Chapter 23 - Spiders Do Not Hatch in Boiling Water

AN: I was out of town for two days and planned on doing my final edit of this chapter when I got home, but I fell asleep instead. Then I was out all day the next day and when I got home, I fell asleep again! I ended up finishing it in the back of a car while I was out today, and then my laptop battery died before I could post it. I know, excuses, excuses. But that's why I'm posting a little later than normal.

It had been several hours since Pepper had left Loki with the Sorcerer Supreme. She had decided to help Bruce cook dinner, since she got very few opportunities to cook for a group or even for herself. There was something therapeutic about chopping vegetables into tiny pieces, pretending they were the appendages of business rivals who had proven to be particularly painful thorns in her side, or members of SI's senior management that still hadn't gotten on board with her take over as CEO and who she knew gossiped behind her back about her "sleeping her way to the top."

"Um, Pepper—"

"Yes?"

"I just needed those bell peppers cut into medium slices," said Bruce. "That's more of a julienne."

"Oh, sorry. Is this enough, anyway?"

"Let's see—with you and Frigga here it's nine for dinner, assuming Loki's coming back up. Hasn't it been a while since she went to meet with that Sorcerer Supreme or whoever?"

"JARVIS, do you know if Loki is coming back up here for dinner?"

"I believe she may have already eaten," JARVIS told her.

"But she hasn't been back up here, has she?" asked Bruce.

"She's not just grazing in the hydroponic garden, is she? Because eating a handful of raw kale isn't the same thing as eating a meal." Pepper had been a little shocked by how thin Loki looked. Tony had explained that she'd been refusing to eat during her imprisonment in Asgard. As far as Pepper was concerned, an adolescent should never have been in an adult prison in the first place, and she was glad they had gotten her out. Maybe all Loki needed was some mentoring—

"Don't worry, Ms. Potts. I believe her meal contained a sufficient amount of protein for a pangolin her size."

"JARVIS, I was asking you about Loki, not the pangolin."

"It's still in the atrium?" asked Bruce. "I thought Tony was going to release it into the wild. He knows he can get in serious trouble for keeping it right?"

"Both pangolins are currently located in the atrium," the AI confirmed.

Pepper's head snapped up towards JARVIS's speaker. "JARVIS, what do you mean, 'both?'" Pepper didn't wait for an answer. She took off running for the elevator and Bruce followed. (Luckily Pepper had swapped her heels out for tennis shoes earlier—why the heck had she even been wearing heels on her day off?) Of course, she didn't know what she could do if she got to the atrium to find that the Sorcerer Supreme had really turned Loki into a pangolin. Reason with the sorcerer, she supposed. Hopefully they would still be there, and hadn't skipped town after turning Loki into a small scaly mammal. While she'd known Loki less than a day, she didn't think the girl deserved to be a pangolin for the rest of her life.

When she got to the point in the trail where they had seen the real pangolin earlier, she stopped to look around. If she saw a pangolin, would she even know if it was the real pangolin or Loki? She'll be the pangolin wearing Givenchy Le Rouge Croisiere in Coral, a small, hysteric voice inside her head whispered.

She didn't see either pangolin, so she continued on to the landing where she and Frigga had left Loki. To her relief, the yellow robed figure still sat on the floor, apparently meditating.

"Hey," Pepper yelled. "You—where's Loki?"

The Ancient One opened their eyes. "She seems to have wandered off. I believe she may be operating under the belief that she is a pangolin."

"What do you mean?" asked Bruce. "Either she's a pangolin, or she's not."

"In that case, I suppose she is a pangolin."

"Okay, look," Bruce said, "I know Loki can be a little difficult sometimes, but she doesn't deserve to be a pangolin."

"Is there something particularly punitive about being a pangolin?"

"There is if you're not supposed to be one."

"And who is there to say that Loki should not be a pangolin?" asked the Ancient One.

"She wasn't born a pangolin," Bruce insisted.

"She wasn't born a human either, yet that was what she appeared to me as this morning. Nor was she born an Aesir, and yet she has been one for over a thousand years."

"That's not the same."

"I'm fairly certain that to Loki, being human and being an animal are the same."

Bruce shook his head. "I don't think that's true anymore. She's had the opportunity to see that humans aren't that different from—whatever it is she is."

