You woke screaming in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, from nightmares of fire and death, and more pain to come. Nightmares of your parents and bullet wounds. Nightmares of smoke.

Loki came bursting in from his room, too startled by your screams to use magic to reach you. He found you sobbing in the middle of your bed, curled in a tight ball, shaking from the nightmares. You couldn't shake the horrors you had seen and relived. It had been worse this time. You had been trapped and dying in the fire and you felt every moment of it all over again.

Loki crawled onto your bed and pulled you into his arms. You didn't resist him, but relished the chill of his body, focusing on that while you tried to stifle your sobs. Loki's cool skin was a sharp contrast from the memories of the fire and helped to ground you in reality.

"I'm here, darling. You're safe. It's ok," he promised while he held you. You were still seeing the images and feeling the fire. You couldn't get it out of your head. You clutched on to him and tried to get the words out. Tried to explain that you were somehow still halfway trapped in the nightmare. Loki, your amazing, wonderful Loki, seemed to understand, though. He held glowing fingertips to your temples. "Let me in, love. Let me see, please, let me help," he whispered. He was asking for a lot of trust and he knew yet.

All you could do was nod. You felt his presence in your mind. It was a strange feeling, but as usual, he was a perfect gentleman and did not venture where he wasn't allowed, didn't try to pry. Somehow he shielded you so you didn't have to see those images anymore, at least not tonight. You didn't hold it against him that he watched your terrible memories of that night. He couldn't help seeing, not with what he was doing to help you.

A moment later, he was out of your head, and you could finally collect yourself and stop sobbing.

"Thank you," you murmured hoarsely, slumping in his arms. He didn't respond, which was strange for him. You moved enough that you could look up at him. "What's wrong?" you asked him gently. You saw the look in his eyes. He was focused on his thoughts.

"Those memories aren't real," he told you finally, his voice was as distant as his eyes.

"What do you mean?" you asked softly, keeping your voice carefully calm. He would talk without censoring his answers if you didn't startle him out of his thoughts.

"Someone has tampered with them. Someone with extraordinary telepathic abilities. I would have noticed before now otherwise. Even I do not have such skill," he shook out of his distant thoughts and looked at you properly. "I hate to even mention this, love, but there is only one way for me to be able to see where the tampering occurred. Some of that memory is real. Some is not," he hesitated. "Can you be brave enough, strong enough, to relive that nightmare once more?" You knew how much it hurt him to ask that. You also knew he wouldn't have if it wasn't the only way.You both wanted to know how your memories had been tampered with and where. "I will be there with you the entire time," he promised.

You nodded. "I see it nearly every night anyway," you reminded him, trying to sound flippant about it, trying to sound unconcerned. Seeing it twice tonight wouldn't be that much worse. Surely, it wouldn't.

"I would never ask. I do not want to subject you to this, but it is the only way." Loki sounded heartbroken and torn by making you relive this.

"I know, Loki. I know you'd never hurt me," you whispered. "Do what you need. I'll be ok," you promised him, sounding more sure than you felt about this prospect. He nodded and kissed your forehead.

"I will make this as easy on you as you am able," he promised. He pressed his lips to your forehead again and you felt his magic roll over you. You succumbed to a deep sleep in under a minute.

The nightmare started again, you couldn't stop it and couldn't change what you saw and felt.

You woke coughing and sat bolt upright in your bed. There was a strange orange glow surrounding you and too much heat. Way too much heat. The air was fogged. No, not fogged, filled with smoke. You jumped out of the bed. You were wearing flimsy summer pajamas, a tank top and short shorts that your dad disapproved of. You fell to your knees instantly, coughing from the smoke. It took a minute of sucking in the cleaner air on the floor of your room before you were able to move. You got back to your feet and stumbled a few steps toward your door. You had to get downstairs.

You faintly heard laughter from outside as the villains celebrated. You managed to get your door open and saw that your entire world was covered in flames. You turned to go back in your room, to try to get out through the window, but the way was cut off there. On your knees, you made your way to the staircase. It was the only way to breathe in the world filled with the hazy smoke. It was a fight to breathe and all you could think about was how you were going to die if you didn't keep going. You had to get out or you would die. You clutched onto the banister for support and ran down the stairs as fast as you could. The stairs would give out soon if you didn't move quickly. The stairs led into your foyer.

