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Playground
Chapter 7: Cookie Monster
"Daddy, look what Ollie can do!" Morgan said when she noticed Ollie staring up at him.
"Uh, yeah, Pumpkin, look at that," Tony said, still uncertain what he was dealing with.
Blue-Ollie gave a full-body shiver and seemed to ripple like a desert mirage. With a second shiver the kid looked like regular-Ollie again, and Tony couldn't even say he'd seen the change happen. Ollie just appeared one way one second, the same but a little hazy the next, and entirely different the next.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."
"Um, that's okay. It's okay, isn't it? Morgan?" Tony rediscovered the ability to move and started forward.
Ollie scooted back on the mat until his back was to the TV. Tony hadn't imagined it, the kid was scared. Now that he was closer, he could see Ollie trembling a little.
Morgan, meanwhile, had shuffled over on her knees back to Ollie's side, and grabbed his arm. "You're not all cold anymore."
"You were cold, Ollie? Are you feeling okay?"
"He was really cold."
"I won't do it again, I promise. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
"I'm not mad, kiddo."
Ollie's head dropped, but not before Tony saw his face pinch up. His chest was hitching a little. Tears had appeared in the kid's eyes, but this wasn't from crying. He dashed around the couch, lifted Ollie up before he could object, and took off for the half-bath located in the hallway just beyond the living room.
"FRIDAY, put Frozen on," he called, running as steadily as he could so as not to jostle Ollie unnecessarily. "Watch the movie, Pumpkin, we'll be back in a few minutes! Hold on if you can, Ollie, almost there."
They made it. Ollie had fortitude; he wasn't sure Morgan would've been able to hold out that long. Afterward he got Ollie seated on the countertop next to the sink and helped the kid clean up – his clothes were clean, but he was crying and his nose was running. And when the washcloth went down, the little arm went right up over the kid's eyes.
"Ollie? You want to tell me what happened?" Tony glanced over at the door, which he'd hastily kicked closed behind them in case Morgan tried to follow. He should probably go get Loki, who would surely have a better idea of what was going on than he did, but Loki was somewhere in the backyard, and the backyard was big. He didn't feel right yet about leaving Ollie to go find Loki, or dragging the poor kid out for a search party. He'd left his phone in the kitchen. FRIDAY could get a message through, but a little triage was probably still a good idea.
"I don't know," Ollie said, the word muffled by his arm. "I didn't mean to. Morgan said blue people are nice."
"Yeah, blue people…like Cookie Monster? Cookie Monster's blue, isn't he?"
Ollie peeked out from behind his arm and nodded, tears still in the corners of his eyes.
"And Cookie Monster is pretty nice. He sure loves cookies."
"He's not a bad monster."
"Cookie Monster? No, no way. Not a bad monster. Not a scary monster. Not a monster at all, actually. It's just his name. Were you afraid of him?"
Ollie shook his head.
"So…how come you looked blue, too? How'd that happen?"
"I didn't mean to," Ollie said, again.
The kid looked so earnestly please-believe-me sincere that there was no way he was telling the truth. But what was Tony supposed to do with that? He still didn't understand exactly what had happened or why. Ollie clearly thought he was in big trouble for it, but Tony didn't know what, if anything, the kid had done wrong. If he had done something wrong, it wasn't Tony's place to handle it.
"Do you feel okay now? Tummy's okay? You're not cold? Wait, what am I thinking, hold on a sec. FRIDAY, can you do a scan of Ollie? Tell me if anything seems off?" Without additional equipment and contact FRIDAY couldn't measure much beyond what came with thermal imaging, but it was better than nothing, and better than going upstairs for the thermometer.
"Scan complete. Ollie appears to be perfectly well at the moment."
A delicate answer suitable for Ollie's ears. Tony didn't miss the qualification, and the implication that Ollie hadn't appeared to be perfectly well a few minutes ago. Not that he needed FRIDAY to tell him that.
"Okay, well, your papa was on the phone with your mama, so let's go find him and see—."
Tony had been in the process of scooping the kid up when Ollie scrambled back from him, shaking his head. "Don't tell Papa. Please, please don't tell him. Because I didn't mean to and I won't do it again. You don't have to tell him. I'm sorry I was bad. I won't be bad anymore."
