Tony watches from the balcony, his arms pressed against the balcony's side, at the ritual being conducted in the atrium of Stark Tower – and it is a ritual, that much is for certain. Loki, still sporting his injuries from facing up with the Hulk, is kneeling on the hard tile, his hands behind his back, his head bowed, and Odin Allfather is speaking in a high, lofty language Tony couldn't hope to understand. Magic is visible on the air itself, smelling like the air after a thunderstorm, and he sees blue strings of energy curling between Loki and Cap, who stands uncomfortably in front of him.

Rogers is standing in a military pose, his shoulders squared, his arms at his side, but Tony can see his eyes reflect a discomfort at precisely what is happening – Odin had made it all too clear. "It is your choice entirely," he had said airily to the group of them gathered, his voice full of faux-sympathy: Thor had stood behind him, his jaw set, his fists clenched at his side. "We shall either execute Loki… Or I will make him harmless to you, and he can help you save lives, instead of taking them."

"You want to put the onus on us, huh?" Clint had spoken up, still visibly exhausted, his eyes puffy and red, his lips chapped. "You want it to be our choice," he had used his fingers to quote in the air, "if you kill your son."

"He isn't my son," Odin had said, damningly, and Tony had seen the way Loki flinched in his bonds. Rogers had seen too: maybe that's why he'd agreed to it.

Odin finishes with a flourish of magic that bursts upon the air, and Loki remains in his spot, silent, unmoving. Tony could believe he was a statue if it weren't for the way his hair hung down around his face, if it weren't for the way he could see his shoulders marginally rising and falling as Loki took deep breaths. What, is he scared? What the Hell does he have to be afraid of?

"Now what?" Rogers asks, his voice professional – just like his posture, it has that military edge to it, and Odin seems to respect that.

"He's yours, now," Odin says mildly. "He cannot harm you. If you order something, his very own magic will have him obey." A shadow passes over Roger's face, a plain discomfort, and he looks down at Loki.

"Stand up," he says, and slowly, Loki rises. Tony hadn't really seen it before, when he'd been half-crazed with the Chitauri and burning with the power of the Tesseract, but Loki has a quiet grace to his movements even Thor doesn't really have. There's something liquid about it, something extra – he's only really seen that kind of smooth stand in cats, not in people. Rogers doesn't look happy to be obeyed. "You have to tell the truth if I ask you?"

"If you order me to tell only the truth now," Loki says, quietly. Something passes between him and Rogers, a flickering light that passes between their eyes, and Loki adds, "You might, of course, renege that order, if you found it wasn't to your liking. I doubt that it would be." Loki's voice carries up to the balconies, and Tony glances at the others. Bruce is stood with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his glasses low on his nose; Clint and Nat are stood together, both of them visibly disgusted, and Thor… Thor is down there, behind his father. Tony can't see his face.

"We've been honoured to receive you, sir," Rogers says, and he barks out the last word as he looks to Odin: Tony half-expects him to salute, but he doesn't. "With me," Rogers orders, and as he marches into the main part of Stark Tower, Loki follows him, his hands still behind his back. If Odin was expecting a "thank you", he doesn't show it: instead, he gestures for Thor to follow him, and the both of them leave through the wide, double doors.

"Come on," Nat says, and the rest of them make their way off the balcony, so they can see precisely what is gonna happen now.

"So, what do we do with him?" Nat asks. They're down in the training hall, where the walls are insulated and the least amount of noise will carry to the rest of the building. Tony guesses it's so Cap can weigh up what kind of skills Loki has, but Loki doesn't seem worried at all: he's sitting on the air itself, gently buffing his nails with a smooth, unfamiliar instrument.

"Whatever you please," Loki says, and she looks at him, impassively.

"Shut up," she says.

"My apologies, Ms Romanov, it seems you've misunderstood the terms of this arrangement. I'm certain Captain Rogers will allow you to give me orders, once he's certain you won't use the privilege to murder me." Rogers turns, looking at Loki. All of them are looking at Loki now, and his pale face shows the barest amount of surprise. He looks between each of them, and then his eyes meet Tony's, his blue eyes staring.

"Surely you knew?" he asks. "Anything you order of me, I am bound to do. You think that stops at harming myself? Killing myself, even? So long as your orders come within the realm of Midgard, I must do as I am bid."

