To be honest, I'm just as surprised I'm updating this as any of you guys are... is anyone still reading this?
A quick recap since it's been almost four years: Thor rescued Sleipnir, who's being nursed back to health at Xavier's Institute and just reunited with Loki. Thor promised to save Fenrir too and found out he was in Jotunheim.
The first thing Tony sees is blood on Loki's face. Trails of red run down his cheeks, but the cuts underneath have already healed.
Jormungandr wraps around Loki's body, looking like a living restraint, but he seems, more aptly, like a child desperately clinging to a parent.
Loki is usually oddly comforted by being squeezed by his serpent (son?) but now looks as if he's struggling against the coils, attempting to punish himself further. His green eyes are wide, and his lips curl into a snarl rivaling Fenrir's.
"What is it, Snoopy?" Tony asks, crouching down.
Loki doesn't answer, doesn't seem capable of speech at the moment. His eyes get wider, his breath quickens to harsh, panicked pants that Tony's all too familiar with.
Tony reaches through Jormungandr's coils, grabbing for Loki's hand. Belatedly, he realizes that Loki could likely crush every bone in his hand if he squeezed too tightly, but Tony brings Loki's hand to his arc reactor all the same.
Loki always had a fascination with it after all.
Tony breathes deeply; clearly he's picked up something from Bruce's meditation despite refusing to participate. Slowly, laboriously, Loki slows his breathing, but his face remains scrunched in pain.
Tony checks Loki's foot again, but it's healed completely.
"Today's been long, huh?" Tony says, as if it's merely been a long day at work rather than whatever the hell today has even been. Giving himself a mental kick, Tony thinks he should be freaking out too, knowing Loki somehow shifted into a horse- a mare- and was impregnated. Forget all the other weird stuff about magic; that one takes the cake.
He's not sure he wants to know how the serpent wrapped around Loki was conceived. Or Fenrir and Hel. Only now he can't stop thinking about it.
"None of this was your fault," Tony says. They literally just had this conversation earlier, but Tony knows all to well that one conversation rarely changes anything. Bad coping strategies keep coming back. He keeps repeating that Loki's okay, that he didn't do anything wrong, until slowly, Loki seems more present.
"You should try alcohol," Tony jokes. "Better than hitting yourself. Don't tell Pepper I said that, she'd kill me, even though you're like a thousand years over the legal drinking age, and I doubt there's a restriction up in viking land. You know, when I was fifteen, I was already having wild college parties full of booze. I tried plenty of other stuff too and-"
Loki's hand shifts to splay over Tony's arc reactor. "Booze on my toes."
"Yeah," Tony glances at Loki's feet. "You shot the glass out, remember? Is this about that?"
"Gotta keep it in," Loki reaches to viciously dig a fingernail into his foot.
"Hey, whoa-" Tony goes to stop him, but Jormungandr's already tightening around him again.
"What's this about?" Tony asks.
Sleipnir goes to nuzzle Loki again, but Loki turns away.
Sleipnir stills at the rejection, and Tony didn't think he was one to read horse body language, but he can tell Sleipnir's devastated.
"Thor got you out." Loki says in a halting voice. "Thor's the hero."
"I mean, yeah he saved Earth, and got Sleipnir out." Tony says. "Didn't stop him from being a bully, before."
Sleipnir tosses his head in what Tony swears is a nod.
"Thor got you." Loki says again. "I take you in the dark."
If this were anyone else in any other situation, Tony would've immediately made a lewd joke, but considering Sleipnir is somehow Loki's child, he doesn't.
Tony glances at the splintered closet door. He can easily picture Loki trying to retreat, and of course dark, enclosed place would trigger Sleipnir- or Tony, for that matter. Tony's not sure how he'd react if Loki dragged him into a closet.
"So you triggered him," Tony says, not unkindly. "How many times have I triggered you? You think we should say sayonara because of some bad moments?"
"I had bad moments in Ass-guard." Loki says, as if bad moments wasn't the understatement of the millennium for his entire life there.
"Sometimes they just come back," Tony's going for nonchalance, and if he fails, Loki doesn't comment.
"Sorry I flashed you back," Loki mumbles to Sleipnir, placing his forehead against Sleipnir's nose. Sleipnir nickers against Loki's long hair.
"I'm a bad Dad!" Loki scowls.
"You're already showing your kids more attention than my dad showed me," Tony mutters.
"I didn't find-"
Jormungandr hisses, interrupting. "He ssssstole ussss from you. Tried to erassssse your thoughtsssss of usssss. It'sssss not your fault."
