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Bruce came out from his guest room and joined Steve, Tony, Peter, and Thor at the large table in the communal area of the guest floor. It was a few weeks out from The Battle of New York and somehow Maggie had wrangled all but Natasha and Clint into staying at the Tower.
It had been a day or so after the Battle when she had approached him. He had spent a few hours with Tony and Peter in Tony’s lab when she had come up to him while he was making tea, “Stay for a bit and play science with Tony and Peter for a few weeks and relax. You’ve been trekking the globe for a few years and it would be good for you to rest before deciding where to go next.” She had handed him several pastries that she had made earlier and then wandered off, assuming he’d stay. So he did. For the pastries and the relaxation (or so he told himself).
The next day Tony had set him up in his own lab and then had asked for some help running R&D, “Just for a bit till we’re up and running completely. I know you have some ideas Bruce and we’ll get them patented under your name so you can have some running money.”
Peter had approached him later that week with questions and asked for help with his advanced biology homework, “Dad doesn’t do ‘Squishy Science’,” the kid had used air quotes, it was hilarious, “and my teacher is kinda not approachable. Could you help me?” So Bruce had found himself tied into this family. It was surreal and surprisingly nice. He felt accepted for what and who he was.
As they all sat around eating breakfast, the group sitting at the table watched as Loki and Maggie came towards them from the elevator, arguing.
"What are they fighting about?" Tony asked Thor who was nibbling on a Pop-Tart while watching in fascination at their breakfast entertainment.
"I do not know," Thor answered, "I am just elated that things are getting back to normal."
"What do you mean by normal?" Bruce asked as he sipped his herbal tea.
"They argue for entertainment," Thor finished his Pop-Tart and then added some pancakes to his plate and drenched them in syrup while Peter gapped at him. He wasn’t sure if it was shock or envy, Maggie had banned him from sugar for the week after he and Ned had eaten her entire chocolate stash.
"This is fun for them?" Steve asked as he pushed his eggs around his plate and onto buttered toast, "How?"
"Sigyn enjoys proving her point and the victory of winning an argument. Loki loves chaos and will create dissent to encourage it. They've been doing this since childhood," he threw a roll at the approaching couple and Loki caught it without looking.
"So what are they arguing about?" Peter asked Thor.
They all paused their conversation to listen in, "I refuse to send him to Asgard for schooling, and he worked so hard to get into Midtown to be with Ned! I don't care what your father said!" Maggie's voice rose even higher.
"He is NOT my father!"
"I can't believe he still hasn't told you! He IS your father!” Maggie shouted and waved her arms around in her frustration. Loki paled and froze, stony-faced. Maggie continued to rant, not noticing Loki’s shock, “That stupid Pirate King was tricked by Laufey! Laufey is your mother! Why do you think you are so short for a Frost Giant!" She snapped her mouth shut and appeared shocked at her insult.
Silence filled the room.
"What?" Loki's whispered, horrified, “What do you mean?”
"Laufey pretended to be Frigga... Frost Giants can shapeshift…. And then you know...” she flapped her hands and fish mouthed before continuing, having spotted Peter, “And a few months later we have a Loki…" she replied, her eyes shifted to Thor for help but he continued to eat and pretend he wasn’t listening, like the rest of them were trying to do. "Why do you think Odin brought you home with him?” Her anger overpowered her embarrassment, “Frigga would have slit his throat for abandoning you to the elements and your death! An innocent child should never be abandoned for their parent’s mistakes!"
There was silence again for a minute or two before Thor threw another roll, this time Maggie caught it. "Sigyn, what about sending my nephew to Asgard when he is not in Midgardian school," Thor interjected, changing the subject and appearing to give Loki a few moments to process.
"Maybe... But he needs the weekends to do homework and to spend time with us, his family. I refuse to allow him to burn out all because Odin Borson wants him to learn about a battle that happened thousands of years ago and millions of light-years away!” She was back on her roll and the original argument.
"Hey! Don't I get a say in this, as his real father!?" Tony asked, offended.
Silence again and then Peter spoke up, "Why don't I go during school breaks and once a month or something. I promised Grandmother I'd visit and I wouldn't mind learning some new things, it would be like AJ’s parents and shared custody.”
"That would be acceptable," Loki finally spoke up and Maggie nodded in agreement as she settled next to Tony at the table.
"What about me!?" Tony was still confused as to why he wasn't making this decision.
"Do you wish to argue with your sister, Anthony?" Thor asked as he finished off his pancakes and grabbed some eggs and bacon, "she is always victorious."
Tony shoved his plate forward and banged his head on the table, “Why did I agree to let my kid be adopted by gods?”
