"So what do we do with these?" Tony asks, pacing to the counter of Loki's vanity where two golden apples and a silver sphere rest on a pile of discarded armor.
Loki reaches around Tony and picks up the apples. Inspects runes that wrap around the fruit.
"Destroy them." he says.
"Ah, what?"
Loki holds both apples in one hand and grabs the sphere in the other.
"The children are Jotun, they will live long without the Aesir's magics." Loki says, leaving the bathroom. "We only needed to steal them to deny Thanos power."
"Time out, Pinocchio, your nose just grew."
Loki turns, and Tony almost runs into him. The nose-to-nose staring contest becomes something of a standoff. He steps back, and raises his eyebrows. Waits for an explanation.
Loki sighs. "There is more to the apples than long life. There are powers, mantles, prophecies. I do not want strings attached to my children."
"You would have died if you didn't eat yours." Tony argues.
"Our situation was unique." Loki says, "Until the skin is broken, an apple remains in stasis. I did not realize until-"
Until he started getting weak and decided not to eat the rest. Best not think about that right now, they have newer, shinier tragedies to worry about.
"So Hela has to eat it." Tony infers.
Loki's jaw tenses, and he nods. "Most likely, yes."
"When you say prophecies-" Tony trails off, knowing very well what the legends say.
"Ragnarok." Loki confirms. "Not all Aesir are gods, Anthony. Only those with apples. We do not choose our paths, but we can choose not to take them."
Tony puts his hands in his pockets and absorbs Loki's words. For all that he said, there's a lot more he didn't. That he'd turned down his apple a long time ago. That whatever fate had in store for Loki, he did not want. That he'd changed his mind and accepted the burden in order to give Tony a longer life.
He walks to the dresser a few feet away and slides open his sock drawer, and then the hidden drawer inside the drawer. A stack of worn parchment letters sits inside, along with a picture of Tony and his father, and a small velvet box. He finds the most buried letter and unfolds it. It has holes in the creases, and the bottom right section hangs on by a thread. He reads the words that he knows by heart, and steels himself around the familiar sensation of pieces clicking together far too late.
"Every time I think I know you-" Tony sighs, discarding the letter on the dresser and tapping his palm on his fist in a restless rhythm.
"I meant it. Every word." Loki says.
"Will there ever not be secrets?" Tony asks. "Is there a bottom to this rabbit hole, or am I always gonna find out a million years too late?"
"Must you always assume I had hurtful intentions?" Loki snaps, "We were, both of us, longing for permanence. The price was not relevant."
"It's all relevant." Tony says, throwing up his hands. "Whatever fate that apple tied to you, you didn't want. But you took it on. For me. And you don't think that matters?"
"Weighed against your life? The life of the only person who has cared for me when it did not benefit them? No, it does not."
About eighteen different answers spring up at the same time, but Tony only has one mouth so he winds up gaping like a fish. Because he knew that, of course. It's far from the first time they've discussed Loki's fucked up history, but Angrboða changes things.
A man who's been married with three kids ought to know what he likes in bed. Someone that's spent eight hundred years with one partner ought to know how to talk about their feelings. And they certainly shouldn't stare into Tony's eyes and tell him he's the first person that gave a shit.
He should label it a fib and move on, but Loki's not lying. There's no widening eyes, no attempts at distraction.
"Okay, sure. It's not relevant." Tony concedes, and Loki rubs his temples.
"Now that I have utterly debased myself, may we return to the current problem?"
"Destroying the brat's apples, you mean? Because I don't think that's ethical."
Loki's arm tenses around the apples, and Tony feels his own defenses kick up. The hair on his neck prickles and he tries to stop turning gears that are already in motion. He can see Loki's chest heaving faster, and his nostril flaring. Warning bells sound in his brain. Danger, Will Robinson.
"It's for their protection" Loki says.
"I think it's Fen and Jori's choice."
"They do not need to know."
"You sound like Odin." Tony says, aware of the edge they're walking, of how badly this conversation could turn at the slightest provocation. Slow as a glacier, he lays a hand on Loki's arm. Walking on eggshells is not his talent, but for Loki he's learning.
Loki grits his teeth. "I do this for their protection, not for some self-serving political machinations."
"Put yourself in their place. You can't tell me you wouldn't feel betrayed." Tony says, careful to keep judgement out of his tone. Doubly careful to keep it off his face.
"I do not want this for them. I want them free." Loki seethes.
Tony squeezes his arm. "Then let them decide. That's what freedom means."
Loki thinks very loudly. His eyes are glassy, his face tight, and with a deep centering breath he makes his shoulders ease down. Blinking rapidly, hangs his head. A reciprocal uncoiling works its way up Tony's spine and he blows the tension out his nose.
"I only want them to be safe and happy." Loki says.
