'-'
Playground
Chapter 11: Infection
Tony stepped outside when FRIDAY informed him Loki was in sight – he'd upgraded the five-story-plus-basement townhouse substantially after purchasing it several years back, and its security systems were now top-notch. In deference to Ollie, sleeping leaned against Loki's chest, he smiled a silent greeting, opened the door, and gestured for Loki to go in. They took the elevator up – less jostling for the kid – and Loki followed him to the guest bedroom they'd decided to put Ollie in. Pepper was bent over, plugging in one of Morgan's My Little Pony nightlights; she stood and exchanged a nod with Loki.
Ollie was already in what Tony took for the Asgardian version of PJs, solid dark blue and a little sleeker-looking than the local version, but simple and comfy. The kid barely stirred when Loki laid him down and got him tucked in, and with a few murmured words from Loki his eyelids fell still. Loki pulled a brown stuffed animal of some sort from a small bag that had been hanging from his arm and nestled it in close to Ollie.
Tony stepped out into the gallery from where he'd been hovering in the doorway, Pepper following him. Loki emerged a few seconds later.
"Hi, Loki, I'm Pepper. It's good to meet you."
"Likewise," Loki said, shaking the hand Pepper held out and looking a little awkward doing it. "I apologize for disturbing your evening."
"Don't worry about it," Pepper said. "Really. It sounds like you and Jane need to be able to talk without worrying about little ears, and the bedroom was already set up. Ollie won't be any bother here."
"No bother at all. If he happens to wake up, we've got a nightlight in there for him, and FRIDAY will let us know – like a baby monitor but better. I'll come down and tell him all about infrared radiation and he'll go right back to sleep."
The barest hint of a smile pulled at Loki's mouth. The guy was definitely in a different frame of mind than before, his attention divided. Worrying about whatever was waiting for him back at the hotel would probably do that.
The bag, buttery brown leather with auburn accents, came off Loki's arm and wound up in Tony's hands.
"A change of clothes, socks and boots, a snack, a couple of toys, a healing stone…like I used at the playground. If he should happen to…to be gravely wounded while sleeping, crumble it over the wound. Emergency contact information. There are probably a few other things in here, too. Jane's idea," Loki said with a tinge of chagrin.
"Nothing wrong with being prepared," Tony said. It took genuine effort not to tack on a request to keep the 'healing stone' for study if Ollie managed to avoid being gravely wounded while sleeping.
"He shouldn't need any of it. Jane and I won't be up all night – she has more meetings tomorrow. And I know you would reassure him but I prefer to be here when he wakes up. I'll get him right back to the hotel."
"No problem. Pepper and I'll be here in the morning. Whenever you get here, just open the door and come on in. FRIDAY'll grant you access. If we're not up yet go ahead and do your thing, but don't feel like you have to rush. You're welcome to stick around for breakfast if you want."
"I'm sure we'll simply be on our way. Thank you, though. Tony, Pepper…I'm in your debt. I don't say that lightly."
"Can I keep the healing rock if Ollie's grave-injury-free in the morning?" He should've been embarrassed, and he should've grimaced at his utter lack of shame, but he wasn't, and he didn't. Besides, from the look Pepper was giving him she was obviously taking care of both of those on his behalf.
"My supply is limited. I—. All right. Yes."
"Yes."
"Tony," Pepper chided. "Don't worry about a thing, Loki. Ollie will be just fine."
"Thank you. I should be going."
"Yeah, okay. I'll show you out," Tony said, heading for the stairs this time.
All too soon they reached the door and Tony had no idea what to say. Everything that came to mind seemed totally inappropriate, and now was maybe not the time to shrug and say it anyway. Pepper was better at this sort of thing.
"So, uhhhh," he said once Loki crossed the threshold, hoping reasonably appropriate words would spring forth once he opened his mouth for them. They didn't.
Loki drew in a deep breath, let it out, nodded, then turned to trot down the short flight of stairs to the street.
Tony watched as the figure receded into the distance, then headed back upstairs. Elevator. It was late.