"Hey, it's okay, squirt," Tony said, wincing a little at the slip. Hopefully Loki was out there finding out from Jane that Tony wasn't disparaging their son by calling him squirt, especially since after all that talk about it, the nickname really seemed to suit Ollie. "But you know we can't hide things from your papa. He needs to know."
Ollie's face crumpled, and his voice, when he spoke, was choked off, barely audible. "But he'll be really mad at me."
An icy hand wrapped around Tony's heart and squeezed, not unlike the sensation of the old arc reactor being removed, his heart struggling to beat in its regular rhythm.
Ollie wasn't afraid of what had happened or of Tony, at least not nearly as much as Ollie was afraid of Loki.
Tony still didn't know what was going on, but he understood that much. And his anger toward Loki was so recently, so shallowly buried that it was easily reemerging, and Tony was rapidly losing control of it. Which wouldn't do at all, he told himself, trying to calm his tight breathing. Because whatever was going on, a four-year-old child was involved, and Tony's first step had to be to simply not make it worse.
"Okay, Ollie, here's what we're going to do," Tony began, dampening another washcloth and wiping it gently over Ollie's face again. "You're going to go watch a movie with Morgan. I'm going to go talk with your papa. Don't worry about a thing. Before I tell him what happened, I'll make sure he's not going to get mad. Okay? I'll make sure of it."
"But he will. He told me not to."
"This happened before?"
Ollie nodded.
"And he got mad?"
Ollie's eyes grew wide and the nodding picked up speed.
"Well, he's not going to get mad this time. I promise. You know what? We have special promises here on Earth. They're called pinky promises." Tony extended a pinky, prepared to explain, when a tiny smile appeared on Ollie's face.
"Mama does those."
"She does? Of course she does. Your mama must know all about pinky promises. Can I make one with you now?"
Again Ollie nodded, this time more tentatively.
Tony curled a pinky around Ollie's outstretched littler one. "I officially pinky promise that your papa will not be mad at you."
Ollie didn't seem totally convinced, but he wasn't crying and he let Tony pick him up and carry him back out to the living room, where Morgan promptly demanded to know what had taken so long and Tony told FRIDAY to start the movie over.
Ollie watched him go, while Tony flashed his most confident, reassuring smile. He wasn't sure how he was going to do this, especially since he had no idea why Loki had apparently blown a gasket when whatever this was happened before, but he would. He was not going to break that pinky promise.
The first step: don't make it worse.
The second step?
Deal with Loki.
The kitchen was empty. Tony detoured around the kitchen island to grab the phone, then paused in his path to the back door, sniffing. The cookies. The not-burnt cookies. "Thanks, FRIDAY. And keep an eye on the kids, will you? Ping me if there's any trouble."
"Of course, boss."
"And FRIDAY? Loki doesn't get back into this house until I say so."
-/-
-/-
Jane's meetings had gone well thus far. Promising, she'd said, and little else. She didn't have much time, and she wanted to hear about his day with Ollie, and with Tony and Morgan. Do you think you and Tony could become friends? she asked. Because that would be so perfect, she continued before he could deliver a suitably sarcastic negative. Luckily, she didn't push for an answer when he responded by telling her about the tiny car Ollie had made for her.
How was he supposed to make any friends here? Did Jane really expect it? Tony Stark, the Iron Man, his first "friend." Next he should try to arrange an outing with Steve Rogers. Oh, how they could laugh and laugh about that time he'd tried to make the other man kneel to him! Perhaps reenact it for nostalgia's sake, while Tony recorded it on his phone. Even better, an afternoon relaxing with Barton. Loki shuddered. At least with Bruce Banner he had something of an uneasy truce. He and Tony were perhaps establishing something similar.
Loki would be fine without friends, as long as he had Jane and Ollie. Jane had prior friendships here, and should be able to make a few new ones, ones who could ignore her choice of husband. Ollie would have a harder time of it. Yes, he got along well with Morgan. Maybe each of the growing little band of Avengers had a four-year-old now. Barton had two already, older than Ollie, but perhaps more had come. Too bad the man kept them secret from his fellows. What fun the birthday party gatherings would be.
Midgard, of course, was filled with billions of people he'd never fought or enslaved. Millions of children for Ollie to befriend. But which of them would allow their child to continue to be Ollie's friend once they found out who Ollie's father was? Yes, he'd assisted these people, protected their realm and all the rest from Thanos's intended destruction. A footnote on his record here. Preventing destruction was far less memorable than causing it.