Loki looks like he wants to argue, so Tony jumps in again. "The King and Queen weren't bad parents because Gothel stole Rapunzel. Mother Gothel was bad for stealing her."
Loki thinks about this, but instead of commenting, he shoves Simba and Toy Stark at Sleipnir. The toys' arc reactors glow like Tony's own, and Loki says "'s a night light."
"Arc reactors are much more than night lights," Tony's offended tone is only half joking.
Sleipnir presses closer to Loki than Simba.
Clearly, all is forgiven, but Loki still insists on making a sort of nest for Sleipnir out of all his toys. It's... parent-like, in a way Tony's not used to seeing. Loki insists Sleipnir lay down, and cards his hand through Sleipnir's mane. He's the perfect image of a parent soothing a sick child. His rocking motions appear to soothe not only himself, but Sleipnir as well.
Both Loki and his children seem terrified of the thought of losing the others.
"I know you wouldn't have given them up," Tony tells him quietly. "I mean, not with how you carry Simba everywhere."
Tony wonders if that's why Loki became inseparable from his toy in the first place. Loki certainly seems to be paying more attention to the living animals now.
"You get all my toys," Loki promises, then pauses, considering. "You can't play 'less you kick them. Or bite them. Sleipnir, you can give them rides. An' Jormungandr hugs us real tight!"
Sleipnir nudges several toys toward Loki with his nose.
"They still gots Fen." Loki scowls.
"Talk about corrupt royalty." Tony mutters. "Kidnapping, abuse, torture, false imprisonment."
Tony decidedly does not think about how he's experienced all of those, too.
Sleipnir's head rests atop Stitch- a supposedly savage, dog-like creature from outer space who crashed on Earth.
"My Fenrir's not a-abomination." Loki's clearly trying to counter what he was told before.
"Of course not," Tony says.
Loki tilts his head and speaks to the sky. "You guess you're bad like Bruce thinks Hulk?"
The wolf appears as an illusion, and Tony would say he's almost trying to look like an overgrown puppy, eyes saying "Who, me?" The effect fades to something more serious, and the wolf suddenly looks more monstrous. They're bad.
"Get out of the ceiling guns." Loki tells him, then frowns. "No, you're all chains. Get out of the chains now?"
Fenrir suddenly looks quite exasperated.
Sleipnir chuffs with a toss of his head, as if to say Fen can't get out.
"You're stronger'n Stitch." Loki argues. He lays down next to Sleipnir, and Jormungandr grows to surround the whole toy pile.
"Fen's gonna crash on Eeee-arth too." Loki says, quoting the cartoon aliens' odd mispronunciation. "On Mmmm-Idgard!"
Loki begins to spin a sort of bedtime story for himself and his children; weaving together Disney plots and plans for the future. Tony is slightly surprised to hear Loki describe, in somewhat jumbled but graphic detail, how Fenrir will hunt and tear animals apart, feasting on the meat from their bones.
Then again, Fenrir is a wolf, and hunting is likely a way of life for a warrior society.
"And we'll all see movies together, and go to Lila's party, and have our own parties."
Loki curls up tighter with his snake and his horse, humming his lullaby about horses and fields.
Loki wakes to the sound of the Bifrost crashing. He squeezes his eyes tighter, willing it to be a dream. He feels soft fur pressed against him, but the body is too bony. Another scaly body wraps around him.
He frowns, then feels Jormungandr shift, wrapping protectively around them.
Loki opens his eyes, and sees Thor crossing the grounds of Professor X's school with Frigga... but no Fenrir.
"He said." Loki furrows his brow.
Thor lied. He promised he'd get Fenrir.
Loki starts to laugh. Why should he trust Thor's promises? He'd trusted Thor before, hoped Thor would have a change of heart and look after him; Thor was so friendly to almost everyone else, and Loki had longed for it. Thor had hurt him every time.
Loki rocks, agitated and unsure what to do. His eyes fall on Sleipnir's starved form. Thor saved Sleipnir, but he'd tricked Loki so many times. And Frigga's there.
"You're a Gothel!" Loki shouts, before he can help himself, and now Thor's attention is drawn to where Loki was sleeping in the stables. "Where's my Fenrir?"
"I know where Fenrir is held," Thor tells him, seriously.
Loki snorts rather like Sleipnir. "You Gothel. He's not here!"
"Storming Jotunheim to free him would not end well." Thor said.
"You tried and tossed me there!" Loki scowls. "And you killed tons. Like a war."
"I was foolish then." Thor's voice is heavy. "I have much to amend for."