Pepper was waiting where he'd left her, except that she'd drifted over to look in on Morgan.
"Ready for bed, part two?" he asked, sidling up to her. He slipped an arm around her waist and kissed the corner of her mouth.
"Mm-hm."
Tony trailed her to the stairs, slowing and stopping before he got there, as the bag reclaimed his attention.
"I guess I should leave this here."
"Yes, you should."
"Loki might show up at 6AM. Better to leave the bag in Ollie's room."
"Yes," Pepper said, more firmly this time, "it is."
"Although…I could—"
"No. You are not analyzing whatever that thing is tonight. You're coming to bed."
"But I could at least run a few—"
"No, Tony. It's not yours. Not yet. It'll keep. Come to bed."
"But—"
"MFS4LOVE. I'm calling it in. I'm wide awake now and I've got to relax and get some sleep."
"Okay. You win. Clever woman. Devious woman." Humming Pretty Woman, Tony started off after Pepper and they fell into step together up the stairs to their floor.
"You know you have to give that rock back."
"I do— what? No. I don't know what you think you know, but I don't—"
"It's the Asgardian equivalent of a first aid kit and he said his supply was limited."
"Loki? You're quoting Loki? Guy just wants to keep all his magic mumbo jumbo secret. Especially from me since he knows how much I want to figure it out."
"You're holding his son hostage."
"Why does everybody think I'm holding Ollie hostage? Are you secretly in league with Loki?"
"What was he going to do, go get his son back out of bed and haul him down the street again?"
"Please. Loki's a grown-up. He could've said no. He knew I wouldn't have turned his kid out."
The robe came off Pepper's shoulders and slipped straight to the bedroom floor in a satiny puddle.
"That's cheating."
"Come to bed."
"Okay. But I reserve the right to—"
"Tony."
"Coming."
./.
./.
They were sitting across from each other at the tiny table now, Jane with a glass of milk, Loki with a glass of water.
"I had some time to think during the walk."
"I had some time, too, while you were gone."
Loki nodded. He'd wanted to give her that, a little time to herself without having to leave the hotel. "I did misspeak in at least one thing. None of this is your fault. I know that. When I suggested otherwise…it was anger speaking. Not reason, and not what I truly believe. I know the fault lies with me."
"When you say that, the fault lies with you…what do you mean? Because I think sometimes we're using the same words, and we don't mean the same thing."
"I mean…we wouldn't be dealing with this problem if I hadn't…saddled Ollie with my genetic material." And there it was again. That old shame and guilt that left him unable to look Jane in the eye. Not just shame and guilt. Unworthiness. He felt it down to his bones. Deeper than his bones, because these bones were not the ones he was born with. There was a reason – a whole host of reasons – he didn't like to talk about this.
"We definitely don't mean the same thing. Loki…I happen to like your genes."
Loki barked a laugh and dragged his eyes back to Jane's. "You've never seen the genes I was born with. You've never seen the realm I was born on. You've never met those from whom I received my genes. You like the genes I was given to cover up the original ones."
"Aren't they both a part of you, though? Most of your physical features you didn't get from Odin or Frigga, but they didn't come from nowhere, did they? Like your hair, you said nobody in your family tree had hair as dark as yours."
"The only Frost Giants I ever saw were all bald. Ollie was…he was bald, when he looked like that. It seems my physical features did come from nowhere."
"That's an assumption based on a miniscule amount of purely anecdotal data, collected by a biased observer who's also the ultimate subject of the study. Otherwise known as colossally bad science. And anyway, I was trying to make the point that Ollie obviously inherited both sets of genes from you. It's like they're…in complementary distribution, maybe."
"I don't think so. I didn't see anything of you in him when he looked like that. Those other genes seem to…to override everything else."
"Maybe. But do you really think you were capable of seeing much past the fact that he looked like a Frost Giant?"
Loki huffed. "I think I would have noticed if he resembled you at all, because then—." Because then he would have seen something that he loved. Those exact words hadn't quite yet been formed, but that was exactly where his reaction had been leading him.