"What if I tell you that you that don't have to obey what I tell you?" Rogers asks, and Loki barks out a laugh. It's an angry, savage thing, showing all of his teeth, and his eyes look impenetrably deep for the barest second, a thrum of power radiating away from him like a pulse, and Tony feels himself, unconsciously, take a step back – and sees the others do the same, except Cap himself.

"Are you certain you want to risk that, Captain Rogers?" Loki asks, arching a fine eyebrow. His tone is slippery, steaming with venom, as he adds, "After all I've just done?"

"I didn't think it was going to be slavery!" Rogers snaps, and Loki chuckles, shaking his head slowly.

"A moral question for any young student of philosophy," Loki says archly, and he stands up from his invisible seat, vanishing his nail buff into the ether around them. He speaks with his shoulders back, his chin high, and he gestures widely with his hands. His every movement is quietly theatrical, as if he is used to lecturing on this subject, as if he has practised this before. "The question as is as follows: the man in your possession is a slave. He shall obey your orders, gladly, and promptly. You yourself, of course, cannot abide by taking away the liberty of another fellow – but if you set him free, he shall surely die, or worse, be taken up by someone who might treat him cruelly. Do you keep him, or do you set him free?"

"Shut your mouth," Rogers orders, crisply, and Loki's mouth shuts with an audible click. There's a bitter taste in the back of Tony's throat, and he watches the way Rogers' brow furrows, watches the way his lips twist. "I didn't mean that. Talk as much as you want."

"In accepting the Allfather's terms, you have made yourself responsible for me. The very reason he has bound my magic in this way is so that I cannot be held accountable for any actions I perform: I am your charge, Captain Rogers, and subsequently he has removed any connection from me to him, or myself to the throne of Asgard. Cunning, isn't it?" He sets his hands behind his back, his lips pressing together for a moment, and then he says, "If I might make a recommendation, I would suggest the true meaning of this arrangement be held back from the general public. It will sour the name of Captain America, or indeed, of any of you, to think you have entered into an agreement the people of Earth at large will find to be archaic. Tell the peoples of Earth that I was somehow under the psychological control of the Chitauri: pretend I have entered this arrangement to pay back the debt I feel I owe to this society."

"Why should we believe you?" Bruce asks, his hands in his pockets, but he seems neither scared nor angry, really – just quietly curious, scientific mind working underneath that thick hair of his. Loki sighs.

"One makes the best of an ill situation, Doctor Banner." Why the Hell is he talking like that? Tony can't quite get the hang of it – he and Loki had almost been on a level when the two of them had been talking upstairs just a day or so ago, and now everything Loki says is stiff and starched at the edges, as if he's speaking as an ambassador to some foreign court. Is it part of the magic?

"What?" Clint asks, taking a few steps forward, until he is directly in Loki's face, until he is looking up into Loki's eyes. Loki can see that he's shaking, sees that his face is red, but Clint doesn't seem to give a shit how scared he is. "What, you think this is the best that could have happened, huh?"

"By no means, Mr Barton," Loki whispers, and he leans in closer: his lips move, but no sound comes out. Barton's eyes widen as he reads whatever Loki had said on his lips, and then takes a step back.

"What did he say?" Cap asks, but Barton is already leaving the room, heading toward the stairs and rushing up them: Nat follows him, but not without shooting a venomous stare in Loki's direction. "What did you say to him? Tell me."

"I said the best of this situation would have been if the Allfather had me executed, as per my request," Loki says. The room is utterly silent now, the four of them standing in the quiet, unmoving. After a few long seconds pass, Loki says, "Of course, Captain Rogers, you might pass me onto SHIELD as an asset, if you would prefer. You cannot shift the connection the Allfather has fostered between us, but you could order me to obey the commands of the SHIELD officers, scientists. Do you trust your organisation, I wonder, with me?"

"Stop trying to turn this into a philosophy class," Rogers says quietly. "I'm not gonna feel guilty for saving your life."

"You're more like Thor than I expected," Loki replies in a soft voice. "Foolish, and sentimental." Rogers lets out a quiet laugh, shaking his head: if Loki meant for that to hurt, he doesn't seem to have landed the blow.

"If you think you can bait me into hurting you, your highness, you're damn wrong," Rogers says. Looking between Bruce and Tony, Rogers gives a wave of his hand, and says, "You guys head upstairs. Work on the rebuild. Me and Loki are gonna stay right here." Bruce seems glad for the excuse to leave, and he heads toward the stairs, but Tony reaches out, touching Steve's arm.

