.-.

Playground

Chapter 9: History (& Other) Lessons

Tony called Loki over to one of the tables on the other side of the plane as soon as they were in the air; Loki joined him warily.

They'd continued as though nothing had happened, helping the children build things with Legos – Loki didn't see how stepping on one could be that painful – and dining on spaghetti, carrots, and broccoli prepared by Tony. The children had fallen asleep during the drive back to the small airport; Ollie had barely stirred as they transferred to the airplane and was sound asleep again once he was settled.

Something had happened, though, and now he and Tony were, in essence, alone again. Repairs were needed, and Loki was uncertain how to make them, or if he would even have a chance to attempt to do so, since he was also uncertain of Tony's motives for calling him over again.

When he woke up this morning, he could not have cared less what Tony Stark thought of him as a father. He probably still shouldn't, but he did. Few things were more important to him than being a good father. Perhaps nothing. After all, there was nothing he would put before Ollie.

"I meant to say something earlier, got distracted and forgot," Tony said, pouring the drinks, red-tinged golden brown this time, the glasses only a quarter full. A tray of fruit followed onto the table.

Loki said nothing. Feigning ignorance of the topic was pointless.

"We have files on you. The government does. Probably a couple hundred governments do, what's left of SHIELD does, I do…well, I have everybody else's files. Not just because you attacked us. They have files on me, too. Cap, Widow, Bruce…all of us. No, your file just got a lot of extra effort because of that. Thor wasn't all that cooperative, though, so it's still pretty thin. Adopted and Thor's baby bro is about all we have on you other than what was directly observed while you were on Earth. The people you used the Mind Stone on didn't have a lot of insight. Vision, he couldn't add much beyond supporting your claim that you didn't know Thanos was using you to help create the universe's gaudiest gauntlet."

"I'd rather not go back over all that, if you don't mind." It was bad enough he'd had to explain that he'd succumbed to such base manipulation, that he'd had less control over that unfortunate incident than he'd claimed at the time. Better to pretend the entire thing had never happened…which was far easier to do on Asgard than it was here.

"Me, either. I still have nightmares sometimes. Don't go getting a big head. Not about you. About…other things. But dredging up memories better left undredged wasn't my point. I wasn't pumping you for information to beef up your file today. That's not what this is about. You said you didn't want anyone to know where you were born? I don't see any threat there, any reason that needs to go in your file. Your secret's safe with me. Well, with me and Pepper. That's as far as it goes. I just thought you should know that."

Loki watched Tony for a long moment, searching for signs of deception. He couldn't find them. That was no guarantee of truthfulness, of course. And if Tony was sincere, that was no guarantee he wouldn't change his mind tomorrow. Loki understood why they collected information even on their heroes. Today's hero was potentially tomorrow's villain. The hero could change, or the one deciding who was a hero and who was a villain could change. Thor hadn't been here at the time and had never understood the details enough to properly explain secondhand, but Loki knew that such a thing had happened, right here on Midgard with this very band of heroes, some of whom had found themselves relabeled villains.

"You know, your bigger problem there," Tony said, pausing to sip at his drink, "to the extent you want to keep this inside the family, is that four-year-olds aren't known for their ability to keep secrets. And it seems like Ollie wants to…to share that other side of himself. He said it itches. Do you know what that means?"

"No," Loki said, cutting off his nod, because yes, this was a big problem, one he'd been trying to resolve in the wrong way. "I've never experienced what he has. Not…not exactly."

"Not exactly?"

He hesitated, but not for long. Nothing he could tell Tony about this would worsen his situation, or offer up any further weapon to be wielded against him. "About a year before we first encountered each other, your beloved hero Thor started a war on Jotunheim. It's what got him cast out of Asgard to Midgard. When he first met Jane and Erik."

"He must have skipped over that story."

"Shocking," Loki deadpanned.

"I don't suppose you had anything to do with it."

The instinctive denial died on his lips. He sighed, gave his glass a half-turn on the table. "I was not without blame. But his actions alone rekindled the war. He isn't as flawless as you think."

"Nobody's flawless. Never said or thought Thor was an exception. I assume you were working your way around to a point?"

"One of them touched me. I had stabbed him, but I didn't get the blade in deep enough or at quite the right angle. He grabbed my arm. He must have thought he would blacken the flesh and destroy the nerves, as one had done to another of our group moments before. The metal of my armor broke away like glass, leather turned brittle and crumbled, but my skin didn't burn. Instead, I stared at blue creeping steadily up my arm. He didn't expect it any more than I did, and he didn't react in time when I came at him again with my right hand. When he let go of me the blue receded. I had no injury at all. Later, when I handled the Ice Casket – it's a powerful weapon imbued with their magic, we took it from them at the end of the Ice War – it also forced a change onto me, and receded once I was no longer touching it."