He pushed against the table – just barely remembering to hold back lest he accidentally slam it into Jane's chest – and jerked up from the table to pace. Jane caught her glass, but his tipped over. It was only water. The least of their worries.
The thought was instinct, driven by emotion, and it wasn't quite true. Tony was not right. He did not and could not hate Ollie, no matter what Ollie looked like. But could he have hugged him? Kissed that blue forehead, with those marks Morgan had been trying to rub off? He recoiled from the very idea of it. Recoiled from his own son. Tony wasn't right, but he was less wrong than Loki had initially been willing to accept.
Jane left the dishtowel she'd wiped up the water with and stopped him from his pacing by planting herself in front of him. "Are you calm?"
He allowed himself the time for a deep breath in and out before answering. "Calm enough."
"Okay. Please try to listen to me, and don't interrupt. Can you do that?"
"Yes," he said after another steadying breath.
"Here's what I mean when I say you're the problem. And I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to come out so accusing before."
Loki tilted his head, fixing her with a skeptical look. He was the problem, but she was not accusing?
"Okay, I didn't mean for it to come out…just let me keep going, please? Your reactions to all this are the problem. Not the only problem. All of Asgard is a problem. But we can't start with Asgard. We have to start with us. We have to handle our own problems first, our family. And Loki, our family can't get through this until you do. You hate them so much, but what you hate is a part of Ollie. And it's a part of you."
He started to speak, but Jane rushed ahead and spoke over him.
"Stop, just stop. You said you wouldn't interrupt. I understand that you don't want to be all kumbaya about Jotunheim. I'm not asking for or expecting that. I could even live with your hatred of them. But you've internalized so much of that, into self-hatred, and then convinced yourself you haven't because you're not really Jotun, but you have, and Ollie…I don't want that for him, Loki. You moved on by ignoring it. For a while I thought maybe that was okay. Denial is probably not the healthiest reaction, but you'd been through so much and I didn't want to try to make you confront it again. It's not like it had to be part of your life. Things have changed, though. Having Ollie, and now knowing what Ollie can do, that this is a part of him…. I can't continue to ignore it and I can't accept it. I don't want him to grow up to be like you."
The responses that had occurred to him, points he was holding onto until he was able to speak and not have it called interrupting, fled his mind in a heartbeat. "I see," he said, a weight pressing so heavily against his chest that his ribs ached and his lungs would not fully inflate. No physical blow had ever struck him quite so hard.
"Don't look at me like that. You know what I mean."
"Do I?"
"I don't want him to be like you in this one thing. The thing that we're talking about. And I don't want to hurt you. I know how sensitive you are about all this and that's part of what makes it so hard to talk to you about it. But then we never get anywhere, and…and I'm starting to think maybe you need to be hurt. You need—"
"Oh!" Loki said, throwing the hands he'd begun wringing out to the side, palms out toward Jane. One hand went to his face before he dragged it away again, both arms falling awkwardly to his sides. He could not even defend himself. "By all means, please proceed, then."
"You like to say you healed. And I used to think you did."
"You would prefer that I not? You are wrong."
Jane wrapped her arms around herself, a sign she was upset, a signal – as he would have normally taken it – to go to her and offer comfort and support. She had drawn her bottom lip in between her teeth as she often did when she was thinking through an especially vexing problem. Given that he was the especially vexing problem and the reason she was upset, he stayed where he was.
"You only healed on the surface. You closed up the wounds but you never treated them. They're still there, festering like an infection. Maybe I've been too careful of your wounds. Maybe they have to be lanced."
"Your solution, then," he said in a tightly controlled quiet voice when she fell silent, "is to deliberately drag a knife through my wounds?" His temper was dangerous. No matter what he felt, he loved Jane too much – and the risk to her was too great – to loosen the closely held reins on himself even a little.