"Perhaps pangolins aren't that different from humans either."

"Please, can't you just turn her back?" begged Pepper, not in the mood for negotiating with an insane sorcerer on her day off from work.

"I could, but I can only imagine that the reason she's still a pangolin is that she's enjoying herself. I would hate to ruin her fun."

"Wait—are you saying that if Loki wanted to, she could turn herself back?" asked Bruce.

"Magic is all about belief, Doctor Banner."

"Are you saying that the entire reason she hasn't been able to turn herself back into her Aesir form is that she has some mental block preventing her from doing it? That the reason you turned her into a pangolin was to force her to change back on her own?"

"It was the idea, but I suppose I didn't account for Loki's ability to accept life as a pangolin. I believe she has been eating ants."

Bruce shrugged. "Ants aren't so bad—in Brazil, they're kind of a delicacy."

"As I said, perhaps pangolins are not so different from us."

"This is crazy. She can't stay a pangolin," insisted Pepper. "Please just turn her back. If this was some kind of lesson you were trying to teach her, obviously, she didn't get it."

The Ancient One sighed. "Pity. This kind of thing usually works. And Loki has been a student of magic for hundreds of years. If anything, I'd have expected her to catch on faster than my usual students."

"This is the kind of teaching method you usually employ?" asked Bruce.

"Of course. If one of my students is having trouble conjuring a shield, I often find the quickest way for them to learn is to shoot a deadly projectile at them. If they are having trouble opening portals, I simply abandon them on the side of Mount Everest, and what do you know? The vast majority of them figure it out several moments before hypothermia begins to set in. Perhaps that was the problem. There's nothing particularly deadly about being a pangolin. Perhaps I should have cast her into the ocean, so that she would have had to change herself into something that had gills before she drowned."

"Whoa there—you are not going to put Loki in danger just to force her to shape shift," Pepper told her. "You have some highly questionable teaching methods."

"And yet, they work ninety-nine percent of the time."

"What about the other one percent?"

The Ancient One didn't answer for a long moment, as they stared off into the distance. "Death is what gives life meaning, you know."

"Whatever school this is you're running needs to lose its accreditation," said Bruce.

"Very well," said the Ancient One. "Perhaps Loki was not in the right frame of mind for this lesson. I shall return her to her human form, though we will have to find her first. I expect she is sleeping somewhere in one of these trees, having gorged herself with ants."

"Couldn't you just turn her back into an Asgardian while you're at it?" asked Pepper.

"I am afraid not. I should be able to return Loki to her human form only because she was one before I forced her into the form of a pangolin. If she wishes to be something more than that, it is up to her."

*****Pangolin's Delicious Ants******

*******;— • )́`́'́`́ ; ~************

************" / \***************

- ant hill

- claws for digging

- long, sticky tongue

- small rocks (optional)

Use your claws to dig into the ant

hill. Stick your tongue inside, then

slurp up all the ants and swallow

them whole. You might want to

swallow some small rocks as well,

to aid with digestion.

'******************************

Being a pangolin had not been so bad, in retrospect. Perhaps it had been just what she needed, a relaxing day of hanging from trees, napping. But also in retrospect, she should not have indulged in quite so many ants, because regurgitating them upon being returned to her humanoid form was decidedly not fun. Apparently, that many ants in their raw form were just too acidic for the mortal humanoid stomach.

At least her preoccupation had prevented her from attempting to murder Midgard's Sorcerer Supreme, which, considering that she still didn't have her magic, would likely have resulted in her subsequent transformation into something farther down on the food chain than a pangolin or imprisonment in some alternate dimension. Luckily, by the time she had finished expelling the contents of her stomach, they had vanished.

Pepper had held her hair back for her, and upon their return to the common floor and the couch where she had laid convalescing the night before, Bruce brought her a tiny plastic cup filled with a thick, pink potion. "I know the color is probably a little off-putting, but for medicine, the taste isn't that bad. And it should make your stomach feel better."

Doctor Banner's treatment of Loki during the strep throat incident had led her to believe she had no reason to distrust the man, so she downed the shocking pink liquid in one gulp. It did in fact, taste a little like candy, and almost immediately began to work at soothing the lining of her stomach. Amazingly, by the time dinner was ready she found herself prepared to introduce something new to her stomach. For the first time since the ill-fated "pizza night," she found herself eating a meal with the household at large.

