"Am I in trouble?"
"Whyever would you believe so?"
"Bringing me aside, taking me to a secondary location against John Mulaney's sound advice."
"Who is John Mulaney? An authority figure?"
"More than half the teachers at my school, honestly."
Kvistr exhaled slightly through his nose, a smile playing on his lips. Were all Midgardians as curious as he? This guest was young and, in his own words, still attending mandatory schooling for youths in his realm, and yet there was a certain air about him that kept all the servant's eyes drawn. Kind and friendly and quick-witted and mature enough to mind his bearings in a foreign galaxy.
And was Prince Thor's son if Lady Sif and Sir Fandral were correct in their assumptions.
He snuck a peek at Peter's side profile, and hid his frown. He still was unsure about the claim.
"Your summoning was only a request. There will be no offense should you change your mind for refusal," Kvistr said as they reached the edges of the banquet hall. This side in particular curtained with long vines, lush beautiful flowers shimmering with the overflow of the Queen Mother's seidr that kept them in stasis, never a threat of withering with time. Some of the petals brushed past their faces at their approach and Peter's forehead scrunched as he rubbed at the parts of his skin that came into contact with them. A heightened sensitivity to the arcane, perhaps? He did not display the countenance of a sorcerer, but the facets of his abilities had yet to be revealed.
Either way, that did not matter much to him. Peter had saved him without thought and had not asked for anything in return. Not that he held the expectation that guests of the realm should worry themselves with bouts of courage, but it is his hope that those who resided on Midgard were much like him.
"Through here." Kvistr gestured to a resplendent glass door hidden slightly behind the vines, an opaque pearlescent sheen rippling across the surface. "And this is where I leave you."
"Thanks!" A pause. "But I'm really not in trouble, right?"
He pressed his lips together to hide his smile. "Correct."
"Cool, cool." Peter nodded and proceeded to hold out his fist in front of him. It was not in any offense or threat, merely hovering in the space between them. A few silent moments passed until, "Oh! This is, like, a thing on Midgard. It's used as a greeting or a goodbye or a what's up, so you hold out a fist too—" Kvistr followed the instruction and mirrored the movement— "and then it's just a tap!"
Peter bumped their fists together. It did not bruise nor sting, barely a brush of their knuckles.
"Like that!" He beamed. "Neat, right?"
"... Yes." Kvistr blinked down at his own hand. "Neat."
Peter grinned and waved as he stepped through the door and onto the balcony where the Queen Mother awaited.
He stood there for another moment more, staring at the closed door while his fingers still curled into a loose fist before he went to continue to attend the celebration. Perhaps after the guests were strewn across the floor and he and the other servants had finished cleaning up around them, he would ask if anyone would like to join him in picking a small bundle of fruits from the orchards.
::
Kvistr was a cool dude but Peter was almost positive that he was at least in a little bit of trouble. What for, though, was probably going to be a pain to find out. The human thing could be one reason, the rumors about him being related to Thor was another—which was wild as hell, by the way. Thor didn't even radiate dad vibes.
As he waved at the servant and shut the magicky glass door behind him, a muted peace hit him right in the face. He hadn't realized how loud it was inside until the balcony let him hear the faint ringing in his ears; the bar was the same way with how all the glass-breaking and gun-firing had Mr. Weasel gifting him these sick ear plugs to wear during his shifts.
And with that faint buzz in his ears, he took in the person staring out into the night. She stood with a ramrod straight back, elegance in her posture and how she cradled the chalice in one hand. The heavy sleeves of her gown pooled into the crook of her elbow with its deep teal waves shimmering more green than blue. When she turned towards him, she smiled, blonde-brown curls a golden wreath around her head.
"Peter," she greeted against the stillness of the Asgardian night. The moment his name left her mouth, his hands fell behind his back as he startled to attention. "Thank you for taking the time to join me."
"Ye-Yeah, of course. I'm always up for meeting new people." He shuffled closer when his spidey-sense stayed settled beneath his skin. "Um, Peter Parker. But it sounds like you already knew that." He smiled sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his head. "And you…?"