She started to say something, but her eyes were shining with tears and instead of speaking she averted her gaze and walked around him, dropping onto the sofa, drawing her knees up, and pressing her head into them, arms wrapped tightly around her legs. She made no sound, but the little hitches of movement gave away her crying. The way she sat, in that shirt that swallowed her up, made her look even tinier than she already was. The instinct to protect, to hold her, to reassure her that all would be well, again tugged at him. This time it was even easier to resist, though. Where was his protection? His comfort? She had directly stated that she wanted not to reassure him but to hurt him. That did hurt, and he could only stand there, trapped between churning waves of anger and pain.
Eventually the corners of the shirt came up to wipe at her hidden eyes, and then she swung around and planted her feet on the floor to sit properly. "That's what Tony did, isn't it? Is that what made you listen to him? I hope it's not just that it was somebody who wasn't me. He forced you to confront what your reactions were doing to Ollie, and he didn't try to sugarcoat it so it wouldn't hurt you, or get in the way of the convenient lies you tell yourself. He lanced a wound and suddenly you decided you needed to do something you'd been refusing to even consider when I brought it up."
"Tony did not lance a wound. He showed me a video that made me realize…. No, it wasn't Tony at all. It was because Ollie changed again that I knew that we had to alter our course."
"You would have rationalized your way right out of it if he'd let you get away with it."
"That is not true."
"Of course it's true!" Jane sank back into the sofa with a noise of frustration. "I feel like I'm just slamming my head against a wall, over and over and over, and all I'm getting for it is a bloody forehead and a killer headache."
"Then perhaps you should stop."
"Just pretend there isn't a problem? I can't do that, Loki. I tried. I did it for a while. But there's someone else involved now. You've been protecting yourself so hard from all this, from your biological heritage, and I understand why, I really do, but the way you've been doing it, it has to stop, because it's not protecting Ollie."
Loki clenched his jaw, forcibly restraining every horrible thing that wanted to escape his mouth. This was betrayal. Betrayal after betrayal. The implication that he was not protecting his son, that in turn he did not care about his son… He wanted to protect me.
He turned around, and after a moment wandered over to the window. There wasn't much of a view – a still-busy street below, a far too visible man watching television in the neighboring building across from theirs – but he wasn't really looking. Yes, Odin had wanted to protect him. He'd come to understand that. In the end, though, maintaining that secret as long as his father had, and his mother, too, had not protected him but had instead left him woefully unprotected. Discovering the truth when he had, the way he had…it had all but destroyed him.
And he had already harmed Ollie.
Something inside him was forming…bubbling…rising. It was unpleasant, not unlike the earlier sense of a bilgesnipe sitting on his chest, but this was coming from the inside, not the outside. He barely resisted the desperate impulse to crush it down into oblivion. Whatever it was – he didn't know, not precisely – it was terrifying.
"You closed up the wounds but you never treated them. They're still there, festering, like an infection."
Yes, that's what it was. Things, feelings, carefully hidden away but long-festering, wounds, now agitated and threatening to burst to the surface. There was a reason they were hidden away. The last time they were exposed…
He started, sucking in a breath, at the arms slipping under his and encircling his chest from behind.
"You're shivering."
Was he? Loki looked down at his hands, past the ones clasped over him; maybe they were trembling, just a little.
He didn't want to let out any of what was roiling inside him. But if he could with anyone, it had to be with Jane. Maybe he had no choice.
Or maybe he had a choice…and he was making it. "Sometimes," he said, voice barely above a whisper, "no matter how much you love your child…no matter how much you want to protect him, your instincts for how to go about it are wrong. I don't know how to protect him from this. I thought I did, but…I still don't have the answer to my question. What do I tell him?"
"He's four. He doesn't need a complicated or detailed explanation," Jane said, pressed to his back. Loki felt the side of her mouth moving, her warmth seeping into and melding with his own. "For now he just needs to know the basics."
Loki carefully took Jane's hands and drew them apart and away so he could turn to face her. "There is nothing about any of this that is basic." The anger, he realized with genuine surprise, was gone, every last bit of it, every stubbornly lingering bit of resistance right along with it. He heard it in his own voice, the pleading timbre of it, as though Jane knew the secret for how to fix this and had been holding back all this time, waiting until he was ready to hear it. He was ready to hear it. He knew he had to do this, and he knew he had to do it the way Jane wanted him to.