"You sure you wanna be down here alone with him?"

"Get Pepper to call Nick Fury," Steve says quietly. "I didn't exactly get SHIELD approval for this one, and that's probably for the best. He's right. I don't trust him in SHIELD's hands – I wish I could. Can we put him in a room here in Stark Tower?"

"Sure," Tony says. "If that's what you want. You trust him?"

"Hell no," Rogers says, shaking his head. "But I don't need to. Thanks, Stark."

"No problem, Cap," Tony replies, and he heads out. It's… Weird. The whole thing is weird. But what else are they meant to do?

Loki stands with his hands behind his back, his back straight, his soles flat against the soft matting that makes up this training hall's floor. From a very young age, Loki has been used to many different training grounds, most of them using some sort of mix of sand and saw dust to soften the ground, but these mats seem soft enough to allow for an easy landing, and the Midgardians seem so intent on covering everything in plastic.

Captain Rogers is watching him. It doesn't matter that he's a hundred years older than his fellows – he has spent those extra years unconscious, and they add nothing to him. Even if they did, what is a hundred years? Loki is nearing his third millennium, now, and not a single person on Midgard could compare to him.

"The magic tricks," Rogers begins. "Sitting on the air, pulling stuff out of nowhere. You weren't doing that when you had the sceptre in your hands." Loki frowns.

"I didn't need to," he begins, but Rogers holds up a flat palm for him to stop, and Loki does.

"You couldn't. Tell me why."

"The sceptre drained all manner of energy in its vicinity," Loki murmurs. He dislikes to be forced into honesty like this, but he feels his magic bubbling in his veins, feel it force him to speak with honesty. "Mine included. It would have come back to me after a time."

"Uh huh," Rogers says, as if he doesn't believe Loki, as if Loki doesn't know what he's talking about, but there is a pit in Loki's stomach, and he chooses not to engage with it. "You really wish you were dead?"

"Not exactly," Loki answers. "The Allfather offered me a choice between imprisonment beneath the city of Asgard, alone, or death. I chose the latter." Rogers's frown draws at his lips, turning them downward.

"Then Thor stepped in?" Loki inclines his head.

"He didn't want to see me die. Suggested that if they imprisoned me under Asgard, it'd only be a matter of time before I broke out again – he was trying to appear to the Allfather's sense of logic, and cunning, but rather quickly, and with little forethought. It was hardly his fault: he was upset at the thought of seeing me lose my head. Scrambling for an idea, he suggested the Allfather bind me, using my own magic, to Thor's hand."

"And Odin said he didn't want you roaming around Asgard?" Rogers asks, and Loki nods his head once more. The young captain is, Loki is uncomfortable to realise, much more perceptive than Loki had initially realised – even with the clean, methodical lines of Clint Barton's thoughts beneath his own, he had underestimated each of the Avengers. Is it not fitting that this should be his downfall? "What I need to do know is if you're gonna try to kill yourself at the first opportunity. 'Cause that puts other people at risk – other people I have to care about."

"Why not just order me not to?" Loki asks, and Rogers sighs.

"Can't order you not to risk yourself. What if I need you to, later on? I just need to know that you're not gonna jump into self-sacrifice when there are other options available. Suicidal soldiers are no good to anybody."

"Is that what your Avengers are to you? Soldiers under your command?" Loki asks, and Rogers' lips twitch into a wan, unfeeling smile. What must it be like for him, Loki wonders? Such a bright-eyed young man so intent on saving others, and here Loki is, a spanner in those particular works: Rogers ought despise him, by all rights, and yet he seems to be doing his best to be near civil to Loki.

"Let's talk about what you can do," Rogers says. "Illusions?"

"Yes," Loki nods. Rogers looks at him expectantly, but Loki doesn't say anything more, and Rogers sighs, shaking his head, before continuing.

"And your magic… What's the limit of that? What kind of stuff can you do? Tell me." He's learning quickly, Loki thinks, and he cannot help the way his lip curls.

