Chapter 27 - Brunches with Wolves

AN: I haven't watched the last episode of _Loki_ yet. Hopefully, it hasn't ended in a way that's going to make Loki fans want to rage quit the MCU all over again (I'm looking at you, _Infinity War_).

When Loki next opened her eyes, she had fur in her mouth, which she could only guess had come from her own tail. She nearly fell out of bed when a loud snore startled her, but realized quickly that Thor had fallen asleep next to her. Thor had returned with the pain medication on his own the night before, having convinced Doctor Banner and the others to leave checking on Loki to him for the rest of the night. Loki had to admit it had been considerate of him, as it meant no one else had seen her in her current state yet. But given that Loki couldn't remember being awoken since, he must have irresponsibly fallen asleep instead of actually checking on her—she couldn't complain about that since it meant she'd finally gotten some sleep herself, but Bruce wouldn't be happy about it if he found out.

With her wolves ears she could hear more than one person moving around in the common kitchen. Loki knew that she couldn't hide in her room forever, and the need to fill her empty stomach threatened to overrule her reluctance to be seen. Perhaps she could use her injury as leverage to convince Steve to make pancakes again. But what was she even to wear? She would have to cut a hole for her tail to come through her jeans, or else wear a skirt—but then she would have to remember to keep her tail down unless she wanted to scandalize everyone. As Loki got out of bed, the tail hit the lamp on her nightstand, knocking it to the floor. It seemed to have a mind of its own, so jeans it was. She used her nail clippers to make the hole.

Her tail switched back and forth and her ears twitched as she brushed her teeth in front of the mirror in the bathroom. She had to admit, there was something cute about it. Still, she wondered if it might be possible to gaslight everyone else in the tower into thinking her tail and ears a product of their overactive imaginations. No, even she wasn't delusional enough to think she could get away with a lie that big.

She might as well just let the others see her, react in whatever way they were going to react, and have it over with. "Good morning, everyone," Loki said as she walked into the kitchen, having imagined that this would cause everyone in the room to turn and look at her. After all, she didn't normally greet them in such chipper fashion. Steve stood at the stove cooking breakfast, too concerned with trying to figure out when to turn the bacon to turn around and greet her. Clint seemed to be sleeping at the table.

Natasha looked up at her, then looked back down at the paperwork she had spread out on the table in front of her, as if she hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. Loki reached up to make sure her wolf's ears were still there. Perhaps she had somehow made them invisible, or perhaps she'd somehow made herself completely invisible, which would explain why no one had responded to her greeting. Fantastic, that was all she needed, to have somehow made herself invisible and not be able to reverse that either.

She felt a wave of relief when Tony grunted, "Morning," without looking up from his coffee.

Bruce blinked up at her. "You have a tail."

"Why yes, Doctor Banner. I believe you win the prize for being the most observant Avenger. Though I also have pointy ears, see?" Loki twitched her ears.

"I noticed," said Natasha. "I just didn't think it was necessary to point it out."

Tony looked up from his coffee, seemingly half asleep. "Huh—you do have a tail."

"Holy Toledo." Steve lost his grip on his spatula, and it clattered to the floor as he turned around to stare with his mouth open.

"Now see, that is a proper mortal response to someone having the ears and tail of a wolf," Loki said. "What in the nine realms is wrong with the rest of you—is Clint sleeping?"

"We're all exhausted because we were up half the night, taking turns checking on you and being yelled at," Tony pointed out. "Until Point Break showed up and took over, but that wasn't until around four A.M. Also, I'm Twitter friends with this Canadian girl who has a big bushy squirrel tail, so it's not that big a deal."

Loki decided to ignore Tony's comment about the squirrel girl, as he wasn't sure if it had been meant as some sort of innuendo. * "If someone really needed to check up on me, couldn't you have had JARVIS do it?"

"See, that's what I said," Tony complained as he threw his hands up into the air.

"JARVIS is a computer, not a person, and he hasn't been programmed to check on people with concussions," Bruce explained. "He might not have been able to tell if your behavior was out of the ordinary, and it would have been difficult for him to wake you gently. Anyway, everyone here volunteered to help, Loki."