"They'll get over whatever scars we leave on them. Have some faith." Tony replies, moving his hand down Loki's arm to the lines at his wrist. He rubs there gently, and watches his relief pass into Loki and unwind him a little more.
"I need… help." Loki admits, each word forced out around a tight throat. Pride tingles out Tony's fingertips and warms Loki's ears. He nods, and takes the silver orb from Loki's palm.
"I'll do the talking. Just listen and make sure I don't butcher the facts."
"Yes, Mr. Stark." Loki says in a much steadier voice, and stands up straight.
Tony smacks Loki's butt playfully. "Now go put clothes on, I wanna get this over with."
Loki's gaze sharpens, and he gives Tony a demure sort of smile. After their game of Slaps he doesn't buy the whole pure maiden shtick, but if that's how Loki wants to play it he's game.
"I hope you'll do the same." Loki quips, looking down his nose at Tony's ripped and stained scrubs.
"Yeah, these are going straight in the incinerator." Tony agrees, heading for the closet.
Pepper goes home after lunch and some intense assurances that they are all fine here. Extra help around the house would have been nice, but they really don't need witnesses for the next task on their list. Getting the UN and the WSC to issue visas for the sprouts has been hard enough without any talk of deism and destiny.
Loki looks devastating in a cream colored henley, the light fabric contrasting with his dark skin. His hair cascades out of a messy bun to fall over one shoulder, but Tony isn't supposed to be thinking about that. He should be choosing his words more carefully as he explains to the godlings that they're… well, gods. Proper gods. With feast days and ideological domains and stuff. But Tony's deathly allergic to responsibility, so mostly he repeats what Loki told him and sprinkles in choice phrases about free will.
Looking around the dining table at his attentive audience, he supposes the jar of peanut butter he put next to the plate of apples was a bit misleading. He meant it as a joke, but in hindsight it's clearly sending the wrong message. Fenrir in particular glares at him like this is another inane vocabulary test, and Tony intentionally picked words he hasn't learned yet. Tony decides to bail himself out with a meme.
"-so, what your dad and I are telling you," he says after a long meandering explanation, "-is that with great power comes great responsibility. And when you're older, you two get to choose if you want your power or not."
"Why is mine not the same?" Hela asks, picking at hir nails. Tony covers his wince with a hit from his third coffee of the day.
"Boys, perhaps you ought to go outside." Loki says softly. Fen and Jori know an order when they hear it. They jump up and scram, whispering between them and glancing over their shoulders at the tense conversation. Tony assumes they'll eavesdrop, because that's what he would've done.
Setting his mug on the table, Tony threads his hands and says, "Now I wanna start by saying that this is not a joke, and your feelings are valid."
"Ok." Hela says warily. Hir fingers continue picking and fiddling. Tony twists his lips and decides he might as well rip off the band-aid in one go.
"A giant purple alien tried to eat it."
Hela eyes the silver orb cooly and angles hir jaw.
"I guess he choked."
Loki snorts from his place at Tony's right.
"Actually, your dad pulled some thrilling heroics." Tony says, giving him a quick look. Loki's pulse flares in his neck, and the slight smile he returns sends a rush of those feelings through Tony's chest.
Focus, Stark. Apples. Godlings. Responsi-tivity.
He clears his throat. "Anyway, the short version is, you don't get a choice like Fen and Jori. Because it's jacked up, your apple's gonna rot or something if you don't eat it now."
"No." Hela says, standing so fast her chair almost bites the dust. "That's not fair!"
Loki looks down into his own mug of tea, clutched between his hands. Tony grips his knee under the table and hits Hela with what Pepper used to call his tortured genius look.
"I got nothing." he says, shaking his head. "It blows, kid, but it is what it is."
"You promised." she screams at Loki, zero to sixty. "You swore you would not send me back."
Loki freezes. Now Tony's the one on his feet, livid.
"Don't you raise your voice at him." Tony warns. "He did everything he could."
"To condemn me to Niflheim?" Hela shouts, "I would rather be dead."
"Well it's not too late, Split Screen. If that's what you want, all you gotta do is wait." Tony snaps.
"Hela-" Loki starts, eyes wide with panic. "Kærr, please."
"You swore an oath to me." ze says in a broken voice, hir true terror starting to erode hir mask.
"And I will honor it. Lady Death will not have you." Loki swears.
"I'm to be the god of death. Our reunion is inevitable." Hela says, cover hir mouth with hir hand. Ze slumps back into hir chair, and hir eyes travel aimlessly around the room.
Tony paces to the end of the table and leans on one hand. "Just drink it, kid. Look at him, he almost died for this."
Hela's skin melts away as ze takes on hir true form, half fleshy and half rotting skeleton. Hir remaining eye takes on an eerie red-orange hue.
"How do I kill this purple man?" ze asks.