"Shifting the shape of my own form requires time and energy, but I can become much smaller and much larger than myself with relative ease. I can form various shapes, including seemingly inanimate objects and non-sentient beasts. For conjuration, I can quite easily conjure inanimate objects as large as, say, a dining table. I can also summon objects, either from pocket dimensions or another location, so long as I know where that location is precisely, ideally having been there. I can speed the growth of living thing, and I can heal most bodily wounds, so long as I have a deeper understanding of the thing's anatomy. I can do minor divination, use magic to interbreed strange plants. I can Skywalk, which is rather like a more dignified form of flight – I can walk or run upon the air, and travel freely with seiðr as the source of fuel, I—"

"Stop." Rogers is looking at Loki with his eyes slightly wide, his lips pursed, and then he says, "Ground rules. You never lie to me – and I mean never, Loki. You don't lie by omission, you don't try to squirrel out from a question I'm asking you, and if anything important happens, if you notice anything weird or anything that creeps you out, you tell me."

"Creeps me out?" Loki repeats, mockingly, and Rogers grabs him by the front of his jerkin, setting his jaw as he meets Loki's stare, his eyes intent.

"Anything makes you uncomfortable, anyone treats you badly, anyone orders you to do something that you think I'll think is wrong, you fucking tell me."

"You use profanity," Loki murmurs, his lip twitching. "I didn't know that."

"I'm a soldier, Loki. You ever meet a soldier that didn't curse?"

"Soldiers don't usually get the chance to say a word to me," Loki replies, his smile showing his teeth, but Rogers is unshakable. He releases his grip on Loki's armour, and then he puts his hands on his hips, looking Loki up and down.

"For now, take orders just from me. You don't have to do anything anyone else says, but as a rule, don't manipulate people, don't try to set them up to fight each other, and stop saying stuff just to make people uncomfortable. Do not hurt anybody. Do not engender a situation in which you technically are not the person hurting them, but they become hurt as a result of the situation you made. Do not tell anybody who doesn't already know the ins and outs of this situation, and do not tell anybody who doesn't know that the magic your father used binds you to me. Next, be healthy. Don't try to starve yourself, or stop yourself from sleeping, or anything like that. You're not meant to be hanging off my word, so unless I've told you to do something, just live your life."

"Very comprehensive," Loki murmurs. Every order seeps into his skin like poison into groundwater, and he clenches his hands into fists at his sides, turning his head away from Rogers so that he doesn't have to look at the soldier's face. To think: he has come from the binds of the Chitauri to this. "What will you have of me?" The bitterness of the question sounds through, but Rogers doesn't seem to care.

"I don't know yet," he admits. "We obviously don't want you in the field if we can help it – people will try to attack you, will think you're there to hurt them. Probably keep you on hand as a healer. You know much about technology?"

"Asgard is much more advanced than Midgard," Loki points out, but Rogers raises his eyebrows.

"Yeah, I can drive a Buick, but it doesn't mean I can take the engine apart and put it back together." A Buick is some sort of automobile, Loki imagines, and he doesn't appreciate the hardness of the other man's stare.

"I take your meaning." Loki hesitates, then says, "In short, yes. Magic requires a lot of mechanical comprehension – without understanding something, I cannot repair it if I need to. I understand the facets of electronic and engineering invention, and I would consider myself a passable engineer."

"How old are you?" Rogers asks.

"Exactly?" Loki asks. "I don't know."

"I told you not to avoid questions," Rogers says lowly, his eyes dark, and Loki feels his magic pull hard at his heart, and he sighs, frustrated, and angry, and trapped, as an animal in a corner.

"I'm some years past my third millennia." Rogers' eyes become marginally wider, but he schools his expression carefully, ensuring his surprise doesn't show too obviously.

"So when you say you've got skills, you've had time to accumulate them." Rogers presses his lips together, looking Loki up and down, as if searching out clues to other skills Loki might have under his belt, as if searching for the evidence on Loki's very form. There is none. Loki is not used to wearing his abilities on his sleeve. "Jesus," he mutters, and Loki frowns.

"What?"

"You and Thor, you just look… You look young."

"We are," Loki says. "By the standards of our own species, we're very young indeed. Well—" The magic drags at him, makes him choke with its heat, and he spits out, "Thor is." Rogers's blond brow furrows.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, it—" Loki lets out a sound of pain as he feels his magic bubble like so much venom in his throat, forcing its way out into his mouth and strong-arming his tongue into speech. "Thor and I are not the same species. I'm not an Æsir, as he is. I'm a Jötunn."

"He mentioned you were adopted."