"Because you all care about me?" Loki guessed, rolling her eyes.

Clint snored—no, it had been a snort, not a snore, and Loki was certain it had been a derisive sort of snort, though the man was supposedly asleep. Natasha must have heard what Loki heard, because she smacked Clint on the bicep with a rolled-up sheaf of paper. His eyes fluttered open as he jolted forward. "Hey, I didn't say anything."

"Just be civil," Natasha said in a stage whisper. She looked at Loki. "I'm sorry you got hurt, by the way. I should have listened when you asked me to take it easy on you, and I should have been more careful when it came to observing safety procedures." Her eyes drifted to Steve at that last bit, and Steve nodded.

Loki knew that theoretically, she was supposed to say something. Accept Natasha's apology, perhaps. Assure her everything was okay between them. But she just didn't have much experience being apologized to. Thor had apologized to her a few times, starting with their little showdown on the Bifrost, but she was yet to accept one of his apologies. He had only ever offered them when she had been in the middle of an emotional breakdown and well beyond rational thought.

So instead of saying anything, Loki stood frozen, except for her ridiculous tail, which twitched nervously back and forth.

"It's alright, Loki. You don't have to forgive me. I'll just add it to that ledger of mine, with all the other unforgivable things I've done."

"No—I do want to forgive you." The words seemed to stick to her tongue, but she got them out.

Natasha's eyebrows crept upward. "You accept my apology, then?"

"Yes," Loki grit out.

Tony got up to get himself another cup of coffee, and as he passed Loki, he patted her on the head. "Good puppy." Loki grabbed the offending hand and brought it to her mouth, teeth clamping down so that he couldn't pull away. "Now, just wait a minute. Haven't you ever heard that you're not supposed to bite that to the hand that feeds you? And since I pay for all the food around here—"

Loki growled.

"Loki, if you don't let Tony go, I'm not going to make pancakes," Steve told her.

Loki stilled and dropped her jaw. Tony pulled his hand back and shook it out, then pointed at her. "No more biting, or I'm going to have Bruce vaccinate you for rabies."

"Actually," said Bruce, "I've been meaning to bring this up, but Loki probably ought to be vaccinated for a few things before she comes down with something serious. Not for rabies, but for all the other things she's never been vaccinated for. Diphtheria, tetanus, MMR, rotavirus, hepatitis A and B, meningitis—"

"Well, sucks to be you, Balto."

"Tony," scolded Bruce, before turning his attention back to Loki. "It's nothing to be worried about. Remember the antibiotic injection I gave you when you were sick? It would be just like that."

"I believe it would be around twenty just like that, Doctor Banner," said a familiar mechanical voice, "as some of the vaccinations require multiple doses."

"Yes, thank you, JARVIS." Bruce didn't sound too grateful. Loki found it interesting how often JARVIS provided information that truly wasn't helpful in the moment, almost as if the AI found it humorous. "I know it sounds like a lot, but it won't be all at once. I'll work out a vaccination schedule for you. Better than getting sick again, right?"

Loki couldn't stop her ears from flattening back against her head. "Is this a joke?"

"Nope, sorry. But you don't want to get any of those diseases, Loki. They're all pretty rare, but any of them could be potentially deadly."

"What if I just wash my hands a lot?" She normally considered whining to be beneath her, but this warranted it. The injection Bruce had given her hadn't been painful, but it hadn't been pleasant either, and twenty sounded excessive. What did she look like, a pin cushion?

"It won't be that bad," said Bruce.

"What won't be that bad?" Thor yawned and stretched his arms over his head as he came from the direction of Loki's room.

Loki drew herself up, refusing to seem anything but cool and collected in front of her brother. "It's nothing, Thor. Doctor Banner wishes to inoculate me against a plethora of Earth diseases, because his realm is a rancid garbage dump full of aggressive pathogens that have been trying to kill me ever since I got here."

"Loki, that might be true, but it isn't nice to say." Thor scrunched his nose up. "What does 'inoculate' mean?"