"If we knew he'd be a corpse." Tony replies.
With a wave of his golden arrays, he turns the silver sphere into a goblet.
Hela throws it back like a shot, and the metal cup rings like a gong when she slams it down.
"I will carry his bones to Niflheim in a garbage bag." Hela swears. This time Tony actually digs out the gold star stickers and puts one on hir exposed skull. Because if he's gonna be an evil step-dad, he's gonna be the type that supports big dick energy.
Hela all-but forces them to catch hir up. Ze takes it well, but maybe that's not so surprising. Ze did spend a couple centuries hanging with a bunch of dead guys.
By the end Tony isn't paying much attention. That stuff is old news to him. Boring. So he's slouching on the sofa channel surfing while Loki prattles on. The flickering of the TV draws him into a meditative trance. He's brain dead tired, so it feels nice just to space out.
Sitcom, click.
Talk show, click.
Infomercial, click.
Emergency news bulletin, cli-
Wait. Don't click. What's Maria Hill doing on the news?
Tony dials the volume up, and Loki and Hela both turn at the noise.
A matronly reporter reads smoothly from a teleprompter.
"-as many as a hundred thousand citizens marched on the Sokovian capital this morning in an unprecedented public outcry against Tony Stark and the Avengers."
Clips play, and it's like 9/11 all over again. Nothing exists outside of the television and the nauseating repetition of crashes, explosions, and bodies carried on stretchers. Nobody moves. Even Fen and Jori stop scribbling in their coloring books when Tony's name echoes around the walls. The reporter continues.
"Emergency teams successfully located the carrier's blackbox this morning. In a shocking press conference, the FBI released clips showing famed billionaire Tony Stark allegedly attacking Sokovian refugees. President Ellis had this to say:"
The screen flickers with photographer's flashbulbs as the American president stands at a podium surrounded by men and women in suits.
"The Avengers, although formerly a U.S. military initiative, have been a private enterprise since 2012. They are subject to international jurisdiction for crimes not committed on American soil. It is our decision that the Avenger's will not face indictment in an American court."
The camera zooms closer, and Ellis pauses for emphasis. "As President of the United States, I urge the Sokovian government to seek justice through their own official channels."
The television cuts back to the news station, where the aging reporter now addresses Maria Hill. "A former federal agent for the armed forces, Maria Hill is currently employed by the Avengers Corporation and has agreed to shed light on this developing situation. Miss Hill, welcome to the program."
"Thank you, Stacy, I'm glad to be here. I'd like to start off by saying that I cannot confirm or deny any of the allegations."
"And what do you think will happen, if or when they find Mr. Stark?" the reporter asks.
"I can't disclose that at this time. However, the Avengers have agreed to assist the U.S. Marshalls, and the foreign agents in the manhunt, until such time as-"
Tony's mouth hangs open. He can't even begin to worry about disguising his shock, he's too stunned. His head swivels to Loki, and he feels almost betrayed by his partner's calm reserve.
"She is so fired." Tony rasps, standing up and running a hand through his hair. "I can't believe—she is so fucking fired."
Jori's eyes go wide and he whispers way too loudly. "Tony said a bad word."
"Shhh." Fen hisses back. "Shut up, idiot, you're gonna make him mad."
"Don't call him an idiot." Tony says on rote. He paces a circle around the couch and finds himself digging through the junk drawer for the liquor key.
"Son of a bitch." he mumbles, hands shaking as he tosses loose change, key chains, and tape dispensers on the floor.
"Anthony-" Loki starts, rising from his recliner.
Tony whips around at the sound, eyes wide. "Can you believe this shit? They're throwing me under the bus."
"We must remain calm." Loki says carefully, advancing gracefully with his bathrobe hanging from his long arms.
Behind him the screen changes again, only this time it's not news footage or Maria Hill's talking head. It's grainy, pixelated security footage. Iron Man hovers over a mass of humans, firing lasers from his hands and spinning. They miss Ebony Maw, and slice through a dozen helpless Sokovians.
Tony's vision blurs, and just like that he can't breathe. There's no build up, no flurried pause where he notices his chest heaving. He's instantly there.
His hands tremble in the pile of junk and his vision tunnels. All he can think is where's the key, where's the key, where's the fucking key . If he doesn't shut his brain down he's gonna die right here.
Indistinct voices bounce off his ears like rubber balls on concrete, and he keeps searching even when his fingers refuse to move. Hands come over his and he jerks away, his hip colliding hard with the kitchen island.
Loki stays a few feet away, voice soft. "Tony-"
"I need a drink."
"You've work very hard to stop drinking."
"Well I need to start again." Tony gasps. His hands grip the marble counter, and cold sweat seeps into his cotton shirt.
"Why don't you sit down." Loki suggests, hands open like he's being arrested.