You stopped moving and just screamed when you entered the foyer, though you barely had the breath for it. You fell to your knees again, sobbing at the scene before your eyes. Both of your parents were tied to your dining room chairs. Chairs that didn't belong in that room, but had been dragged there for that purpose. They were both dead already, each with a gunshot wound in their head. You managed to stumble to your feet and run to them anyway. You had to untie them. Had to try to save them. Had to get them out of here. You shook them, trying to wake them, though part of you knew better. You knew they were dead, you were just so out of it from smoke inhalation and horror that you weren't thinking clearly.

Something crashed through your brain, yelling for you to get out of there or you would die. Some sense of self preservation kicked in and you left your parents with tears streaming down your face for doing it, to try to run for the door, to try to get out of here. There was a loud crash. You raised your arms to protect yourself, but you were thrown off of your feet. One of the wooden structure pillars that supported...something... in the house was pinning you to the ground a moment later, burning the leg it was trapping.

You screamed and screamed for help as you tried to push the pillar off of you, but it was no use. Eventually, you succumbed to the smoke and the heat of the fire and passed out in the middle of the flames.

You woke to frost covering you, shivering in Loki's arms. You didn't mind, though. You were safe from the fire. You would take being cold to being burned alive again. "Don't make you do that again tonight," you begged Loki, your voice so hoarse and raw. You guessed you had been screaming again in your nightmares.

"I will not," he replied gently and stopped breathing frost. "I saw what I needed. Come, darling, we'll discuss this over tea," he told you gently. You nodded and let him help you out of your bed. He wrapped his robe around you when you were standing. It was too big and smelled like him, but that was what made it perfect. He led you downstairs to the kitchen with his arm around you. You needed to walk this time, needed to focus on the real world and not the nightmare hellscape you had escaped.

You sat on a stool in the kitchen and he made your tea the human way. You watched him work in silence and let him tuck you under a thick blanket on the couch with your tea once it was ready.

You sat in silence and sipped on your tea. He had slipped honey in your and it soothed your throat some. "Did you find out what was tampered?" you asked him softly. You didn't want to aggravate your throat anymore than you had to.

He looked up at you and nodded. "It was the moment after you ran to your parents. That is where the tampering began. I do not know who did it or why, but everything after that is a false memory. I cannot dig deeper into it without hurting you, which I will not do," he told you firmly. Much as you wanted to know what really happened that night, Loki wasn't going to help you if it would hurt you.

"Why would they change my memories?" you asked him, confused. That was the part that didn't make sense. Hell, none of this made sense. Who would change your memories and why?

"Something happened after that moment that someone does not want you to remember," he answered.

You considered that, then threw the blanket aside and pulled up your pant leg to show him the scar on your leg from where you'd been pinned by the beam. "I have the scar from the beam that pinned me down still," you reminded him. He looked it over and nodded.

"I do not understand it any more than you do," he told you gently as he tucked the blanket back around you. "I think we should be on our guard though. There is a reason your memories were tampered with,"

You nodded and went back to your tea, trying not to think about the fire anymore. So you decided to change the subject. "You haven't told you when your birthday is," you reminded him.

He rolled his eyes with a put-upon sigh. "Darling, I have explained already that our calendar does not coincide with Earth's," you glared at him.

"You could narrow it down some and we'll pick a birthday for you," you reminded him quite logically. This argument had come up a few times already.

He laughed. "Very well. My birthday falls in our spring, the day the hoofali trees bloom," he said fondly. You could see him imagining the way the trees looked when they bloomed. You sensed his homesickness.

You grinned at him, trying to lighten the mood. "Spring..." you pondered, then lit up. "I know when your birthday should be!"

"And when is that?" he asked, amused.

"April 1st!" you exclaimed. He looked at you confused. "April 1st is known as April Fool's Day. It's a day for tricks and pranks. It's traditional to pull pranks on friends and family and coworkers on that day."

