Chapter 29 - The Fun in Dysfunctional
"Is there something you need, Friend Bruce?" Loki still hadn't been able to open his eyes, but Thor seemed to be hanging back by the door to the exam room-cum-makeshift mortuary, judging by the distance of his voice. "You must forgive me, Father is being rather unreasonable when it comes to the repatriation of my sister's corpse. He says that it is not possible for a mortal to be given Asgardian funeral rites—"
"It might not matter," Bruce told him. "Loki's started breathing—and making noises, and look, I think he's crying."
"But—you were certain she was dead, were you not?"
"I was. I've never seen anything like this before. He hasn't woken up yet, but he's alive. All his vital signs are steady."
"It cannot be. If it is, it is a miracle. Even an Aesir cannot return to life after being dead for longer than a few minutes." Loki felt Thor grip his hand, hard enough that he feared the bones would be crushed to dust. His eyes flew open, and he gasped from both the pain in his hand and the med bay's blindingly bright overhead lighting.
"Let go of me, you stupid oaf." Loki's voice had come out as a rasp. He wished Doctor Banner would hand him a glass of water already.
"Loki! Little sister—brother—whichever you are right now—you're alive!"
"Yes, Thor, now let go before you break my hand."
"But how?" Thor gentled his grip but didn't let go. "Don't tell me this was all some trick of yours!"
"You would think that, wouldn't you?"
"Please don't take offense. I have been wishing for your death to have been some sort of trick. I told myself that even if it were, I would not be angry with you—just tell me that the trick isn't this, and that you'll not go back to being dead, leaving me to realize I only dreamt we were speaking." Thor seemed on the verge of tears. Had Loki ever seen him cry? He remembered what Hela had said, about how Thor might be the only one who loved him unconditionally.
"It's no trick, Thor. I'm here. Hela, the goddess of death, sent me back." He decided to leave out the part about being Hela's father, or Thor might think him completely insane.
"I must tell Father—"
"He won't be happy about it. You heard him, he said it was better for me to be dead."
"You heard our conversation? Loki, please. Father didn't mean it. He was only trying to console himself. It's the kind of thing people say when those they love die, that they will know peace in what comes after."
Loki remembered what Hela had told him about cutting his brother some slack. Thor wasn't stupid, Loki disagreed with Hela on that point, but in some ways, he wasn't as grown up as Loki. There had been a reason he'd wanted Thor's coronation postponed. It hadn't been out of jealousy, as everyone seemed to think. And while Thor had grown up a little since then, he hadn't grown up all at once. He hadn't yet come to the realization that all children must eventually come to: that their parents are not the faultless, golden beings they believed them to be in their youth. Loki, on the other hand, had been shocked out of that particular delusion once he had realized how long both Odin and Frigga had lied to him. "You believe that, and yet you've been arguing with him about whether or not my corpse can be allowed to return to Asgard—by the way, I don't care what you do with my body when I'm dead, so long as you don't do it too quickly. Hela has promised to return me to life unless I die in a way that means something."
"Your death would always mean something to me, Loki."
"She specifically said that it ought to amount to something more than your grief."
Thor eyed him warily. "Why has the goddess of death taken such an interest in you?"
"Well, if you must know, apparently she's my get."
"But who could her mother be? You've never taken a lover, at least not that you've shared with me—and if this death goddess is so powerful, is she not a full-grown woman, much older than you or I?"
"Hela exists out of time with us. The normal rules need not apply to her, so just don't think about it too much. I'm trying not to."
Thor shook his head. "It doesn't matter. I don't care why you've returned, only that you have. Loki, I know I have not said this enough, but—"
"You don't have to say it."
"No Loki, I need to. I thought I had lost my chance to ever tell you—"
"Not in front of everyone, for Bor's sake. I know what you're going to say. Maybe I even feel the same way about you, but we don't need to say the words."
"Why not?"
"Because it's embarrassing."