The room starts to look like some kind of jacked-up kaleidoscope.
Tony shakes his head, but the next thing he knows he's falling to his knees. The tile floor freezes his clammy hands, and he tries to get his lungs on any kind of rhythm. A tall glass appears.
"Here, drink." Loki says, nudging the glass against Tony's hand. He takes it. Loki's intense face and thin lips swim into view, and he follows the cadence of his breathing. It takes forever, this time. He hasn't had an episode like this in months.
Loki keeps him talking, asks him about various machines and inventions.
"What about the letter bot, do you remember that?" Loki prompts, now sitting on the floor nearby.
Tony nods weakly, his hands are still trembling but he can see again. His breathing is close to normal. The glass contains water not booze, and he seems to have drunk most of it.
"I know Fury does." he grunts.
Loki purses his lips. "Where is it now?"
"Downstairs. Bunked it up with DUM-E."
"I have need of it. Wait here." Loki says, rushing downstairs.
Clicking heels climb up the steps and when Loki stops beside him, Tony finally feels rational again. The room looks stretched from the floor, the tall ceilings even taller and the painted figures on them elongated like Slender Man. He can hear the sprouts arguing down the hall. The TV is off. Whoever did that is getting a giant stuffed dog for Christmas.
Loki sets the bot on the island, and scribbles out a note. A long note. Three pages. The envelope gets sealed the old fashion way with a lick to the adhesive edge, and then it goes in the letter bot. His partner walks out the front door. Returns empty handed.
"Wassit?" Tony asks, getting to his feet.
"Fury." Loki says, gathering his bathrobe tighter around his waist. "Officially he can do nothing, but a guilty conscience greatly incentivizes altruism. We shall see what he can offer."
Tony's pocket buzzes. Forty one missed calls, although most of those were already there. The latest is from Steve Rogers. Friend or foe, who can tell anymore. Either way, the council can use the call to get a trace on Tony's phone. He can't take it.
The phone vibrates again, and he almost answers it. The caller ID stops him.
'General Ross-feratu' appears over the incoming call symbol. Oh shit, the feds are involved. And that means Rogers is almost certainly working for them. Actually, all of the Avengers probably are. And Rhodey. They were all there, if they don't cooperate they'll end up fugitives too.
Lightheaded shock recolors their situation. The Avengers are hunting him down. His goddamn teammates are coming to capture him. And they are in the right. He killed people. He didn't know it, couldn't see it, but he knew it was a possibility when he unleashed the stone. He's a murderer.
Loki presses the decline call button and places his hand over Tony's. The sound of crashing metal jolts them into awareness. Tires screech, and a beaming white searchlight passes through the front door.
"Already?" Tony sighs.
Loki grabs him and pulls him down behind the island.
"We need a safehouse." Loki whispers. "Buffalo?"
Tony shakes his head. "They'll search any place I've ever been."
A man on a megaphone yells from the driveway. Exit the premises, hands in the air, the usual stuff. He always wanted to be on an episode of Law and Order. Lesson learned, some dreams are best left unrealized. Tony creeps along the obscuring line of the kitchen cabinets, waving Loki along behind him.
"Asgard?" Loki suggests, like it's the last thing he wants to say.
Tony twists his lip, looking over his shoulder. "We need your magic back."
Loki nods, slinking across the gap between the kitchen and the hallway far more gracefully than Tony is about to.
"Good thing I bought you a new coat then." Loki says.
"I just got a parka. Barely got to wear it." Tony grumbles, crawling to the hallway and grunting when the motion inevitably tweaks his ribs.
Despite the rather dire circumstances, Loki smirks. "Oh, you will look far better in this."
"Leather?" Tony guesses.
Loki quirks an eyebrow. "Wool. With leather sleeves and lapels."
"Betrayer. Playing dress up without me." Tony teases, following Loki into the hall.
"You were busy, always off Avenging." Loki says, faux innocent. "It was dreadful. Only excessive spending could console me."
Human silhouettes cut black shapes out of the searchlight's path, and the voice cuts out from the megaphone. A Quinjet rounds the building, it's twin lights shining through the windows of the ocean view balcony.
"Oh come on, in my own damn jet?" Tony growls, "That's just tacky."
Loki ignores him, hurrying down the hall to the line of bedrooms. He gathers up the bits and their half-packed bags, hustling them with the efficiency of half a millennium of practice.
This time Tony has the foresight to throw extra underwear in his pre-packed emergency back. For all he knows, they aren't coming back and he's not keen on loincloths. The hillbilly shades and blindfold get thrown in too, and a toothbrush. It's funny, the things that seem important when you're up against the wall. Half practical necessities, half random nonsense.
The Marshals get through the front door pretty quick, given that it's glass. Bulletproof glass, sure, but they have a fucking battering ram. There's more shouting, the shuffling of at least a dozen armed agents, and then Steve Roger's voice invades the house.
