Ceres nodded, and although she didn't feel right about not telling Loki the whole truth, she understood where Thor was coming from. "I'm afraid his first impression of me wasn't very good... I was just so happy he was awake and I had someone to talk to about what happened in that lab..."

"I think he understand now, somewhat" Thor replied, it was all rather confusing. "I told him that you were friends, he said it made sense."

"Thor, if there's anything that he should know, you should tell him. Because I won't lie to him if he asked. I can't..." Ceres was very bad at lying and if was not hard to get information out of her if you were her friend.

"Please, Ceres. There is nothing else that I would ask of you" Thor begged, "but to simply... withhold some of the truth. You needn't lie but you needn't tell him everything. It is actually an area of grey that Loki knows well."

"I think that's called irony" Eric commented.

Ceres shook her head, "Thor, you know how I act. I can't make sure a promise. If you pushes the question I will answer him. I... I don't know how to lie or 'bend' the truth."

Thor looked to the floor and nodded, "Very well..."

Ceres looked down to the floor as well. "But...I can try. I mean, I don't actually know a great deal about the events that made him who he is- was before he forgot. Because you've done so much for me Thor... I'll try."

Thor nodded, "If he asks... perhaps you could just direct him to me?"

She nodded, "I don't think it's my place to tell him anyways. I don't want to mislead him with information I don't know."

Thor nodded again, he looked a little tired, "Anyway. We should probably leave him alone for a little while. He did not take mother's death very well last time..." the azgardian stood to leave, "we shall go down again tomorrow"

Ceres began to show her tiredness once more, "Alright. You traveled a great deal to get here. I'm sure you're tired from the trip as well as talking to Loki." She wrapped her arms around Max. "...Carry me back to my room?"

Thor smiled a little and Max picked Ceres up and carried her off like a princess.


Meanwhile, down in the basement Loki stood in the center of his little prison. There was a flash of green light that blinded the camera briefly and then merely showed him standing there for several hours. While in truth the Azgardian was ripping the place apart with his illusion staying calm.
His mother was dead, had even gotten the chance to say goodbye? Azgard could no longer be home, he was cast out from everything he knew and for reasons he couldn't even recall. The last thing he remembered was celebrating and now this. It was a crushing blow.
He screamed and cried and threw a fit until finally he was worn out and he curled up on the floor with a blanket-the bed had been trashed-and he finally fell into a fitful sleep.

When Loki came around he found a soft purring friend curled up to him. There was the smell of fresh bread in the air.

"Good morning your highness." Juno sat on the other side of the room on the floor, cross legged. In front of him set on a rather lovely tray, was a fresh loaf of bread, butter, eggs, sausage, orange juice. A breakfast fit for a king. Juno didn't move from her spot when he awoke, simply pulled her knees to her chest, "Rough night?" She asked.

Loki looked at her a moment, then took a deep breath and rubbed his weary eyes as he sat up and leaned against the far wall of the cell. He took a moment to size her up but speaking, "... And you are?"

"My name is Juno or Jane which ever you prefer. We're kinda friends FYI. I'm Ceres' older sister;" She pulled her shirt down just enough so he could see the green gem on her chest, " one of them anyways. I'm sorry about your memory lost... It must be hard to all take in. Like you must be having some kind of bad dream." She looked down at the floor. "Brought you some breakfast." She pointed to the food, "Thought you might be hungry..."

There was a long pause, "How you holding up?"

Over the past few months Juno and Loki had shared a fair few laughs. There was the rubber knife incident, the sleeping spell in the cafeteria soup, the illusionary swarm of wasps. Now however, this face was a foreign as Ceres' had been the day before and he looked at Juno blankly. To be honest, he didn't particularly feel like talking to strangers at the moment, so he let one of his illusions take over. It rose from his own body and spoke, "I'm just fine," it replied, waving it's hand to send everything back into it's place.

Meanwhile the real Loki just curled up and closed his eyes. Of course he wasn't okay, he wanted to wake up from this nightmare.
There were very few people, people who either knew him very well or had some greater ability that could see through his illusions. It even took Thor a few minutes sometimes.

"Liar." She got up and walked through the illusion and pulled the real Loki into her arms. Coco hadn't moved from his spot beside the real Loki and the dialogue coming out of his illusion was bullshit.

"I know you're not fine. Your whole world has crashed in around you. And I know I'm just some stranger who just pulled you into a hug. "She withdrew from the hug a bit, " But don't say you're just fine... Know that even though your world has crashed around you... there's a new one to take it's place. Just know that there are still people who care and love you. Look... dancing Orange."

Juno had done this for Loki before because he'd mentioned doing such a prank on his brother, a hundred dancing fruits in the shield cafe and when Loki had done it, it had been a 1000 grapefruits, singing and dancing down the great halls of the palace.

Juno poked the Orange on the tray, the little guy sprung to life, kicking it's legs and waving the fork around like a cane. She offered a half smile meaning, I know you're hurting and I will never know how much pain you're going through... but I hope this may give you a moment of happiness.