"I don't care, Loki. You were dead this morning. If you can't tell your younger sibling that you love them when they have just come back from the dead, then when can you? Loki, I do love you—that was why I became upset this morning, when you admitted that your intention was to die when you let yourself fall. I wasn't upset with you for saying so, I was upset with myself for ever allowing you to feel so unloved as you must have felt then."
"It wasn't about anything that you did or didn't do, Thor." He wasn't sure how to explain it, but it was true. What he had done had had nothing to do with Thor, and he should never have tried to hurt his brother by bringing it up that morning.
"I can't believe that's entirely the truth. But we can speak more of this later—for now, I must tell Father you are alive. He loves you too, Loki. I know you don't believe it. Someday, you will understand that Father isn't perfect, and then you will start being able to forgive him for all of the mistakes he has made in his treatment of you."
That caught Loki off guard. Both he and Hela had been wrong—not only was Thor intelligent and mature enough to realize that Odin wasn't perfect, he was mature enough to start forgiving his imperfections. Of course, Thor would have him beat in every regard. Maybe Odin was right, Loki would never be his older brother's equal; he would always be a step or two behind. He started laughing. The people surrounding him probably thought he had cracked, and maybe he had. Then he realized his eyes were full of tears, and he wiped them with the back of his hand. "I know he isn't who we thought he was when we were little, Thor. That became painfully obvious when I found out my entire life was a lie. But I'm notready to forgive him."
Thor nodded. "That's understandable. I haven't completely forgiven him either."
Again, Loki was caught off guard. "Sorry, but what have you even got to forgive him for?"
"When he lied to you, he lied to us both. Every time he treated us unequally, he wronged both of us—don't roll your eyes, Loki, it's true. You are my sibling, no matter where you came from, and no matter what you have done. What hurts you hurts me as well."
How was it Thor could be so infuriating, even when he was saying all the things Loki had ever wanted or needed to hear from him? Like Odin, Thor wasn't who he had been in the past, but he shouldn't be angry that Thor was no longer the arrogant, cocksure child he had once been. But that was just it, Thor wasn't giving him any excuse to be angry. "Stop it, Thor. Stop being so damned perfect! It's not fair. I want to be angry with you—no, I need to be angry with you."
"You can be angry, Loki."
"Oh, that's it. I've had enough, and I'm going to scream."
"Scream, if it will make you feel better."
"I'm going to."
"Then do it."
The air filled with a blood curdling scream.
ヽ(; ≧◇≦;)ノ!
Loki might have pulled out a clump of his own hair as he screamed, and he might have blacked out for a few minutes afterward, because when he came to, everyone in the tower had come to gawk at him again, including Frigga, who was clinging to her husband's arm like a limpet—when had she decided to show up, exactly? Where had she been when he had been lying dead?
"What foul trickery is this?" bellowed Odin.
"I am sorry to disappoint you, All-Father, but it turns out I'm not nearly as mortal as we thought," Loki told him, as he tried to focus on breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. "It seems I am favored by the goddess of death." This was apparently the wrong thing to say, or it would have been if Loki had given a fig about what Odin thought at this point.
"You claim to be in league with Death, Laufeyson?"
Thor looked hurt. "Father, please, this is a miracle. Loki is alive. Does it matter how?"
"It matters a great deal, Thor," said Odin, now making an effort to look tired and put-upon. "What kind of deal has your brother made, do you suppose, if Death has agreed to release him?"
"I didn't make a deal," Loki said, but then he wondered. Was he beholden to Hela now? He hadn't thought so. There hadn't been any contracts signed in blood or anything. "She sent me back all on her own. Out of filial loyalty, presumably."
"Filial?" Frigga cocked her head to the side. She had been standing in stunned silence until then, though when Odin had begun bellowing at Loki, she had released his arm. Loki finally noticed how pale and drawn she looked. Perhaps his death had affected her after all. She arched an eyebrow at him. "Is there something you wish to tell us, Loki?"
"Well, now that you mention it, I suppose I must have knocked someone up, but it would have been before time began, so either it happened in a different life or it hasn't happened yet, but it will when time decides to loop around to the beginning of things. Either way, congratulations, Frigga, you're a grandma."