"Tony, I know we haven't gotten along all that well in the past. And I'm sure you've got good reasons for going to ground-"
The arrays appear around his clenched fists, and Loki grips his shirt.
"Going to ground? We were beamed up, how did they not see that?" Tony says.
"They're hands are tied." Loki whispers.
Tony huffs. "I designed and paid for every vehicle, weapon, and piece of armor their using."
The goon squad sweeps the building while Rogers makes his appeals. The coordinated line of men in riot gear fan out and start searching. Despite the talk of peaceful surrender, they're carrying an awful lot of firepower.
"Running only makes you look guilty." Rogers says, inside the house now, close enough to put down the megaphone and speak for himself. "Me, Clint, Natasha, Thor, we only want to clear your name. So why don't you come on out and let us help you?"
"Move, Stark." Loki hisses sharply, throwing a heavy coat over Tony's shoulders and pulling him along by the lapels.
"I'm forgetting something." Tony says, letting himself be dragged along. He racks his brain, frantically reviewing everything he picked up today, everything he touched.
A cluster of men with buzz cuts and bulletproof vests turns the corner, and then there's a lot of guns pointed at them. Men shout indistinctly in the living room, and Loki shoves him and the bits through the nearest door. It's the kids bathroom, the counter lined with wolf-chewed rubber ducks and the mirror "decorated" with stickers Tony never got around to peeling off. A portal appears over the fish-and-dolphin shower curtain.
Loki picks up Jori and slings an overstuffed duffle over his other shoulder. He waves a hand in front of Tony's nose, his mouth stretched in an exasperated line.
"Tony, by the Norns-"
Guns cock on the other side of the door. No windows in the bathroom, so even in the mid-afternoon it's dark. Light slips under the door from the hallway until booted feet block it out.
"Come out with your hands up." Steve says in a muffled command, "I don't want to fight you."
"What's your problem?" Hela whispers, halfway through the portal and loaded with luggage like a pack mule. "Let's go."
"We're missing something." Tony repeats, searching Loki's eyes. It's itching at him, something important. Something heavy collides with the other side of the door, and they all jump. Jori starts crying. Loki holds him tighter, and in the middle of telling the kid to be quiet he whips his head to Tony.
"The apples." Loki says, stricken.
The battering ram slams into the door a second time. Wood crunches, splinters flying across the tile floor. A third hit sounds immediately after the second, and this time it punches a hole clean through.
A red dot travels along the wall and stops on Tony's chest. Loki tackles him into the portal, and they land in a heap in a snowy wilderness. His ribs radiate a biting pain that almost matches the shock of freezing air on his lungs.
"The apples, we need-" Tony says, panicking.
"I can do it." Hela insists, dropping hir burdens and shifting into a U.S. Marshall. Damn, ze didn't used to be able to change hir clothes. Ze must have practiced while he was off unleashing evil murder bots and becoming a super villain. Loki doesn't hesitate, he shoves Jori into Tony's arms and summons a new portal. Without a word he and Hela jump through, and in the space of seconds he's alone with two blue brats in tank tops and cargo shorts.
Son of a bitch, he's stranded.
Fen clutches Tony's leg. "Where are we?"
Tony shivers, holding Jori on his middle and zipping the coat over both of them.
"What, you don't recognize your home planet?" he says, shoving his rapidly freezing hands into deep pockets. There are gloves hidden in one of them, black leather with the paper packaging still attached. Something like appreciation flares up in his chest at Loki's foresight, and he rips the tags off with his teeth.
"It's cold." Fenrir complains, and Tony pulls him under the long tails of the wool coat.
"That's 'cause your human right now, dingus. Go blue."
The kid complies. It's better for Tony too, the extra heat. For lack of a better plan, he stays with the pile of luggage and huddles against the wind.
After a decent night's sleep and two square meals, the forest isn't so ominous. Not that it's especially pleasant, but there is a savage beauty to the crystalline whiteness and pitch black trees. The sky overhead looks like a Jackson Pollock painting, clear and swirling with galaxies normally invisible behind Earth's atmosphere.
The cold brings with it a lancing clarity. This is his life now. Gods, aliens, running from the authorities. They make it look fun in the movies. Funny how the devil-may-care protagonists never seem to mention the crippling fear, the numbing sensation of toes catching frostbite, or the underlying knowledge that Tony chose all of this. He could've kept on being the genius billionaire. Could have banged hot models until he succumbed to senility and old age from the comfort of his penthouse.
A soft snow falls and dusts his hair white. As if the universe hears his thoughts and wants to mock him. Fen and Jori grumble and complain while they wait and he just nods along. Answers their questions about the Marshalls. No, they don't want to hurt us. They're good guys that work for the government. Tony did something bad, so they came to put him in time out.