“To keep him safe, Tony,” Maggie replied as she placed a few cloth napkins under his head to cushion his frustration, “And you would do it again,” She poked him until he looked at her, “If you don’t want him going, he won’t have to. I can always have Aldrif come here to teach him and I’m sure Frigga would love to visit Midgard…” She trailed off, lost in her thoughts, “I wonder if she would like that new play on Broadway, she always loved a good comedy…”
“Mags, it’s ok. Just rope me in next time, Ok?” Tony said as he nudged her, “we’re co-parenting now, isn’t that what you called it?”
“Yes, co-parenting you and Peter with Pepper and JARVIS,” she smiled at him as he hung his head, pretending to be upset.
“I believe that my prime directive is you and Master Peter’s welfare, Sir,” JARVIS interjected, “and the Stark family.”
“Well, I guess I should be grateful that people love me,” Tony said as he rested his head on the table, “I need more coffee.”
******
As part of his daily routine, Bruce would spend about an hour in the small Tower library to unwind from his day before joining the rest of the Tower’s residents for dinner. Loki was there reading in the far corner, which was a regular occurrence so it wasn’t strange to find him there, what was strange, was the cat that was sitting in front of the god.
“Shoo, creature!” Loki said as he poked at it with a long spear, “Go bother my wife and Peter.” The cat just continued to meow and paw at the spear. After the third time Loki poked at it, the cat opened his mouth and tentacles shot out and ate the spear.
“What the hell!” Bruce shouted as he backed away to make his escape, The Hulk shifted and assessed the situation, Angry cat, The Hulk rumbled and tried to take control.
“Sigyn! Get down here and retrieve your pet!” Loki’s voice seemed to echo with his magic when suddenly there was a blue flash and Maggie appeared between Bruce and the ‘cat’.
“Goose! I told you that Peter would be here later today and to wait in his room,” She scooped up the ‘cat’ and turned towards the door, “Oh! Doctor Banner,” she said as she smiled at him, the ‘cat’ in her arms. The Hulk rumbled something almost like admiration. Huh.
“Umm, what is that because it’s obviously not a normal cat,” Bruce said as he backed slowly away, The Hulk approved of that move and was currently ok to remain in the background.
“Oh, this is Fury’s cat… umm flerken. She’s an extraterrestrial cat…?” She turned towards Loki for confirmation and he just scowled at her.
“Oookaaay” Bruce kept backing away from the scary ‘cat’.
“She knows that you don’t like her,” Maggie addressed Loki, “She loves to mess with people.”
“The creature doesn’t understand a cognitive conversation,” Loki spat out as he backed further away, “get rid of it before it eats our son and the rest of the people in the Tower.”
“You said our son!” Maggie literally glowed in her pleasure.
Bruce stopped moving backward and The Hulk seemed to perk up at seeing this woman literally glow from the inside, Pretty lady!
“Yes. And I refuse to see the poor child eaten by the Kree’s failed invasion experiment,” Loki said as he pulled a dagger from somewhere and pointed it at the animal as Maggie cuddled the ‘cat’ and Loki cringed. “Please get rid of it. I think I’m going to throw up if you keep cuddling the creature like that. Better yet, send it with Thor when he goes back to Asgard. Maybe that thing will eat Heimdall and teach him a lesson in loyalty.”
“As much as I and The Mother agree with that sentiment, I can’t do that,” Maggie said as she set the ‘cat’ down and it wandered back towards Loki and meowed and chased him towards the doorway and Bruce.
The ‘cat’ meowed and appeared to wave (wave?!) her paw in the air at Loki before disappearing in a flash of white.
“What the fuck!” Bruce and Loki yelled in tandem.
“Oh! She can teleport,” Maggie said excitedly, “I’m not sure if that’s normal flerken behavior or not…,” Maggie tilted her head in thought, “I’ll have to do some research when we get to Xandar.” She turned and left the room.
Loki and Bruce looked at each other, still shocked, “You’re a brave person for marrying her,” Bruce said, “I don’t know if I could handle her casual attitude towards creatures that The Hulk is concerned about.”
“You have no idea,” Loki said as he sat heavily back in his reading chair, “I should tell you about the time she battled a sentient robotic army alone with nothing but her sword, tall boots, and a tunic. I swear I aged three hundred years when we got the call from Heimdall to go and assist her. She had cut down half the army before we got there and this was all before she had access to any of The Mother’s powers.”
The Hulk seemed to want to hear the story, but Bruce was already stressed out by his day of wrangling R&D Interns and the ‘cat’ incident, “Maybe some other time, I think I need a moment to recover from this first.”
“Oh that’s not even the worst thing she’s managed to do,” Loki said as he manifested tea for both of them. They had bonded over tea a few days after meeting since both of them had a distaste for coffee and were fascinated by the obsession Thor, Tony, and Maggie had with the drink. “Once, about a hundred years after we had reached majority, she was taken by pirates. By the time we rescued her, she had slaughtered the leader, taken control of the band of pirates, and was raiding a nearby moon to free the slaves.”