"I was going to make curry again," Bruce told them, "but since last time there were complaints—"

"Ah come on, I thought it was good," Clint complained.

"Spicy is fine with me," Tony agreed, "so long as it's not blow-your-head-off, only a frat boy with a serious need to prove himself would ever be stupid enough spicy."

"It wasn't that bad last time," said Natasha. "It was still within the realm of edible as far as I was concerned."

Steve seemed reluctant to give his input, which made Loki think he had been the one to complain.

"Anyway, I made moqueca instead," Bruce announced. "It's a Brazilian seafood stew made with coconut milk and cilantro. I wasn't sure if Loki or Frigga would like spicy food, since the food in Asgard seemed kind of bland by our standards, and considering Loki's been sick—" (Which was obviously code for "and considering Loki's thrown up three times in as many days, and therefore must have a delicate stomach—")

"Asgardian food is bland," said Loki. "To be honest, I prefer your realm's cuisine."

Tony's hand clutched his chest in a pantomime of shock. "Whoa, seriously Reindeer Games? You're actually admitting that Earth has its good points?"

"I never said it didn't. I am also quite impressed with the variety of your wildlife. I am less impressed with your ability to keep it alive."

"Hey, if you're talking about the pangolin, it's alive, obviously."

"I refer to humanity as a whole. Friend Pangolin told me what those poachers did to its family."

"Wait, wait. You can talk to animals like a Disney princess?" Loki wasn't about to dignify that comparison with an answer, but Tony seemed to misconstrue her silence and assume she had failed to understand the reference altogether. "Ooh, ooh! We need to have a Disney night. Let's watch The Sword in the Stone."

"In light of recent events, I'm not sure that one's a good idea," said Bruce. "Besides, it doesn't even have any princesses in it."

"Maybe we could watch Snow White?" suggested Steve.

"Seen it," said Loki.

Tony arched an eyebrow at her. "When?"

"1937."

The rest of the table blinked at her. Then Tony cleared his throat. "Right, because you're actually over a thousand years old. Still, you're saying you visited Earth in 1937, and saw Snow White in the theater?"

"I was rather intrigued by your technology of making a moving picture entirely out of drawings," Loki told him. "But the film itself was rather insipid."

Steve looked a little hurt. "It's a classic fairy tale. I thought it was beautifully done."

"If an evil witch tried to have me killed, I'd be focused on getting the bitch back, not playing nursemaid to a bunch of dwarves while I waited for 'my prince to come.' Oh, and the witch herself was pretty dumb too, or else a complete coward. What is the point of cursing the girl with a spell so weak that it could be broken by a 'true love's kiss,' when she could have used real poison? And don't even get me started on that prince. Kissing a stranger while they're asleep is just creepy."

"Gotta say, I kind of have to agree with everything Loki just said," said Natasha. "If I wanted to get rid of an irritating, dark haired princess, I'd go with Novichok. And if we're really going to do a Disney night, we should definitely go with The Little Mermaid."

After that, there was a lull in the conversation as everyone served themselves from the rice cooker and the giant pot of fish stew on the stove. (Bruce had explained that the stew was meant to be poured over the rice.) It was difficult to tell if it was more shocking to the others that Natasha had casually threatened Loki with Russian nerve agent, or that she had a preference when it came to animated movies. Loki was definitely more surprised by the latter.

Or maybe they were all still a little disturbed by the idea that Loki had visited their realm before the previous year. She probably shouldn't tell them some of the other things she had gotten up to there over the past couple of centuries. In Asgard, there was a saying: "What happens in Midgard stays in Midgard." (Though apparently that didn't apply if your name was Loki and you made the teensy-tiny mistake of letting the Chitauri army loose in one of their most densely populated cities.)

"Hey, where is Frigga?" asked Tony, probably just to break the silence.

"Ms. Frigga doesn't appear to be in the building," JARVIS announced.

"Seriously? I didn't even have a chance to get her that phone! We still don't have any way to contact her."

Before Loki could prevent herself, she stated her deepest fear to the entire table. "Perhaps she is not coming back this time." And then, everyone was staring at her.