Loki, to say the least, was startled. It didn't happen often but he actually found himself speechless. How was she able to do that? How did she know? He actually wanted to be mad at her, how dare she invade his privacy like that? If he was using illusions it meant that he didn't want to be bothered himself and she just had to walk right through and... and... make him face reality like that.

And the dancing orange, it did coax a broken smile from him. But had it been something he'd told her or merely coincidence? If he had actually opened up to this girl that much then the one called Ceres... he had no idea how close they might have actually become.

"Juno, is it?" the prince spoke, finding his voice again, "First of all, do not touch me. Secondly" he prodded the orange, "it's step, kick, step twirl, not twirl step twirl kick." and he took a drink of orange juice. While he didn't have much of an appetite, he was actually quite thirsty.

The orange wiggled backwards and shook the fork at Loki before getting back into position and doing it properly.

"Sorry, I'm not usually so bold." She said, giving him his space again. Juno normally wouldn't be so physical but something about Loki just made her want him to feel better. "...Oh! I thought it was a bit off. I couldn't remember how you put it...sorry." She started explaining their relationship," We weren't close friends but we did pull some pranks together during your last stay here. I hope we can be friends again."

"I see..." Loki watched the orange in silence for several minutes before speaking again, "Tell me. Thor wasn't exactly heavy on the details as to what landed me here. Something about an attack on New York city?"

"Ah, that." She leaned back, " I personally don't know your motives behind it but you lead an alien army into Midgad. There was a huge portal that opened up right over New York City... A lot of people got hurt, some civilian casualties and massive damage to the actual city it's self.

If your brother and the other Avengers hadn't arrived on the scene to stop you... The damage would have been much worst."

"That makes no sense" Loki shook his head and sighed, despite just waking up he was still feeling exhausted, as though he hadn't slept at all.

There was a time, during his rehabilitation with Shield, that Loki had been exposed to a group of five year old children. It was supposed to make him realize humanity and start caring or something. The memory came forward, piecing itself together as it went along.

"Isn't it nap time or something?" Loki had grumbled, already irritated by these little brats.

"I don't wanna go to sleep!" one little girl exclaimed, rather stubbornly.

"And why is that?" Loki rolled his eyes.

"Because that's when the monsters come" she replied, a look of fear in her eyes, "they sneak into your brain and make scary things happen"

Loki raised a brow, looking down at her, "You mean... nightmares?" he guessed and she nodded. "You know none of that's real, don't you? They're just figments."

"Don't you ever have nightmares Mr. Loki?" one of the boys looked up at him.

"Me? No." the azgardian shook his head

"Why not?"

"Because nightmares are made of the things you fear happening" Loki replied bluntly, "and I don't have any of those fears."

They looked at him, wide-eyed and clearly impressed. "I wanna grow up and not be afraid to!" the girl exclaimed.

"You mistake my meaning" Loki shot her a glare, "Any reasonable person, regardless of age has something they are afraid of happening. They dwell on it and it becomes their nightmares in the dark."

"Then how come you're not like that?" the boy demanded

"Because my dear lad" Loki replied, "When you go sleep your nightmares begin. Mine begin when I wake."

Loki rubbed his eyes as the tidbit of memory faded, "When am I getting out of here?"

" I'm sorry. I should have asked you for more details about your life but I didn't want to pry... I'm not sure. I'm not part of this organization." She pulled out her visitor's pass badge. "I wish I had more answers for you. I hope they let you out soon. Then we can have teleport races." She smiled lightly. "I brought you some books to read. Though I'm sure you're not up to it. You seemed to enjoy them when I brought them to you last time..." She pointed to the pile of Game of Thrones books in the corner of the room.

Coco stretched and crawled into Loki's lap, purring. "This is Coco, by the way. He's Ceres' familiar. From my understanding, he didn't like you at first but I think he grew to like you over time. Little guy was sitting by the door when I came down this morning. Guess he wanted to make sure you were alright."

"Yes... I believe he turned into a wand last time I saw him" Loki replied, stroking the cat, "I never thought it would be inconvenient to keep things to myself. If there was one person I could count on to keep a secret it was myself, yet now I find I'm keeping secret from myself and I have no way of retrieving them. Even Thor doesn't seem to know, he merely said that I reacted badly to our Mother's death. Well who wouldn't? There must have been something more than that..." he frowned, puzzling over it while scratching under Coco's chin. "I don't even remember the funeral. I bet all of Azgard was there."

With a sigh he set Coco aside, there wasn't much use in dwelling over questions that no one here could answer. He had to start pulling himself back together, so he got to his feet and tried to shake it off. Impossible, he wasn't waking from this nightmare and all he wanted to do was go home. The ache in his heart was too heavy to dismiss so he turned to distraction and began cleaning up the abysmal mess he had made of the place last night. The Bed repaired and made itself upon command, the table flipped upright again and overturned chair had it's arm rest reattached. The books flew back onto the shelf in order, though some of those self-help books caught his eye and he paused, looking at them oddly.

"Did I actually read these?" he inquired, going through them and looking at one in particular, Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self Help. "... why is this here?"

"Hm? Oh, no I meant the Game of Thrones books." Juno got up and picked one of them up, "There's magic, dragons and a huge throne made out of like a million swords. I'm pretty sure you weren't interested in the other ones."