This plot bunny ambushed me as I was reading the various rather good fics about Loki on this webite, including The Writing On Tony's Wall and Mischief loves Company. It is a scene from a longer story that may never get written and shows Tony Stark's first meeting with Loki's eldest son.
Please review!
Slepnir
Tony Stark scowled at the twenty-something-year-old seated in the interrogation room. This punk had dressed up as Loki and somehow swamped three blocks around the Stark Tower in New York city with lime jello four feet deep, which had forced the Avengers to split up instead of all chasing after the real Loki, who had been raising hell in Washington DC. Of course, the real God of Mischief had escaped. The imposter however had not, calmly giving himself up once the rest of the team arrived on the scene.
The resemblance, even after removing the impressive reproduction of Loki's horned helmet, was somewhat uncanny. He was the right height and general build, being only slightly more muscular than the original; a swimmer's build rather than a marathon runner's. He had brown eyes to Loki's vivid green, a slightly stronger jaw and much longer hair, but that really was it for differences. You had to be really familiar with how the God of Mischief actually looked to spot what set them apart.
Having been defenestrated by the mad god, Tony had seen his face at uncomfortably close quarters and had realised as soon as the helmet came off that something was up. Thor, arriving on the scene with Captain America a few minutes before the imposter surrendered, had known at once that the man bouncing from car roof to car roof and cackling manically was not his little brother.
The imposter lounged carelessly on the uncomfortable chair, hair now fastened in a high ponytail, eyes closed and as relaxed as if he wasn't responsible for at least ten thousand dollars' worth of property damage and being a public nuisance. Tony couldn't wait for Fury to arrive so they could interrogate this asshole.
The interrogation was quite possibly the strangest conversation Tony had ever listened in on. The prisoner had perked up as soon as Fury entered the room; the cell had magic dampeners built into it, but as the imposter had given himself up Fury had refrained from putting the dampening cuffs on him.
Fury sat opposite the imposter –just as Natasha Romanov, the Black Widow, stepped into the viewing room where Tony was– and calmly sorted through his files. "Is there anything you'd like to say before we begin?" the Director of SHIELD asked coolly.
"Just one question," the imposter said, sitting up straight. "Can you guarantee that, regardless of the outcome of the current situation, you will oppose any requests and attempts to deport me to Asgard?"
Which had to be the weirdest request ever. Fury stilled for a moment, indicating he was suddenly much more interested in this prisoner than he had been. "I think we can agree to that," the one-eyed man said neutrally.
"Your oath on it?" Oh, this guy was definitely Asgardian. Tony reached over to tweak the volume on the security cameras.
"My oath," Fury agreed.
"So mote," the imposter murmured before smiling widely. The cheerfully mischievous grin made him look utterly adorable, which caused Tony to wonder if Loki had ever smiled like that.
"Well?" Fury prompted.
"Nickolas Fury, Director of SHIELD, I am Slepnir Svadilfarisson, first-born child of Loki Laufeyson called Odinson," the imposter said with a small bow, hand over his heart. "Well met."
Tony gaped. What the fuck?
The rest of the two-hour-long interrogation was a study in frustration. Not that Slepnir wasn't perfectly chatty and perfectly amenable to talking; however the tall brunet seemed blithely impervious to subtext and subtlety and frequently went off on long, rambling tangents that had nothing to do with what Fury wanted to know. What Tony did however find out in between looking up the legend of the origins of Slepnir on Wikipedia was that the boy lived with his adopted mother and siblings, had been on Earth –he called it Midgard– for over three hundred years and yes, he actually was an eight-legged horse. However he also had an IQ of 146 and was a shapeshifter, so he preferred human form as it allowed for the most opportunities. People don't take you seriously if you look like a horse and having both a voice box and thumbs was very useful. As he actually stepped away from the table and briefly transformed to prove he wasn't some random nut, Tony couldn't fault his reasoning; he would have hated being horse-shaped and unable to use a computer.
When asked about his foster mother Slepnir had gone off on another tangent, talking about how pretty and kind and smart and strong she was and how much she loved him in spite of his not being hers by blood. The name of this paragon was Sigyn, a name without much mythical background beyond 'wife of Loki', and she was pregnant. Which, Slepnir added, was why he'd flooded New York with lime jello: Loki was needed at home to support his wife in her delicate condition, which he couldn't do while in jail or taking over the world. Slepnir had volunteered to play distraction while one of his other brothers caught up with their father and told him the news.
Fury had listened carefully to every word that came out of Slepnir's mouth, nodded at intervals, asked the occasional question and, once the human horse finally ran out of things to say, said that he would be back later and left the room. Tony quickly dashed out into the corridor.