"It means that Doctor Banner wishes to inject small amounts of living or dead pathogens into my bloodstream to build my immunity to certain diseases. Remember how Mother used to feed us small amounts of poison when we were little to make us less susceptible to them? It's the same concept, sort of. But you've some experience with injections, haven't you?" Loki knew all about Thor's trip to the hospital after Jane had run over him with her car. Even with everything else that had been happening, she had been using magic to keep an eye on him. First because she had worried about him—she'd wanted his coronation postponed, she hadn't wanted him dead—and then for the sheer entertainment value. The hospital incident had proven an amusing distraction somewhere in between finding out his true heritage, Odin falling into the Odinsleep, and everything else that went wrong in a time short enough that she hadn't slept.

Thor's eyes darted from side to side and his hands jerked backwards to hover over his hindquarters, as if someone might sneak up on him and jab him.

Loki rolled her eyes as she slumped onto her chair at the kitchen table. "It's fine, Thor. I had to have an injection when I had an infection a few days ago. It's not that big of a deal. Now I just need around twenty more, according to JARVIS."

Thor grimaced. "There are many things I enjoy about Midgard, but Midgardian medicine is not one of those things."

"It's not meant to be enjoyable." Bruce gave him a tight-lipped smile. "It's just something we worked out to prevent us all from dying before we're thirty."

"Ah, you must forgive me, my friend, I meant no offense to your profession."

The man waved him off. "That's okay, it's not even my profession, so much as it's a backup thing."

Thor nodded and turned towards Steve. "Ah, Friend Steve. I see you are preparing cakes of pans this morning. I shall require at least a dozen!" Steve smiled thinly at Thor as well, and Loki came to an important realization—Thor's loud, swaggering manner, oblivious comments, and casual imperiousness didn't impress these mortals nearly as much as it did Thor's Asgardian friends. For once, they were among people who didn't vastly prefer her brother's company to hers, or at the very least, they didn't idolize him and detest her.

"Thor, why are you here, anyway?" asked Loki.

"Why should I not be here? The repairs to the Bifrost have been completed."

"So soon?"

Thor shrugged. "With the Tesseract's power and Father's magic, it was a simple matter. I have to wonder if Father could have repaired the Bifrost at any time since we returned to Asgard with the Tesseract, but had been holding off for some reason."

Loki could well believe that Odin had been able to repair the Bifrost all along but had chosen not to. Odin always did whatever would bring his own plans to fruition, without regard for how it affected anyone else. "He probably didn't want you running back here to see that woman of yours."

"You mean Jane?"

"Yes, Jane. You remember Jane—have you even seen her since you brought her to Asgard? She did make it home, didn't she?"

"Of course she did. I deposited her at her home before I came to fetch Stark."

"You deposited her there? And you haven't seen her since then?" Loki shook her head in sympathy for the poor woman. "If I were Jane, I would break it off with you."

"Jane will be fine. She does not expect me to check in with her first every time I come to Midgard."

Loki had a feeling that was exactly what Jane expected.

"I am here to see that my younger sister and my mother are doing well. Where is Mother, anyway?"

"I've no idea, Thor. She just shows up whenever she feels like it and then leaves. I fear she might not come back this time."

"That's ridiculous, sister. She wouldn't just abandon you."

"I am not a small child to be abandoned."

"Yes, of course, sister. You are very mature and worldly." Norns above, when did Thor learn to be sarcastic? "After all, you did so well on your own the first time you left home."

Thor really could be a jerk when he tried. Loki tried to think of the most hurtful thing she could say in response, and settled on the truth. "I didn't 'leave home,' Thor. I let myself fall from the Bifrost because I wished to die."

Thor thumped the table hard with his fist, startling everyone who sat at it. Then, in an attempt to cover his little outburst he cried, "Coffee—I require coffee!"

"Coffee maker's right over there, big guy." Tony hitched his thumb over his shoulder.

Thor scrambled to get to the coffee maker, and presumably away from his embarrassment of a sibling. Loki had lost her appetite. "I'm going back to my room, unless I'm not allowed to leave the table."

No one said anything for a few slow-moving moments, then Tony pushed his own chair back from the table. "Hey Cap, Thor can have my pancakes, okay? I'm going out to breakfast. Brunch really, as late as it is. Bruce is coming too—JARVIS, where's Doc?"