"You can't run from time out!" Jori argues, affronted.
"Don't be dumb, Jori. Tony's not like regular people, he doesn't get time out."
Shame eats away at him, the video of him slaughtering innocents repeating over and over in his head.
"I'm not special." he murmurs, unsure how to explain. "Your dad and I… we have a job to do. But when we're finished, I'll be punished like everyone else."
"Time out sucks." Fenrir replies sagely, peeking his head from Tony's coat to give him a pitying look. It breaks Tony's soul, the half comprehension. The earnest sympathy of a kid who thinks they're talking about Tony sitting in the corner for five minutes. If he killed even one person he'll be in Earth's highest security corner for a lot longer. Life without parole.
"Rules protect people." Tony says, head ringing and his fingers stiff in his pockets, "If we don't follow them, we're no better than the bad guys."
He means it. Desperate as he is to run from this, he knows he won't. Can't. So many times he's been on TV and stood in Senate hearings preaching his gospel of world peace, clean energy, and corporate accountability. It wasn't bullshit. Even when he had other motives for saying it, he meant every word. He can't just turn around on that now he's the one facing consequences.
When a swirling black portal appears nearby, he sees himself in the murky depths. Loki and Hela step through, covered in concrete dust and holding an apple each.
Loki throws off his ruined bathrobe and brushes dust off his favorite charcoal joggers.
"Another house bites the dust." Tony quips.
Loki grimaces. "I fear it is becoming a pattern.
"Nobody was hurt." Hela says defensively, shifting into Jotun and favoring Tony with a perceptive look. "Do not worry."
"Why would I worry about that?" Tony asks weakly, trudging through deep snow to stand beside Loki. His partner slides the apple and his hand into Tony's left pocket, and something fierce and needy in his mind clings to that.
Loki casts his gaze around the disorganized pile of luggage. "Well, let's get everything together. We shouldn't keep Angrboða waiting."
"We're expected?" Tony mutters. Loki gives him a sidelong glare.
"Our magics are bonded. She will have sensed my arrival." he says lowly, "Paranoid arse."
"Fool me once." Tony says lightly, but cups Loki's hand in his pocket to soften the blow. They both know he's justified in his suspicion, even if Loki would rather pretend otherwise.
"I know. That was a compliment." Loki says. He attempts a deadpan, but his lip twitches on one side.
Tony rolls his eyes to stop himself from mooning like a starstruck teenager and nudges Fenrir out from under his coat.
"Load up, pack mules. This stuff won't carry itself." he says, clapping his hands behind Hela's butt like a cattle rancher in a spaghetti western.
The trek is grueling, more so from the added weight of Jori on his tender ribs than the distance. He'd pass the moocher off on someone else, but Loki and Hela are already loaded down with bags, and Fen can barely walk through snow higher than his knees.
A black stone obelisk stands sentinel over the white landscape, and Loki leads them toward it. Coming closer, the snow gives way to an icy platform carved out of the permafrost, surrounded by nine statues of wolves in various poses.
A narrow door cuts into the bottom of the onyx spire, and he's half expecting Loki to offer his first born as a blood sacrifice. The ice platform is clean and dusted with fresh white snow, so he figures Hela's safe for now. Loki sets down his bags and tugs down the zipper of Tony's coat. He pulls Jori out by the armpits and sets him on his hip.
"Do you remember when you were very small, and sneaked out of the house to see me?" he asks, petting Jori's hair.
The kid nods, eyebrows pinched in concentration.
"I need you to do that again. Go in and find your Machem. Understand?"
"Ok, daddy." Jori says, squirming until Loki lets him down.
Tony watches the biter approach the obelisk, concerned.
"Machem?"
"Carrier." Loki says, "The parent who bore the child."
"Which makes you?" Tony asks, although he's already missed the terminology boat by a good nine months.
"Aleha." Loki says. "The caregiver. Once the babe is born, the carrier's job is done. The aleha does everything else. Or so Angrboða argued for the better half of a millennia."
Jori reaches the wall, and Tony jumps when the kid walks right through the stone. Not like Loki does, where it looks like he's walking through but he's actually teleporting. The kid goes all shimmery and transparent, and walks through.
Loki chuckles. "He used to slip through his crib while he slept."
"You know, someone really should have slapped a disclaimer on your ass. 'Not suitable for sainer partners. Discretion advised.'" Tony huffs, zipping his coat again.
After a short pause, a grinding noise sounds from within the stone, and the slot widens. If there's a crystal skull in there, Tony's bailing. The last thing he needs is a bunch of cursed cave Indiana Jones bullshit. The grinding gets louder, and within the dim doorway he can see layers of interlocking doorways opening one at a time in a complicated mechanism.
