Rhodey allowed Jak an hour of time with the dampening cuff turned off before lights out that night. Normally, it would have been the time when she was pulling on her coveralls and gathering the various keys and fobs she needed to do her job. However, since her hearing had been in the morning and they'd been celebrating most of the afternoon, she hadn't really had time to sleep in the last twenty hours. Tony convinced her that the Compound would be fine without a janitor for a night or two while she adjusted to having magic again.

Of course, there was still the matter of not being able to sleep in the dark, but very few people knew that and Jak didn't want to cause a fuss. So, she planned to stay up, in her room, testing her magic all night and then sleep during the day. She could just hear Loki's mocking voice asking her why she couldn't just turn the light on in the room while she slept. But she'd tried that before and it didn't work.

She hadn't always been nocturnal. Proper young ladies did not stay up late, her mother always chided in her mind. Proper young ladies slept in night gowns and curlers as well, but Jak had left those things behind when she'd discovered the blissful comfort of flannel pajama pants. And she found curling irons much more convenient than tying twists of hair with old rags. Not that she really curled her hair these days anyway.

After her mother had died, Jak's mind simply would not allow her to sleep at night. A new fear of being alone in the dark had started at that time as well. This fear had recently been justified when the assassin kidnapper person had been standing outside her window that one night. Since then, she'd put up thick curtains that she kept closed after dark and flung wide open in the day, even when she was sleeping.

With the curtains closed, the lights on, and a nonsense video playing on her phone to provide auditory company, she was just fine to sit in her room and let her magic flow through her. She could have been working, but she really was too tired to do much, and she knew one of the Avengers or Loki would order her to go back to bed if they caught her mopping floors. So, she kept to herself and experimented.

She found that her skills weren't as rusty as she'd worried. She could still use a spell to change the color of her hair from pink to brown, or blonde, or auburn, or black. Altering the appearance of her clothes was easy. Though she'd never had true telekinetic ability, she could gather enough power to lift objects and bring them to her or push them away. There were certain spells she could not recall without her mother there to whisper them in her ear, and she was wary of trying any weaponized or defensive magic, but she had impressed herself with what she could still do and the command she had over her power.

Until she sneezed and the pencils and pens flew off of her desk and stuck in the ceiling like throwing darts. Horrified, she quickly blew her nose to try and deter any more sneezes, but another came anyway and her mattress, with her on it, lifted from the bed frame and floated around the room like Aladdin's carpet.

"This is fine," she told herself, "No one is hurt. It's not that far from the ground if I need to jump. And if the mattress falls, it's a mattress, so it won't hurt when I land on it."

Her forced calm began to chip away when she couldn't figure out how to get the mattress to lower with magic. Eventually, she had to jump, nearly twisting her ankle in the process. The mattress remained floating around the room and after several attempts to subdue it back onto the bed frame, she gave up and texted Rhodey to turn the dampening cuff back on. As soon as he texted her back with a thumbs up, the mattress hit the floor with a loud thump.

Her bedroom door flew open and Loki burst in.

It was a good thing she didn't have access to her magic, otherwise she wasn't sure what her reflexes would have done. Her non-magical instinct was to scream until she realized who he was. And then she pointed angrily at him.

"What are you doing in my room?! I locked that door!"

"Are you okay? I heard a noise," Loki looked around and saw the mattress on the floor, "Why is that there? Are you… redecorating? At one in the morning?"

"Your room is too far away from here to have heard that thump," she accused, "What were you doing? Standing outside my door?"

She looked at the door behind him and saw that he had snapped off the knob, leaving a twisted, broken piece of metal. She'd have to get her toolkit and a replacement knob now. Though she no longer feared Loki doing anything to harm her, it made her uncomfortable how easily he could break into her room.

"I've told you before that I am to be your bodyguard until you can properly defend yourself or until the assassin is caught," Loki replied, crossing his arms and looking down his nose at her as if she were the one being unreasonable. "What was the noise?"

"I'm fine. It's none of your business," she snapped, "Get out and leave me alone. Don't Asgardians need sleep?"

"As if you are one to judge sleeping schedules," he said scornfully, "You've been awake far too long. I'm genuinely shocked that you haven't passed out yet. I may cast a sleep spell on you just so you don't break your fragile human mind."

"Don't you dare!" She jumped back from him, terrified that he would force her to go to sleep. "I'm completely fine!"

"Your nose is bleeding," he pointed out.