"Considering that according to Thor, Odin still rides around on Slepnir, don't you think there's more to what he told us than that?" the playboy genius demanded.
"Very likely," Fury conceded. "However from what he did say, he's been living in this country since just after the second world war so he is a naturalised American citizen with all the rights that entails. Revealing his presence at this point would only cause more friction."
"So, we won't be telling Thor who he is?" Tony mused. "Hey, can I talk to him?"
Fury frowned.
"Just to see if I can get any more out of him!" the creator of the Iron Man armour protested, raising his hands in surrender. "He seems the type to chat." Well, if Slepnir was really anything like Loki he'd been playing the fool with Fury and the director of SHIELD knew it, but Tony wanted to be able to prove it.
"Very well then," Fury agreed grudgingly, "but any injuries are entirely your own responsibility."
Tony sauntered into the interrogation room and stood in front of the table, incidentally looming over the seated Slepnir. "So, your dad really was a horse?" he said, tone both curious and faintly deriding. "I wouldn't have thought Loki was into that kind of thing, but I suppose it takes all kinds. Was that-"
Slepnir was suddenly behind him, hand on the closed door with white lightning flaring around it. Tony shot over to the right-hand side of the room, putting as much distance between himself and the suddenly deadly serious prisoner as possible without getting too far away from the door. Slepnir then moved forwards and drifted sideways, so that the door was to one side of them both, rotated the table and dragged a chair over so he was sitting opposite Tony with the door on his right.
"Do be seated, Tony Stark, man of iron," Slepnir said gently, his voice holding a trace of the vicious edge that Loki's voice did right before he threw Tony out the window.
Tony darted over and tried the door, but it didn't move.
"The door is jammed until I will it otherwise," Slepnir said matter-of-factly. "Do sit down."
Not having other options and not wanting to further irritate the man he was trapped in a cell with, Tony sat, moving the chair so he was facing Slepnir with the table between them.
"Attend, Tony Stark," Slepnir said, his voice soft but compelling, "to the tale of the younger son of a king."
"Once there was a king who had two sons. The younger son was only five years old when he first realised that he was different. He was not tall or strong or gifted in the arts of war; instead he was intelligent, quick-witted and had a gift for magic. However these skills were not well-received by his elders or peers: they mocked his lack of physical strength, disparaged his love of learning and openly scoffed as his 'tricks' as being unworthy of a true warrior."
"How would you have fared, Tony Stark, had you been born in an Iron Age warrior society?" Slepnir inquired idly, gazing at the ceiling. "Would you have fared any better, I wonder?" He did not however give Tony time to answer and continued:
"The prince was widely looked down upon for his aptitude and outright preference for 'women's work', as such scholarly pursuits were considered, so he did his best to improve in those areas that were more worthy of praise. But in spite of spending twice as long on his swordwork and wrestling as anyone else, he was never more than merely capable. He had no talent for it and was scorned for that deficiency. The prince however did not abandon his other studies: he loved them too much to abandon them and they gave him an edge, no matter how little others thought of such skills.
"In all things the younger prince sought the approval of his father the king, yet he was continually overshadowed by his older brother, the heir. The older prince was strong, tall, a gifted warrior and much-loved by all at court. Thus many years passed with the younger prince striving to escape his brother's shadow and win his father's attention. But, when it became clear that all his efforts could not win that approval, the younger prince turned to mischief and trickery in order to call others' attention to himself. While his victims turned on him with anger, others often laughed behind their hands and the sufferer's misfortune."
"Then, when the younger prince was fifteen and newly a man, his father decided they needed a new palace. However there were few builders capable of such feats. One such man came to the court and offered to build the palace in three months in exchange for the hand in marriage of the queen. After much debate, a bargain was struck with certain conditions: first, that unless all the work was completed within three months the builder would forfeit all payment and second, that he must do it all with his own two hands without assistance from anyone else. The builder agreed, but asked that his stallion, Svadilfari, be permitted to assist him. The young prince, amused at the condition, pointed out to the court that the help of a horse would make little difference. Entertained, the court agreed to the request and builder began his work."
"However Svadilfari proved a powerful horse capable of lifting great weights and two and a half months later the palace was nearly finished. The court gathered and determined that, since when they found themselves so discomforted the younger prince was to usually blame, their losing the bargain was also his fault. Furious with the young man, there were murmurs that it would be better to kill him for his crime if the palace was indeed finished on time."
"The prince glanced towards the king, but not even his father defended him. The prince then felt true fear as he realised that he is of little consequence to his parents; he is not the heir, so he is expendable. Terrified, the young man –only fifteen years old, Tony Stark– swores before the court that he would see the builder lose no matter the cost to himself and fled into the night."
