Lila that she and her family are going to be away from their home for an indefinite amount of time. Since it's no longer safe, they may actually never return.

"My Tony an' Bruce and Pepper slept with me here." Loki joins Lila in bouncing on the cushion floor. Tony's sofa cushions have taken a lot of abuse from Loki the past few months.

"You slept in the fort?! Why did you get to?" The kids clearly think it's unfair, which in some ways it kind of is.

Laura patiently tells them that the same rules don't apply to Loki, which the kids find hugely unfair, but she manages to distract them by saying they're heading down to the pool now.

Loki asks if he can join, and then runs to go change into his swimsuit.

Clint approaches Tony, clearly wondering if he should ask something. Tony just gives him a look telling him to spit it out. "This is going to sound weird, but, well, Lila's turning six in six days, including today-" Tony interrupts him to point out the double sixes in that sentence, and Clint rolls his eyes and continues "-and she has her heart set on a doll that they never even made in the first place. She knows that, and she's really bummed."

Tony has a feeling he knows where this is going, even though if he'd had this conversation twenty four hours ago he never would have believed it. Then again, at this time yesterday, he didn't know Clint had a family. "You want me to make a doll for your daughter?" He quirks a brow. "Really? I'm the world's greatest engineer, and you're asking me to make a doll?"

"I can pay you, of course." Clint says, and then glances around "Right, billionaire. Not like you need any money or anything." He sighs. "Never mind."

"No guarantee or anything, but kind of doll is it?" Tony asks, folding his arms. Okay, honestly, he's probably going to do it regardless, even though it kind of seems like an insult to his engineering skills, and maybe his manliness. But hey, Tony's well-versed in the art of providing people with extravagant or specialized gifts. He's seen how Loki lights up at the sight of his favorite toys, and Lila seems to be the same when it comes to the Toy Story toys she'd brought.

"Lila's really into this show, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, a sort of spin-off on Toy Story . Anyways, you know that Mira Nova character Lila mentioned earlier?" Clint asks, and Tony nods.

Jarvis helpfully pulls up an image of this Mira character. "She's blue." Tony comments, mind automatically jumping to Loki's true form. Maybe seeing Lila be really happy about getting a blue-skinned doll would make Loki feel better about his own blue skin. He's occasionally turned his Loki toy or Elsa doll blue, but not enough.

"She's this show's version of Jessie to Woody. You know, a strong female character who's right up there fighting with all the guys, like Nat." Clint smirks. "Lila's really into strong female characters... Laura's taught her well."

Tony's barely met Lila, but Clint's daughter doesn't seem like the kind of girl to sit idly by and let stuff happen to her. Judging by how she fought holographic hyenas last night and doesn't let Cooper push her around, she seems like the type who would go out and bend the world to her will, rather like Pepper and Natasha, actually.

"Ok, fine." Tony says.

Clint grins. "Thanks, you're a lifesaver. She would've been heartbroken. I'm assuming you can have all the electronic stuff Buzz has, and wings and a helmet and everything, right? Oh, and maybe real doll hair? Wait, could you have hair and a helmet somehow?"

Okay, the doll hair definitely isn't something Tony has laying around his workshop, and he normally doesn't work with plastic either, but it should be a piece of cake. He's Tony freaking Stark.

Tony gives the archer a wounded look. "You really have to ask? I build freaking Iron Man suits. This is child's play- no, baby-play. I building circuit boards at four years old. So do you want me to make it actually fly or something?" Clint actually says no to that, adding that the kids' Buzz Lightyear toy doesn't fly. Tony could fix Buzz up, too, of course. He offers, but Clint says that's going a little overboard.

However, Tony doesn't offer to build a working lightsaber or equip Buzz or the soon-to-be-made Mira with a real laser, because even he knows that doing so would end with someone losing an arm. Or a head.

"Thanks, really. She's already going to have to miss her party with her friends now that we're here, so I really want her to get what she wants. Cooper at least got his party last week, although I couldn't make it." He sounds really guilty about that.

"Wait, your kids have birthdays less than two weeks apart?" Tony asks, surprised. Clint nods, saying Cooper's is November 23 and Lila's is December 6. Man, this must be a busy time of year for them, with two birthdays and Christmas in the span of a little over a month.

"I can arrange for the awesomest party for both of them, since their birthdays are apparently really close together." Tony says. If Lila wants a Space Ranger themed party, Tony could arrange to have the next best thing- real astronauts- show up.

"You said you guys haven't seen Frozen, right?" Admittedly, he's really thinking of Loki again. For starters, Loki loved that movie and would no doubt want to see it again. Furthermore, if Loki sees Lila like Elsa and her magic, that'll probably help him.

"We were gonna see it today, but then all that shit happened." Clint says.

"I'll see about getting another private viewing." Tony says, and Clint looks somewhat shocked, before looking like he's realized some of Tony's motives for this are for helping Loki. "Maybe we can have a whole team movie event, including Thor, just in case someone decides to attack." Another bonus is that, if Thor watches it with them, it might help change the thunderer's prejudice against ice powers. Frozone may have done a little of that when Thor watched The Incredibles, but more examples certainly wouldn't hurt. Especially since he'd see how much it hurt Elsa to be hated for her powers.

"Thanks." Clint says again, looking really pleased. "I really didn't expect you to do all this. And Cooper'll really love meeting the remaining two Avengers." Tony already knows that the kids haven't met Steve from Cooper's question yesterday, and by process of elimination they haven't met Thor either. Do they know what Thor did to Loki?

Technically, Clint's kids only met Tony and Bruce yesterday.

Loki, wearing his swimsuit that doubles as his Mowgli costume, runs towards the elevator with Simba in his arms and Stitch on his back. Clint follows him to join his kids in the pool.

Pepper joins Tony in the kitchen, and before she can mention how they woke up, they're interrupted, thankfully.

"Sir, you are receiving a video call from Dr. Jane Foster." Tony frowns. The astrophysicist? Well, she's also Thor's girlfriend, but, still, why is she calling him? He waves it off at first, feeling he should stick with Loki for this conversation, but Jarvis report that they claim it's very important.

It probably has something to do with Thor, that's really the only explanation. Tony hasn't heard from the thunderer since that time when all the Avengers visited the Malibu Mansion and watched The Incredibles. Had seeing that made Thor view turning invisible, making force fields, and having ice powers in a slightly less negative light?

"Uh, put her through, I guess." Tony shrugs, speaking around a mouthful of waffles. Pepper is with him, while Bruce has gone after Loki.

A holographic screen is projected from his phone. Ordinarily, Jarvis would put the call on the TV, but Tony's eating breakfast and he doesn't actually have a TV in his kitchen. Maybe he should fix that.

Tony gets a very nice view of a woman's breasts under a shirt that leaves some to the imagination, but Tony has a great imagination. There's a voice in the background saying "Jane, have you even looked at the screen? You're giving him a total view of your boobs, but since he's like a super playboy, he probably doesn't care."

"I really don't mind" Tony grins, and Pepper smacks him in the back of the head. He quickly adds "But you're taken, so you're safe from this genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist."