Let's just take this one day at a time, Jane was fond of saying. That didn't come naturally to Loki.
This space of Tony's, at least, was somewhat calming. He'd walked the grounds while speaking with Jane, then settled on a bench in a gazebo with a view out over the flowering garden, with a playground off not far to his left. The weather was beautiful. Sunny, warm but not hot. If he and Jane could live in a place like this, they would enjoy privacy and a defensible perimeter, Ollie would have plenty of room to run and play, and Loki perhaps could learn to tend the grounds, giving him something to occupy himself with while Jane worked and Ollie attended lessons.
He reached for his phone, intending to take a few photos to show Jane and talk up the idea, but as he stood he caught sight of Tony headed his way. The man's brisk pace and determined posture had Loki glancing back toward the house in concern, but he trusted that if Ollie was in danger Tony would not merely be striding across the lawn. How he could have come to trust Tony so quickly he didn't understand, but looking back, he thought perhaps it had begun when Tony trusted him with Morgan.
"How's Jane?" Tony asked when he reached Loki, remaining just outside the gazebo.
"She's fine. You may call Ollie 'squirt' if you wish." He hadn't actually asked.
"Great. We need to talk."
Loki studied Tony warily. The man was tightly wound. Something was wrong. Loki would rather nothing go wrong when his child was near. "All right," he said, taking a few measured steps out from under the shade of the gazebo.
"First, a ground rule. You stay out here and talk to me before you go back in there."
Loki immediately started off for the house, but behind him he heard the familiar whine of one of the Iron Man weapons powering up. He stopped, listening, but did not turn around.
"Ollie's fine, you have my word. He's watching a movie with Morgan, and FRIDAY's keeping an eye on them."
"Is he a hostage?" Loki asked, each syllable slow, deliberate, and masking a swelling tide of clashing anger and fear while he instinctively measured his options for what action he might take next.
"A— What? No. No, your kid is not a hostage."
Loki swallowed, then turned partway, keeping his hands in sight. A gauntlet covered one of Tony's. Loki was confident he could win this battle in seconds, if it came to it. "Then I'm not sure what has given you the impression that you are in any position to issue orders to me."
"Not an order. Just a fact. The defenses aren't visible, but they're there. I made a promise to Ollie, and you're not getting back in my house until I let you."
The baffling reference to Ollie released the pressure on the outrage at Tony's sudden behavior, with confusion now competing for the same limited space and stilling Loki to indecision and inaction. Before he could formulate a question, Tony was continuing.
"What's the story with your kid turning blue?"
The words echoed back, initially as though in a language Loki could not quite understand. The universe shrank, and narrowed further still, until it consisted of nothing but Tony's accusing face and terrible words. He didn't realize he'd staggered back a step until a sense of unsteadiness struck. It had happened again. He'd told Ollie. He'd been certain Ollie had listened to him last time, had understood that it must not happen again.
But it had. And now Loki had to deal with it. What choice did he have? Tony was clearly furious. Loki sucked in a breath as the ground dropped out beneath him. "Did he injure Morgan?"
"No. Why would he have injured her?"
"His skin. It's extremely cold. If she touched him, he would have burned her. Not intentionally. He—."
"She did touch him. She was poking his arm when I came in and found him like that. She said he was cold, but I know how she reacts when she gets burned. I know how anybody reacts to getting burned. She's fine."
Loki nodded his acknowledgement and tried to mask the relief that so overwhelmed him he could almost collapse. One of his many nightmares, averted. Morgan was an innocent child and did not deserve to be dealt such harm, not to mention that she was Tony Stark's child, and if his son harmed her, Tony and his friends could easily make Jane's plan for them to establish a life on Midgard untenable. "Regardless, I apologize for what he did. He shouldn't have. I'll speak to him about it."
"There's where I'm confused. It's some kind of Asgardian magic, like what you can do, right? I'm just not seeing why what he did is so wrong. A smidge surprising – I didn't see that one coming at all – but not wrong."
"You may not," Loki said, calming as he recovered from the shock. Perhaps Tony could even be convinced to keep what he observed to himself, especially if provided the proper context. Tony would be pleased to collect ammunition to use against him…but Loki was confident the man would not take the same attitude toward Ollie. "That cannot be said of everyone, however. Especially on Asgard."
"Why? What's the big deal about it? Is it something about him making himself look different in general…it was him doing it, on purpose, right? That's the impression I came away with. General change, then, or is it specifically the blue skin and red eyes?"