"Just getting out of the shower, Sir."

"Invite him along." He turned to Loki. "Go on, go get your jacket."

"You're taking me out?"

"Uh, yeah. I think you could stand to get out of here, or am I wrong about that?"

"I wouldn't mind it, but I currently have a tail and ears."

"This is New York. Trust me, no one's going to care."

▽･_･▽ﾉ"

Tony didn't hesitate to walk out in front of traffic, and he didn't mind shouldering tourists who had stopped to gawk out of his way. The rest of them struggled a bit to keep up with his pace. Tony had also been right, no one even looked at Loki, even with her tail and ears on full display. Even the waitress at the sidewalk cafe where they sat down to eat pretended not to notice, nor did she seem to see through Tony and Bruce's "disguises," which were nothing more than sunglasses and baseball caps. Apparently, this was one of the unspoken rules of New York City—there was no such thing as 'out of the ordinary,' and furthermore, everyone minded their own business. Perhaps it was a side effect of so many people living together in so little space, or perhaps no one had the energy to care about business that was not their own. Everyone seemed in a hurry to get someplace, which might have explained how little care the residents of the city had for pedestrian traffic signals.

"You guys order whatever you want," Tony told them. "I'm not sure why I have to say that every time we go out, by the way. It's like you people forget I'm a multi-billionaire."

Bruce arched an eyebrow at him. "Maybe it's because you keep complaining about the cost of repairing the tower."

"It's not really the cost. It's more the principle of the thing, and the hassle of finding and vetting contractors, and then having to put up with randos in our living space."

"I'm surprised that you wouldn't already have a go-to for that kind of thing by now," said Doctor Samson as he studied the menu in front of him. Loki attempted to look at hers as well, and once again, felt overwhelmed by all the choices Midgardians were faced with daily.

"I did, but they've all been busy lately, since—well, you know."

"I'm not stupid, I know you're talking about the invasion," said Loki. "You don't have to dance around the subject. I take it these contractors of yours have been busy repairing all the destruction I caused."

"That the Chitauri caused," Bruce corrected. "You told us you didn't have any control over them, remember?"

"But I should have known what they would do. As I said, I'm not stupid."

"No, of course you're not stupid," said Tony. "But you're still a kid, so you get a pass for doing a few boneheaded things. I was a real 'smart' kid too. Want to hear about the time I hacked the pentagon? I was fifteen, and man was Howard pissed when the FBI showed up at the mansion—"

Loki couldn't quite believe that Tony wanted to "give her a pass" for what she had done, when it had led to the destruction of the city he called home. Would she have been able to forgive someone who had released chaos and destruction on Asgard, even inadvertently? Not that Asgard was "home" any longer.

Instead of listening to Tony's rambling story, Loki contemplated the menu. Her eyes still didn't want to focus on the descriptions of the food, so she made up her mind to simply order the most expensive things on the menu. They weren't even all that expensive, since the restaurant wasn't that upscale. But Stark had gone out of the way to assure them that money was no object, and she wouldn't want to disappoint him by ordering something cheap.

"I'll have the eggs Benedict," Loki told the waitress, "and a mimosa."

"Can I see your ID?" the waitress asked.

Loki blinked at her, not understanding why she needed identification to place her order.

"We're her dads, it's fine. Just make it a pitcher for the table, and bring coffee, too." The waitress didn't even blink at Tony's assertion that all three men at the table were Loki's "dads," and continued to take their order.

Loki waited until she was gone to ask, "Is it normal for humans to have more than one male parent?"

"Oh, sure," said Tony. "The waitress probably assumed that Bruce and I are your gay dads, and that Samson's married to your mom, who's either one of our ex-wives or banged one of us in college."

"Why am I definitely with you in this scenario?" asked Bruce. "I mean, why couldn't I be with Leonard?"

"Because you guys don't look like a couple."

"But the two of us do?"

"Of course, Bruce. If it weren't for Pep, we'd totally be together."

"Bruce told me that your facial hair was a turn off," Loki told him.