Tony may have a reputation of one-night-stands, including people who were in a relationship or even married (not that those people seemed to care in the slightest. To be fair, he only found out after they'd exchanged fluids). He's not going to go after someone he knows is in a relationship, though. Also, Thor would probably rip him limb from limb if he thought Tony was ogling his girlfriend, and Tony would rather keep all his limbs.

"I'm not taken." The other woman shouts.

The camera angle tilts upwards, but not before Tony gets a brief glimpse of another incredible female body, belonging to, presumably, the person who told Jane that she was giving Tony a free look but is available herself.

Jane Foster looks a lot like Padme Amidala from the Star Wars prequels, Tony thinks.

"Dr. Foster, you're as beautiful as Thor says you are. He talks about you, like all the time." Tony tells her, and she looks slightly embarrassed but pleased at the same time. Technically, Thor hasn't said much about Jane the past few times he's visited, but that's mostly because Tony had been tearing into him about Loki. "Who are you?" Tony nods towards the other equally stunning woman with dark, straight hair. Apparently this other woman is the snarky one.

"Darcy Lewis." The other woman, Darcy, introduces herself.

"Why are you calling?" Tony arches an eyebrow. "Is it because I became an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics in one night?"

"You can't become an expert in astrophysics in a night." Jane tells him firmly, looking rather insulted. "It takes years and years, no matter how smart you are, and there's always new stuff to learn, so you're never really an expert."

She obviously has the same love and passion for science that Tony does himself. Bruce has it, too. After all, Tony doesn't let just anyone be his Science Bro.

"I'm sorry about him, Dr. Foster." Pepper speaks up., leaning in so she's in the picture. "Tony has the world's biggest ego, but I'm sure he didn't mean to insinuate that your work is easy, or that he's better at it than you are." Tony shoots her a betrayed look that Pepper returns with one of her infamous glares.

"Of course I didn't." Tony nods hastily. He honestly hadn't meant that. Besides, he's not the most knowledgable about everything. Bruce knows gamma radiation better than Tony does, and Loki definitely has Tony beat with information about animals, stars and Disney.

"So why are you calling?" Tony asks.

"Thor said that you'd want to know what happened yesterday..."

"What? Did Asgard declare war because I called it 'Ass-Guard' on my fruit basket?" Tony blurts out. Darcy snickers at the renaming of Asgard.

Man, he hopes they didn't take that personally. Okay, he kind of does, and he really wouldn't mind handing out some long overdue retribution to Loki's abusers, especially Odin the Ass-Father.

But deep down, he's not sure how well Earth would do against a army comprised of Asgardians almost as mighty as Thor. That'd be way worse than the Chitauri, which were bad enough. And if Thor is pissed about that, he's certainly not going to be siding with Tony on this and-

Fury's going to kill Tony if it turns out he accidentally started an intergalactic war with a crazy-sadistic space viking god society.

"He didn't say anything about declaring war." Jane says slowly, and Tony feels a mixture of relief and disappointment that he won't get to make the Asgardians suffer.

Pepper's phone rings and she excuses herself and leaves them to take the call. Apparently it's something important for Stark Industries, from what she's saying as she leaves the room, she's no doubt going to some horrendously boring meeting or something, even though it's the weekend. Tony's glad he rarely has to go to those things anymore as he turns back to Jane and Darcy onscreen.

"So what has he told you about Asgard?" Tony asks. Probably that it's a magnificent, glorious realm or some bull like that.

"He said it's wonderful, but from what happened yesterday... some of it seems horrible." Jane trails off.

"They definitely have some huge asses there. And not the fun kind." Darcy mutters.

Wait, has Thor told Jane the darker parts of his society, like all the severely screwed-up shit they put Loki through? It doesn't seem like he's mentioned that he was a large part of it, though...

"So you know about Loki?" Tony asks.

"Low key?" Darcy asks it like it's the phrase instead of a name.

"I'll take that as a no." Tony mutters. So what are they talking about? Were they horrible to people other than Loki? Well, both Loki and Thor have mentioned they have slaves there and that they're not treated too well, so maybe it's that? Has Thor decided to go on an emancipation mission or something?

"Where's Thor?"

"He's here, but he's busy." Jane answers after a bit. "It's about what happened yesterday."

Tony thinks he hears Thor's voice speaking softly from somewhere offscreen, but he can't tell what he's saying.

Thor sounds quieter than normal, and rather gentle. Even before Tony knew about Loki, Thor never exactly seemed gentle. Outside of battle, he was always a bundle of excitable energy, delivering bone-crushing bear hugs to unsuspecting victims. He also has that tendency of booming his words, and Tony hasn't really heard him quiet like this. Sure, he's heard the thunderer talking in a normal voice, but this is like he's trying to coax a frightened animal or a small child.

"He's trying to find food that won't make a horse barf." Darcy supplies, more solemnly. Uh, so Tony supposes he got the animal part right. He's still not entirely sure how this merits a phone call to him. "He says most horses literally can't throw up, but this one does, like, every time he eats."

"Then he guards it like he's planning on saving it for later." Jane adds, as if it makes a sense in a terrible way. "He threw a fit when we cleaned it up."

"What." Tony deadpans. While this is all horrible, why is he getting a call about a horse? "Uh, can you start from the beginning? I think I'm missing something here... or a lot of things. I mean, I know literally nothing about veterinary stuff, so I literally have no idea why you're calling me. I mean, if it was some weird robot horse, I could help, but then it wouldn't be eating-"

Tony hears a faint background noise of retching and barfing, sounding so pained that Tony winces. He's no stranger to throwing up- most of his experience in that is from drinking too much, although he did have the flu once. This sounds even worse than when Tony felt like he was puking his guts out. Tony pities whoever the victim is.

Onscreen, both Darcy and Jane wince as well, temporarily looking off to the side with horrified expressions on their faces.

"You need the number of a really good vet or something. I can have Jarvis get ahold of the best vet money can buy or something, but I'm still not sure what this all is about..."

"Thor brought this really weird spider-horse creature from Asgard yesterday." Darcy says.

Tony's freezes, horror-struck. Spider-horse? No... it can't be.. That sounds like Sleipnir. Hadn't that been how Loki described Sleipnir when he first mentioned him in Dr. Carlisle's office?

No, that's literally impossible. Sleipnir's just an imaginary friend, right? Admittedly one that can seems to be autonomous from Loki and seems sort of real in his own way, but still just an illusion. Do they have a lot of eight-legged horses running around or something?

"A horse with eight legs." Darcy clarifies, probably mistaking his expression for imagining some grotesque creature. "Aside from that, there's not really anything spider-y about him. He doesn't have eight eyes or pincers or anything."

"I need to talk to Thor. Right now." Tony says in a tone that doesn't leave an option to argue. Jane nods and calls for Thor over her shoulder.

Thor appears, wearing normal clothes instead of his Asgardian armor and cape. His current outfit consists of a red flannel shirt, and jeans that look like they have bile on them.

"Thor, what the hell is going on?!" Tony demands almost before Thor's in the picture. Because what Tony's thinking is impossible.

"Well, Friend Stark." Thor says, looking down. "Heimdall informed me yesterday that there was someone you would be interested in in the dungeons."

Thor's never exactly been subtle, so he gets right to it, although he looks extremely guilty. "Loki's... friend, Sleipnir, is real."