"Adopted?" Loki repeats, surprised by the harshness of his own voice, and he clenches his fists at his sides, feeling magic bubble in his veins, but not, this time, against his own volition – adopted! What a word to use! "Of course he would call it that." Rogers opens his mouth, evidently planning to ask another question, but there are footsteps in the stairwell, and Loki looks to see the one-eyed Nick Fury striding into the room, flanked by two young soldiers.

"You're not taking him," Steve says, lazily, for the fifth time. Fury is pacing before him, his hands clasped behind his back and his shoulders high – you can tell he used to be a soldier of sorts himself, before he was a commander. There's something in the attitude that never goes away. Steve leans upon the island in the centre of the corner kitchen, his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee. This kitchen is an anteroom off the main training hall, like the changing rooms and the showers, but this room is mercifully clean, and isn't heavy with the scent of sweat.

"You're telling me this guy has just killed a few hundred people, and you're adopting him?" Fury demands, his voice harsh: he's a skilled manipulator, Steve will give him that, but Steve doesn't need to remember the Cold War to know that isn't the way he plays. As soon as Fury had entered the room, he'd ordered Loki to go and find Tony, and reluctantly the god had gone up the stairs, pursued by Fury's two lieutenants.

"He's been entrusted to the Avengers. Last I checked, Nick, you aren't an Avenger."

"Entrusted?"

"He's bound by his own magic. He's one of us now."

"He just killed half a thousand people!" Fury snaps, his voice raising and bouncing off the thin walls, but Steve just stares at him.

"He's gonna pay it back," Steve replies, his tone calculatedly even. "Better than he would, what? Spread out on a lab table so SHIELD can take him apart and see how he works?" Fury's single eye narrows slightly, and he can see the twitch of muscles underneath Fury's skin as he shifts the set of his jaw. "He's not an asset, Nick. He's a person, and he's gonna do some community service and pay back his debt. I don't trust him any more than you do, but he literally can't lie his way out of this one."

"He ain't a person, Steve. You not thinking of Coulson? What about—"

"We're going in circles, Nick. I've told you what's happening: this is how it's happening." Fury's lip curls slightly, but he seems to realise he can't use Steve as a tool, can't push him around. Steve thinks of the weapons they'd seen up on the ship…

Yeah. Fury isn't at the top of his to-be-trusted list right about now.

"Let's go upstairs," Steve suggests, sipping at his coffee and setting the mug in the sink. "I'll walk you to the door." But Fury is already walking away from him, his squared shoulders showing his irritation, and Steve smiles, sourly.

Loki lies on his back on the cot to the side of the room. It is a small bedroom, holding only this single bed, a small desk and chair in the corner, and a bathroom that takes up a corner of the bedroom's box space, holding a toilet and shower. These rooms are intended for the short term, Stark had told him, for those that just need somewhere to stay overnight if they need to be on hand.

This tiny space is the box they'll put him in, when his services are not required.

Loki stares up at the bare, white-painted ceiling, his lips pressed loosely together, his hands loosely clasped over his belly. He feels like a corpse on a ritual slab – and isn't that right? Isn't that fair? Isn't this what Odin wanted, when he saw that Loki would choose death over imprisonment, and wanted something worse than both?

And what better punishment for betrayal than to turn Loki's most loyal friend against him – his very magic?

A knock sounds at the door. Loki's eyes flit toward it, staring at the dark wood and waiting for someone to step through. There is a long pause, and then there is another knock upon the wood, polite, and short. Frowning, Loki stands from the bed, comes to the door, and opens it.

Here stands Tony Stark, forced to look up a little to meet Loki's gaze, and he peers past Loki into the bare room. "You've been in here for an hour," he says. "When I said make yourself at home, I kinda meant… Do whatever you want with it. What, you can magic stuff up, but not paint and different bed sheets?" Loki says nothing, and merely stares down at the other man, his gaze impassive. "Uh huh… Anyway, come with me. We're gonna have something to eat."

Loki steps out of the room, closing the door behind him, and he sees that the door is not the same as it was when he first stepped inside: somebody, likely Stark, has pained Loki on the wood in curling, painted letters. Loki feels a nausea deep in his belly, and he follows Stark down the corridor, toward the primary dining hall.