He laughed then and the sound of his laughter scared the last of your nightmare memories away. "That is the perfect day indeed," he told you. "Are you ready to go back to bed?" he asked gently, knowing you needed more sleep than he did.. You shook your head.

"You can go. I don't want to go back to sleep tonight." It was only 3am, but you couldn't go back to sleep and risk those nightmares again. Not for a third time that night.

"I can make it so you will not dream," he reminded you.

You shook your head. "Not tonight, Loki. No more magic in my head tonight,"

"As you wish, my dear," he told you, but didn't sound convinced. Instead, he put the Avengers movie on the TV and let you curl up with him, laying your head on his cool chest.

Two Avengers movies later, Tony came clomping into the room. "Can't you two stay out of the news?" He grumbled at you. You sat up and looked at him. You figured you looked like hell after the night you'd been through, especially if he wasn't yelling about you being on the news, but was only grumbling instead.

"We didn't do anything," you swore. Tony grabbed the remote and switched the TV to the news. "Oh. That." They were playing your entire performance from the comic con in its entirety. "It was a promotion for the movie," you shrugged. You all liked the Avengers movies being in a good light and doing things like the stunt at comic con helped with that.

"Just try to stay out of the news, ok?" he asked.

You nodded. "I don't try to get on the news," you reminded him.

"You feeling ok, kiddo? You don't look like you are," Tony finally asked, concerned. He placed a hand on your forehead and you rolled your eyes at him.

"I'm fine. I just didn't sleep well," you replied sourly. He finally accepted that and left you alone. You watched your performance with Loki when they showed it again and you couldn't help giggling at it. You had to admit you'd actually had done a really good job.

*

You spent most of the rest of the month working on Loki's birthday present, which was hard since you were hiding it from him. It involved a lot of cooperation from the supers to get it accomplished too, plus Tony's credit card. Loki kept pestering you to find out what you were doing, but you refused to tell him. Fury even helped you by making sure Loki was on patrol all day on March 30th and 31st. It took you the entirety of those two days to get his present made. On the 30th, he knocked on his door, growling when he found it locked

"Why am I locked out of my room?" he asked when you cracked the door open.

"Because your birthday present is in here. So you're not allowed in here," you told him quite logically.

"I would like to get some sleep before my next patrol shift," he answered, also logically.

"You can sleep in my room," you reassured. "And no peeking at your present!" you told him. You did give him a kiss before you sent him to your room to get some sleep. "Promise you won't peek," you begged. You really didn't want the surprise ruined. He sighed, but promised. You knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't break a promise, no matter that it would drive him crazy until his birthday. Especially when he could use magic to see into the room and you'd never know.

Finally, late in the evening on March 31st, his present was completed. After his cake and ice cream and presents, which somehow were all either Loki or Elsa themed, you led him up to his room to show him his actual present from you. "I have been dying to find out what you have been up to, darling," he told you, giddy with excitement. You stopped outside his room and handed him the new key.

"Then open the door and find out," you told him with a smile. He did and you watched his mouth fall open. He stared in shock as he stepped into the room.

"How did you do this?" he asked, staring in awe.

"I had a lot of help," you admitted. The supers had spent two days straight working with you to change his suite into an exact replica of his suite on Asgard.

"How?" he repeated. He couldn't get any more words out and you were proud of yourself for tripping up his silver tongue.

"You showed me an illusion of it months ago," you reminded him. "Wanda read the image from my mind and projected it to the others. Doug and his crew helped with the actual construction. Uncle Tony's credit card and the internet helped some. We got it as close as we could." you knew you had gotten it perfect, but you weren't going to brag.

Loki pulled you into a hug. "I love it. It's perfect. Thank you, darling," he finally told you before he kissed you deeply. He stared around the room in awe again. You saw the tears in his eyes. You knew he missed his home, that's why you'd done this. This was the closest you could get to it for him. "I do not have the words to thank you properly," he added softly, emotion in his words. You spent the evening in his room, before he sent you to your own room just before midnight.

"You're kicking me out early," you accused. He grinned.

"I want you out of danger before the pranks begin," he replied. You giggled, but let him shoo you from the room. You stayed in your own room, wondering what the next day would be.

