[Loki shakes his head. Why bother with this? It's meaningless. It's an open wound. It's the thing he wishes he did not remember, because it's confusing and it bloody hurts for a multitude of reasons.]

I tried to sneak out of the house, and Tony... and Stark stopped me. [He'd rather just call him Stark now, scrambling for some kind of emotional distance, but it doesn't work. Not like it used to.]

He said I needed to... dry out. Forced me to admit I wasn't happy. [And he hadn't been, in that false life. But that had been someone else's life.] That I wasn't all right. Forced me to agree to stay with him and Pepper until I was better.

[He laughs again, and it's that same painful, unbalanced sound, the way he laughs when really he ought to be crying.] Of all stupid things... oh, it's funny, it really is. Stark said then that I had a family to take care of me because I had them.

[The words are practically seared into his brain: "You have us - and we have you. Family isn't just flesh and blood, Loki."

Only it was all a bloody lie again. None of that had been real, and it was the plainest sort of mockery. It's an open wound. And it shouldn't bother him. Such things are not for Loki. He has no need of family, because he is not of any realm, of any people. Right?

Right?]