There is an unfamiliar man, tall and handsome (another soldier, Loki knows at a glance), dominating the large kitchen in the corner of the dining room, and he is working with ease at the stove, searing the meat of some of those… Ugh. What the Midgardians call burgers, made of the heavily processed meat America seem so fond of. The very scent of the stuff is heavy in Loki's sensitive nose, and when Tony says, "You want a glass of water?", Loki nods his head a little more fervently than he had wanted. He takes a sip, and he looks to the dining table, watching the Avengers. Rogers is already sat down, talking seriously to a red-headed woman that Loki doesn't recognize, and Romanov and Barton work swiftly, setting out plates at every place setting as Banner sets out knives and forks and napkins. The entire situation is unnervingly domestic, and yet no one glares in Loki's direction or snaps at him. They act as if they've done this a thousand times before, and yet Loki knows they've only just been thrown together, that they are all as yet strangers.

"Sit down next to Steve," Stark murmurs, and Loki, seeing no other real option, takes a seat beside Steve. He and the red-headed woman are discussing a renovation of Stark Tower, making it into a space for the Avengers instead, and Loki stares at his empty plate. Soon enough, everybody is sitting down: Stark sits beside Loki, the handsome cook beside the red-headed woman, and then the others take the remaining seats. They pass plates around the table, allowing everybody to serve themselves, and Loki takes a modest amount of a salad Banner had thrown together, passing the plate of burgers immediately onto Stark when Rogers hands the plate to him.

Conversation occurs around him, and Loki eats in silence. He is hyperaware of what he must look like, still in his leathers, his straight back, his poise princely, but no one comments, and everybody ignores him, mercifully. Loki has never been so glad not to be noticed before. The salad is palatable enough, the vinaigrette strong and settling acid-heavy on his tongue, and it is plain that Stark orders in high-end stock – what the Midgardians call organic, ridiculous phrasing – because Loki cannot taste the tang of pesticides in the crisp, green leaves or in the softness of the tomato.

"So, Loki," the handsome man says, and Loki looks across the table to him, doing his best to keep his expression entirely neutral. "You don't eat meat?" Loki looks from the handsome man's dark, brown eyes to the platter of burgers in the centre of the table, dressed with relish, a few of them topped with American cheese or slices of bacon cured in some sort of syrup.

"Uh—" Loki isn't entirely certain how to respond: he cannot lie, his magic reminds him, and he dislikes the idea of telling the entire truth. "I… Do."

"Just my cooking you don't like?"

"He won't eat processed food," comes Barton's voice from down the table, and Loki both rejoices at the interruption and reviles it: everyone is silent now, and Loki feels embarrassment blossom in his chest – of course, Barton knows things about him that those gathered here do not, and all of them are staring at him, now, with various expressions of repulsed curiosity. "Won't eat American meat, won't eat American cheese. Won't eat candy or fast food."

"But apparently mass murder is just fine," Romanov says dryly, her tone dripping with sarcasm. "Interesting." Loki wonders why Rogers had refused Fury, wonders why he hadn't just allowed Fury to take him – none of these people want Loki here, and Loki should prefer plain torture and pain over this sort of social awkwardness.

Banner takes the bowl of salad in front of him, and passes it to Tony, who passes it to Loki: taking the silent instruction, Loki serves himself a little more of it, and murmurs, "My thanks." The handsome man is watching him, his chin on his hand.

"You haven't got food like this where you come from, huh?" he asks.

"No. The city of Asgard is served by wide orchards, possessing a great many fruits and fast-growing vegetables and roots, each of them imbued by their own magics. Meat is farmed on a very small scale, and the majority of our domesticated animals are goats and hardy cows, a few egg-laying fowl. Most of the meat we consume is that which we have hunted ourselves." Loki looks away from the man's staring eyes to his plate, taking small bites.

"Thor likes Earth food just fine," Stark points out, mildly. "You always been a fussy eater?"

"No: Thor is merely an indiscriminate one." Stark laughs, patting Loki's shoulder, but the rest of the table is entirely silent, and Loki wishes he had held his tongue. "You have cooked a most admirable meal for a large table," Loki says quietly, meeting the handsome man's searching eyes once again. "Please, do not take my… Fussiness for ingratitude."

"I won't," he says. "It's just that in the army, you learn to eat what you're given." Loki chuckles, quietly, and he wipes his lip on a napkin.

"A lesson that was never imparted to me, I fear, and likely never will be. My own children once complained of my palate." Banner leans forward, looking around Stark, and his dark eyes land on Loki, his eyebrows raised, his wide eyes.