Tony sprints to them. "Wasn't that the whole point of your saving spree?"
"Fenrir's in Jotunheim, with my born monsters family?" Loki asks, not sure Thor isn't trying to trick him. "I born my monster family, but we're not monsters."
"You are not," Thor says slowly, the opposite of what he's always said.
"Where are you?" Loki asks Fenrir, out loud. He flinches, half expecting Thor to shove him for talking to nobody, to call him mad, but Thor stands silently.
Fenrir appears, his eyes and growl saying It's hard to tell in this dark cave.
Loki shouts, and Tony flinches. Just like Sleipnir, Fenrir doesn't even know where he is, all trapped in the dark.
"Is it cold? Hot?" Tony's voice sounds strange. He'd been in a cave, Loki knows, where it's hot. And he'd been held captive. "Are we talking a desert? A tundra? Kind of influences what gear we pack to come save you."
Fenrir huffs, and his breath is visible even though it's warm here.
"So, cold," Tony says.
"Heimdall can see him in Jotunheim," Frigga informs them.
"Why'd they want Fenrir but not me?" Loki asks.
"Because they're idiots," Tony says, quickly. "Not for wanting Fenrir, but for not wanting you."
"Idiots," Loki says. Usually those words were flung at him, that's why they hadn't wanted him. "Idiots, idiots, idiots."
Tony's said over and over that Jotun weren't bad. Loki glances at Tony but sees Frigga looking at Sleipnir.
"If you'll allow me, Loki, I can give Sleipnir strength."
"I fed him bottles," Loki says, then scrunches his face. He hadn't, for so long. "Logan gives him food an' helps him walk."
"I can speed up his recovery," Frigga promises, gently. "It's the least I can do."
Loki stares down at the queen's dress, slinging an arm protectively over Sleipnir's neck. "Mother Gothel," he scoffs, but she's not. He wishes she'd stolen Sleipnir from the dungeons and raised him as her own, even though he's Loki's.
But then, he'd once wished she'd help him, and she rarely did. She should've stolen him away too.
Loki yells, eyes screwed shut as he tries to drown out his own thoughts. Thinking that isn't helping. She didn't help. The end! He doesn't get that story!
Only now she wants to help, like Thor. It feels too little, too late, but he glances at Sleipnir's painfully skinny body. Anything to help him.
Slowly, Loki nods. Frigga places a hand, delicately, on Sleipnir's neck. Slowly, his muscles fill out, he gets body fat. His legs are no longer twigs, but legs fit to run.
Tony blinks. "Don't tell me you just stole some other horse's muscles and body fat to do that. Unless you turned Odin into a horse, then go ahead."
Sleipnir neighs, kicking his hooves with more power than Loki had seen from him since knowing he was real.
"Seriously, you're telling me you warriors don't want mages on your team when you can do that?" Tony asks incredulously. "I take it they don't have, like, any fantasy games up there? Dungeons and Dragons?"
"They have dungeons," Loki scowls.
"Right, Snoopy." Tony stops grinning. "Sorry."
"Say sorry to Sleipnir!"
"Sorry Sleipnir."
Sleipnir gazes at Loki, then looks at his own back, a clear invitation.
Loki clambers onto Sleipnir's back, Jormungandr coils around Loki's waist, and soon they're flying. Sleipnir's hooves pound like thunder over the ground, Loki rises and falls with the beats. Loki glances back- Tony's a speck, now- and Sleipnir turns and gallops back toward the group, which has grown larger. Professor X, Logan, Bruce and Hank are outside too, along with several students.
Loki laughs breathlessly, and once he can speak, he sings softly."The spider stallion gallops away,"
"Sssssleipnir'ssss not ssssilver." Jormungandr agrees, but he's not singing. Loki laughs and continues.
"His herd follows him and they start to neigh,
Their hoofs beat to the stars and the moon above,
Just follow them to find the one you love,"
Loki leans to hug Sleipnir's nice, sturdy ribcage. He squeezes, because it no longer feels like Sleipnir's going to break.
"We need to find my Fenrir," he states.
"Mother and I will depart to Jotunheim," Thor says. "Mother will be able to negotiate his release."
Loki shakes his head. "Me an' my family's going."
"I'm going too," Logan growls.
"You fit right in with the wolves," Rogue teases.
"-erines!" Loki snickers at her mistake. "He's not a wolf! We're going to have my real wolf soon."
Loki's ready to charge off on Sleipnir, but Tony says they need to suit up. Loki yells to the sky, "We're coming, Fenrir!"