"Does that mean I am still your mother?"
"I've been calling you that, haven't I?"
"And Odin is your—"
Loki cut her off. "He just called me Laufeyson again, so no. Besides, Tony and Bruce are my gay dads now."
Pepper arched an eyebrow at Tony, then gave Bruce a questioning look. Bruce shrugged.
Odin scowled. "You think this is a laughing matter, child? First you are careless enough to get yourself killed, then you make a deal with Death!"
"I said I didn't make a deal. You're not listening to me, but what else is new?"
"Have a care how you speak to me. Whether or not I am your father, I am still the All-Father of these Nine realms."
"I think we should all try to calm down." Doctor Samson stepped forward and extended a hand towards the All-Father. "I'm Doctor Leonard Samson, Loki's psychiatrist. We kind of met before, but we didn't get a chance to talk. I think it would be a good idea if you, me, Frigga, and Loki all sat down for a private conversation."
"Who do you think you are to involve yourself in the affairs of Asgard, mortal?"
"Like I said, I'm Loki's psychiatrist. I'd like to serve as a mediator between the two of you, if you would be open to it."
"There is no need for a mortal mediator to interfere in the affairs of Asgardian royalty!"
"But I'm not Asgardian royalty," Loki pointed out. "I'm not even Asgardian."
"You are Asgardian if I say you are."
"But that's not fair. You only want me to be Asgardian so that you can call me a traitor."
"If you are not a traitor to Asgard, you are a traitor to the Jotunn. Which is it, Loki?"
"I don't want to be Jotunn either."
"You cannot belong to no one."
Tony cleared his throat. "He's ours, then. Like the kid said, Bruce and I are adopting him, so he gets Midgardian citizenship."
"Tony, I'm not sure—"
"Shh, Brucie. For all King Triton knows, we can totally do that," Tony said in a stage-whisper. "Besides, from everything we've heard about it, it would be every bit as legal as the kid's first adoption."
Loki's eyebrows flew upwards at that. Odin might be half-blind and going senile, but he wasn't deaf. Tony either didn't care that Odin might blast him off the face of Midgard, or he didn't appreciate how little effort if would take for him to do just that.
Amazingly, Odin didn't smite Tony for his impertinence. "It seems odd you should want him after what he did to you and your people."
"About that—Lokes, don't you think you ought to tell him what you told us? Maybe try to clear your name a little?"
Odin arched an eyebrow at Tony, and then turned back to Loki. "What is this about?"
Loki decided it was as good a time as any to "lay all his cards out on the table," as Midgardians would say. Odin would probably accuse him of making it up, but oh well. "Invading Midgard wasn't exactly my idea," Loki said, shrugging as if it didn't matter. "I was subjected to psychic torture until I agreed. I also lost the battle on purpose, because I didn't want Thanos to get his hands on the Tesseract. I liberated the mind stone from him in the process, so you're welcome—though I have a sneaking suspicion that it might have fallen into the hands of a Midgardian authoritarian paramilitary-subversive organization."
"SHIELD took it into custody," said Natasha.
"Exactly. Still, better off with mortals who don't know how to use it than with the Mad Titan."
Odin had that exhausted look about him again.
"I know you don't believe me."
"I do believe you, Loki."
"You do?"
Odin nodded. "I never thought you were acting on your own, and the thought that you had been coerced had, in fact, crossed my mind."
"But you imprisoned me anyway."
"You offered no defense whatsoever; in fact, you admitted to every crime you were accused of. You were flagrantly disrespectful whenever you were brought to me for questioning. Tell me, Loki—as king, what else could I have done?"
Loki wanted to rant and rail and tell him that he had needed Odin to be a father, not a king. Why couldn't Odin have understood that whenever Loki had screamed that Odinwas nothis father, it had been because he needed Odin to tell him otherwise? But instead, the man had cruelly disowned him and called him by a monster's name. Even if he had been trying to be a good king, some of the things he had said had been cruel and unnecessary.