"The latter," Loki said. He nearly shook under the strain of maintaining eye contact, to avoid putting his utter humiliation on display. "Ollie…has the ability to shift his appearance."
"So do you," Tony said before Loki could force out more of the intended lie hidden among truth. "Not cool if you're using it to, I don't know, try to take over a planet or something crazy like that, but…yeah, I'm still waiting for the why. Because your son was so terrified I would tell you what happened that he puked."
Loki's eyes drifted closed. This was fast spiraling out of control. He needed to take Ollie and leave here. He would figure it out. Find a way to make things clear to Ollie without frightening him. Loki felt ill himself imagining Ollie so afraid he'd made himself sick.
"I'm sorry for the trouble. We'll be going now."
"Loki? We've had a nice thing going here. I'd really hate to ruin that. We're not done."
"Is that a threat?" In no mood for patience, Loki was ready to call on Heimdall to get Ollie out of here safely if necessary. Tony's "defenses" might slow Loki down, but he doubted they'd be any hindrance to the bifrost.
"No. This time it's an appeal to your humanity. Okay, and a little bit of a threat."
"My son is ill. And you expect me to stand around out here? Would you agree to that if it was your child?" For once, Loki hoped with all he was that Heimdall was watching, and prepared. He would prefer not to have to fight to get to Ollie. If it was the only way, though, there was no question that he would.
"He was ill because of you, apparently, but he's fine now. Like I said, watching a movie with Morgan. So you and me, we're going to have a chat before you go back in there. A friendly one, okay? Because I'm worried about Ollie. You asked what if it was my kid. If it was my kid, and somebody was concerned, I hope they'd care enough to not just ignore those concerns. And I hope I'd have the patience and the wisdom to listen."
Loki glanced to the house once more, looked down, inhaling deeply, and finally turned fully toward Tony. He didn't think the man would lie; Ollie was in no immediate danger, nor was Morgan. And if he didn't deal with this now, he'd probably have to deal with it later. "I lost my temper before. It was the second time he'd done it, and I had told him not to do it again. I went too far. I know that. I knew it then. It won't happen again. There is no cause for concern."
"Did you hurt him?"
Loki drew his neck back in disgust. "No! Of course I— No. I raised my voice. I spoke harshly. Too harshly for a child. That was all. If you were imagining there was violence…I understand if you think little of me. But I would not mistreat my child that way. I made a mistake, one I shall not repeat. I would like to collect my son now, if you have no further objection."
The two of them stood there in a silent stand-off, Loki watching Tony carefully to try to anticipate his response, to be ready to act if needed. He hoped it would not be needed.
Loki tensed when Tony's hand went to his pocket, but he forced himself to relax again when the man only pulled out his phone.
"I think you should see what happened."
"I know what happened. I've seen it before."
"Okay, I want to see what happened. What happened before I got there," Tony said, brushing his fingers over the phone.
"Are you trying to stall me for some reason?"
"No. Still trying to appeal to your humanity."
"I am not human," Loki muttered as Tony ordered FRIDAY to send the relevant video footage to his phone.
"You're the one who said it first." He tilted the phone this way and that, held a hand up over it, then finally stepped under the gazebo. "That's better."
Loki glowered at Tony but followed, stiffly, forced to stand close to be able to see the screen. The view was from overhead and behind the children, coming from a camera that had to be located in the center beam in the series of exposed roof beams in the living room.
"Zoom in, FRIDAY. All we need is the kids, and the TV screen."
"You record your own family like this? Is this a home or a prison?"
"Security, remember? There are people out there who don't like me very much. Give us the sound, too. Remember that song they were singing? The Cookie Monster song? That's Cookie Monster on the screen."
Loki saw no cause for concern thus far, but examined the images closely, since Tony had felt the need to identify Cookie Monster. Yes, Cookie Monster happened to be blue, but it was as Tony had mentioned earlier: he appeared to be a friendly creature of the sort meant for amusing and comforting young children, found in one version or another all over Midgard and Asgard both, probably everywhere children existed. The blue-furred creature, clearly a puppet, shared nothing more than its color in common with Frost Giants. Ollie was singing exuberantly alongside Morgan, wildly swinging his head back and forth in rough time with the music. The words weren't exactly difficult to learn.