Tony batted his eyelashes theatrically at Bruce. "For Brucie-Bear, I'd shave."

The pitcher of mimosas and four coffees came. Loki loaded her coffee with as much cream and sugar as she could fit in the mug and discovered it to be drinkable that way. However, she much preferred the mimosa, which turned out to be juice with some sort of carbonation.

Doctor Samson cleared his throat. "Is there a reason you're taking us all out to breakfast this morning, Tony?"

"Right, you weren't there," said Tony. "Thor got in early this morning, and family drama was imminent. Loki needed some space."

"Is that true, Loki?"

Loki knew that eventually, Doctor Samson would get the entire story out of her, so she might as well just tell him. "Thor was being obtuse, so I decided to finally make it clear to him that falling from the Bifrost was not something I intended to survive. He didn't take it well."

Samson nodded. "I think we should try to sit down and talk with him when we get back—or if you want, I'll talk to him alone first, or we'll talk alone first, if you need to."

"You're assuming that Thor will still be there."

"He'd better be there," Tony said, taking a swig of his mimosa and chasing it with coffee. "I'm getting a little tired of your family walking in and out without giving us a heads up."

"Yes, annoying, isn't it?" Loki twisted the stem of her empty mimosa glass between her fingers. "Almost as if they think of themselves as gods who are beholden to nothing and no one." She reached for the pitcher to pour herself another drink.

"You should go easy on those," Bruce told her. She could only assume he was concerned about the sugar; she had noticed that Bruce had forgone the mimosas entirely and was sipping coffee instead.

Two mimosas later (she'd refilled her glass once while Bruce wasn't looking, so he wouldn't worry over it) the food came, and Loki discovered that Eggs Benedict was the Most Perfect Food Ever Created. By her not-grandfather Bor, how could she have ever thought so little of a people that had come up with something like this? The sauce was creamy, just a bit acidic, and paired perfectly with the richness of the egg yolks. Then there was the contrast between the texture of the soft egg whites and the little crunchy-chewy round of bread beneath it, which soaked up the sauce and egg yolk. Add to that savory, salty ham—was there anything better in all the universe than Midgardian breakfast meat?

"Good?" Tony asked, and Loki realized that she had moaned out loud.

"I think I might just have had my first orgasm," she announced, somehow knowing that Stark would laugh, Bruce would blush, and that Samson would simply look bemused, before she even said it.

"Wait—first?" Tony laughed so hard that he nearly choked on his omelet.

Her own cheeks felt warm now, and she had a feeling that Bruce wasn't the only one whose face had turned red. "In this form, I mean. I am very young for an Aesir, you know, and I haven't spent that much time as a woman."

"Shh, Loki," said Bruce. "Not so loud. We're supposed to be your dads, remember? This isn't the kind of thing you talk about at brunch with your dads. And I really think you need to slow down on the mimosas. Honestly, you shouldn't be drinking at all when yesterday, we thought you might have a concussion—wait, you realize they have alcohol in them, right?"

"Oh, that explains why I feel so odd." Like everything was underwater—how had she not noticed before now?

Bruce moved the nearly empty mimosa pitcher to the other side of the table and pushed a glass of water towards her (it seemed to Loki that Bruce was constantly trying to give her water for some reason or another). "Drink some water and try to finish your food. Food will help."

✧･ﾟ: (=^o^)_ɏ*✧

Loki clung to Bruce to keep herself upright as they left the restaurant. She tugged on his sleeve. "Wait, wait—"

"Loki?"

"Bathroom," she whispered in Bruce's ear, hoping that would be enough communication for him to take her in the direction of a toilet.

"Okay, come on." Bruce led her around to the side of the building, where there were two doors with icons on them indicating that one was meant for women, and one was for men. "Are you going to be alright if I let you go in the women's alone?" he asked.

Loki giggled as she played with the button at the top of Bruce's collar. "Of course, Brucie-Bear. I'll be fine."

Bruce caught her hand and took a deep breath, perhaps trying to center himself. "I'm not sure you are. Maybe you should just go into the men's with me. I can look first to make sure no one else is in there."