"What? Why would you think that?" asked Tony, likely worried she was right, and he was now stuck with Loki permanently.

"I botched my meeting with the Sorcerer Supreme," said Loki, thinking that the rest should be obvious.

"No, Loki, you didn't," Bruce said. "That person's teaching methods were horrible. It isn't your fault it didn't work out."

"Teaching methods?"

"You don't even get that they were trying to teach you something, do you?"

"I made them angry, and they turned me into a pangolin."

"They weren't angry—at least, I don't think they were. They seemed to think that if they turned you into a pangolin, you'd figure out how to turn yourself back on your own."

Oh. That sort of made sense. Odin had never turned him into wildlife, but a lot of his "lessons" had been similarly abstract. "I failed the lesson then."

Bruce shook his head. "No, you didn't. Throwing someone into a situation they're not prepared for and waiting for them to sink or swim isn't a valid teaching method."

"Wait—are you saying that they expected I should be able to change myself back?"

"The Ancient One said that magic was about belief, or something like that."

"But I'm mortal. Mortals can't do magic."

"If mortals can't do magic, how does Earth have a Sorcerer Supreme?"

Loki snorted. "That person was not mortal. They were using some sort of magic to extend their lifespan—"

"But that means they were mortal at one time, right?"

Loki's mouth opened to spit out a response, but then she realized she didn't have one. Should she still be able to use magic? Perhaps it was only some sort of mental block preventing her from turning back. Come to think of it, she had never had any trouble shifting back into her Aesir form before, but then she'd never shelved her own immortality in this manner. But if the two weren't related—Loki stood, intending to return to her room. She had work to do and no time to sit and chat.

"Hey, wait a second," said Pepper. "You haven't eaten anything."

"My stomach is feeling bad again," Loki lied. "I'm going to go lay down."

Doctor Samson frowned disapprovingly. "Loki, that's an obvious lie." Damn, how did he always know? Loki might be known as the Goddess of Lies, but even she wasn't as good as Samson at detecting them.

"You haven't eaten all day—other than the ants, which you didn't keep down—so you need to eat now," Bruce told her. "Whatever you were planning on rushing off to do can wait twenty minutes."

It wasn't fair of them all to gang up on her, Loki thought, but she didn't want to waste time arguing, and her stomach was empty at the moment. Plus, spellcasting required energy, some of which needed to come from her own body's reserves. She sat down, grabbed her fork, and began shoveling her food in her mouth so quickly that Volstagg would have been proud.

"Loki, you might as well slow down," said Pepper, with an aggravated sigh. "No one leaves this table until everyone is finished eating. That's the rule around here."

"What—since when?" Loki asked, pausing with her spoon halfway to her mouth.

Tony cleared his throat, and then spoke in a stage whisper. "It's the rule whenever Pep's home, got it? She got kind of sick of certain people wolfing down their food and then disappearing into labs for the rest of the evening—"

"Certain people meaning you," Loki guessed, not bothering to keep his voice low, since everyone could hear them.

"Not just me. Bruce was totally guilty of doing the same thing."

Bruce shrugged. "Not as often as you did it. And I'm completely with Pepper on the no leaving the table until everyone's finished rule. Eating together is a good team bonding activity."

Tony arched an eyebrow at his fellow scientist. "When did you drink the team bonding Kool-Aid? Seriously, Bruce, I'd expect something like that to come out of Cap's mouth—"

"Tony, you know you like it when we all eat together."

Tony shrugged like he wasn't going to deny it, but he wasn't going to confirm it either. Loki recalled the argument he had gotten into with the Black Widow the night before, and glanced at Natasha to see her reaction, but as per usual, her face was a carefully schooled blank.

If the Avengers had still been Loki's enemies, she would have had so much ammunition to use against them by now.

Loki resigned herself to the fact that she would be at the table for a little while longer. Arguing was likely to prolong matters, so she began eating at a more reasonable rate, which at least allowed her to appreciate the aromatic, slightly sweet flavor of the stew. She even went for seconds.