The demi-god smiled from behind the lip of her chalice.
"Come, admire this view," she beckoned. Peter slowly treaded forward keeping his hands pressed up to the knife against his back. Okay, so this might be worse than thinking he was in trouble because trouble was all that was going to spell out for him if he didn't keep watch over his shoulder. He'd just been telling himself that he wasn't going to butt into alien politics and here he was, invited by a stranger who probably wouldn't tell him her name no matter how many times he asked.
Which meant she definitely had a high-standing on Asgard. Oh man, if he messed up here did that mean he was going to get thrown in the dungeons. Did they even have dungeons?
He peered out, and immediately braced his hands on the edge of the railing to hold him up as he leaned forward as far as he could to take it all in. One of the best parts about being Spider-Man were the moments on the upswing, when the world paused between web strands, when he soared over rooftops and clouds of pollution where the air was fresh and the stars were blinding. He spent a lot of time on Midtown High to stargaze, sometimes the Empire State, sometimes the Chrysler, but there was something about his empty school building at the dead of night that helped the skies shine brighter.
But here? Back at Heimdall's he felt like he could skim the galaxy with his fingertips, but to see the rainbow of space studded with astral bodies he didn't recognize overlooking architecture that didn't exist on Earth was…
"Wow," he murmured.
"I have been blessed with the opportunity to travel the realms in my youth and even with all that I have witnessed, it is this view that will never cease to amaze. Though of course, perhaps you may color me biased." She winked conspiratorially, her kind and open air drawing a smile out of him.
"Oh, I have been so terribly rude." She plucked the second chalice from her drink tray and poured in some translucent red liquid before handing it to him. "It is hardly polite to invite your presence without sharing my favored wine. Do you drink?"
"No, sorry. I'm still not old enough for alcohol and I'm not a big fan of the taste. My uh, part of my boss' job is mixing drinks and he's been teaching me." He looked down at the drink rippling in his cup. "Like, I can taste the difference between scotch and bourbon and things like that—and I guess scotch and bourbon are apparently different kinds of whisky? Either way, it's not my first choice. Not just whisky. Alcohol in general."
"I see. Place your chalice down here, if you would."
Peter did as he was told and watched with eager eyes as the demi-god held a light hand against the chalice's stem. He then felt it at the tips of his ears, a change in pressure just in the vicinity of her ring-laden fingers, and saw the succession of heating and cooling phases in the span of seconds when it should have taken a span of hours. When the pressure re-equalized, she passed the chalice back to him.
"There," she said. "Spirit-free."
Peter stared at the cup for a long while. No way.
"You—" His head shot back up. "You just magicked up a single-cup vacuum distillation!"
She gazed at him in twinkling amusement and raised her own chalice to her lips. "Do explain."
He set down his drink and turned back to her expectantly, brown eyes shining with the faintest flecks of green. "Permission to give a long-winded science-y explanation?"
"Permission curiously granted."
"Okay, so!" Peter beamed. "The boiling point of ethanol is around 78°C and while heating it up to that temperature would be the straightforward way of alcohol reduction, you also run the risk of losing taste and texture in your drink. So to avoid all that, the best way would be utilizing vacuum distillation—reducing the pressure of the process by one bar and allowing it to run in the range of 30 and 60°C. Usually you'd need a bunch of machines and set-ups with a whole lot of working parts to get an end-product like this, but the fact that you managed it through an entirely different physical force is amazing! I mean, there's always been the argument that magic is just science not yet understood, but I think that's just an excuse for close-mindedness."
His brow pinched. It had been weeks since his mind drifted to high-rise buildings and multibillion dollar labs and drivers with ironic names and invincible superheroes. It… reminded him of a conversation from a while ago. More of a rant, really, as he sat at one of the benches in the private labs as Tony Stark went on and on about Thor and how it shouldn't be possible to store lightning in a hammer.
