Chapter One: Pregnancy Hormones

Bruce Banner had been in a deep sleep when he first heard the taps on his window. He had first assumed that maybe it was a pigeon. They were all over the city, after all. When the taps got harder and more insistent, he pushed himself out of bed, thinking that he would just open the window and shoo the bird away so that he could sleep.

However, when he put his glasses on to see what was at the window, he quickly realized that it was not a what but a who.

Of all the people he might expect knocking at his window, the woman known as Phoenix wasn't one of them.

It had been a few weeks since her and Loki had dropped in and announced that they were having a kid. Fury had amazingly been willing to agree to the truce, as long as they consented to being watched, along with giving help whenever the Avengers needed it.

While they had agreed to stop trying to take over the world and refrain from kidnapping any of them out of spite, neither of them had completely given up on being annoyances. Everyone found things hidden in weird places around Stark Tower that belonged to them, and one night everyone had realized that all of the books on history in the home were stolen, only to return a few nights later with corrections. Thor insisted that they weren't in his brother's handwriting, which left only Phoenix as the culprit. Despite not liking that someone had written in a few of his personal books, Bruce couldn't help but enjoy reading facts from a person who had been around to see things like the rise and fall of Rome.

Banner opened the window, wind whipping in and blowing through his hair. They were many floors up off the ground, so the wind was fierce. "How did you even get up here?" he asked.

"Never mind that," she said, pushing past him and making her way inside of the room. "I figured it would be nicer of me to try knocking rather than just breaking in or something." Bruce realized that she couldn't teleport on her own. He knew that she had abilities in magic as well, but, other than almost unconsciously conjuring fire, he hadn't seen any of her abilities. "I need a doctor."

"I'm...not exactly the kind of doctor you should be going to," Bruce told her, realizing what it was that she was wanting.

She shot him a glare. "Now exactly what sort of doctor should I be going to? A human one that doesn't know what I am? What sort of baby I am carrying?" He couldn't help but notice that she spoke a lot like Thor and Loki now, even though her own speech was more peppered with modern colloquialisms. Then again, she likely spent all of her time around Loki. Why wouldn't she start talking like him?

Bruce sighed and nodded. "Alright, point taken," he grumbled. He wanted to argue that he wasn't that kind of doctor, but he had helped plenty of pregnant women while in India and during his other travels while he had hid from the American government. At least here, he had real equipment.

He shut the window and motioned for her to follow, leading her toward an elevator and then down to the medical wing that they kept here. People ended up banged up enough that it was a necessity to have it here. Right now Bruce was just grateful that they also had sonograms.

"Are you telling me that you haven't seen a doctor since you've been pregnant?" he asked as he motioned for her to sit on one of the beds in the medical wing.

She shook her head, nibbling on her bottom lip. He couldn't help but realize that she looked horribly nervous, like something had been on her mind for a while.

"What's on your mind?" he asked, motioning for her to raise her shirt.

She did, exposing her swollen stomach. "I want to see if it looks normal," she admitted to him after a moment's hesitation.

"Normal by what standards?" Bruce asked her. He pulled out a tube of jelly, squirting some on her stomach as he waited for the machine to fully warm up.

She sighed. "I am not sure of that myself. I think I will know once I see it, though."

He simply nodded. When the sonogram machine was ready, he turned the screen toward her, pressing the tool down on her stomach so that pictures could be seen.

"Do you have to press so hard?" she grumbled, obviously trying not to shift on the bed.

"If I don't press hard, we won't be able to see anything," he told her. Shortly the images within her appeared. "The baby looks normal, ten fingers, ten toes, well formed..."

"What color is it?" she asked.

He paused, looking directly at her. "What?"

She lifted up a hand and he watched as it turned jet black, as if burnt. Apparently, she wasn't that different from Loki in that she had a different form as well. "What color is it? Black? Blue? Purple? I need to know."

As he watched her hand change back, he realized what she meant by normal. "This isn't going to show that," he told her. "She'll likely have two forms like you and Loki do."
"She then?" she asked, and he nodded. "I wonder if she'll be fire or frost...I am not sure what will happen when the two mix like this."

Bruce shrugged, handing her a towel and pulling away from her stomach so that she could clean up. "Only time will tell, but, so far, things look as normal as can be with a child born from gods."

She smiled, seemingly reassured. Once cleaned up and with her shirt back down, she did something completely unexpected. She jumped off the table and hugged him. She was apparently quite relieved.

He went stiff in her arms before awkwardly patting her on the back. "Thank you," she said when she pulled back. "You're going to be my doctor from now on."

She turned from him and started walking toward the elevator, presumably to let herself out of the building. "I don't even get a choice in this, do I?" he asked, more to himself than to her.

"Nope!" she called out over her shoulder to him.

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During the next month of her pregnancy, Phoenix dropped by Stark Tower at least weekly for a doctor's appointment with Bruce, and had been hanging around a little bit more each time afterward. Tony and Clint were still uncomfortable around her, although even that was starting to ebb. Everyone had to admit that she really did seem to be sticking with the idea that, if she was going to have a child, she wanted to raise it on a normal and functioning world.