"What? Oh," she touched under her nose and her fingers came away sticky with blood, "That's probably because I sneezed too hard. Not because I'm sleep deprived."

She picked up a tissue and pressed it to her nostrils.

"Jak, if I'm going to teach you, I need you to be able to function," Loki said, "In order to function, you need to sleep."

"I don't sleep at night," she replied, "And if you make me, I'll, I'll- I don't know what I'll do, but you won't like it!"

It didn't help her argument that she was too tired to properly form sentences, but she wasn't going to let him knock her out. He might be growing on her, but she didn't trust him to use a sleep spell on her.

He narrowed his eyes and raised his hand as if he was going to cast a spell anyway, but he stopped himself. With a great sigh, he stalked past her and picked up her mattress, putting it back on the bed. He straightened the sheets and threw the pillow on top, followed by the quilt. His fingers paused over one of the quilt squares, which was embroidered with two names.

"Who are Ruth and Joyce?" He asked, his voice soft.

"It's not important," she crossed her arms. He looked back at her with a raised brow as if to say she was being silly for not sharing such information. Her tired brain must have agreed, because she eventually muttered: "Ruth was a name I used to use. In the thirties and forties. Joyce was the name my mom used at that time."

"Did you make this blanket?" He asked, taking in the well worn and over-patched fabric. It didn't look like more than a tattered old rag anymore, but it used to be beautiful.

"It was for a contest," she shrugged, "Right before we left America to go to be with my father in Germany, my mother and I were part of a group of wealthy southern women. They had maids to do almost everything for them, but they liked to take on projects like knitting and quilting and embroidery. They had a friendly contest for the best quilt in the town we lived in."

"Did you win?" Loki asked, clearly not impressed by the old thing.

"No," she took the tissue away from her nose and found that it had stopped bleeding. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, "My mother purposefully made some of the stitches sloppy because the prize quilt was going to be hung in town hall. When our quilt didn't win, they gave it back to us, Mother tightened up the stitches and then packed it away to come with us to Germany. She wanted me to give it to my father as a birthday gift."

"I suppose he didn't find it good enough?" Loki asked, his voice suddenly bitter.

"I suspect he wouldn't have," she fought a yawn, "But I never found out."

"Why not?"

"Aren't you supposed to be training me in magic in exchange for this kind of information?" She frowned.

"I won't charge you a question for tomorrow's lesson if you finish the story now," he offered. She wanted to say that she'd already answered several questions, but she was too tired to argue much more and there wasn't much left to the story anyway.

"We didn't get to Germany until after his birthday had passed that year," she looked at the quilt and was glad she'd never given it to her father, "We were in the country for almost a year- staying at a Hydra base, schmoozing with Nazi officers and their families. Truly some of the worst people I've met. We had a party planned for my father's birthday, but knew it had to wait because the Hydra leader had plans for Father. Plans involving the new great American hero, who was blasting his way through Hydra's forces. This new great American hero also blasted his way right through my father. My mother kept the quilt packed safely away for a long time. We had a storage unit with some of our more treasured belongings from over the years and when the feds were going through it after she died they let me keep the quilt."

Loki stared at her curiously for a long moment.

"Captain Rogers killed your father."

She nodded.

The Asgardian prince sat down on her mattress and drummed his fingers on the quilt in thought. His piercing green eyes never left her face, as if he was expecting her to say more. She'd already decided that anything else he wanted to know would have to be part of their bargain. Telling him about how her father died and how Captain America had come to be her sworn enemy - at least for a time - was far more information than she had expected to give.

"Do you always sleep with this quilt?" Loki finally asked.

"Usually, yes," she shrugged, "Both of my parents were horrible people, but it is nice to have something to remember them by. Why?"

"Are you aware of the enchantment woven into it?"

"I beg your pardon?" She blinked in shock.

"I do love it when you beg," he grinned and then returned his fingers to the embroidered names on the quilt, "Someone has sewn a very interesting bit of magic into your quilt. I take it, you did not do that yourself."

"This is news to me," she stepped closer to examine the blanket, "I suppose I have always noticed a smell of magic, but I assumed that was just an old scent from my mother. What sort of enchantment is on this quilt?"

"To answer that fully, I must ask a question first," he responded, "Did your father often take lovers other than your mother?"

Jak gaped at him, her cheeks going red at the nature of the question. She would have liked to yell at him that it was none of his beeswax, but now she was more curious than ever about the quilt.