Tony stares. He'd just dismissed the idea, and even now that Thor's said it aloud, it seems so unreal.

"Come again? Because I think I heard you say that an imaginary, eight-legged horse that you guys beat Loki up for talking to is in fact, real. Weren't you one of the main nay-sayers about Sleipnir?"

"I was wrong." Thor admits, slowly. "He was locked in the deepest dungeon, a horrid place I did not know existed, and he was... mistreated there."

"How so?' Tony growls.

"It's awful." Darcy says sadly, and then adds. "Don't puke."

The view flips, shifting from Thor, Jane and Darcy to a window in front of the device. All that's out there is what looks like a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in the desert, until someone turns the device around.

Tony spits his coffee out in shock at the sight that greets him, and some of it goes through the holographic screen on his phone.

This horse is literally skin and bones.

The eight legs are sort of a giveaway that this is Sleipnir, except he's much bigger than the colt he appeared to be when Tony saw him. His black mane, the same color as Loki's hair, is very long.

Corpses of people or animals who starved to death probably don't look as bad as Sleipnir does right now. Loki's friend Hel is literally a skeleton on one side of her body, and Sleipnir's as skinny as that half of her.

Sleipnir is rolling around on the floor almost frantically. He rolls into a doorframe and seems to compulsively bite it while he arches his too-skinny neck and makes weird grunting sounds. Thor explains it's called Cribbing, and it's seen in some horses but is considered abnormal. The thunderer goes on to say that he's seen it in (presumably well-fed) horses in the palace stables, so Tony supposes it's not a sign of starvation, which was his first guess. In some ways, it reminds Tony of Loki's somewhat atypical movements.

Tony's seen a ton of terrible stuff in his time, and it's not like animal cruelty doesn't exist here on Earth, but still... How the hell is Sleipnir not dead?!

"Sleipnir?!" Tony asks, shocked, when he feels he can talk without wanting to hurl. "That's really you? You... uh, you've grown in some ways, but shrunk in others." Okay, that probably wasn't the best thing to say, but Tony's mouth is running away with him. Not that that's uncommon, especially in situations when he has no clue what the right response is.

Really, though, Sleipnir's a hell of a lot skinnier than even an anorexic supermodel.

"Damn, you look like shit... no offense. Really, don't take it personally. Uh, Loki misses you, a lot." There's no way Tony wants Loki to see his friend in this state.

Sleipnir stops biting the door and slowly tilts his head to the side, apparently hearing Tony's voice but not knowing where it's coming from. He's nothing like the energetic, playful colt that always showed up for Loki.

Was he really like this all along? His lethargy seems almost overwhelming, although considering how starved he looks, that's really not a surprise at all. Sleipnir rolls over to something on the floor, and Tony realizes it's a can opener. Is that a coincidence, or does he know that Loki played with one on his first day here?

The screen flips back to Thor, Jane and Darcy.

"I know not where he came from." Thor says after a bit. "I simply found him in the dungeons. But Odin must have known, and he should answer for this heinous crime." Thor actually sounds angry at the Odin, as he very well should. If Thor thought this was in any way okay... "We do not do this in Asgard."

"No, you just abuse people for being blue, because that's so much better." Tony levels a look on Thor.

Thor did seem to be telling the truth when he said he didn't know about this, though.

"As soon as I found Sleipnir, I immediately brought him to Midgard." Thor says. "I am trying to make him well again."

At least that's an improvement. Would he have left Sleipnir in the dungeons at one point? Tony would like to think not. It does seem like Thor genuinely wants to help Sleipnir.

Man, Tony wants to freaking murder Odin even more now. He'd totally do it, in cold blood, if he had the chance, and it would be very drawn out and painful. That sick shitty bastard... Loki's treatment was bad enough, but how can anyone mistreat a living being as badly as Sleipnir's been mistreated?! This stuff happens on Earth, too, except earth horses probably would have been dead by this point.

"Who's Loki?" Jane asks Thor.

"Can I call you back in a bit?" Tony asks. As much as he'd like to witness the conversation about Loki, he needs to figure out what in the world he's supposed to do now. Or what in the Nine Realms he's supposed to do now. This situation's level of messed up is big enough to cover all nine of them.

Jarvis ends the call, and Tony rubs tiredly at his face.

He's still not entirely convinced this is real, he really hopes it's just some messed up dream, although he doesn't want to know what dreaming this would say about him.

It's a moot point, since pinching himself proves it's not a dream. Even with that proof, he's still having a hard time believing this. That anyone could so badly mistreat another living being. At least Loki had been fed, even if he's on the skinny side.

He wonders if Thor will actually tell Jane about how he'd played a big role in Loki's abuse, even if he's apparently innocent where Sleipnir is concerned.

Sleipnir's got to have some issues after being locked up for so long. Admittedly, he hadn't seemed to when interacting with Loki before, but there's no way anyone could get out of that and not have some serious issues. It'd be like if Tony was locked up in Afghanistan for his whole forty-three years of life instead of three months, which was bad enough. Sleipnir's probably older than Tony is, right? Considering Loki's over a millennium, Tony would hazard to guess that Sleipnir's at least a century? He looked like he was pretty much grown.

And then there's that thing about how Thor said he had problems eating. Apparently, he can't die from starvation, or he would have done so long ago. That's freaking horrible.

"Uh, is something wrong?" Bruce asks, coming in and sitting down in the chair next to Tony. Tony briefly glances up, and Bruce awkwardly asks "Is this about last night?"

"Yeah..." Tony moans, not looking up, "Things are really, really shitty right now."

"Why? Because you and Pepper aren't dating anymore?"

"What?" Tony stares at him incredulously.

Bruce gives him a knowing look. "Well, you two were cuddling last night in the fort." His lips twitch upwards and he fails at hiding his smile.

"Wha-...You saw that? You weren't even there when I woke up."

Bruce shrugs and smiles. "You were doing it when Loki woke me up at around three in the morning."

How did Tony not wake up then?

Tony sighs. "I almost wish it was that. We haven't even talked about it yet. At first, I was glad for the distraction from that, but I wish I never got that call. Well, no, I wish what it was about never happened." Wait, but that would mean Sleipnir wouldn't be alive... is Sleipnir being alive good or bad?

"What is it?" Bruce asks, very warily at hearing Tony's tone.

"Uh, maybe we should go to your cool off floor? Because I totally wouldn't blame you at all for going green over this. I'd have smashed the whole tower already if I could." He wouldn't blame Bruce in the slightest if he Hulked out while hearing this news. Bruce hasn't Hulked out over some of the things they've learned about Loki, which were horrible. This has a pretty good likelihood of resulting in the green guy taking control, though.

"That bad?" Bruce asks really warily.

Tony groans. "Hell yes. And I'm all for you letting off some very justified anger on the big guy's cool off floor. I wanna don a suit and go blow shit up." Preferably Odin's face. "But neither of those are gonna help me figure out what I'm supposed to do now. And I think you can probably help."

Bruce nods, and closes his eyes. Tony gets the feeling he's having a conversation with Hulk in his head. Hey, that should help the relationship between Bruce and his huge alter-ego, right?