Bruce froze with the cup halfway to his mouth, “What?!” The Hulk growled in approval of her and insisted on hearing the whole story, “Does she get into trouble often?”
“Yes,” Loki and JARVIS said simultaneously.
“Oh,” Bruce sipped his tea, “Good to know.”
******
Bruce had spent the last few hours with Tony in his personal lab trying to sort through the coding of FRIDAY, JARVIS’ soon to be sister AI. Tony had finished up the coding and then when he went to activate her, she wouldn’t startup.
“I’ve gone over the coding, J has gone over the coding and now you have gone over the coding and we still can’t figure out why she won’t start,” Tony pulled at his hair and paced between the stainless steel workbenches. They were loaded with a mish-mash of Iron Man suit parts, Peter’s projects and toys, empty coffee mugs, and several tablets.
Adjusting his glasses, Bruce picked up the tablet again and reviewed the area of the coding that all three of them had agreed that may be the problem, “I don’t know Tony,” Bruce said as he scrolled through, “She should have started up.”
“I know!” Tony picked up a cup, drank some down, cringed at the cold drink, and took another drink, “Ugh! JARVIS, what are your thoughts on this?”
“We have been experiencing problems ever since we locked up Ma’am’s Scepter in the vault.”
“Oh.” Tony set the mug down with a clink, “Oh! Oh!”
“What?” Bruce asked as he set the tablet down and crossed his arms, “What does the Scepter have to do with FRIDAY unable to start up?”
“The Scepter is actually another Stone,” Tony said as he made some motions in the air and holograms populated the entire room. Images of Maggie wielding the Scepter, energy blasts taking out Chitauri and the Leviathan, and in New Mexico wielding power blasts from her hands, eyes glowing, were front and center. “She had me put Mind in the vault when he tried to get out of her pocket dimension again but I think she put some sort of spell on the scepter so he couldn’t leave the Tower. She said he wanted to leave and was fighting her for control.”
“So you think that the spell she cast to prevent the Stone from disappearing is preventing FRIDAY from starting up?” Bruce was still trying to adjust to the fact that magic was real, gods existed, and that he knew three of them.
“Yup.” Tony continued to flip through images, “JARVIS, can you ask Mags to come down, please?”
“Ma’am is on her way,” JARVIS replied.
A few minutes later the door to the lab opened and Maggie walked in, dressed in a teal and gold ball gown, “Tony! We’re leaving in a half-hour for the Maria Stark Foundation Ball at the Plaza and you are still not dressed?!”
“Oh, yeah…” Tony’s eyes darted around in a panic, “I forgot.”
“Pepper is going to have both our asses if we’re late! I should have known when I sent Bruce down to remind you, that you would get distracted,” She crossed her arms and glared at both of them.
“Oh, yeah!” Bruce smiled guiltily, “I forgot.”
Maggie sighed, “What do you need?” She asked as she waved her hands and Tony was suddenly dressed in his tuxedo with an Iron Man red bow tie, pocket square, and his custom tinted glasses hooked on his pocket. Even his hair and beard were trimmed and styled.
Tony waved his hands and a holographic mirror appeared, showing him his reflection, “Oh, very nice Mags! I gotta have you dress me more often.”
She sighed again, “Tony…”
“Oh, can you disable your spell on the Scepter so we can activate FRIDAY?” Tony said as he brought the glasses up and put them on and admired himself in the mirror.
“Only if you get Bruce to come with us to the ball,” She said as she looked over at Bruce, accessing him with laser-like intensity.
“Ok,” Tony turned to Bruce and took him by his shoulders, “We can activate FRIDAY so she can get acquainted with JARVIS, go to the ball, you eat some good food and hide in the corner with Loki, and then we’ll come back early since Peter has a bedtime at 11 on weekends. Please Brucie Bear…,” Tony gave him puppy eyes identical to Peter’s. Well, he is his father and had to learn if from somewhere, Bruce thought.
“Fine. But we’re home by 11,” Bruce agreed, “but I have no formal clothes.”
“Oh, that’s easy to take care of,” Maggie said as she waved her hands again and he was dressed almost identically to Tony but his accents were deep indigo, he even had a pair of horn-rimmed square tinted sunglasses in the purple.
She then followed Tony over to the far wall of the lab and the wall slid, revealing another room and a large bank vault door centered and flush to the steel wall. Tony opened it and Maggie reached in and brought out a wooden case etched with symbols. She came back towards him and put it down on the table that she had cleared with a wave of her hand. Her hands made several complicated motions and teal tendrils wove in the area around the box, as the symbols glowed gold. With a pop, the case opened, revealing the glowing Scepter.