Slepnir paused, shifting in his seat. "What would you have done, Tony Stark?" he inquired of the ceiling, musing words hiding a lethal edge. "How would you have responded to the knowledge that, when it came to it, you were all alone with no-one willing to support you? That your own father would see you dead for something that he knew you had not done, yet allowed you to take the blame for?"
Tony couldn't answer. He'd lost his voice a few minutes back when Slepnir had asked him how he would have coped in Loki's place, because he really, really didn't like the answer his brain had handed him.
"So, the younger prince had to disrupt the building, but do so in a manner that could not be traced back to the court by the builder. The best way to do so would be to distract the stallion, as it did most of the work. The prince decided therefore to transform himself into a mare and lead Svadilfari on a chase. So, just two evenings before the palace was due to be completed, the young prince in the form of a mare emerged from the woods near the building site. The stallion on noticing the mare instantly gave chase and the young prince suddenly realised, as he dashed hither and thither around the almost finished palace, what he had not given thought to the night before: what would happen to him if the stallion caught up. Even more frightened, the younger prince ran faster. He ran all night and for all of the next day around the building site in the form of the mare, eventually fleeing into the woods with Svadilfari still at his heels on the day the palace was due to be finished."
"The young prince ran and ran, but he eventually came to the end of his strength, lacking even the magic to resume his human form. As the stallion caught up with him the prince realised he had run so far and so fast that there was no-one around who could help him, a thing he both regretted and was grateful for. Regretted because he knew with grim certainty that there was no way for him to escape being raped; grateful because he knew within his heart that even if someone of the court had been present, there was a good chance they would not have bothered to help him, seeing the immanent humiliation as his well-deserved comeuppance."
Tony finally found his voice. "That's sick," he rasped. Slepnir bowed his head.
"Fifteen years old, Tony Stark. How well would you have survived it at that age, I wonder?"
Tony really, really didn't want to know.
"When the young prince in mare's form recovered from the assault, he found the stallion lying dead of exhaustion beneath a nearby tree. He spent the next few days eating and resting, recovering his magic so he could return to his true form. However when he attempted to change his body would not allow it and he despaired, for there were only three reasons that would prevent one from changing to a new form: a mortal wound, lack of strength or incompatibility between forms. As he lacked a mortal wound and his strength was recovered, that only left incompatibility, which meant the mare he had become had changed in the time since he first assumed the shape in a way a human male could not accommodate. Considering the assault he had suffered by the stallion Svadilfari, the most likely change was that his current form had conceived."
Another pause, this one painfully heavy. Tony felt like a cruel, insensitive bastard for bringing up Slepnir's parentage in the first place.
"I was fortunate that my father did not slay me as soon as I emerged from the womb," Slepnir mused, "for doing so would most certainly have been justified. My very existence was proof of his shame, evidence that he was both less than a warrior and less than a man. However the lady Sigyn, who at that time was his attendant, caught up with him a few days after he realised himself trapped and took care of him, healing him in mind and heart to the point that he could think beyond the pain, despair and humiliation to decide that his unborn foal was not at fault in the matter. So once I was born and weaned my father once again assumed his usual form and he and the woman I now call mother raised me between them for a few years, until the Allfather came looking for us."
The young demi-god rose to his feet and paced to the wall behind his chair, then back again. "I was very young then, physically a half-grown stallion but still a toddler in mind. The Allfather decided that I was an excellent horse and that I would make a fine mount for him to ride to war on, so he took me away from my father, broke me to bridle and treated me like a common animal. For centuries. That state of affairs continued until I was mentally about eleven, when my father managed to arrange a swap and replaced me with an identical animal that was merely a very fine stallion rather than a sentient being." Slepnir dropped back into his chair with a thump. "Satisfied, Tony Stark?"
"I apologise," Tony said quietly.
"Thank-you. Now go away," the son of Loki said evenly, waving at the door. The supposedly secure steel door opened smoothly to reveal a gaggle of SHIELD agents and technicians.
Tony left, deeply conflicted feelings twisting in his gut. On the one hand, Loki was a crazed lunatic who wanted to enslave the entire planet. On the other, it was painfully clear that he had been pushed right off the edge of sanity by the people who had been supposed to look after him. Loki had been the equivalent of a young teen when he realised that no-one in Asgard in a position to protect him really gave a damn, but had held out a good while longer before finally snapping.
Stalking down the hall towards the lift, Slepnir's deliberate comparisons between himself and the mad god echoing through his mind, Tony really wasn't sure he'd have managed to last as long.