Apparently, he was bargaining with Hulk, since when he opens his eyes, he says. "All right. The- Hulk- says he won't come out when 'Hurt Nice Man' needs me, but if Loki needs him, he's coming out whether I like it or not. And I think I may have to let him blow off some steam later." Bruce sounds somewhat surprised that he'd actually managed to bargain with Hulk, which is weird, because Hulk's living in his head so one would think he'd know Hulk better than anyone.

And yet, Bruce still hasn't totally seemed to decide Hulk isn't a monster, although this makes it seem like they're getting there.

"Sleipnir's real." Tony says.

Bruce frowns. "What? But he's just... you know, imaginary. Loki grew horse legs last night when you were sleeping. He was crawling around his room, saying it was their field, looking for Sleipnir. You know, in his song 'follow them to find the one you love'."

"No, he's real. Thor apparently found him yesterday, and he honestly didn't seem to know, so he might actually be innocent here. Not that that changes the fact that Sleipnir been starving in an Asgardian dungeon for who even knows how long! A century?! Two?! Loki's like a thousand, right? I have no clue how Sleipnir's even still alive! He looks like he's been to hell and back multiple times. He looks worse than Loki's Hel." Tony rants. "I mean, now Loki trying to feed him makes horrible sense."

"I really wish you were kidding about this, but I can tell you're not." Bruce moans, and Tony definitely shared that sentiment when Thor told him. "How bad a shape is Sleipnir in?"

Seeing it is so much worse than hearing about it, Tony knows from experience. Tony hesitates a tad, but he trusts Bruce's hold on Hulk and he trusts Hulk not to smash him, so he tells Jarvis to pull up a screenshot of Sleipnir from the video call he'd just had. Somehow, the frozen image seems even worse. Tony could count the bones jutting out of Sleipnir's body, and the fact he appears to be an older horse rather than a young colt somehow makes him seem even skinnier.

Bruce's eyes bleed green, but apparently his deal with Hulk is working, since he doesn't transform. "What sort of sick psychopath does that?!" Bruce's voice is deeper than normal, maybe because his eyes are green and thus Hulk is partially out. He sighs and rubs his face before looking at the photo with mostly-successful clinical detachment.

"I'm not going to list the obvious malnourishment, but he's probably dealing with atrophied muscles, if he really was locked in a cell without much space to move. I mean, look at him. His head's drooping, he's not standing. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he had some infections, although it's hard to tell just looking at him.

"So what do you even do with a starved horse?" Tony asks Bruce as Clint walks in, saying something about Cooper leaving his swim goggles up here.

"What do you mean 'what do you do with a starved horse?!'" Clint demands incredulously. "You feed it! I thought you were a genius."

Then, he notices the holographic picture being projected from Tony's phone. "Holy shit." He stares. "I have literally never seen a horse in such horrible shape. I mean, yeah, people treat them terribly here, too, but how is he still alive?"

"You've worked with horses?" Tony asks, feeling a bit more hopeful but also confused. "Since when?"

Clint just frowns at the picture some more. "Wait a sec, that horse has way too many legs. Wasn't Loki's horse like that?"

Tony nods. "He is Loki's horse. He wasn't so imaginary after all." Clint looks horrified when Tony once again recounts what he'd heard from Thor. At the end, Clint's looking like he really wants to turn somebody into a pincushion for his arrows.

"How the hell am I supposed to break this to Loki?" Tony asks, running a hand over his face and through his hair. He can still barely wrap his head around it, it feels surreal even after telling two other people.

He gets Jarvis to show the camera feed from the pool. Loki is sitting with Simba, Lilo and Stitch on a surfboard- which he'd insisted on bringing back from Malibu, even though there's not an ocean here- and it's apparently his way of keeping his toys that can't get wet close to him while he plays in the water.

When Loki kicks his legs in the water, the surfboard goes almost impossibly fast, as if it's motorized. He's giving Lila and Cooper rides on it, much to the kids' obvious delight, before the diving board catches their attention.

"Jarvis, are there any movies or anything about imaginary friends turning out real?" Not that a movie would come close to solving this problem or replace having an honest conversation with Loki, but they've helped in the past. Special thanks to Stitch and Elsa, with honorary mentions to Violet Parr and Lucius Best/Frozone.

There probably aren't any movies where an imaginary friend was really starving in a freaking dungeon, because what kind of sicko would make a movie about that? What kind of sicko does that, anyways?

Jarvis waits a bit before answering. "The closest I can find to a longtime not-so-imaginary friend is Mr. Aloysius Snuffleupagus, although his first name is rarely used and he also goes by Snuffy."

"Who?" Tony asks.

"I was getting to that, sir. Mr. Snuffleupagus was believed to be Big Bird's imaginary friend for fourteen years. His first appearance on Sesame Street, on November 8, 1971, marked the trend of him conveniently disappearing whenever someone else might have seen him. On November 18, 1985, he was finally seen by the adults on the show, who were under the impression that Big Bird was making him up."

Jarvis provides a picture of a brown, hairy, mammoth like thing with yellow eyes, and then the same creature that's a slightly different shade of brown with longer eyelashes and non-yellow eyes. Apparently they'd changed his look sometime over the years, because he looked really weirdat first.

"Um, I'm assuming this weird mammoth thing is Mr. Snuffle-whatever?"

"Snuffleupagus." Clint looks at Tony in surprise. "You've never seen Sesame Street?"

"I don't have kids." Tony says, because presumably Clint's watched it with his. Admittedly, it did exist when Tony was a kid, but it's not like Howard ever would've let him watch it even if he'd wanted to (maybe he had, and Howard had shot it down?). "And what does it teach, like numbers and letters and stuff? I already knew all that well before I was two. You're talking to a genius, remember? I was building circuit boards at four, when most kids would just be learning all their ABCs."

"I knew all that, too. I just liked the puppets." Bruce says.

"Yeah, okay, Sesame Street is probably not what we're looking for, J." Tony mutters, although Loki had mentioned the little girl at the SI daycare wearing what Tony and Bruce later worked out was a Cookie Monster shirt, although Loki called it Cootie Monster at first. The girl had listed Cookie Monster and Grover as good blue monsters. .

Technically, Elsa and Anna made Olaf as kids, and Elsa brought him to life later, and Quasimodo had those gargoyle friends, but Tony doesn't know if those were actually supposed to be real or not.

There probably isn't a movie that covers something so colossally messed up. At least, not one Loki would watch.

"If I may make a suggestion, sir, perhaps you might want to call Professor Xavier?" Jarvis suggests. "By the way, your next appointment is scheduled for today at three o'clock."

Tony nods, and Clint looks like he's torn between staying here and going back to the pool. Tony waves him away. The archer leaves, looking decidedly less happy than when he'd arrived.

Maybe Charles will have an idea of how to tell Loki about this. After all, the man- mutant, whatever, he's still a person, despite what some bigots apparently think- is Loki's therapist right now.

Apparently, Charles doesn't do video calls, so there's no point in having a holographic screen.

The phone rings for a bit, until Tony starts to wonder if the Professor even has an answering machine, until there's finally an answer.

"Hello, Mr. Stark. Are you calling to cancel our appointment today?" Charles asks.

"Uh, no, actually, we really need you soon." Tony says, his mind racing.

"I'm teaching a class in twenty minutes, but if it's really urgent, I can cancel it. I'm sure the students would not mind." He sounds faintly amused about that last part.