He simply didn't think he was capable of it. How could he "unfeel" what he felt to his very core? How could he speak positively, or even neutrally, of something that sickened both his stomach and his mind?
Jane's hand on his cheek wrested him from his spiraling despair.
"Are you listening?"
He covered her hand with his and drew it around to kiss her palm. "I'm sorry. I am now."
"I was saying he understands what adoption is. Remember that book Erik found for me?"
Loki nodded as he let Jane lead him by the hand to the sofa, and managed to mostly suppress his scowl when the springs underneath him again gave way. The book in question was a children's book about a boy who was adopted. Loki had thought it odd in its overly pointed adoption is wonderful message with its clear intent to reassure an adopted child that he or she was loved and valued no less than a biological child, since Ollie was not adopted. Jane's explanation, after he'd naively asked if she'd gotten that book as an indirect means of telling him she wanted them to have a second child through adoption, had sent him into a rage. He'd refused to read the book to Ollie afterward, would have tossed it into the fire had Jane not flown into a similar rage when he asserted his intention to do just that.
"I know what adoption is, Jane. I even looked into it, a little, when—"
"You did?"
"Yes. When I thought you wanted us to adopt. It's so rare on Asgard that I had little understanding of how it works. There are meetings. Approvals. Legalities. Magistrates. Documents. Oaths. None of that happened in my case. I was…taken. Rescued. And then hidden in plain sight. I was not adopted."
"I know. That's the complicated stuff. The basics is, you say: 'I was adopted.'"
Loki shuddered. "It rolls easily from your tongue." His eyes widened and he looked at Jane with new hope. "Jane…"
"No."
He drew back. "You don't even know what I was going to say."
"Were you about to suggest that I tell him, instead of you?" she asked coolly.
Loki's annoyed exhale answered for him.
"It needs to come from you. He shares this with you, and he needs to know from you that it's okay."
"It isn't okay."
"Then you're going to deliver the best lie of your life and tell him it's okay, because he's four."
Loki clenched his jaw, deliberately remaining silent through a couple of deep breaths. He knew that voice – the one she used when she had hit her limit on dealing with Ollie whining or disobeying that got Ollie to do as he was told when he would keep right on ignoring his father – and Loki was not fond of it being used on him. "My mother would do it. She would know how to say it."
This, he could tell, irked Jane. She was taking the same conspicuous calming breaths. "When you were locked up in prison, your mother defied your father to visit you, but she didn't help you escape. If she was here, she'd help you. But she wouldn't tell Ollie for you."
Jane's words rang true. That didn't mean Loki liked hearing them.
"You can do this. I know you can. And you know you have to. You tell him you're adopted. He'll understand that. He won't think it's some terrible family secret, not if you don't give him that impression. You tell him that you were born on another world. I think you should tell him Jotunheim, but at least tell him another world. He'll understand that, too. You tell him that you looked different when you were born, that you looked like he looks, when he changes. I think he'll understand that, too. He knows there are other realms, and that people on some of the other realms look a little different from people on Earth and Asgard."
"A little different," Loki scoffed.
"I don't want to put words in your mouth. It has to come from you. But don't you think that would work? And then you tell him that everything's okay, and isn't it cool that he can choose how he wants to look. And then, after that, maybe you can talk to him about not surprising people who don't know he can do it. If you can say something like that, and say it without even a hint of loathing or…or disgust, then maybe it really will be okay. And then he has a chance to get used to the idea here on Earth, without the burden of a thousand years of Aesir hatred. And in the meantime, maybe things on Asgard can change, at least a little. I've been talking to Thor, and I think—"
"You've been doing what?"
"You wouldn't let me talk to you, okay? Who else was I going to talk to?"
"Eir, for one."
"Eir's not in a position to influence public opinion on Asgard. Thor is."