The final door opens with a stuttering scrape of rock on rock, and an imposing figure stands on the other side with Jori in their arms. Loki steps into the threshold, and Tony follows suit.
Angrboða looms over them. They are easily a foot taller than Loki, not including the springy cloud of red hair or the corkscrew horns . With a back as broad as a linebacker's and hands the size of dinner plates, Jori's looks like a football in their arms.
Tony swallows down the possessive caveman impulse to drag Loki off and scribble 'Property of Tony Stark' on his forehead. It's absurd, because Angry Buddha clearly hates Loki's guts, but that doesn't stop his hind brain from going full defensive.
"Machem!" Fen yells, his face lighting up. The kid runs full force into Angrboða's meaty leg, and Tony feels paralyzed. He thought the puppy was allergic to smiling. Angrboða grabs the kid by a horn and bites his nose.
It looks aggressive, Tony steps forward on impulse to intervene. Loki grabs his arm.
Fenrir howls with laughter and tries to climb up Angrboða's leg, demanding to be picked up. Jori squirms in the giant's other hand, and without much thought they trade one child for the other. Fenrir paws roughly at Angrboða's horns, licking their face. It's weird. Like he's a totally different kid.
As soon as he's recovered from that shock, Jori lands emotional punch number two. Glancing back, he runs past Loki and directly to Tony.
"Did I do it right?" he asks, nervous. Tony glances at Loki, but he's useless. Just staring at Jori like he's speaking gibberish.
"Yeah, champ, that was super cool." Tony says. Jori makes the grabby hands and Tony hesitates. His skin prickles. Angrboða glares daggers at him. Jori's face falls when Tony doesn't pick him up, and that hits him right in the gooey center. Hoisting him up double speed doesn't exactly undo the damage, and it definitely doesn't do his injuries any favors, but whatever.
Angrboða's brows drop in an edgy line.
"Thank you for allowing us inside." Loki says, unusually civil. Then again Tony would be too if he was in a marriage dispute with someone that imposing.
Angrboða says something in Aesir. Loki frowns.
Hela steps forward. Ze's been busy lugging the bags inside, and there's a faint sheen of sweat on hir brow when ze finally steps up to stiffly greet hir parent with a half-hearted bow. Ze offers hir right arm to Angrboða, and the Jotun grips hir elbow in something like a handshake.
"Tony does not speak our tongue. We speak English around him." ze explains. It's polite in the way Loki can be when he's telling you to fuck off. Angrboða growls out a string of alien words and Hela lets go, abruptly.
"I have learned much from his planet, and I like him." ze says, and goes to pick up the bags again. That's as close as Hela's ever come to a compliment. Fen glares at her, climbing to sit on Angrboða's shoulders and suddenly the rivalry makes a lot of sense. Fenrir is a goddamn wolf, obviously he'd be the favorite.
Angrboða frowns, their words awkward and heavily accented. "Iron Wood different now."
Loki hoists up the remaining luggage. "Clearly. Where is my cottage?"
"Follow." Angrboða says, bouncing Fenrir higher up their back and stalking down a short flight of stairs.
A gatekeeper waits at the end of the tunnel. With a stomp of his foot, a circle in the floor turns to ice. It drops several feet without warning, and Tony would've fallen if not for Loki's hand on his arm.
The gatekeeper laughs loudly, pointing at him and slapping his leg. Apparently open mockery is socially acceptable around here. Loki tenses at his side, and Tony brushes it off before violence ensues. He fakes a shared laugh, and gives Loki a business smile so he knows it's fine.
The disc of ice sinks steadily after the initial fall, slowly lowering them below the surface of the ice. They come out the other side, and it's a real struggle to play it cool. Below the ice is a massive hollow cavern, like a sinkhole or a caldera. Thick metal beams extend from the muddy floor and up through the frozen ceiling.
If he stares any harder his eyes might fall out of his head. Fen gasps from Angrboða's shoulders, and he shoots rapidfire questions that they answer in low, even tones.
Jori grips Tony's collar in his fist, and gives him a wide eyed look of wonder. The shameless excitement has him smiling back without meaning to.
"Some years ago the lake beneath the ice sunk, and the nine tribes of this region were without clean water. They combined their efforts to construct a support system to keep the surface ice undisturbed." Loki translates. "It provides insulation from the planet's turbulent weather, and allows them to grow crops which would failed on the surface."
Crystal blue water floods the bottom of the cavern, and a series of rusted levies contain the pools in stepped reservoirs. The lowest level is dry, and Tony can see sizable gardens. A handful of spindly Jotun pace the rich, dark soil, tending to lines of leafy vegetables and chasing off blue creatures that look like hairless rabbits.