Tony quickly fills Charles in on the whole situation with Sleipnir. Charles never encountered any of Loki's friends, though.

The man just listens patiently, not speaking until Tony's done "-and I don't know how to tell Loki without screwing something up, and I don't know how to nurse a starved horse back to health. Not to mention, Loki will totally freak out when he sees Sleipnir like this, not that I blame him at all, of course, but what if it has some horrible effect?"

"This says you're supposed to feed them alfalfa hay, starting with one pound every four hours for the first few days." Bruce reads off of a tablet. "You're also supposed to contact a veterinarian, for obvious reasons, although Sleipnir's an alien horse, so a normal vet may not work..."

He pauses and then frowns. "Immediate overfeeding could result in death."

"Is there any chance that Sleipnir might not make it?" Charles asks somberly.

Tony blanches. He hadn't even thought of that. "I mean, I figured since he somehow is still alive now- and he looks like he should have died long ago- he wouldn't die now, but they said he keeps throwing up. I don't know." He hates not knowing.

Sleipnir's not going to die, is he? After everything he's been through, he deserves to have a chance at a good life where he's treated right.

"Perhaps, and I really hope it doesn't come to this," Charles starts. "You should wait to see if he makes it, first. It would hurt more, for Loki to get his hopes up only to have them ripped away."

"But I still don't know what to do with him. I mean, my tower isn't exactly horse-friendly, and if he was here Loki might have to watch his friend die." Besides, horses are supposed to be outside or at least in a barn or something. Sleipnir really deserves to be outside after being locked in a dungeon.

Maybe Tony could have Sleipnir at the Malibu Mansion, or even the Hampton mansion that he hasn't set foot in in years, but that still wouldn't solve the problem of Loki seeing his friend like that.

"Sleipnir can recuperate at my school." Charles suggests. "We decided to actually make use of the barn out back. A fairly new extracurricular here is horseback riding, as well as Animal Husbandry, so we have all the necessary equipment for looking after horses." Charles says.

"What about alien god horses?" Tony mumbles. Then again, Charles' school is apparently full of mutants, who undoubtedly have a better grasp on this sort of stuff than most.

"I believe we may even be able to help alien god horses." Charles says lightly, but it becomes more serious. "Many of the horses we have now did not have particularly pleasant pasts. Rather like a lot of my students."

"Did I ever tell you how glad I am that you're Loki's therapist?" Tony asks. Seriously, Charles has done a lot of good, after only one session and a phone call. He introduced Loki to Kurt and is now helping tremendously with this Sleipnir situation. Plus he seemed to help Loki during a flashback once.

Tony wishes he'd hired Charles from the beginning instead of Dr. Carlisle.

"I see you're scheduled for a three o'clock today, but it might be best to get Sleipnir situated before, and Loki can come visit him if he gets better."

"Yeah, sounds great." Tony mumbles, still trying to convince himself that Sleipnir won't die. He hadn't missed the 'if' in Charles' sentence. Sadly, they can't use 'when' just yet.

"I'll call for a jet to pick up Thor." Tony says.

"Oh, there's no need. We have our own jet, remember?" Charles asks. "Just tell Thor ahead of time, will you?" Tony nods and gives Charles the number Thor had called from, even if it's technically Jane's number.

"Hopefully you'll be able to bring Loki to see Sleipnir soon."

---

Jane's giving Thor a completely deserved look of disappointment that only grows when he continues telling them who Loki is.

She clearly isn't pleased with him, but she says she knows he's a better person than that, and that he'd better do something to make it right.

There's no changing the past, but Thor is honestly trying his hardest to do what is right when it comes to Sleipnir. Even Tony seemed to realize that to some extent.

Not long after this conversation, Tony calls them back and asks about the rest of Loki's friends. After all, if Sleipnir is real, who's to say they are not. Tony says something about Loki trying to feed Fenrir and Sleipnir last night and asks if they're starving Fenrir in a dungeon too.

Thor tells him that he actually had thought to look for Loki's friends in the dungeon when he discovered Sleipnir, but didn't see any of the others.

Tony nods, looking disappointed, and changes the subject. Apparently, he set up a place for Sleipnir to recuperate, but it's not his tower or any of his houses, not even the one in Malibu, which had a nice yard.

Tony explains that a jet is coming to pick Thor and Sleipnir up to take them to that place, and that Thor had better go along with it. They'll get a call when it arrives.

At one time, Thor would have loudly demanded who would dare order around the son of Odin and Prince of Asgard. Now, he follows orders from Steve, the Captain of America, and Furious Nick. Besides, he has to admit that he's not entirely sure what to do with Sleipnir. Every effort to feed him hasn't ended rather badly.

He wants to help Sleipnir, honestly, and not just in an attempt to make up for a few of his countless transgressions against Loki.

A few hours later, a call from an unknown number comes in, and it's a woman's voice asking if Thor's there. When he says he is, she tells him to go to a certain crater outside of town. She doesn't refer to it as such, but Thor realizes she's talking about the crater Mjolnir had left upon impact with the ground when Thor was banished. It had been quite a popular place, and S.H.I.E.L.D had eventually built a whole structure around it, but apparently people have lost interest in it.

This would be much easier if Sleipnir was small again. He'd attract a lot of stares from the Midgardians if they saw him in this larger form, and it would be much harder for Thor to get him there.

It takes a bit, but Sleipnir does shrink down to the size of a colt, like he'd been when Thor snuck him out of the dungeons and here to Midgard. He looks much better than he had then, if only because he is clean now. Unfortunately, he has not gained any weight since he has regurgitated everything he's eaten.

Thor wraps Sleipnir in a light blanket, not because of the temperature, but to keep Sleipnir hidden from curious eyes. He makes sure to tuck the can opener in with him. For some reason, Sleipnir seems very attached to it, and Jane is letting him have it as a parting gift.

Finally, he sets out to the crater. He doesn't use Mjolnir to fly, even though it would be quicker. People recognize him even in Midgardian clothes, although part of that might be because Mjolnir's strapped to his hip. He just smiles politely at people but does not stop until he reaches his destination. (Two teenagers, one male and one female, try to follow him, but he tells them that this is Avenger business. When that only makes them more eager to follow him there, he tells them that there is dangerous radiation, and they scurry).

There's some sort of aircraft by the crater. It's smaller than the Helicarrier, dark and sleek with wings sticking out of the side.

A woman with white hair waits outside of the craft, and she introduces herself as Storm.

The interior of the craft- the X-Jet, or Blackbird, has a row of seats on both sides, facing inward. In the aisle between them is what looks like a harness for Sleipnir, only they'd apparently been planning for an adult horse.

Sleipnir seems incapable of changing sizes right now, so Thor takes one of the seats, still holding Sleipnir to make sure the horse isn't injured during their flight.

. Sleipnir certainly seems to want to change sizes rather than remain in Thor's arms, as Storm makes the jet rise into the air. Thor isn't sure if most jets are able to simply fly up or not.

Thor gently strokes Sleipnir, trying to calm him down. He's honestly not sure if this is making it better or worse.

He learns that Storm is aptly named and actually has powers quite similar to his own. She calls clouds to mask the jet from view.