And that was totally not how it worked, by the way. Thor was the God of Thunder, not the God Responsible for Thunder, so why the hell would a naturally occurring state of energy manifest in a tool of control?
"Um." Peter snapped back to himself, blinking away imagines of too-white labs. "I guess you can't blame anyone on Earth—Midgard, sorry—for thinking they have to be opposites. But I mean, the definition of science is the systematic study of the structural and behavioral properties of both the physical and natural worlds, no more, no less. Magic is magic, a science of its own that should be observed under its own merit instead of being compared to topics already studied, you know? And sure, you can have spells equivalent to vacuum distillation, but it's not like there aren't going to be other spells that can't be made to understand through the lens of Midgardian physics." He peered at the demi-god's face and was relieved to find an expression that was often on Granny Sal's: amused at the youngin' who was bursting with too much energy. "Right?"
Granny Demi-God crossed her arms as she regarded him, her wine sloshing up to the rim of her half-empty chalice. "I do indeed agree with your sentiments. The study of seidr and the study of science, do they balance themselves in the forefront of your interests?"
"Science does for sure," he acknowledged with the bob of his head. "I even had one of those at-home microscope kits when I was little and would smudge anything and everything on the slides until I ran out." That went on until about middle school, and instead of getting a new pack of slides every Christmas it turned into a new Lego set or something related to Star Wars. "But seidr is pretty new! I met a sorcerer a couple months ago. I don't think he likes me."
"Not all who practice the arcane arts are also gifted with the temperament worthy of them." She drained the remains of her drink and set the chalice down on the railing. "You cannot channel seidr?"
"Nah, but it's super cool to see."
"Then perhaps you would care to witness another feat?"
"That'd be awesome! But you don't have to if you don't want to, like, the distillation was already one of the highlights of my week."
"Oh, for what purpose should we wield this power if we cannot learn its means for enjoyment?" She waved off. She glided to the outer palace walls to peruse an expanse of flowers along it, and Peter took this moment to thank every star in this unfamiliar galaxy that this wasn't turning into Odin 2.0. Granny Demi-God was everything the King wasn't: kind at least outwardly, friendly though she probably wanted something from him, and used seidr with pride even when it wasn't the culture's first pick, which made him wonder if Mom ever met her before.
She came back with a plucked flower between two fingers, its full bloom petals so deeply violet it could be pressed into dye for the highest royalty.
Then it outlined in a whitish-blue light, crawling tendrils through petal veins and pollen-dusted antheres. In a flash of that same colored light the flower morphed and writhed and disappeared, and in its place—
"That's such a little guy," Peter whispered. The now deeply violet frog croaked and swelled up a pouch of skin under its chin. It hopped from Granny Demi-God's hands and into his. "Oh my gods, is this an actual frog?"
"It is as real as the blossom on the vine," she said. "It is easy to turn one thing to another, but one must remember a transformation is only as strong as its origin." She leveled an easy gaze from under the canopy of her curls. "The palace will run amok should the perceived son of Thor be this amazed by the arcane."
Peter laughed as he stroked the top of the frog's head. "If I were Thor's son I'd be so mad I didn't get his hair."
(She did not wager for the lad to have great talent in lying, but with both the distraction of her seidr and his continual lively manner it must not be true. Though not apparently born of her eldest, it is not outlandish that others had directed to such a conclusion.
Yet, there was more. She knew there was. There was something on this boy's shoulders that even Thor had sworn himself to protect and if the erratic movements of Huginn and Muginn were to be inferred, Odin must have an inkling to that exact truth.
Her gaze traveled from the transmuted froskr to the softness of Peter Parker's face.
And, with a nudge of her power—)
The frog croaked again and leapt towards the railing, missing just slightly, and tumbled down tens of stories to splat by some unassuming guard's feet.
At least that was what probably would've happened if Peter wasn't so keyed into his new buddy. He wanted to give a shout-out to the squirmy dudes from Sister Margaret's Infamous Mice Night where he spent hours wrestling rodents into a box while Wade wielded Raid products like he was Rambo. As the frog leapt, he followed, and he cupped the little guy between his hands as he stood on the outer side of the railing.