Half an hour later, everyone at the table was finished other than Clint, who was on his third bowl at least. Loki could have sworn he was taking his sweet time just to mess with her. Most of the Avengers were chatting with each other about whatever mortals chatted about with one another, and didn't seem to have noticed that Clint was eating slowly just to torture her, although she had seen Natasha arch an eyebrow at him the last time he had topped his bowl off, and Tony had started to tap his fingers on the table a little impatiently as he listened to Lady Pepper's recap of a meeting she had had with an investor in Toronto. If only Loki had her magic, she'd—wait, why not try it? Loki made a series of hand gestures under the table, going through the motions of a spell she had mastered centuries ago for the purpose of playing tricks on certain members of the palace staff she felt didn't give her the proper respect. She tried to believe it would work.

At first, Loki thought it hadn't worked, but then, Clint looked down in his bowl and scrunched his nose up. He jumped up, knocking his chair backwards as he threw the bowl across the table. All conversation stopped as the others at the table turned to stare at Clint, and then the bowl, out of which a spider the size of Loki's palm scurried and ran across the table.

Okay, so it wasn't dozens of spiders spilling forth from the bowl, which was what Loki had been going for. Obviously, she needed to do some work to get her magic to cooperate with her fully again. But now that she thought of it, it was probably a good thing the spell hadn't worked as intended. One spider could have explanations beyond the magical. So long as she didn't break out into a huge grin as she desperately wanted to, no one should even think to blame her.

"Was that a spider?" asked Tony. "How did you not notice a spider that big in your bowl before now?"

Clint had backed up almost to the kitchen counter, and his eyes darted around, looking for the "spider" that had already disappeared. "I don't know, it must have been in the rice! Bruce, is this that rice you got from that sketchy online import place?"

"If the spider had been in the rice before I cooked it, it wouldn't be alive anymore."

"Yeah, well maybe there were spider eggs in there, and cooking them made them hatch."

"That's not how that works, Clint. Spider eggs do not hatch in boiling water, nor do they hatch into full grown spiders the size of your fist."

"I know it wasn't in the bowl before I put rice in it."

"It probably crawled into your bowl while you were eating," Natasha told him between bites of her own stew. She didn't seem to be concerned about spider eggs.

"There's no way I wouldn't have noticed that! It's like it just—you." Clint locked eyes with Loki from across the table. "I don't know how, but somehow you slipped that spider into my bowl."

"Clint, you have no basis on which to make that accusation," said Doctor Samson.

Clint pointed to Loki. "God of Mischief. Or goddess, I guess."

The last time she had felt so hurt by words alone had been when Thor had told her to know her place. It was so unfair—yes, Loki had done it, but Clint had no evidence beyond Loki's reputation as a troublemaker. Loki's heart began pounding in her ears as it occurred to her that even though she and the Avengers weren't actively at odds, they still weren't her friends. If they knew that she had just performed magic, there would be a good chance they would realize that with magic, she could be a danger to them. Then they would lock her up in some cell somewhere and throw away the key.

And since she still thought there was a good chance Frigga's disappearance meant that she was done with Loki for good this time, there would be no rescue forthcoming. Perhaps it would be a good idea to make her exit now, while there was still confusion over what had just happened. She jumped up and made a run for the emergency stairwell.

"Loki, wait," Lady Pepper called after her, but Loki knew she couldn't stop to look back.

╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭

Author's Note:

As far as I'm concerned, Lady Loki totally qualifies as a Disney princess, whether or not we get to see her on screen. I'm a little behind on the Loki Disney+ show, btw, so that's not a spoiler, since I actually have no idea what's going on. No spoilers in the comments either, please ^_^;;

Thank you to lost_1n_my_m1nd for suggesting moqueca as Bruce's specialty dish (Ao3). I also ended up playing off BurntOffering's comment on the last chapter (Ao3), because I'd already written the part where Pepper was wondering how she'd know the difference between the real pangolin and pangolin Loki. Obviously, the answer is that Pangolin Loki would be wearing lipstick. Yay for audience participation!

This fic is already over 100,000 words, and I'm starting to wonder if it's getting too long. I've also been wondering for a while if two chapters every week is just too much to expect more than a few readers to keep up with me. But then, maybe late June - July isn't the best time to publish fan fiction either. I was out doing things most of this week, so I totally get it if everyone has been too busy to read.

(I guess my question this week is, who's still reading this? I'm still planning on posting the rest of it as scheduled, so I'm asking more out of curiosity than anything else.)