It is very intriguing, and shocking, to meet a Midgardian with powers much like his own. She tells him that she is a mutant.

Apparently, there are many people who dislike her for her powers, and Thor feels himself grow angry. Thunder rumbles around them. Who would dare look down on powers so similar to his own? They are a gift, not a curse.

Yet, they'd treated Loki's powers much like how Storm's powers are treated by some people here. Tony had told Thor, once, to imagine what it would have been like if he'd been abused and ostracized for his powers.

He might have been, had he grown up on Midgard.

Eventually, their jet lands lands on a very luscious lawn. There's a huge house next to it, that might rival one of Tony Stark's, except it looks much older. There's even a barn out back.

Thor gets off the jet, and Storm tells him to wait for "the Professor". Then, the jet takes off again, but it doesn't look like it flies far, just around to the other side of the house for some reason.

"Hey, Goldilocks." A voice says. Thor vaguely recalls Tony calling him something like that a few times, but this clearly isn't Tony.

Thor turns to frown at the speaker, who turns out to be a shorter, black-haired man with sideburns, and something sticking out of his mouth. The man takes the thing out of his mouth and exhales rather odorous smoke. Thor fishes around his brain for the word for it. A... cigar, that's it. No, maybe it was cigarette? Whichever it is, they're not on Asgard, and Thor can't understand the appeal of them.

"I am Thor, Prince of Asgard." Thor inclines his head slightly in greeting, both to be polite and to ensure this man will know how to address him in the future. The man looks thoroughly unimpressed.

"No, really? I had no idea you were the thunder Avenger from another world." The man tells him. "I thought most people carried around huge hammers like that."

Thor is distinctly reminded of Tony's brand of humor, which isn't always obvious.

"Are you not cold?" Thor asks, mostly because he's starting to get cold, himself, which means Sleipnir probably is, too. Maybe they should get him inside, considering his frail state. Glancing at Sleipnir, he realizes the horse doesn't seem at all bothered by the low temperature. Right, if Sleipnir is Loki's child, he may be immune to cold since Loki is a Frost Giant. Not to mention, the dungeons were rather cold as well.

The man snorts slightly. "Canadian winters eat these pathetic New York winters for breakfast. There's not even snow here right now." That's right. Apparently, many parts of Midgard turn into a sort of less hospitable Jotunheim during the season known as 'winter.' Here, snow and ice are not foreign things associated with an enemy realm.

"Besides, the Professor doesn't let me smoke inside. Keeps telling me I should quit, too." The man doesn't sound like he's even given a single thought to actually quitting. One thing is certain, he's not the Professor that Storm mentioned. "Not like he can say it's killing my lungs by turning them black or whatever shit happens to most people, though."

Thor has no reply for this, but it turns out he doesn't need one.

Sleipnir has started wriggling, and now he starts to grow, seeming annoyed that he hadn't been able to do so in the jet. The blanket he'd been wrapped in falls to the ground, exposing the emaciated horse. Sleipnir bends his neck to pick up his precious can opener in his mouth.

"So, do you treat all horses like shit there in Ass-gard, or just this one? Do all horses have too many legs there?" The man asks, nodding at Sleipnir and taking another drag from the cigarette. Like Tony, he seems to mispronounce Asgard so it has the word ass in it on purpose as he gives Thor a hard look.

"Most have four legs, just like on Midgard." At least the answer to that question isn't horrible.

"Are they fed any better?" The man demands, teeth clenched around the cigarette. "Surely you could have divvied up the food more evenly. Because this is both horrible and stupid. You still use horses as transportation up in viking land, right? This is like letting your car rust and never filling her tank, and then trying to drive her somewhere. Except horses are actually alive and have rights!" The man glares rather fiercely at him.

"The horses in the palace stables are... fed very well." Thor once again feels rather ashamed of Odin, and he feels really bad for saying this in front of Sleipnir, who can obviously understand them more than any other horse could. They take very good care of the horses in the stables, and this is like rubbing it in for Sleipnir. The comparison between the palace stables and the dungeon where Sleipnir was secretly kept just makes Sleipnir's treatment seem that much worse.

"I see. So because he's different, he doesn't deserve something as basic as food." The man's tone is as acidic as a bilgesnipe.

"I did not know of his existence until yesterday. I was not a part of this." Thor looks at Sleipnir. How many times had he laughed at Loki for talking to someone who "wasn't real" and thought nothing of it, while Sleipnir was wasting away in the dungeons? "I found him in the dungeons and immediately removed him."

"What's his crime? Lemme guess- being different. Having two many legs, like some sort of mutant." If looks could kill, someone would certainly be dead, and it wouldn't be Sleipnir. "You do this to all your prisoners?"

"Most of our prisoners are treated much more humanely, in the upper dungeons. I had never visited the lower dungeons, where he was kept, until the day before this one." Thor admits, ashamed, and the look this man's giving him certainly doesn't help his guilt. Neither is the fact that Sleipnir may be listening, hearing again how much worse it was for him. Thor hadn't even done anything to Sleipnir, hadn't known about him, yet he still feels guilty about what happened. "I swear, if I had, I would not have allowed him to stay down there. It should be a crime, to leave anyone in the conditions he was in."

Jane and Darcy both say that it's animal cruelty, and Thor finds he's inclined to agree with them. When he first found Sleipnir, he'd thought that nobody would ever deserve to be in those conditions.

The thought that his father knew Sleipnir was there and let it go on makes Thor's blood boil.

He feels bad for how he treated Loki, too. They haven't even gotten into that. They always mocked him for getting stupider, saying he was too weak, but if they hadn't hit him, it wouldn't have happened. Part of it had seemed awfully sudden, though.

"So who the hell put him there?" The man growls. "If I ever find them..." His fists curl, and suddenly, long metal claws shoot out of his knuckles. Thor can do little but stare.

"It better not have been you." The man narrows his eyes Thor, and light glints off the wickedly sharp claws. "You seem to declare your innocence a lot, and sometimes that means the opposite."

"Logan, I don't think there's a need for your claws." A voice says.

"I think there is a need for them, Professor." The clawed man- apparently Logan- replies darkly.

"Logan, he's telling the truth." The bald man- the Professor that Storm told him to wait for, apparently- says.

Somehow, Sleipnir seemed to recognize the Professor from the moment he saw him.

Thor's rather relieved that the Professor is vouching for him. Yes, he'd been horrible in his treatment of Loki, but Sleipnir's treatment almost seems worse, and Thor wouldn't want to be blamed for it.

Then again, he's not sure he wants those claws of Logan's slicing through his father, either. He doesn't want to think that Odin might deserve something like that. That Thor himself might deserve that for how he'd treated Loki.

The claws slide back into Logan. The cuts from where they'd stuck out of his knuckles knit together, until there's no sign that he'd ever been injured. It heals faster than the same injury would for Thor, and Midgardians are much, much slower in healing than Asgardians.

But Midgardians don't suddenly grow incredibly long claws out of their knuckles, either. Nor does any other being Thor can think of, actually. Who is this Logan man? Is he one of these mutants, like Storm?

"Thor," The Professor says, his face and voice not betraying any of his thoughts. "I'm not sure if Tony told you about me. I'm Professor Charles Xavier. I work with Loki." Thor had been too focused on the claws to really look at Professor Xavier until now. He is bald and dressed more formally than Logan, but that's not what catches Thor's attention.