There was an ice rose waiting for you on your nightstand and you smiled at it as you fell asleep.

The next morning, you woke early and headed down to breakfast as usual. No one was around since it was so early. So you made breakfast and sat down with your book on the couch while you waited for everyone to get up. You hadn't seen any pranks, yet, so you wondered what was going on. Knowing Loki, he wouldn't throw this chance away.

It was then you heard the roar. "KAT! WHERE IS THAT CURSED BOYFRIEND OF YOURS?" It sounded like Tony, but something was off with his voice. You looked over and just started laughing. You couldn't stop for a good five minutes. "It will hurt no less when you kill him in this form," Tony growled. Tony was female. A rather attractive female. Like someone had taken him, turned him into a girl, and then made him extra hot. It was hilarious.

You finally stopped laughing long enough to shrug. "I haven't seen Loki yet today," you told him calmly. More people were beginning to mill in. All of them were either pissed or laughing. Or both. Everyone had changed genders. You seemed to be the only one immune. You saw Helene. She had been immune too. You were relieved. It wouldn't be nice to prank her with all she did for everyone in the tower and you were glad that Loki seemed to understand that too.

"How are we supposed to go on patrol like this?" Wanda asked from a man's body. You tried not to laugh at her. She could kick your ass on a good day, today she'd do it without question. It was so very hard not to laugh. "How come you're not affected?" she demanded when she saw you.

You shrugged. "I don't know. I haven't seen Loki," you reminded them. They kept glaring at you like this was your fault. Loki finally came downstairs looking like the most gorgeous woman you had ever set eyes on. Everyone glared at you more. "Not my fault," you reminded them. You had no access to magic.

Fury came storming in. He was only recognizable because of his uniform and eyepatch, since he was a stern middle aged woman now. "Patrols will continue as usual. The villains won't know what hit them." He ordered, then burst out laughing. At least he enjoyed the prank. Everyone grumbled, but went off to do whatever they were supposed to be doing.

Loki came over to see you. "Good morning, my dear," she told you with a glint in her eyes and her Cheshire Cat grin firmly in place.

"Morning," you replied. "You pranked yourself too?" you asked, curious as to her transformation.

Loki shrugged and looked a bit shy. "Not exactly... I am what you Midgardians call 'genderfluid'. I identify as male most of the time, but only that, most of the time. Today, I wish to be female," she paused, letting you take that in. You offered her a bright accepting smile and she relaxed. "Would you care to join us in the fun?" she asked you.

You shook your head. "Thank you, no," you replied with a giggle. "Tom sent you a message this morning that they'll be on campus today doing some filming. Want to go see them?" you asked. Tom usually texted you instead of Loki. It tended to work better.

Loki giggled and gods the sound was adorable. "This will be fun," she told you brightly. You couldn't help laughing too and you left the compound to go watch the filming. Tom and Kelly saw you and waved you over.

"Who's your frien-?" Tom started to ask before he got a good look at Loki.

"There's an April Fool's prank running amok around here," you told him with a smile. "Loki got tied up in it." You wouldn't out Loki's genderfluidity to outsiders without Loki's ok. You also wouldn't pressure her into being ok with it.

Tom and Kelly just started laughing. They grabbed Loki by both hands and dragged her over to the director and producers for ideas for the movie. You laughed as Loki was dragged off. They took a bunch of pictures of her and made her run a couple of scenes for them and read some lines. You had a feeling this would be a plot point at some point. It wasn't like Loki hadn't been female in the comics already.

"Darling, you're looking cold," Loki told you once they let her go. She conjured a hat and handed it to you. You rolled your eyes at your overprotective girlfriend, but accepted it. You should have known better, but Loki was always like this so you hadn't thought about it. You plopped the hat on your head. It was a cat-ear hat, and would've been cute had it not disappeared the second you put it on your head, leaving only cat ears in its wake.

"Loki!" you exclaimed, giggling.

"I couldn't leave you out of all of the fun," she giggled. You laughed together and hung out that day with everyone in the wrong bodies. It was hilarious to see the guys in girl bodies sitting with their legs spread and no one knowing how to walk or talk. "Don't worry, Loki finally told them. The spell wears off at midnight."