"That must've been…I guess I'll go with a surprise. The sudden blue skin."

"A word as good as any other. There was no itch." Loki looked over toward his son, still sleeping. Unlike him, Ollie was a sound sleeper, at least thus far. He still lowered his voice further. "Ollie usually says other forms of magic feel like a tickle to him. Those aren't so dissimilar, perhaps, but he's never described it as an itch. I think it's something different."

"A tickle comes from the outside. An itch comes from the inside."

Loki nodded, somberly.

"Is Ollie turning blue the real reason you're moving to Earth?"

"Where did you get that idea? No. I told you why we're moving here. For Jane's work, and for Ollie to feel as much at home on Earth as he does on Asgard. We've shielded him from it there. It's not like it was when I was a child."

"Oh yeah? What was it like then?"

Loki shrugged. On Asgard, this was the most basic of history lessons. "I was born at the end of the Ice War. The war I mentioned earlier, which began with the Frost Giants attacking your realm, by the way. So of course—"

"Wait, they attacked Earth? When exactly was this?"

"There were multiple attacks in your mid-tenth century, with the last in 965. The Aesir drove them off your world and back to their own, where the war continued until 966, the year of my birth in your calendar."

"Alien attack in the tenth century…I wonder if there's any archaeological evidence of that. No one would know how to interpret it."

"I doubt it. Their main weapon is ice. They somehow draw it forth from their own bodies and shape it into whatever they like, sharpened for slicing and stabbing, or blunted for crushing. With the Ice Casket, they were able to send out waves of ice, engulf an entire village. If you get close enough to attack with your weapon, they can burn you with their touch. Their attacks leave little behind other than ice that eventually melts away…and destruction and death."

"Okay. Hm. Maybe a good thing the kids didn't get that far into Frozen. You're going to want to watch that one before Ollie sees it, and trust me, he'll see it. It's one of the newer ones and still popular with the juvey crowd. Princess with ice powers. Good ice powers. She's one of the heroes. Might be good for him to watch. Might be good for you to watch."

Ice powers? Ollie was certainly not watching that movie. "Thank you for letting me know," he mumbled. "When I was a child, all the songs were about Frost Giants. All the paintings, all the tapestries, all the games. A child's nightmare was of a Frost Giant stealing into the room in the middle of the night. A warrior entertained his fellows at the tavern with tales of his battles against them. It remained that way until recently. The Dark Elves attacked and killed many of our warriors…." Loki swallowed against an unexpected tide of emotion. They had killed Asgard's best and bravest warrior. Perhaps someday thinking of it would no longer feel like being punched in the stomach. He cleared his throat. "And then there was the threat from Thanos. Other enemies now take primacy in the Aesir mind, and in our tales and art. Ollie doesn't even know what a Frost Giant is."

Loki's gaze fell on Ollie again, a heady rush of memories flooding him. The tiny infant Jane had delivered, barely two handfuls, filling his lungs with air for the first time and putting them immediately to use. A perfect baby. Again and again he'd said it, He's perfect, Jane, he's perfect. So much relief. Forgetting they'd ever worried was easy, and by the time of the first incident, they nearly had.

"You found out you were the Asgardian version of the boogeyman. How exactly did you get sane again?"

Ignoring Tony – often the best recourse, Loki was learning – Loki picked up his glass and tossed back the contents. Some things Tony didn't need to know. Some things Loki didn't care to relive.

"That's port. A twenty-year tawny. More of a sipping drink. Port shots, not really a thing. Eh, I guess it doesn't matter. Want more?"

"Please."

"I'm not sending you home to Jane drunk, am I?" Tony asked, pausing with his hand on the bottle. "Do you have the same constitution as Thor?"

"I don't know if anyone has quite the same constitution as Thor, but no, I won't get drunk from this."

Tony poured, and topped off his own glass.

"When do kids start school on Asgard?"

"We start at age five. Thor and I studied separately from other children, as Ollie would have and will, assuming Jane and I continue in that tradition when we return to Asgard."

"Special school?"

"Not a school, really, or at least we didn't call it such. Our parents arranged for the best tutors. Those who knew their subject well, and how to engage young minds."

"Private tutors, huh? That's an idea. But I think kids miss out on a lot of socialization that way, you know? Maybe that was one of your problems."

Loki arched an eyebrow.

Tony shrugged and laughed.