"Public opinion?" Loki echoed in disbelief. "Public opinion about what? Surely you're not suggesting that we make this public? I'm not sure even Thor could stop them from burning me at the stake. If however this is your means of ensuring we never return to Asgard, this would certainly accomplish that, because Ollie would have no future there, either. He would be shunned at best. I wish my parents had told me the truth, but I've never wished they'd told anyone else the truth."
"Calm down, Loki, please? Nobody's preparing an article for the register. That's an issue for another day. I just don't want my son growing up hearing songs about Frost Giants being dismembered while people laugh and make toasts."
Loki rested an elbow over the back of the sofa and his forehead in his hand. You are half Frost Giant, Ollie, but everything is okay. He shook his head against his palm. How would he ever be able to say that? An image of Tony shrugging nonchalantly as he talked about Morgan wetting the bed came to mind. "No big deal. Nothing to worry about." Ollie wouldn't grow out of it. His son would always be half Frost Giant. Half Frost Giant and half Aesir, along with half human, but half Frost Giant nevertheless. Did that not make it even more important that Ollie feel a sense of assurance in himself, in who he was?
He took a deep breath and straightened up again. "All right. I'll talk to him. I already knew I had to talk to him. And I will try to— to be positive. Not try. I must succeed. You know I don't want him to hate himself. I don't want him to feel less than anyone else. I don't want him to feel shame. But I don't know how to give him that when I—. When I don't—."
He blinked and Jane was practically in his lap, arms around him squeezing tight, cheek pressed to his.
"I know. Loki, I know."
He blinked again and a tear fell. And then another, and then he was shaking with racking sobs, squeezing Jane back as tightly as he dared.
It hurt. All of his pride ripped away – false pride, the Aesir identity he wore like nailed-on indestructible armor that let nothing past it, whether in or out. Armor gone, a hundred knives plunged in. A thousand.
Hatred, yes, there was hatred. For the realm he'd come from, the people that had brought him forth into life and then turned him out unto death. For his hidden self and every trace of them that remained within him no matter how much he wished he could eradicate it.
And shame. So much shame.
Longing. To be like everyone else, to not be this. To be Frigga's, to be Odin's, to deserve the name Odinson rather than be a pretender to it. To never doubt he belonged in Asgard's palace. He was an imposter, always had been, had never stopped.
He was so unworthy of Jane's love, for what he was and after all he'd done.
And Ollie could never, ever, ever feel any of this. Certainly not because his father made him feel it. His father who was the cause of it all to begin with.
He made no attempt to reconstruct his armor, to tamp down even the worst of these wretched thoughts and emotions. These things that festered inside him, maybe Jane was right, maybe they needed to be lanced. And if they were all to pour out of him, better that it happen now, here in Jane's arms, where there was safety, and compassion, and love, and enough strength to handle the wounds.
./.
Notes
I think of this as the "heaviest" of these chapters, in terms of the difficulty of the emotion. Because of that I've kind of held off on releasing it until I could release the next one pretty soon after it. The next chapter's done and the one after mostly done, looking at I think two more chapters after this one now (but broken record: take that with a grain or two of salt).
Random behind-the-scenes: I was really sold on "Bullet Meets Bone" for this chapter title. And then I realized that was one heck of a mixed metaphor what with the "lancing of wounds" and such, and that would probably be bad writerliness. (Creating words like "writerliness" off the cuff, however, is without question good writerliness.)
Sorry for the long delay and general MIA-hood (more good writerliness). I am stretched to the breaking point and sometimes you have to set some things aside so you don't actually break. I did get some work in on Beneath, for a little while, but I couldn't keep it up. 100% guaranteed I'll be back at it though.
In the meantime I think - I hope - that you will really enjoy the next two chapters. Another behind-the-scenes moment: At one point today I was writing something (should be in Ch. 13, most likely, I haven't broken the chapter yet) when suddenly I started laughing and said out loud, "They're really going to like this." Ha. I always hate saying things like that though b/c I imagine like most people engaged in any creative endeavor the immediate follow-up thought is "but maybe they won't." :-) But I hope you do! Best wishes to each and every one of you!