"You've got kids?" Loki frowns, looking around the table at large: once again, silence reigns, and everyone looks at him with a sort of dawning horror. A lie comes to his tongue, but immediately evaporates into the ether, and so Loki gives the smallest shake of his head.

"Not anymore," he murmurs.

"You've been married, then?" Rogers asks, and Loki gives a nod of his head.

"Twice," he says. Rogers' gaze flits downward, looking for a ring on Loki's fingers, but Loki has never worn rings, and likely never will. Rogers keeps looking at him, silently urging him to continue, and Loki says, "My first wife died some time ago. My second wife and I are—" How best to phrase it, that these puny aliens might understand, might comprehend? "Estranged."

"Big surprise there," Romanov says, and Loki gives a light shrug of his shoulders, his palms to the ceiling.

"Few marriages survive the deaths of one's children," Loki says simply. "Even in cultures far across the stars, this fact remains the same." Romanov's expression changes, and Loki knows that this isn't the act he experienced from within the confines of his cell: that slight change in the marble features of her pretty face is entirely real, and Loki feels a bitter triumph at having engendered it.

"What were they called? Your children?" asks the red-headed woman, her voice quiet. Surely, she cannot be giving into sympathy? Foolish, these mortals are – their hearts are so easily swayed.

"Narfi and Valí," Loki answers. "Borne of the lady Sigyn."

"What about your first wife?" Stark asks, and the curiosity on his face shows with another, more complex cocktail of emotions: it unnerves Loki, to be at a dinner table with so little ability to lie, to shake off questions. Never has he felt so very exposed, so forced into this horrific veracity.

Truth is not in his nature, but then, nor is servitude.

"Angrboða," Loki says. "She was a Jötunn, like myself. We had three children together: Hel, Jormungandr, and Fenrisúlfr. We lived together on an island I had built on the edge of the great Jut sea, apart from the political quagmire of Jötunheimr, and a world away from the courtly graces of Asgard. Our children were wild things, half child and half monster, roaming in the waves, laughing on the sands. There was the great wolf, Fenrisúlfr, with white teeth and strong jaws, running with his four great paws pounding the earth beneath him, and in the shadows he would go unseen, for he sported fur of blackest night. Then Jormungandr, the snake, a great curve of sliding scales and coiling muscle, with eyes of agate, and Hel… She was the image of myself and her mother alike: her hair fell about her head in shining black tresses, her skin was a blue-tinged white that seemed to have been made of moonlight itself, and she walked on two feet, like the princess she was."

"What happened to them?" asks the red-headed woman, and from her downturned lips, her sad eyes, he sees that she has already grasped some of the truth to come, simply from the reminiscence in Loki's tone. She asks the question, knowing the answer will be sad, and for that, he finds a sort of respect for her.

"The soothsayers said that the children of Loki would bring about Ragnarök – that is to say, the end of the realm of Asgard. The twilight of the gods. I was away at the time, walking the lands of Jötunheimr as I hunted a great deer – when I returned home with its weight upon my shoulders, my children were gone, cast to the ends of the universe, and my wife lay dead in the water, her blood tainting the sea. Fenrisúlfr was locked in a crypt and bound in great chains; Jormungandr was made mad, forced to consume his own tail, and sent to the depths of the ocean, and Hel… Hel was cast into the underworld, to rule over the realm of the dead. She had yet to reach the cusp of womanhood, and yet there she was, made queen over corpses and rotted things." Loki sips at his water, feeling its coolness running over his tongue. He can taste what the Midgardians use to keep their pipes clean, hints of chemicals that prevent strange things coming out of their taps. "At least her mother was among her subjects."

Loki sets down his knife and fork, and says, "My apologies: I find myself without appetite. If I might be excused, Captain Rogers?"

"Go ahead," the Captain says, his tone unwaveringly casual, and Loki stands from the table, making his way swiftly down the corridor and hiding himself in the bathroom of his small quarters, his back against the cold tile, his head in his hands. His very heart feels as if it has been cleaved open, pumping forth its blood like the words he had spoken – the magic hadn't forced him, and yet spoken he had, spoken and spoken!

How shall he be here, now, amongst these Midgardians? How shall he be a servant, indentured forever more? How shall he be?

This is the bed he has made for himself. How best to die in it?