Well, maybe dangle was a better word? He was almost horizontal and had a great view of the guards that were actually posted on the ground floor of the palace, dulled golden helmets winking in the surrounding torchlight. One foot stepped back to balance on the flat top of the railing, then the other, and he turned and crouched to face back towards the balcony.
"Can you turn him back into a flower?" He asked with a sheepish grin. "I think he's got too much of the hops."
Intrigued, Granny Demi-God waved a faintly glowing hand. His palms tickled and a warm rush of prickling magic washed over his life lines and when he opened his hands, there was a still vibrant violet flower.
"That's never going to stop being cool."
"With what manner are you adhering yourself to the structure?" She peered at his feet with a calculating eye. "You have already noted your lack of sorcery—has Midgard advanced in their technological invention to create anti-gravitational tools? Physical adhesives to obey the push and pull of command?"
"I'm sure some aerospace engineering companies have stuff they're testing with specialized operatives, but I don't really get my hands wet with classified government objects." As per the rules of the bar, anything traceable or taken from regulated facilities were banned within a ten mile radius. "But this is all me! I'm sticky."
He cartwheeled into a single-armed handstand on the railing and launched himself so that his feet stuck to the parts of the side wall not lush with vines. "Ta-da!" He exclaimed and jazz-handed because that usually made passers-by snort. And while she didn't snort, Granny Demi-God smiled and regarded him with her unending amusement.
"The universe is vast, and it will always amaze me that I will continue to meet those unlike any other as long as I live," she said as he held out a hand to help him back onto the balcony.
"Aw, shucks. You're super cool too!" Peter took her hand—
(Jolt.)
(("Why am I not enough?" Loki cries. Their workbooks are overturned at their feet, papers crumpled and folded at the force they have been thrown. "I am more studious, more intelligent, more proficient in strategy and yet—and yet that is not enough?" They exhale harshly and spin towards the burning fireplace. "Why am I even here?"
"You are here because you are my child," Frigga tells them firmly. She bends down to pick up a strewn book and begins to turn each damaged page to straighten them out with brief flares of whitish-blue. "You are studious, intelligent, and strategic, as you are already aware. That will get you far in life, gifted and talented and brilliant—"
"I am not Thor, Mother," they cut in with their barbed tongue. She will be the first to admit that it cuts even her on the worst days. "And that alone seals my fate."
She frowns. "Your brother is your companion—"
"He is the standard that Father will never stop lording above my head."
Hate has made a nest in their once clear eyes and as the days pass, she cannot help but stay the sole witness to it pooling into place in their heart. She taught them the arcane arts in hopes that he would finally find himself in it, that with all their skill and raw power they could finally find contentment.
But Odin, her love. Odin, her fool.
How could he refuse to see what his indifference was doing to their second born?
Loki's hands ball at their sides as they storm across the room.
"Loki, wait."
They barge through the door,
"Loki!"
and disappear from the study.
She sighs and looks back to the books across the floor. She lowers herself in the middle of the mess, waving a gentle hand for the texts to pick themselves up and arrange themselves into short, neat stacks for easier sorting at a later time. As the book to her right lifts, she spies a gleam of green hidden beneath white and yellowed pages and reaches for it.
Ah. The charm Loki often used to mark pages in the stories they enjoyed most. A raw green stone cut into the size of a coin with thin gold wire wound around the center. Attached to the top is a gold chain; should the end attach to the stone, it would have made a simple necklace.
Frigga carefully lays it under the cover of the book they had most recently been enjoying before she sets off for her wayward child.))
—and hopped back onto the balcony not unlike the frog had when trying to take a swan dive with a view. He moved to pull his hand back, but it didn't budge. "Uh?"
Then, he glanced up at her face.
Her eyes had gone distant, misty, her jaw dropped slightly as her free hand hovered unsurely over the the bottom of her face.