"No, I'm okay, really," Loki said, letting him go. "Men's rooms on your planet always smell foul. It's at least one reason I'm glad to be stuck in this form and not my other."

Loki managed to walk in a relatively straight line towards the women's room, leaving Bruce to call after her that he would be waiting just outside the door and to yell if she needed help.

When she emerged several minutes later, she felt a bit better for having splashed a little water on her face. But Bruce wasn't waiting for her. Odd.

She heard screaming from down the street and froze. For a moment, she thought she'd been transported back in time to the invasion, which meant that Bruce not being there would make sense. A rumble louder than any thunder Thor had ever created filled the air, accompanied soon after by the sound of glass shattering and the crumbling of stone. She rushed back towards the entrance of the restaurant to try to find any of the men she had come with, only to find she couldn't see three feet in front of her for all the dust in the air.

Again she stood frozen, but then the wailing of a siren woke her from her from her stupor and she decided she needed to find a place to hide. She ducked behind the first thing she could see once the dust had settled somewhat, which was a blue, graffiti covered mailbox.

The pavement beneath Loki's feet shook, and the last that she remembered, everything was too loud and too bright—

┌(x_X)*┘

Loki stood before a throne. At first Loki thought it to be made of wrought iron, but upon further inspection decided it might be a pile of charred bones— oh, lovely. A woman wearing a green bodysuit sat on it, legs crossed, chin resting in her hand. Her headdress brought to mind a stag that had gotten tangled in the branches of a tree, and she must have found putting eyeliner on as difficult as Loki did, because she'd apparently given up and decided to simply smear it all over her eyes.

"Who are you?" she asked the oddly dressed woman.

The woman nodded to her regally in response. "Father."

Loki looked down and saw that, yes, she was in her male body again. She also no longer had a tail, and reaching up, she didn't have wolf's ears either. That still didn't explain why this woman, who seemed to be somewhat older than herself, had called her "Father."

A wicked smile spread across the woman's face. "You don't know me, do you?"

"Should I? I admit I'm a bit confused to be hearing anyone calling me 'Father.' It seems rather an impossibility, when I'm, well—"

"A virgin?"

"What? I'm not—"

"There's no point in lying. I can see your entire life from birth to death, written across your soul."

"Alright, fine. Then you know it's impossible for me to be anyone's father. Or mother, for that matter." If Loki ever figured out for sure who had started the idiotic, persistent rumor concerning Sleipnir's parentage, heads would roll. It was just so stupid; for one thing, Odin had ridden the geriatric horse into battle with the Jotunn.

"I am Hela, Goddess of Death," the woman announced. "I am older than the realms themselves."

"Ah, that's the other thing. I'm barely more than a millennia old, definitely too young to have sired you. I do wonder if you have gotten me confused with someone else."

"Unlike you, I exist outside the cycle of death and rebirth."

"Oh." So that was it; Hela was Loki's daughter, but she existed outside of time. Either he hadn't sired her yet, or he had sired her in some other lifetime. Unless she was lying. He had a feeling she might be lying about something, but if she was, didn't that suggest she might be telling the truth about her lineage? None of that mattered, however, because being in the presence of the Goddess of Death could not be good, whether or not they were related.

╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭

Author's Note:

I've read a lot of fan-fics where Hela is Loki's daughter, but she's usually an OC version of Hela based on the mythological Hel. Here, she's a combination of MCU Hela and Hela from the comics, who is both older than Loki and is more or less considered to be Loki's daughter except when they imply she's not.

Yes, I complained about Infinity War, then I killed Loki (－‸ლ) Sorry about that. But when all is right with the world, death is only a minor inconvenience for a Loki, which is why there aren't any "major character death" warnings for this fic.

I did consider including trigger/content warnings for this chapter but concluded that if the content in this chapter was going to be seriously triggering for someone (as in, it might trigger a flashback or panic attack, not just make them uncomfortable), that person likely wouldn't be able to watch any of the films in the MCU. I also didn't want to make anyone apprehensive about the possible content of the chapter when what does happen isn't explicitly violent and mostly happens "off-screen."

* It wasn't innuendo.