When the song ended, Morgan called for another Sesame Street video she wanted to show Ollie. She started narrating some story about the program, but Loki's attention, like Ollie's, quickly faded from Morgan. Ollie was thinking. Morgan pulled out a bin of toys from near the TV, a smaller version of one of the other creatures on the screen, and moved it around as though it was dancing. Ollie wasn't moving.
"Do you like blue people?"
That sense of the ground dropping out from under him returned.
Morgan laughed. "That's silly."
Morgan's head was still down over her toy, and Loki couldn't see much of her face. Ollie was facing her though, and Loki had a clear view of his profile. His eyes were downcast, his entire body slumped. Loki's chest was tight, heart hammering.
"Oh, you mean like Cookie Monster? Yeah, I like blue people."
"Do you think they're bad?"
"No, blue people aren't bad."
Morgan was barely paying attention, up on her feet now and pretending her toy could fly. She was talking about making it fly for real.
Ollie was chewing on his knuckles.
Loki didn't need to watch to know what was coming. But he couldn't look away, no matter how much and for how many reasons he didn't want to see this. More than anything he wanted to snatch Ollie up and out of there before it could happen.
It had already happened, though, and before his eyes it was happening again. Ollie squeezed his eyes shut, shivered, and when he opened them again, he had changed.
"Wow."
Startled by the reminder of the audience at his side, Loki missed a second. He refocused at the sound of Morgan's gasp, delayed because she hadn't been looking at Ollie when he changed.
"Ollie? Is that still you? What'd you do?"
Standing above him, she poked at, then rubbed at the darker marks on his forehead, as though she thought they might wipe off. Loki's eyes followed every motion of her fingers, waiting for her to jerk them away in pain despite what Tony had said, but it didn't happen.
Ollie peered up at her; signs of his nervousness manifested despite the different face he wore.
"It's me," he said when she stopped touching him.
"Where'd your hair go?"
Loki huffed out a short breath. Of everything Morgan was looking at, a bald head was her chief concern?
Ollie's hand went up to his head, which he then jerked up toward Morgan. "I don't know!"
"How come you're so cold?"
"I'm not cold."
"Yes, you are."
"But I don't feel cold. I feel hot."
"We should take your temperature. We have to run diagnostics. FRIDAY, pause the movie. I never met any real blue people before. I don't think I ever met anybody with red eyes before either, but maybe I did when I was little and I just forgot."
"My eyes are red?"
"Biiiiiig red. How'd you do it?"
"I don't know. I just did. Sometimes it itches."
"What itches?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?" Morgan asked with scrunched up face, poking at Ollie's arm. "Can you turn into other kinds of people? Like…like green people? Oh! Or purple people?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. I think maybe just blue people."
"Hey, kids, I heard you singing about something that starts with—"
Morgan was saying something; the words washed over Loki without ever sinking in. Then Tony, only an out-of-focus shoulder on the screen, was saying something. Ollie, still in that other form, was petrified.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."
Tony approached Ollie, who shied away, though not out of shyness.
The Tony at Loki's side took the phone in both hands, moved his fingers over the screen, then held it out for Loki to see again. "See this? This is not a normal reaction to being afraid of getting into trouble."
Loki's vision slowly came back into focus. Ollie looked himself again, but still petrified. It was even easier – and harder – to see like this. Tony hadn't done anything to frighten his son. Loki had done that himself. Frightened his own child nearly to pieces, and for no purpose. He should have explained to Ollie, not shouted. He should have made it clear that this could not happen. Ollie was exceptionally bright. Everyone said so. Ollie would understand if Loki could simply explain it in the right way. He would find the right way. He pushed Tony's hand away. This could not happen again. Neither of these things could happen again.
"So what's the deal, Loki? What's this all about?"
Loki brushed past Tony and sank down to the gazebo bench, all the energy drained out of him for the moment. Difficult conversations lay ahead. With Ollie. With Jane.
And, he decided, with Tony.
Mirroring Loki, Tony sat on the bench opposite and forced himself to appear relaxed. The last vestiges of confrontation seemed to have bled out of Loki, but Tony still didn't quite trust the guy. Trust was earned, and not even bicycle cars and The Bare Necessities could accomplish that in a single day.
"I don't have to tell you anything."
"I guess not. But I'd feel better if you did."
"This might come as a shock, but making you feel better isn't among my top priorities."