Loki relaxed into a slight smile. He was getting better at this, he thought. Tony was teasing, not mocking. Not humiliating. Teasing he could handle. "Thor and I are not even a year apart. We were together for nearly all of it. And during our outdoor playbreak, there were usually other children who were having a more typical education out on break at the same time, and we played games with them. But it would be a different experience for Ollie. I'd already begun speaking with potential tutors when we made the decision to come here. We were thinking he might join the regular group for some of his lessons."

"Hybrid format. Okay."

"I don't know how well Ollie will fit in at a regular school here. Jane is convinced he'll be fine. But he's only half human. And the other half…"

"Turns blue?"

"That is not what I was going to say." Loki took a few seconds to release some of the sudden tension in his muscles. "What you say is also true, though. I don't want him bullied, for any reason."

"I get that. Of course you don't. Nobody wants that for their kid. You'll have some things to discuss with Ollie's teacher. But maybe…you could start with you not losing it when he turns blue? Go from there?"

Back to this again. Even thinking about it now left Loki feeling exhausted. He leaned over, resting his elbows on the table. "Easy for you to say."

"True. But whoever said parenting was easy? It's way harder than I thought, and we haven't even gotten to the part where she thinks boys are gross, much less the part where she decides they aren't. But it's worth the effort, yeah?"

"I never said it wasn't. Children are worth every effort."

"Okay. So…it's like when Morgan wets the bed. We were—"

"She still wets the bed?" Loki asked, dragging himself up from the table in surprise.

"Yeah, well…every now and then. Ollie doesn't?"

"No. Not for…nearly a year now. Is it normal, for it to still happen?"

"Her pediatrician says it is. The internet's divided. Either it's totally normal, or she's going to grow up to be a serial killer. I prefer to go with the pediatrician. Anyway, if she has an accident, we tell her it's okay, one of us cuddles with her and the other deals with the bed. No big deal. Freaking out over it, or acting worried or upset about it would just give her emotional hang-ups that might make it worse. Nothing to worry about, she'll grow out of it. You know, unless she turns into a serial killer."

Loki huffed a laugh. "She seems a good child. Hardly a future serial killer."

"Right?" Tony said, sitting back and tossing his hands out dramatically. "That's what I think. Best advice for new parents, or parents new to Earth? Never ever look at the internet."

"The difference is," Loki continued after a moment, "Ollie will not grow out of this." Saying it aloud wasn't easy. That was exactly what he'd been hoping for, he realized. That there was some primitive instinct in Ollie that would soon be forgotten and left behind with the application of reasoned thinking, especially once it was clear that the behavior was unacceptable and must not be repeated. He wasn't even certain the idea held any logic, now that he looked back on it with fresh perspective.

"True. Sounds like you need to teach him how to control it, then. To know when it's okay and when it's not okay. And not because there's anything wrong with being biologically half Jotun, but because he'll startle people who aren't expecting a kid to randomly change the way he looks, especially not when he doesn't exactly look human anymore. Morgan took it in stride, but young kids are different. They still believe in the Tooth Fairy. So blue kids with big red eyes and bald heads? Sure, why not? And Morgan's seen some pretty outside-the-norm stuff in real life, too. But I meant what I said before, you know you have to have a serious talk with yourself before you talk to him, right? How's he supposed to accept himself if you can't accept yourself?"

Loki nodded. He knew he was going to have to try to view matters differently, to think about things he'd decided he never wanted to think about again. He could do it. For Ollie's sake, he could. The truth was, he couldn't help how he was born, and he couldn't help that he'd passed it on to Ollie, much as he'd hoped he wouldn't. Surely everyone's family had something undesirable buried in its past, if one dug deeply enough. He had survived his unfortunate beginnings, and was given a better life. A chance to live with dignity. Ollie had inherited the legacy of two families from two realms, and could not help that a third also lay in his family's hidden past.

"Magic," Tony said, shaking his head. "Some dads just get to toss baseballs around with their kids." He broke off to laugh. "We both have some sweet things we can share with ours, and the time to do it, too."

"I suppose I shall have to learn about baseballs. I don't know how to teach Ollie to control his appearance. Not…in that way, what he does. Thankfully it appears he already knows how to control it."

"Maybe he can teach you."

The shudder, Loki hoped, didn't make it beyond the inside. He knew how Tony expected him to respond, and he knew what the man would say about his honest response of disgust: Your son disgusts you. No, Ollie did not disgust him. It was not in the slightest Ollie's fault, and Loki should have recognized that much earlier. Instead, he tried to imagine how Ollie might respond if Loki asked how he changed, and could only hear his son's guileless I don't know in response to Morgan's questions. "Baseballs might be more productive."

"Maybe he'll understand it better as he gets older. But you could still talk to him about it. Little father-son chats about magic. I saw you teaching him how to pedal a bike. You were good with him. He was biking like a training-wheel pro in no time."