Tony follows the herd of rodents as they climb up nearby ramps and onto a network of crisscrossing bridges. Houses and shops are built into the beams, round like seeds and made of stretched hide. The walls of the buildings glow like Chinese lanterns, the internal light casting shadows whenever figures move inside. The brilliant orange homes seem to float on the cool beams, flickering like fireflies.
The temperature rises the lower they go, probably due to the large heat exchange mechanisms mounted to the cavern walls. Near the bottom it stabilizes at a balmy half-warmth and Tony unzips his coat.
The gatekeeper slows their descent near a sort of landing pad. Young Jotun loiter there, giggling and chasing naked rabbits with brooms and clapped hands. Their arrivals seems to end the fun, because when they step off the lift the kids all bow at the waist. He's used to swarming fans and paparazzi but this is different.
There's a frightened edge to the attention, all of them gaping at his white eyes and pale skin. He feels like a glow stick. Suddenly he wants to buy Rhodey a steak dinner for every whitewashed gala event he dragged him to over the years.
They walk a winding path through the village, around seed pod homes with papery walls and past mirror-like ponds with rainbow fish swimming near the surface. All the Jotun they pass stop and bow. With the kids he chalked it up to manners, but when the big lugs draped in fur and armor follow suit he figures Angrboða's the big cheese around here.
They lead him under an archway decorated with orange streamers and bone charms hanging from ropes. Small scraps of parchment hang from strings with pictographic writing in them. It looks like a Tibetan shrine.
"If your house is made of gingerbread I'm out." Tony mutters.
Loki chuckles beside him and doesn't comment.
Further down the path stands a tall stone foundation with a rotting little witch's cottage on it. The raised ground is perfectly circular, and cut from a different color of rock.
Loki gapes. "You horrible witch, what have you done to my house?"
Angry Buddha doesn't comprehend. They step on the platform and Tony eyes the water dripping from the sagging thatch roof. If there isn't black mold somewhere in there, he will eat a boot. Loki repeats the question in alien, and Angrboða cocks their eyebrows in a dark look of amusement.
"Saved." they say, "Loki thank."
"Loki angry." Loki squawks, rushing to the soggy cottage and inspecting the rotten beams. It looks out of place, alone on the edge of town. Built of grey stone and lumber rather than stretched hide, it doesn't seem to be faring well in the wet environment. A crooked chimney props up one side, and the moss covering the roof is stained with soot around the smoke stack. The whole thing gives Tony serious Hansel and Gretel vibes.
Angry Buddha swings the door open and he almost chokes on the heavy aroma of incense. It's bigger on the inside, because of course it is. The main room seems to be a multi-purpose space, crammed to the gills with junk. Wood display cases line the walls, shelves sagging under the weight of glass-jarred ingredients. A marble statuette of a griffon guards the door, and a rickety model of Yggdrasil rests on the pane of a window nearby.
A long wood table consumes most of the square footage, although there are only four chairs, and the rest is piled high with scrolls of parchment and books. The other major space taker is an extravagant canopy bed in the corner, complete with brocade drapes and wood paneling inlaid with fleur de lis. A layer of dust covers everything, from the diamond pane windows to the rough hewn fireplace.
"So how do I hire a maid service on Jotunheim?" Tony asks, setting Jori on his feet. "Do you think they accept pebbles? Or would sharp sticks have a higher exchange rate?"
"Not so open minded now, are you?" Loki replies, eyes narrowed.
Angrboða's frizzy hair grazes the rafters as they walk to rummage in a cabinet that looks like a lunchbox next to them. Clearly the house wasn't built for giants. With a clunk of objects shifting, they pull out a pair of small golden devices shaped kind of like fishhooks.
Angrboða slides the larger of the two over their ear, and holds the other out for Tony. He almost doesn't want to take it. It's definitely a translator, and if she can understand him he'll have to stop being rude. Shrugging, he slips it over his ear.
The giant regards him with a stern eyes, shifting from foot to foot. He shares their anxiety, because he doesn't really know what to say either. The only thing they have in common is a weakness for emotional masochism. At least he assumes so, since at one time or another they both fucked Loki on a regular basis. He holds out his hand.
"This is a handshake. It's a Midgard thing. You grab my hand, and we shake them up and down as a sign of peace. Whether or not you actually want peace is up to you."
Angrboða shifts their weight and takes his hand. They shake, and after the normal amount of time they continue shaking. Tony worms his hand out with a forced smile.
"It pleases me that Loki seeks blessing this time." Angrboða says.
"Excuse me?" Tony replies, eyebrows raised.
The Jotun sits at the table, barely managing to balance themself on on a too small chair. They motion for Tony to sit across.
"Before taking a second wife." they say magnanimously, "I was not given my proper rights when he wed his child bride. Your deference honors me."
Tony blinks, and maybe he hasn't really learned his lesson about thinking before he acts. Because when he realizes Angrboða thinks he's here to respect their authority, he laughs in their face.