One day she was sitting at the kitchen table with Pepper, and, of all things, they were looking at paint swatches for the baby's room. Phoenix didn't really care for pink, but she had already vetoed green from Loki.

"If I let him, he would have everything green," Phoenix said to Pepper with a laugh. "Green's fine, but a little variety would be nice." She was willing to accept that maybe she could pick a color and have gold accents, but that was as far as she was willing to go.

"Well, men can't be trusted to decorate anything," Pepper told her while they spread more swatches over the table. "If they even have an opinion, they get into color ruts. Tony would have everything be in red and gold if he did any sort of decorating."

Phoenix laughed, and would have made another joke about Tony, but she could hear Thor's booming voice coming up from the elevator. Even though Loki had a naturally quiet voice, she could hear his voice was raised as well. She could only tell what Thor was actually saying, though. It was something about Asgard and convincing his brother to visit home.

Why couldn't Thor just let some things be?

When the elevator opened, it was as if the two of them didn't realize that there were others in the room. "Brother, you should both come to Asgard. The child will eventually need to be presented at court," Thor said as the two walked off the elevator.

"Why are you so focused on this?" Loki asked him. "Besides, Phoenix is in no condition for that kind of travel. I am not putting her or our child in any danger just to satisfy some ridiculous tradition of a place than I no longer live at!"

"She scaled the building on her own a few weeks ago," Pepper remarked. Others were starting to filter into the room as well due to the raised voices. "You may want to give her a little more credit."

"I am also in here, you two," Phoenix said with a glower. "Do not talk as if I am not around."

Loki looked toward her. "Do you want to go?" he asked.

Phoenix shook her head. "Absolutely not."

Loki looked back at his brother. "See? Even she does not want to go. Why do you care so much about this?"

"Because we need to let Mother and Father know that they are going to be grandparents!" Thor demanded. "They are dying to see the both of you. Why are you so resistant?"

"Let's see...they lied to me all my life about my true parentage, I escaped from one of their jails, she helped me escape, and...OH! Did I forget to mention the part where she was banished to Midgard with no knowledge of who she was because of what some prophecy said?" Loki spilled out. Phoenix could see that he was getting angrier and angrier by the moment.

Phoenix stood up from the table. "Thor, this discussion needs to end. Neither of us want to do that. This place is our home. Why would we need to go anywhere else for approval that we do not seek?"

"You have never even been there! How could you know which place you would prefer?" Thor asked, turning toward her. "If you would only take a chance and..."

Phoenix hadn't even realized what she was doing until Thor's voice cut off mid-sentence. She had her hand around his throat and had actually managed to lift him off the ground. "Do NOT tell me what to do, Thor," she snarled at him. She could hear noise in the background, but she wasn't paying it any mind. "We are staying here, and that is the end of the discussion, alright?"

When he managed to nod, she dropped him, watching as his color started to turn back to normal as he gasped for air. It was then that she realized that all the 'noise' she had heard before were the others screaming, mainly for her to let Thor go.

She covered her mouth with her hand when she realized fully what she had done. "Oh god...I am SO sorry, Thor," she said. She had just wanted all of the screaming to stop and for Thor to stop insisting on things that were none of his business. She really hadn't meant to go all crazy and throat grabbing on him.

In a blind panic, she bolted from the room, not even checking to see if anyone was following her.

OoOoOoOo

Loki managed to find her hiding on the roof. "I have never seen anyone get the drop on Thor like that." His tone was light, especially since his pregnant wife was sitting near the edge of the roof, knees curled up to her chest.

"Are they angry?" she asked him.

He sat down beside her. "Not really. I think that they are blaming pregnancy hormones."

She chuckled then, leaning her head against his arm. "I thought about throwing Thor through a window," she admitted.

"Something I have wanted to do thousands of times," he told her. "He has bruises around his throat."

She turned and looked at him in surprise. "Really? I barely touched him!" He could see that she was starting to relax. "So much for being a god, the big baby."

Loki laughed and put his arm around her shoulders. "Are you alright?" he asked her.

She nodded as she leaned back against him. "I hope this is the last we hear of this nonsense from Thor."

"I doubt it. Thor can be a stubborn bastard when he wants to be," Loki said with a sigh, burying his face in her hair. "Maybe next time you should just toss him out the window."

"I don't think I can keep claiming pregnancy hormones every time I get mad at someone," she told him.

"You should keep using it while you can. Maybe we can get away with stealing all of Stark's tools," he suggested.
"You're just TRYING to get us in trouble, aren't you?" she asked with a grin.

"I called a truce. I did NOT say that we were going to get boring," he pointed out.

"Alright, but let's wait until he finally goes to sleep, whenever that is," she said conspiratorially.

"That's going to take FOREVER," Loki said with a groan.

"It will be completely worth it," she told him. "Especially if we replace everything with ice cream."

He laughed. "I like the way you think."