"He learns quickly," Loki said, a smile drifting over his face as he recalled his son's studiousness while working out the necessary motions, the boy's happiness at mastering it. If he could not obtain a bicycle disguised as a car – Ollie had clearly loved the idea that he was "driving" – then he would at least purchase a normal bicycle, and make sure that wherever they wound up living, Ollie would have a place to ride it.

"It'd probably be good for you. Definitely good for him. Good bonding time. You don't want him growing up and wishing his old man had spent time with him like that."

Loki sipped at the port, sweet, but not cloyingly so – it was better as a sipping drink – and studied Tony, who was chewing on a piece of pineapple and paying him little attention at the moment. "I spend plenty of time with my son. We talk every day, about all sorts of things. And since I gather that you also spend a great deal of time with your child…I'm led to wonder which child and 'old man' you're speaking of."

Tony's chewing slowed, then stopped. When he swallowed, he choked a little and washed it down with port. "Okay. You got me there. My father wasn't around much. It's not some tearjerker woe-is-me story, though. He wasn't out gambling or drinking. Can't blame The Man, he wasn't working three jobs for crappy pay, wishing he could be home tossing around those baseballs instead. He was busy with important projects. My dad spent more time at the office than at home by choice, and you can't even really hate him for it – he was making a difference. He helped us win wars. He's been gone a long time now, and he's still helping us win wars. Bastard sure knew how to pick his projects. Steve Rogers, Captain America? He was a scrawny little kid whose body barely kept him breathing, until he became one of old Howard Stark's projects, a few decades before I was born. Creating America's greatest hero will keep you busy. So will spending the rest of your life trying to find that hero after his plane goes down, also before I was born."

"You were jealous of the attention and time a dead man took from you." Loki had known the general outline of how Steve Rogers had gained his enhanced strength and stamina, and that the man had only recently been recovered from a presumed icy death, but he hadn't known of the personal connection between the Stark family and the soldier.

"I was a kid," Tony said with a shrug, and no attempt to deny it. "Kids want their parents to pay attention to them. Spend time with them. It's how they know they matter. Must've been hard on you, too. How much free time does a king of an entire planet have?"

"King of Asgard, Protector of the Nine Realms. Not much. More of it for his anticipated heir. I'm trying to decide if it's worse to envy a dead man you never met, or your brother and sometime best friend."

"Best friend? You and Thor?"

"We were extremely close growing up. No one else understood the peculiarities of our lives as we did."

"That tracks. Nobody understands you much when you're a fourteen-year-old college freshman, either. Or you graduate and you still can't legally smoke, much less drink. If I'd had a brother in the same boat maybe we'd've been besties."

"Or you would've tried to kill each other."

"Maybe. Probably not literally, though? When did things go south between you and Thor?"

Loki shrugged, unease creeping in. Tony and Thor had been friends for several years now. He didn't know what Thor might have told Tony and wasn't eager to speak in any detail about his brother and himself. "There was nothing specific. Thor knew his destiny, which he'd done nothing to earn beyond being born, and he grew arrogant, even cruel. He was blind to it. And I didn't appreciate being brushed aside."

"Why does that last not surprise me?"

"How should I know how the vagaries of your mind work?"

"What were you, the screw-up or the overachiever? I'll just put it out there, I was both, and I was great at both. Which is quite an achievement in itself, to be honest."

For a moment – a brief one – Loki considered it. "That probably depends who you ask, and when you ask them. I'd say I'm an overachiever in all things, including when I 'screw up.'" He wrinkled up his face; he so disliked that expression. Then he washed it away with a generous sip.

Tony laughed, too. "Well said. And…same."

Tony held up his glass and Loki obligingly clinked it with his own, though he didn't know what grand screw-ups Tony might have engaged in and Tony had to know what screw-ups he had engaged in – one of them, at least. Surely that couldn't inspire Tony to the sense of happy camaraderie that this glass-tapping custom suggested.

"I think I couldn't decide if I wanted to impress him, or just make him remember I existed."

Tony's smiles and laughter made sense then; the man was thinking of his youth, while Loki was thinking of much more recent events and not quite ready to laugh.

"That was a long time ago, though," Tony continued, a contemplative look overtaking the smile. "I try not to obsess over that stuff too much. Sometimes I catch myself doing it anyway. But his life was his, my life is mine. And Morgan's never going to wonder if I remember she exists. She comes first. Always."

"I wanted my father's approval," Loki said, quietly, looking into his glass rather than at Tony. "I wanted him to recognize that I was every bit as worthy as Thor." He picked up the glass and mustered a macabre smile. "Thor was such a screw-up at that point that I wanted him to recognize that I was more worthy." He downed the rest of the drink.