"It is within the realm of possibility," she managed to answer, "He was quite handsome, never aging, very powerful, and he did not actually love my mother from what I could tell."

"Would you wager that your mother knew he had other lovers?"

"If he did, she probably knew. Her magic worked with minds, like Wanda, but less focused and far less powerful," Jak felt her skin crawl when she remembered how her mother used to use magic to wrench secrets from her mind and the slaps that would follow as punishment for keeping secrets or telling lies.

"I think she enchanted this quilt to torment your father and his other lovers when they spent time together," Loki chuckled, "It is stitched with fear and discomfort. These quaint little fabric squares hold powerful feelings of guilt and unease. Either your mother did not want your father to get any sleep, or she wanted to make him and his mistress feel guilty."

"My mother did have a tendency for jealousy," Jak couldn't stop staring at the blanket. She'd started using it only after her mother died. The same time when she'd started having sleeping problems. "But it only does that at night! I can use it just fine in the daytime."

"Well, it is eighty years old or thereabouts," Loki stood up and pulled the quilt from the bed with him, folding it crisply, "And it sounds as if your mother was crafty, but not particularly powerful. Fabric enchantments rarely last even this long, so I am not surprised that it only works at night, when cruel magics thrive."

Jak was completely astounded by this revelation. She looked at the folded quilt in Loki's hands and wondered if she ought to burn it. Her mother had wanted her to give it to her father for his birthday. Most years, they presented the gift together or her mother alone would give him something. But she'd been insistent that Jak give it to him on her own. If her father had detected the enchantment in the blanket, he would have thought Jak did it. He would have punished her, not her mother. Because her mother wanted to torment him with the blanket, but she didn't want to risk his wrath if she was caught. She knew he'd never permanently hurt Jak because she was his offspring and still useful to him. With Jak grown, her mother was no longer quite so useful.

Loki interrupted her revelations when he set the quilt down on the desk and put his hands on his hips.

"So now you should be able to sleep quite peacefully in your bed at any time you'd like," he smiled, "Go to sleep."

"I'm fine, I don't-"

"It wasn't a suggestion, Jaklyn darling," he stepped behind her and pushed her toward the bed, "Sleep. Now. Or I'll make you."

"I'll be cold," she protested, "Apparently my blanket is evil."

"So resistant to do what is good for you," Loki grumbled, "Lie down and I'll make you warm."

Now she wanted even less to lie down. She shook her head.

"No! I will not have you in my bed! That's absurd!"

He smirked at her and she felt stupid.

"I wasn't planning on joining you… not tonight anyway," he pulled off his long jacket and offered it to her with a more sincere smile, "I only meant to cover you with this. It can hold up against the chills of Jotunheim, I think it will keep you warm in your own room."

"Oh."

"Just lie down, you stubborn bilgesnipe," he pointed at the mattress and she reluctantly sat down. When she was too slow to recline, he impatiently lifted her feet from the ground and rolled her into a lying position. She yelped in surprise and he tossed the jacket at her. It was warmer than it looked, lined with a dark, short, fine fur.

"Doesn't quite reach my feet," she pointed out, curling up into a ball, "I won't be able to sleep like this."

He rolled his eyes and leaned down close to her. He rested one hand on the bed next to her face and the other on the jacket. Magic thrummed through it and transformed the jacket into a blanket of the same color and material. Then he moved so close that his lips brushed her ear.

"Go. To. Sleep."

A chill raced down her spine and for a moment she was certain she'd never be able to sleep again. But then he gently brushed her hair from her face and turned to leave. He collected the evil blanket and stepped toward the door. As he reached for the light switch, she called out.

"Wait!"

"Yes?"

"Could you leave that on? I don't want to wake up in the dark. Even without the enchanted quilt."

He nodded and reached for the broken doorknob.

"Loki?"

"Yes?"

"Would you destroy that blanket for me? I don't need that to remember my parents," she closed her eyes, not wanting to see if he would mock or pity her.

"It would be my pleasure to incinerate this," he chuckled. "Now stop stalling and sleep."

"Wait, Loki?"

"Norns, what is it, Jak?"

"Thank you," she kept her eyes closed, "Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Not long after he left, she fell into the best sleep she'd had in years, day or night.

A note from the author: A bit more of Jak's backstory! And a bit of flirtation *wiggles eyebrows suggestively*. Thanks so much for reading! And special thanks to darkangelynn5 and zxnightfox for your reviews, I'm so glad you continue to enjoy the story! :)

I'll see y'all in the next chapter!