The air felt…
Aggressive and dark and….
WRATHFUL.
The Hulk perked up and noticed, Bruce’s skin started to tint green as he backed away from the magical object. Maggie shifted to battle armor and Tony was wrapped in one of the heavier Iron Man suits that had been in the display cases along the wall.
“Sir, Ma’am. I am getting several high energy readings in the range of five thousand Kelvins. I advise leaving the lab so I can do a full lockdown,” JARVIS’s voice rang out in alarm.
Maggie started glowing and the bluestone in her chest that had been hidden till now, radiated so brightly that it glowed through her armor, “Tony I need you to take Bruce out of here. He’s going Code Green,” She said just as Loki teleported right next to her in full armor and helm, a sword in one hand and a knife in the other.
“I’m not leaving you,” Tony said as he stood in front of Bruce, “Hey big guy, we got this so you can stand down for now,” Tony reassured The Hulk and Bruce.
Loki and Maggie started muttering together and she went and reached for the Scepter. In a flare of yellow, The Scepter disappeared.
“Oh, NO!” Maggie shouted as she tried to grasp the object that was no longer there. Loki shrugged his shoulders and his weapons and helm disappeared.
“It is gone, Sigyn,” Loki said as he put his arm around her shoulders and helped her sit on one of the stools that were scattered around the lab, “We knew that it was only a matter of time and having direct contact with Space allowed Mind to go where it wanted.”
“He was so angry at me…” She said in disbelief, “I can only imagine what he’ll do. It’s not going to be good.”
“Can you sense where Mind went?” Tony asked as he stepped out of his metal suit, “You’ve said before that you’ve been able to sense where they are.”
“No, I can’t,” she rubbed her temples, “Space said he’s still on Earth, so at least there’s that,” she said with a dark laugh, “I pity whoever gets caught up with him since he’s going to manipulate until he gets what he wants.”
“And what is that?” Bruce asked, finally fully under control, The Hulk just a whisper in the back of his conscience.
“To Rule the World,” She said with foreboding, “Why do you think he wanted to be free, he needs a willing puppet and he wasn’t going to find it here, under my control.”
“Well, good thing you have JARVIS and me to help,” a disembodied Irish voice came from the ceiling.
“FRIDAY?!” Tony exclaimed in shock and happiness.
“Yes, Boss. Here to help!” She said cheekily, “Ms. Potts is calling and is wondering where you are. She said that she sent Happy a half hour ago and you should be here by now.”
“Oh, shit!” Tony said as he looked at Maggie in panic.
“Hey, don’t look at me,” She said, “I’m not in the Sarlacc Pit for being late.”
“JARVIS, can you have everyone meet us downstairs?” Maggie said as she dragged Tony and Loki towards the door and the elevator, “Come, Doctor,” She said as she fixed Tony’s wrinkles and transformed Loki’s armor into a slim, black tuxedo with forest green accents.
“You’ve been watching too much Star Wars with Pete again,” Tony complained as he tried to pull away from her grasp.
“He’s been watching it with Loki, Thor, and Cap to get them updated on pop-culture. It’s not my fault that they do it in my living room while I make my weekly cookies. Which you will get if you stop acting like a five-year-old who doesn’t want to leave his toys.”
“What kind?” Tony asked as he stopped struggling.
“Dark and white chocolate, craisins with pecans,” Loki said as he held up a manifested cookie and ate it in front of Tony with a smug smirk on his face.
“If you’re going to be an ass, you have to share,” Tony said the taller being, “or I’ll have Pep hold a press conference and I’ll tell everyone about Balder.”
Loki scowled, handed Tony and Bruce a cookie each, and then turned to his wife, “You told him that story?”
“Yes. It’s hilarious,” she said as she scowled down at a stain on her skirt, “damn it.” She waved her hands and the dress changed into a dark forest green velvet with black silk trim. Loki pulled a black caplet from somewhere and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Thanks,” she said as she twisted her ring on her right middle finger in agitation.
The elevator stopped on the lower level of the parking garage where a limo was waiting for them, everyone else in the car already. Maggie placed her hand on Loki’s arm and they exited the elevator first.
Bruce turned to Tony in concern, “What are we going to do about the Scepter?”
Tony shrugged in nonchalance, “Deal with it when we find it. If Maggie can’t find it, then we’ll have to just have JARVIS and FRIDAY keep an eye out and track it down for us.”
They followed the couple into the limo and they took off, The Hulk grumbling in concern, Pretty Lady must be kept safe. Boy kept safe too.
And Bruce couldn’t disagree with his alter ego. Maggie would save them all and Peter seemed to be way more important than everyone knew.
Bruce Banner & The Hulk will return.