"Are you okay?" He questioned softly. "I swear calling you cool was a good thing. It's a real Midgardian compliment! If I had connection on my phone I would pull up Google, which is a search bar which is, like, if you have any questions you could punch it in and it'd give you a million ads and regurgitated articles so if you want answers from real people you'd have to go on Reddit or Yahoo! Answers." He paused. "I can also totally explain Reddit and Yahoo if you want."
She squeezed his hand and huffed a short laugh.
"Oh, Peter," she murmured with a light sniff. "I would love nothing more than to hear you speak of your life on Midgard."
Which was kind of odd, he guessed. She was fine up until she took hold of his hand and—it wasn't anything to do with his Jotunn half, right? She was magic but he wasn't sure if she could tell from just that. Didn't Asgaridans hate the Jotunn, though? Mom completely despised that part of themselves and was always hesitant when he got them around to helping him practice.
The glass door opened and Kvistr stepped through to greet them with a short bow. "My apologies for the interruption." His eyes flickered briefly to their clasped hands. "Your presence has been requested, Your Majesty."
Your Majesty?
What the fuck did he mean, 'Your Majesty?'
"It was so wonderful to meet you," she bid him quietly.
Ice crystalized in his bloodstream as Frigga squeezed his hand one last time and strode towards Kvistr as she cast him a knowing wink. He was glad she could find some of this funny—he was too busy punching down his anxiety when he knew his skin threatened to flush blue. What was he supposed to say to that? What was he supposed to do about that? He'd been talking to the Queen the whole time while jokingly referring to her as Granny and turned out the terms were synonymous. Oh man. Oh gods.
'This is real low,' he thought morosely. 'This is real Parker Luck low.'
"Peter," she called out.
He braced himself and turned, nervously clutching his hands together and keeping them balled against the small of his back. Frigga stood with a calm, regal air of long-standing royalty and how the hell did he not see this before?!
Keeping and sussing out secrets were so not in his bag of tricks.
"I truly do adore your necklace."
Her and Kvistr gracefully took their leave from the balcony, the glass door closing behind them with a near-silent schnick.
And Peter held himself steady against the railing and breathed out a shaky sigh. No, he couldn't have another breakdown here. Not when he was lightyears away from home and the King of this realm wanted him dead. Deep breath in, deep breath out. In. Out. In. Out. In. And. Then. Out.
One hand rose up to press against the armor over the center of his chest. Beneath polished metal and the thickly woven material of his tunic hung Mom's necklace, one of the only things he'd painstakingly tried to keep hidden the whole night. He'd made sure the leather strips wouldn't poke out of his shirt and that the stone would stay flat and not tap-tap against the metal plating.
And yet she saw through him like holes in swiss cheese.
"Damn," he muttered.
He piled the glasses, the remaining wine, and the plate of cookies back onto the serving tray—he popped a cookie into his mouth, then a second and, okay, the third was the last one—and carried it back into the main banquet hall. The second he stepped back into the warm lantern glow and the ever-growing cacophony of brawl beginnings and booming laughter, a servant flitted by to lift the tray out of his hands.
"Oh—thanks!" He beamed. "I didn't want to leave a mess for you guys outside."
A fourth cookie wound up in his mouth as he ventured deeper into the party. The later-night festivities were a lot more familiar; most of the guests were drunk or well on their way, red-faced and staggering, and with well-practiced ease he dodged wayward elbows and gasoline-bleach liquor splashing out of their cups. It took him a little bit to wade through—heh, Wade—the masses until he finally spotted impeccable blond hair.
Peter stuck his arm up. "Hey, Thor!"
Thor whipped around and the slight crease in his brow smoothed out at the sight of him. As he moved, others seamlessly slipped out of his way and back into their original places after he passed. It was kind of like watching a shark meandering through a school of fish.
"Good, you are still in one piece," Thor smiled down at him. "How have you been faring? Are you having fun?"
"Yeah, everyone here's super cool!" The teen grinned. "Plus I'm still stuffed from everything. That boar roast is no joke."