Professor Xavier is in a wheeled chair that Thor vaguely recognizes as a Midgardian invention for people who cannot walk. The thought of someone being unable to do something as basic as walkingis a very odd one. Someone requiring a chair to move around like that would not last a day in Asgard, and would most likely be mocked and tormented endlessly for it.

"There are people here on Earth who mock those who are handicapped, too." Professor Xavier says rather more mildly than Thor would have expected, considering the words..

It's like the man was reading his thoughts, Thor thinks with slight horror.

"I could do that, of course." Professor Xavier's voice echos in Thor's mind, almost like Sleipnir's, even though Sleipnir does not actually talk. Thor looks around in shock, and Professor Xavier smiles slightly. Logan smirks at Thor.

"What is this seidr magic?" Thor demands. He's been having to shift his view on that, but still, the idea of someone going in his head is not a pleasant one.

It seems, when Thor looks at this man, that what he's lacking in physical strength, he makes up for in mental strength. However, that doesn't really say a whole lot. In Asgard, physical strength tops mental strength any day.

If Professor Xavier had been in Asgard, he certainly would have been treated much the same as Loki had been, only for this man, it would have been for being both weak and Midgardian (Thor no longer looks down on Midgard, but most of Asgard does. He's trying to change their views, with limited success).

But here, he seems to be the leader, and even the Logan person- who seems like a true warrior- apparently holds Professor Xavier in high esteem.

No matter what Thor was taught in Asgard about physical strength being the most important, he cannot deny the immense power that Professor Xavier seems to have, despite the fact he is confined to a chair.

When Professor Xavier speaks again, it's coming from his own mouth and not Thor's head. "I am a mutant with telepathic abilities, but I can read you like an open book without so much as going an inch in your mind. You wear your thoughts on your sleeve. Now, we really should be focusing on Sleipnir, I believe."

Professor Xavier's wheelchair starts to move without anyone pushing it, like Midgard's cars. "Come." He says simply.

Originally, Thor goes to support Sleipnir and help him walk, but Sleipnir goes towards Logan instead, not seeming at all concerned about the long claws the man had coming out of his knuckles earlier, when they could theoretically pop out at any second.

"I swear it looks like he's thinking things at me." Logan mutters, as he helps Sleipnir towards the barn. Sleipnir sends him a look that clearly asks "You can hear me?"

"Well, you're not actually talking, but you have this thing with your eyes." Logan tells the horse. "I'm guessing you're some kind of super-genius mutant horse or something, Sleipnir. That's your name, right?"

"I'd say that's an accurate assessment." The Professor smiles at Sleipnir.

Thor follows them around the huge house, and into the barn, which obviously has stables for horses.

"Riding is a new extracurricular." Professor Xavier comments, though Thor isn't sure what he means by extracurricular.

"What is this place?" Thor asks.

"A barn. Surely you have those where you're from." Logan snarks while helping Sleipnir into a stall.

"It is a school for mutants." Professor Xavier explains. "A safe place, in a world that often does not accept us."

"Storm said that she is a mutant. Her abilities are quite similar to mine." Thor says.

"Yes. And some of us have abilities quite similar to Loki's." Charles says mildly, but there's definitely a reprimand for Thor's past treatment of Loki in there, and a warning telling him not to treat those here like that.

"If you're close-minded," Professor X tells him, "You really should not be here."

---

Charles can't physically help Logan and Thor get Sleipnir situated in the barn with the other horses, but he remains with them. The eight-legged horse gravitates towards Logan during the whole ordeal. Sleipnir has his own stall, and Thor says it's bigger than his cell in the dungeons was.

It's already abundantly clear that Sleipnir's neglected stomach cannot stomach solid foods well. Thor has mentioned trying to feed him, and reports that Sleipnir threw up every time.

Thor seems to be genuinely concerned about Sleipnir and refuses to leave until he is better.

Charles calls in Jean and Hank to start looking over Sleipnir. Sleipnir seems surprised to see the blue man known as Beast.

Thor also seems shocked to see a blue man, but he does not say anything racist. Then again, Hank doesn't look like a Jotun, even though he's blue, since he has fur. Thor hasn't met Kurt yet, and Charles isn't sure what he'd say. He doesn't dive into Thor's mind to find out.

Hank and Jean talk quietly to Sleipnir while they give him his check-up. Sleipnir clearly isn't used to being touched, and he seems to be trying to shut it out at first.

Aside from the obvious severe malnourishment and atrophied muscles, Sleipnir's list of ailments is less severe than Charles would have thought, considering all he's been through. Being locked in the dark has given him a Vitamin D deficiency, as it would in people, except it takes longer for horses to absorb Vitamin D than humans.

He has colic, from eating too much too quickly (Thor reports that Sleipnir had eaten an apple when he first arrived on Midgard and threw it up). This leads to an elevated heart rate and breathing. Sleipnir rolls around on the ground a lot, as well as make a groaning sound and sometimes nip at his abdomen.

His sheath is infected and swollen, which evidently makes it very uncomfortable to urinate, a result of Sleipnir being in an extremely filthy cell. Another result of living in filth is that there's Thrush on his hoofs, which some of the horses here had when they first arrived at the mansion.

But there aren't any huge bacterial infections. His body isn't covered in sores or bruises, and there are no broken bones. Hopefully this means that Sleipnir at least had not been beaten, although broken bones apparently heal quite quickly for alien beings.

Sleipnir does have a habit called cribbing, which means he bites on a solid object and arches his neck. One of the other horses used to do it as well.

Sleipnir won't give up the can opener he insists on carting around for some reason, guarding it extremely possessively.

It's decided that they'll start feeding Sleipnir with a nasogastric tube to give him the required nutrients before moving to alfalfa hay. He's also going to need physical therapy for his atrophied muscles.

Getting the nasogastric tube in is somewhat tricky. They try explaining why he needs it, but Sleipnir clearly doesn't see how a tube will help anything, and doesn't even seem to be listening half the time.

Despite his severely weakened state, Sleipnir keeps jerking his head back. Charles can't blame him, it has to be a very odd feeling. Even though it's a slow, lethargic move, it still makes it difficult to insert the tube, and they have to hold his head still.

Sleipnir's breathing quickly as they do, and Charles can see he's having some kind of panic attack.

Slowly, Charles slips in.

Odin is sitting on top of Sleipnir. Sleipnir isn't emaciated, and actually looks healthy and incredibly strong. He seems annoyed about Odin mounting him, not that Charles can blame him. He twists, bucks, kicks until Odin goes sailing neatly over his shoulders, landing in a heap in a pile of horse poop. He doesn't look much like the usually pristine royalty now.

Sleipnir tosses his head back as if laughing.

When Odin approaches him again, the eight-legged snorts, darts away easily on nimble legs even in the enclosed stable hall. He rears up, front legs kicking, and the Allfather stops his approach.

He charges at the Allfather. Odin snarls in fury, especially when a blow catches him in the face, almost knocking off his eyepatch and bruising him quite badly.

Charles is pretty sure Odin's arm just got broken by a stray hoof, too.

Odin deserves it, and Charles rarely wishes pain on others..

