"They never managed to explain that to me!" he says, lightly. "Come on, there's hot tea inside, and a library with some pretty neat books." Books and mayhem have always been the two best bribes to get his sister to do things.

"Books!" she calls, darting for the front door. "An explanation first, though!"

"Yeah, definitely."

He follows, beating her to the door so he can disarm the security systems. He identifies himself as Thor and a guest, and asks the resident artificial intelligence not to relay anything to the team just yet.

And then he leads the girl who's probably his sister to the kitchen, heats up some tea and scones (the best he can approximate her old favorites), and sits across from her.

"So, what happened's kind of a long story."

She digs into the snack like she's never eaten. Which, well, she doesn't remember ever eating.

"I don't think I have anywhere to be."

"So. My sister... To start explaining her - she was never our mother's favorite child. She was - wild in ways mother didn't prefer. She'd do things specifically because she'd been told not to. She'd free caged animals. She'd play pranks on dignitaries. We were close, but - I'd always be forgiven for helping her. Our mother claimed it was her fault, because she led me astray, and would punish her worse."

"So she, reasonably, left."

"Something festered in her heart, I think, or in her fate - our people are bound very tightly to the prophecies surrounding us. She hated not just our mother but our entire people. She resented me, and sought to foil me whenever I left our home world. She killed people, because she'd been told not to, and because she enjoyed it."

"And then she figured out how to burn our home. Asgard."

"She'd have to burn herself, too, but - "

"Asgard's end was prophesied. Woven into the great tapestry of fate. Even she couldn't escape that, in the end, and her death during it was there."

"...The tapestry burned," she says, voice distant, like it's coming from outside her head. "It was at the tree's root."

(She's not sure how she knows that, and it wasn't a tapestry, not really, like how Yggdrasil wasn't really a tree. But 'tapestry' and 'tree' are close enough, and fire is made to be the enemy of wood and thread.)

"...Good," he says, firmly.

"Anyways... Asgard got cut off, when the fire started. We were doing search and rescue, a few of us, once we could find our way back, but - you're the only one we've found alive. So far at least, but... People'd been talking about calling off the search."

"You cared about them."

"...Yeah. I did. Even when they were terrible."

"I'm sorry. You shouldn't be hurt."

"Now you sound like my sister."

"Do you think I'm her?"

"I don't know. I don't know if identity's in your body, or your memory, or your fate, or something weirder. But... You're still someone I want to help, and maybe get to know, like I'd get to know a long-lost sibling. If you'd let me."

"I think that'd be okay..."

"And I'll protect you from anyone who has a problem with you being connected to the old Loki. You're my ally, even if you're not my sister." He knows Loki had always had a perhaps odd focus on allies, so...

"Good. Allies are important, like books are important, I think."

He nods. "They are."

"Anyways... We should probably think of a name for you, to help distance things."

"I think Loki's right though, it's - me, or at least the person who burned the tapestry and - and broke fate. Breaking fate - that's a good kind of not doing what you're told."

"Yeah. It is. Loki - that's a heavy name, you know. It'll come with chains from people's expectations, but... That's the sort of thing you're good at breaking."

"Well, I'll do the opposite of what they tell me too, then."

He smiles, and says, "Now that we've got you caught up... How about that library?"

"Books!!!"

She's going to be occupied for quite a while, given she doesn't remember ever having read a book.

He's quite happy to see this side of his sister again.

(He's less happy about reporting this to the Avengers; they'll know she's Loki reborn, even if he tries to bluff them, so it's probably best to just come forward...)

The Avengers: are immensely torn! There's a lot of people of the opinion she's flat evil and should not be trusted, though they don't seem to agree on what to do then and whether they think this is a trick or not.

Captain America and Thor Odinson end up bracketing the young Loki for the bulk of the ensuing argument.

"Public opinion doesn't matter," Captain America says, voice not even raised despite a few people having already resorted to shouting. "It doesn't matter what everyone says is wrong or right. What matters is what we know the truth to be. Blaming a child for something she didn't do - something some alternate version of herself did in a future that can't happen again - is wrong. We're better than that, or we should be."

Is that the start of hero worship in her eyes? It might just be!

(She suspects 'emulating Captain America' is something quite unlike the old Loki, and she rather wants to prove everyone wrong about her. Set their little expectations on their head.)