"Not all that shocking," Tony said, determined to roll with this, determined not to rise to any of Loki's bait, or to drop any himself. Or at least to try really hard.
"I tell you this only because if I don't, then the next time you see Thor you'll ask him, and he'll run his big idiotic mouth. He does not know the meaning of discretion."
"Literally or figuratively?" Tony asked. The first words that came to mind. The reference to Thor surprised him. He hadn't seen Thor in years, not since the last time the two Norse Bros returned to Asgard, both batting for Team Good Guys. It hadn't occurred to him to ask Thor. He wasn't sure how Loki thought he'd be able to ask Thor. So he cracked a joke. Reflex. Loki didn't react to it. Not his best joke, of course, and, well, not his best timing.
"When I pointed out that Ollie was half human…I was somewhat vague, intentionally so. Ollie is…he is half…Frost Giant."
A novel could be written on each of the emotions that passed over Loki's face and body language as he spoke those words, if a shrink could first get in there and tease them all apart. Tony was certain he'd caught sorrow and hatred and disgust, and equally certain that he'd starting reading this series by jumping into the middle of Book Seven or Eight, or maybe Seven Hundred or Eight Hundred. The love Tony had seen before when Loki spoke of Ollie was most noticeable in its absence. Maybe it was just caught up in and obscured by too many other things. That had to be it, the only way Tony could make sense of what he'd just seen and heard.
That Ollie was half Frost Giant.
"You're adopted," Tony blurted out. Insensitive, maybe? It didn't occur to him until after it was out.
Loki looked up at him from his slumped position with a witheringly scornful expression that was downright comforting in its familiarity. "Bravo. Your powers of deductive reasoning are astounding."
"Thanks, but it's actually in your file. Thor mentioned it back when you were…well, back when you were being mean to Earth, if that's how we're putting it these days."
"Wonderful. So he's already run his big idiotic mouth. I don't understand your surprise then. Surely your people grasp the rudiments of biology?"
"Hey, does Jane approve of that kind of your people talk? Look, as far as I know, Thor just said adopted. That's all that's in your file. I think we all assumed…from down the road. Not Frost Giants. Who I'm assuming are not from down the road."
"I see. Then you don't know about them. They are a race of monsters."
Tony drew back. He blinked heavily a few times, replaying what Loki had just said. The way Loki had just said it. Not with all those messy layers of emotions from before. Instead, not much different from how you might say Canadians were polite, or Germans enjoyed a good beer. Simple fact. Everyone knows it. Exceptions prove the rule and all that.
I lost my temper, Loki had said just a few minutes ago. I spoke too harshly.
"The way Ollie looked in there…that wasn't random, was it? That's what Frost Giants look like?"
Loki's answer was slow in coming, and with so much visible reluctance Tony wouldn't have been surprised to see a few vital organs dragged out along with the words. "I have never seen one of their young. Only grown ones. But the other form he has taken must be that of their young. The differences are minor and few."
"Did you tell your kid he's a monster?"
"No, of course not," Loki said immediately.
At least he had the decency to look offended when he said it.
"Did you tell your kid he looks like a monster?"
"No."
The second no wasn't nearly as quick out of the gate as the first. And Loki wasn't meeting his eyes. There was more here, and Tony was pretty sure he didn't want to hear it, but he couldn't not ask.
"But you told him something close to that."
Loki had the look of someone chewing on nails, but eventually answered. "I asked him if he wanted everyone to think he was a monster."
Tony's fist clenched at his side, and by God he wanted to slam it into Loki's face. When Loki blinked, though, Tony caught a shine, a glassiness that hadn't been there before. Looking closer, he saw honest-to-God tears shimmering in the man's eyes. He ground his fist into his thigh to take the edge off. He could hardly punch a man who was crying. Even if that man still deserved it, because damp eyes didn't undo the damage he'd done to that sweet little boy. Better that his hand was stayed, though, since hitting Loki would probably hurt that hand a hell of a lot more than Loki's face.
Loki sucked in a breath through his nose – sniffed, really – and rested his face against his palm. When he removed his hand, his eyes were dry. "I know I was in the wrong. I'll handle it better this time."
"Why handle it all? Maybe just ignore it. Let it go."
Loki shook his head. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"What he's doing…it sounds like it's just the natural expression of the other half of his biology, enabled by that shapeshifting thing he's got in common with you."
"You do not understand, Tony. You cannot understand. They are the hated enemies of the Aesir."