Odin calls for guards, and they approach in golden armor, twirling ropes. The door is open now, but the guards are blocking it. It seems Sleipnir's still not done with Odin, who is staggering to his feet, his face very beat-up.

Ropes land over the horse's neck and tighten. He yanks, sending one guard sprawling, and tries to stomp on him, but the ropes from the other guards hold him back. It's obvious they're cutting off his air supply.

One of the guards injects Sleipnir with some kind of substance that makes his fighting lessen even more.

Odin's one remaining eye glares at Sleipnir with a fury that makes it quite clear that he's been extremely bad and is now in a huge deal of trouble. Sleipnir doesn't look sorry, but he does look scared.

He tenses, as if waiting for Odin to mount him again. Or for the first blows of a beating. Which will come first?

The guards wrap his eight legs in rope, pulling him off his feet. He tries to fight them off but he can't as they're dragging him away. Odin's parting words to Sleipnir echo around Charles in the memory.

"Now, you're going to stay there until you learn to behave."

---

It's all too loud, too bright, making his brain pound as he squeezes his eyes shut. It's all outside him, he thinks, so very different from The Dark. The Dark had been everything and nothing, still and silent but not when he'd talked with Loki. For a very long time, maybe, he hadn't. They'd hurt him, but he'd looked out of Loki's head to see what he was seeing a lot of the time, even if most of it hurt.

Here, there's no Darkness, no Loki. Where's his Loki? Sometimes, Sleipnir catches flashes or hears him in his head, even though he's in Loki's head, so it shouldn't be the other way around like it seems. Nothing makes much sense. Sometimes he gets glimpses of the tower, of a little boy and an even littler girl. And Tony, of course Tony.

He tries to scream out to Loki, but his voice apparently doesn't work because Loki never responds. Maybe Loki doesn't care about him anymore, now that he has even more real friends? What if he's decided Simba is better? After all, Simba has a real body.

There are other horses here, in the stables, but they're kind of slow so Sleipnir doesn't talk to them much. They don't talk much, either. Still, Loki loves horses, so of course there are horses in his mind, and a field and the stables he's in, just like his and Loki's field. They were never there in The Dark, though.

He can see the stars now. He could never see them before, but they're here. Comforting, tiny, pinpricks of light that form pictures like Leo the Lion or Pegasus, the horse with wings. Sleipnir wishes he had wings, because then he could flap them and try to fly back to Loki.

Right now, he can't even run. He can't, even though he ran with Loki not long ago, he thinks, in The Dark. Or maybe that was a long time ago...?

If you find the field where the horses roam,

And you need a place to call your home,

The moon and the stars will give you light,

To sleep in the grass in peace tonight.

He still almost never eats. Loki rarely managed to feed him, and when he did, the food was always really gross by the time it got to Loki's brain. It never looked like what Loki ate.

There's a tube that gives him a weird, horribly scratchy feeling in his nose that goes all the way down his throat and he can't spit it out.

His stomach hurts, not that that's anything new. Even when it feels... full. It takes him a while to realize that's what it is, because he's never felt it before, but his stomach still hurts. It's not like when Thor fed him and he threw up, because he doesn't throw up now. He isn't sure how he's feeling full, though, because he still hasn't eaten anything.

The water sparkles slightly in the trough. Water is something he'd gotten even less than food. Its ripples seem to laugh and welcome him as he lowers his head to slurp it up. It cools his throat and for a moment, prevents the scratchiness of the tube. He closes his eyes in bliss and melts into water.

Then there's hay, and it's marvelous, glorious, better than everything. He's not even imagining it, because he can feel it. Sleipnir can't remember ever getting hay before. He tries to save it, though, because who knows when he'll get food again. He was stupid with the apple, when he didn't make it last.

He doesn't let anyone get near his hay, because surely they'll take it away.

They tell him he'll get more. They have to be lying. But it's always there when he wakes up.

Thor often visits, but Loki doesn't, and Sleipnir doesn't know why. He doesn't want Thor, he wants his Loki, so at one point he kicks Thor in the ribs. Also, Thor had gotten too close to his hay. Still, Thor returns.

The two women Thor talked to never show up anymore, which is sad because Sleipnir liked them. Had Loki known them? He has to, because Sleipnir only knows who Loki knows. Had Loki made them up, too?

There's a lot of touching here, which Sleipnir tries to shut out. He was never touched in The Dark. But this touching is kind of nice. People come in, young people, and sometimes touch his nose, looking sad and horrified all at the same time. They mount the other horses sometimes, ride them out into the field. Sleipnir wishes he could go with them, but he's really glad nobody's sitting on him.

Older people come and do stuff like bend his legs, and try to get him to walk, saying something Sleipnir doesn't understand about muscles and 'atrophy' or is it 'a trophy'? Sometimes it's the blue, fuzzy man or the woman. They're nice, but Sleipnir likes the dark, clawed man best, except he doesn't have claws now. Sleipnir likes him because he doesn't seem to like Odin, and he makes Sleipnir feel safe, safer than the other people who do it. Also, he's snarky to most people but gentle with Sleipnir, like Tony is to his Loki.

There's a girl that's with the dark, clawed man a lot, but she doesn't touch Sleipnir, and backs away when he cautiously tries to nuzzle her. She doesn't touch any of the other horses, either.

The dark clawed man- Logan- suggests that maybe he'd want to go outside. He almost tries to stand, until he realizes. Surely they'll take his hay away when he's not guarding it. He balks, refuses to leave the stall, plonks back down on the floor.

Logan lets him stay, but that's not the end of it. He asks again, and the girl... Rogue, she's nice. She doesn't touch. She promises to look after his hay, make sure none of the horses take it.

Sometimes, the dark clawed man- Logan- takes Sleipnir out into the field, making sure he doesn't collapse. Sleipnir likes it more when Logan supports him than when Thor did.

The silver stallion gallops away

His herd follows him and they start to neigh

Their hoofs beat to the stars and moon above

Just follow them to find the one you love.

Professor X has a gentle voice when he talks to Sleipnir, asking him about what happened with Odin, and what happened in The Dark. Sometimes, the Professor's voice is in his head, but Loki's still isn't and why can't the Professor be Loki? Or maybe the Professor is Loki, and Loki's pretending to be Professor X. Loki's the only one who ever talked in Sleipnir's head before.

Sleipnir isn't even sure about Odin, because maybe that's something that happened to Loki? But Professor X says that's his memory, not Loki's, which makes no sense. He keeps saying weird things about not being in Loki's head. Yes, he's not in The Dark anymore, but Loki's been happier in Midgard so maybe his head changed.

Fenrir used to be in The Dark, Sleipnir thinks and tells Professor X with his eyes, but he hadn't seen Fenrir there for a long time, maybe. Maybe it wasn't too long.

Sleipnir bats at his can opener. He wishes his Loki would come find it, because then he'd find him. And Loki's can opener turned into a mini Loki, so surely this can opener will produce Loki sometime.

Professor X says Loki will come soon.

I'm out of The Darkness after so long,

Yet still I am not where I truly belong.

The stars and the moon all shine above

But now I cannot find the one I love.

Hope you liked the X-Men, and the fact there was more Sleipnir. There will be more of them next chapter.

I already have around 7,000 words written for it.