Doctor Samson cleared his throat again. "Again, I think we should all sit down—"
"No," Loki said. "I'm done. I have no illusions left that this man has ever cared for me."
"You're wrong, Loki," said Odin dejectedly. Again, Loki suspected this to be a play for pity from the others in the room. "I did care for you."
"So you admit that you don't care for me any longer."
"Why must you always twist my words?" Odin growled.
"I'm not twisting them at all, I just listen to what you actually say. You are the one who spoke in the past tense."
"He's right, you did," Tony said, seemingly unable to keep his mouth shut for more than two minutes at a time. "It kind of sounded like you were saying you did care for him, but now you don't. Which if you did mean that, that's really crappy. I think one of the things most people agree on is that you're not supposed to stop loving your kids no matter what they do, and that extends to adoptedkids. Loki isn't a puppy you can just take back to the pound because it chewed your Italian leather dress shoes."
"That's actually a crappy thing to do to a dog," Clint said, squinting at Tony. "You've never actually done that, right?"
"Do I look like a dog person, Clint?"
"Nope, which is why I'm wondering if that happened."
"Okay, fine. Something like that might have happened, but I didn't take the dog back to the pound, I'm not that much of a jerk. I found it a new home myself."
"That's a little better, I guess."
"Except that's not what happened either," Pepper said. "He didn't find it a new home himself, he passed it on to me and I found it a new home."
The All-Father had become a little red in the face. He was clearly not used to being disrespected in the way these humans disrespected him—talking amongst themselves and acting as if they didn't acknowledge at all that the King of All Nine Realms stood among them. No matter that Midgard wasn't under Asgardian rule—it was considered a protected realm, but its inhabitants weren't Odin's subjects. Maybe Odin had forgotten this, or maybe he hadn't, and that was why he really didn't care much for Midgardians.
All the more reason for Loki to want to be one of them. Hopefully, Tony had been serious about keeping him, even if the "adoption" part was a joke. "Stark, if you're adopting me, can we get a dog?"
"Ooh, can we get a dog, Dad?" asked Clint, taking on the role of Loki's new brother.
"I don't know, Clint. Are you going to be the one to take care of it?"
"I'll take care of it," said Loki. "I'm good with animals."
"My younger sibling speaks the truth, Stark," Thor chimed in. "Loki used to have a miniature dragon as a pet—wait, what ever happened to that dragon?"
"When it was old enough to start breathing fire, it burned down half the tapestries in the great hall. Father made me release it into the wild."
"Because dragons are not meant to be kept as pets! If I'd had any idea you were keeping it in the palace, I would never have allowed it in the first place!"
"Mother knew about it."
"Your Mother has as little sense as you do, then."
Frigga narrowed her eyes at her husband. "Is that so?"
Odin's one eye bulged like the eye of a man who knew he was in trouble, but then he stood up straighter and looked down his nose at his wife. "Now dear," he said, speaking as if to a child, "I might have misspoken. You know how I get when I lose my temper."
Frigga would have none of his patronizing tone, however. "Oh yes, I know. I am quite used to your temper, and Thor's temper, and Loki's. Now, we are all going to sit down with Doctor Samson, before something truly irreparable occurs because none of you can control your emotions."
"We are long past irreparable, Mother," Loki told her.
"No we are not. Not so long as you still call me 'Mother,' do you understand, Loki?"
"And where have you been, 'Mother?' If you cared for me at all, you wouldn't keep disappearing. What have you even been doing?"
Frigga lifted her chin and leveled Loki with one of her looks. He managed not to physically cringe backwards, but if he'd still been part wolf, his tail likely would have betrayed him by tucking itself between his legs. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw both Thor and Odin wince in sympathy.
╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭
Author's Note:
Thank you for your comments!
If you've ever wondered what a "limpet" is, it's actually a type of aquatic snail that has the ability to cling tightly to things. I've been seeing the phrase "to cling like a limpet" my entire life, but I only thought to look it up when I wrote it and thought, "Am I using this phrase correctly? What is a limpet, anyway?"
In the next chapter, we will finally see what Frigga was doing all this time.