Another minute passed in silence. Loki went for a strawberry; Tony refilled the glasses.

"I miss Dad."

When Loki looked up, Tony wasn't looking his way.

"I was twenty-one when he died. He didn't always know how to be a father, and we didn't exactly have a great relationship, but I still learned a lot from him. I owe him a lot. I wish I could tell him. And lay a bucket of questions on him."

Twenty-one was too early. So was one thousand and fifty-three.

Loki lifted his glass again. "To fathers. May we learn from them. From what they did wrong, and what they did right."

A smile – staid and somber but a smile all the same – spread over Tony's face again. He lifted his glass as well. "To fathers. May we be worthy of the gift of our children."

Loki swallowed heavily, and silently cursed Tony for the swell of emotion those unexpected words drew forth. He tapped his glass to Tony's again, then drained it.

The silence lingered longer this time, Loki's gaze fixed on his sleeping son.

A slap to his shoulder jolted him from his thoughts and had him swinging around to confront Tony. He calmed once he registered the other man's grin.

"Hey, what would it take for you to really tell me how the bifrost works?"

"I don't know. But filling my glass again, and to the top this time, wouldn't hurt your case."

"Done. Easy deal," Tony said as a voice announced that they would be landing soon.

"What deal? There's no deal. Even if I fully understood the workings of the bifrost, you wouldn't understand my explanations. You would first need hours upon hours of lessons in Asgardian energy creation and manipulation in order to understand the mechanics and engineering. You would need to grasp at least an intermediate level of understanding of magic. And we are about to land."

"Lesson One? In magic? Come on. It's a new field for me but I pick up new fields every now and again. Start me off at kindergarten level and I'll be skipping grades in no time."

"There is no kindergarten level, though I don't dispute the equivalence. Magic isn't taught to children on Asgard."

"How am I supposed to get past the kindergarten level then? What do I need to reach first, junior high? High school?"

"Exposure. Indirect experience. And college. I'm afraid you're out of luck."

"Hate to tell you, Houdini, but your kid's already doing it and he hasn't even started kindergarten. Makes me think maybe it's time to try doing things a different way. But hey, if you're not interested, I could always go to Strange. I bet he'd give me some lessons."

Loki curled his lip and grunted his reaction to that. "Ignorant lazy hack. A mere couple of years of experience and he calls himself a master? If you go to him, you'll be misled."

"So, give me a better alternative," Tony said, laughing. "Enroll me in Kindergarten Magic 101 right alongside Ollie. I promise I'll behave myself way better than I did for any of my actual teachers back in school. Though fair warning, that's a low bar."

"That is a ridiculous idea."

"Maybe. Maybe not. You know, though…it would be neat if our kids could have some of those private lessons together. They get along well, they're both inquisitive, they both come from…atypical backgrounds, I guess you could say."

"If we happened to live in the same area, yes, I agree. I would be happy for Oliver to study alongside Morgan. And he needs a friend here, someone his own age to play his games with. He imagines battles…in our hotel room. He breaks things."

"Um, you know my kid doesn't have any superpowers or anything, right? She's just a kid."

"Ollie doesn't have any…much…of what you call superpowers, either. Not yet. When he's grown, we think he'll have the same strength and durability of the— of the peoples of the other realms. He's no danger to your daughter. He's simply…energetic."

"Got it. Wherever you wind up, we'll have to at least figure out the occasional playdate. And magic lessons."

"Playdates, yes."

"You or Dr. Strange."

"Fine, and magic lessons. Somehow. You'll have to let me think it—. What is this? Did you get me drunk after all? I am not agreeing to give you magic lessons. You have abandoned all reason. And I may not have said much when we last met, but that doesn't mean I wasn't observing. You don't like him, and he doesn't like you. That arrogant prick will laugh in your face when you try to cajole him into teaching you about magic."

Tony simply sat back and chuckled.

Notes

There were more "lessons" references in this chapter...but that portion of the scene, the initial part, got cut. :-) A modified version of it will most likely pop up somewhere else because there's a bit or two in it that "matter," just not so much for this particular chapter, better suited for later. I really can't say how many chapters are left, but the time frame for this entire story is very short so it's not a ton. (Though random occasional vignettes in this "universe" may follow from before and after this time period.) Ch. 10 is titled "Pillow Talk," unless I change my mind which is highly unlikely.

For those reading Beneath, the plan is to dive back into that one starting tomorrow. Weird to leave those updates here, but I haven't been doing it on my profile page lately, so, shrug. :-)