"Yeah, I did pick up the fact that you weren't pals, with that monsters comment the first clue entered into evidence. But he's—. Hold on." Sometimes something clicked. And sometimes the clicks created a symphony worthy of Beethoven. "Woah. Is there a literal light bulb over my head right now? Because I feel like maybe there is. Or a whole chandelier of them, maybe?"
Loki sighed, displaying not even a tenth of the interest the symphony deserved. "Whatever you think you have suddenly comprehended, I assure you that you have not."
"So you don't resent Thor because he's biologically Aesir, the birth son of Odin and Frigga, and you come from a so-called race of monsters?"
Tony winced at the naked pain that slowly overwrote the equally naked shock on Loki's face. He dropped his head, shifted around on the suddenly uncomfortable bench. He'd promised Pepper he would work on his compulsion to always win the argument. He could have at least phrased it a little less bluntly. When he looked up again, Loki no longer had the look of a man with a mortal wound, instead appearing only vaguely ill. Their conversation from the workshop came back to him. Parentage. Adoption. Sandpaper. Tony had skipped the sandpaper and gone straight down to the bone with a meat cleaver.
"I'm sorry. I mean it, really. I apologize. That was beyond uncalled-for. But wait…okay, this is a delayed reaction, and I'm going to blame it on how much this whole thing is blowing my mind, but that's what you really look like, too, yeah? Like Ollie did? It must be."
"This is what I really look like," Loki said, sweeping a hand down his body. "This is what I have always looked like. Except at my birth. Odin took me from Jotunheim when I was no more than a week or two old."
"Jotunheim! Yes! I know that one."
"Again, bravo. Stunning intellectual acuity."
"It's in mythology. One of those 'Nine Realms' Thor's mentioned. Okay, so you come from Jotunheim."
"I do not—. Technically, yes. And I had an innate ability to shapeshift. When he found me, abandoned because I was too small for a Frost Giant—"
"I was wondering if giant was a euphemism. Or maybe ironic."
"—and he picked me up, my features changed to be more similar to his."
"Instinctive mimicry for self-defense. That's actually pretty cool."
"But if I was left alone long enough, I would revert back to that other form. Odin therefore bound me into this one, and it's all I've ever known."
Odin bound him into it? Daddy issues, check. Tony knew enough to steer clear of that one. "You and Ollie are both shapeshifters, then, but you can't do what Ollie just did?"
"I can take on any appearance I want, through magic. It isn't the same."
"How so?" Tony asked. It was almost like they were back on the jet, or at the kitchen table. Two guys at similar life stages shooting the breeze over a drink. Or a video of a terrified little kid. It wasn't that, though, and Tony was certain Loki was still just as aware of it as he was. Loki was even currently sporting his Irritated Look, Variant Seventy-Four.
"If for some unfathomable reason I chose to, I could make myself look like any Frost Giant I saw, or some imagined Frost Giant, just as I could make myself look like you, or some imagined human. But—"
"But you can't make yourself look like you, as a Frost Giant. How you'd look if you'd never been bound into another form."
"Yes. And no," he continued after a short hesitation. "That is the distinction. But Odin removed that binding before he died."
"Meaning in theory, you could do exactly what Ollie just did."
"In theory," Loki drawled, the words dripping with disgust.
"Have you? Ever?" Tony knew the answer before he asked, but a path was opening up before him, straight and narrow and dangerous. And necessary. Tony had pinky-promised Ollie.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because this is me. Aesir. I struggled, upon learning what I was. It was a dark time in my life." Loki visibly swallowed before continuing, never breaking eye contact. "One with which you are familiar. Ultimately, I reclaimed my identity, and rebuilt it, piece by piece. Since he became king, Thor has relied on me, as the more studious of the two of us. I am a prince, and a husband, and a father. I am Aesir. I have no desire to wear the skin of a Frost Giant."
Light bulbs and more light bulbs. So many shiny objects. Tony loved shiny objects. "I'd like to reserve the right to follow up on some of that later," he said, dragging his gaze away from a tantalizingly extra-shiny nugget, "but aren't you even the slightest bit curious?"
"No."
"Really? If it was me, I would—"
"It is not you. Your people have had your own encounters with those savages, but it was long ago in your sense of time, and you have no memory of them. My people do. They are our enemies, remember? I have no interest at all in looking like them."
"Right. I understand. Because they're the enemy."
"Correct."
"A race of monsters."
"Yes."
"You hate them."
"Yes."
"You hate your son."
The initial shock this time was supplanted not by pain but by outrage. "You would do well to mind your words. I love my son."
"But you hate Frost Giants."
"My son is Aesir. And human."
"Your son is half Frost Giant."
Tony lurched toward Loki, dragged forward and up by the fists buried in his shirt, feet dangling, hands coming up and gauntlets forming. Before his arms could straighten everything tipped off balance and the breath was knocked from him. He blinked to clear his vision, then squinted up at the clear blue sky.
Right. Dangerous.
Amazing luck that this little talk had taken place in a gazebo, with no wall between where Tony had been seconds ago and the patch of grass he was now lying on, flat on his back. As his senses came back to him – and ow, the grass was thick but the ground underneath it was still hard – he figured Loki had done some hasty aiming, too, because the gazebo appeared undamaged. He'd been tossed right out through an entry.
Loki was stomping toward him, and Tony could almost see the steam escaping from the critically high pressure in the guy's head.
"Hey," Tony said, voice a little more breathless and ragged than he'd expected, "you realize I was literally quoting your own words back at you."
In the next second Tony fell under shade as Loki towered over him, blocking the sun, hands open and twitching as though about to reach for something. Tony didn't move. If he was making the wrong call now, this view of Loki, the Grim Reaper only lacking his scythe, might be the last thing he ever saw.
Loki took a step back.
Because of course he hadn't made the wrong call. But good God, it was chillingly easy to picture how Ollie had so gotten the bejesus scared out of him.
Tony pushed up onto his elbows. "Would a hand getting up be too much to ask for? The landing was a little hard, and I'm not as young as I used to be."
Loki took another step back.
"Okay, sure, I thought it might be too much."
"I love my son," Loki said, quietly, the picture of calm, while Tony groaned and got his knees under him to stand.
"I'm going to just request no grabbing and tossing in advance this time. You love half of your son. You hate the other half. The half that comes from you. You get that, don't you? Ironic, too. The half you love is the human half."
Loki turned and took a few more steps away, his back to Tony, who really wished he could see whatever was playing over the ex-wannabe dictator's face now. Of course, Loki was facing both the house and the gazebo, so if he wanted to, he could check later. Probably wouldn't matter much by then, though.
"I see your misunderstanding now."
Tony's eyebrows drew upward. This should be interesting.
-/-
Notes
Not so fluffy now...sorry? This story could also go under the "hurt/comfort" label, I guess. I mention that just to perhaps provide *you* some comfort in knowing that yes, there will be comfort, and no, this story doesn't end in some dark horrible place, even if it may seem like it at times.
I keep meaning to add something about where this fits into canon and I finally remembered. It requires a short detour. It took a long time for me to figure out how to understand my feelings about Thor: Ragnarok. Eventually, I stumbled upon a distinction that captures it well. I enjoy Ragnarok a lot as an independent movie; I kind of detest it as Thor 3. (Taika Waititi explicitly said he didn't want to make "Thor 3," so he would consider that a success...which I get but which also bugs me, because he was in fact making Thor 3. Anyway, because of how I feel about Ragnarok, I can't take it as canon here. No, there's no Hela that somehow no one on Asgard knew about, despite many of them logically having been alive when she was. Asgard obviously wasn't destroyed. I'm not going to come up with a full plot for how Thanos was dealt with here, but he was. Loki provided valuable information and worked (uneasily) alongside the Avengers to fight and ultimately defeat Thanos. In short, Ragnarok does not exist, while Infinity War / Endgame exist only in the sense of "they fought a difficult and complex battle against Thanos and ultimately defeated him." Some (not all) backstory/background stuff I assume from my other stories (just to keep things simple for myself - why imagine it all anew?).
I guess the next chapter is finished, since it currently has some 10K+ words (meaning it's more than a chapter), but I'm also about to try out totally rewriting the last scene in it since I'm having trouble getting it where I want it to go...I thought of a different and maybe more effective way to kick it off. Anyway, hope you enjoyed THIS one, and Happy New Year! I hope 2020 with all of its unpleasantness still brought you some good things, and I hope 2021 brings you many many more.
Bonus points for "hidden" Beneath references you catch in this story. There's one in particular in this chapter that I got a chuckle from. (It was 100% unintended!)