"Aye, it will always remain the shining star of any cook's banquet spread. Should you hunger for more, the food will replenish until the light of dawn on the morrow."
"If I want a midnight snack I'll definitely keep that in mind."
A shout rang out to their left, and both of them turned to see Fandral beckoning them his way with each hand wrapped around the stems of overfilled chalices. When one of them got too close, Hogun pushed it away with a single finger while polishing off his seventh cup, and Sif nursed her own drink with pinkened cheeks and watched her loudest companion with mild, open disgust.
"Your friends look like they're having fun too," Peter chuckled. "What about you? Sober night?"
"I… will partake, of course," Thor said as he crossed his arms. "The God of Thunder entertains at the heart of celebration, large or small. There are simply things currently on the mind."
Peter had a pretty good idea about what those things were.
At Sister Margaret's, his identity was safe for both the civilian and the vigilante. There, Ferret took their place, the too-young babyfaced kid with access to the cash register and the key to the gold card machine. But no matter what he did or how much he could hide, the one thing that was always present was his face. His appearance. His age.
It didn't help that Thor was hyper-aware about his father either. But unfortunately, he was a little too late to worry about that.
"Well, I hope your mind's up to wilding out soon because I won't be able to hype you up while I'm asleep."
"You are to retire so early in the celebration?" Thor questioned. The corners of his smile turned down. "But you have informed me of your having fun!"
"And I am! But it's also like, I'm pretty sure I'm running on my twenty-fifth hour awake. I crammed for a test I forgot about last night and I'm not proud of it."
"Then I shall escort you to your room."
"Nah, dude, come on." Peter tapped a fist against the demi-god's shoulder and flashed his widest, most disarming grin. This was a grin that got a knife away from his face more than a handful of times. "We're at a party!"
"And you are my guest," Thor reminded him seriously.
"Who remembers the way back and will ask any of the guards or servants where to go if I get lost. It's practically around the corner, right?" He gestured to the tens of servants minding the feast and all the pairs of guards posted at the main entrances. "The God of Thunder you keep mentioning wouldn't say no to that."
(Later, Thor would think back on this moment and consider himself tickled. Loki used their silver-tongue to bait him into many ill-advised plans that did not seem as thought-out in the throes of their punishments. Of course he would admit that he upped and badgered on their shenanigans more than half that time, but…
Peter was not Loki, and Loki was not he, but Peter was bright and cheerful and mischievous and kind. Some sort of manipulative as well to have aptly convinced him so, but perhaps he would blame the ale he already consumed and the siren call of his oldest friends that whisked him away.)
But now, Thor sighed and dropped a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I will come find you at first light, and you will tell me if any have accosted you this night."
Peter bobbed his head. "I might still be asleep at first light but don't hesitate to toss me off the bed if I don't wake up."
Thor laughed and tousled his hair until every strand pointed in a different direction.
"I will hold you to that," he smiled. "Keep safe tonight, Peter."
"You too! And make sure not to sleep on your back because you can choke on your own vomit if you throw up."
Thor's thunderous laughter followed him out as he weaved a path and carried him past the banquet tables—so that roast boar was really good, sue him—and smiled at the guards as he pushed through the doors and into one of the grand arching hallways.
"Esteemed guest Peter?" A new voice queried.
He spun around to see the servant who'd taken the tray from him earlier; less than middle-aged, rust orange hair, around his height. She cradled a simple leather pouch in her hands and held it out to him with a short, polite bow.
"Uh, cool." He took the super light bag. "Did you want me to take this to someone?"
The servant hid her smile behind her hand. "The confections served to Her Majesty the Queen Mother were on request and not part of the serving list for tonight's banquet. You appeared to enjoy them, so we packed the rest for you to enjoy at your leisure."
"Aw, what? That's so sweet, thank you!" Peter peered into the bag where the cookies were indeed piled up carefully, none of the honey glaze sticking to the inner lining. "Tell whoever made these I'd totally work for them for free to get the recipe."
Her smile widened, still rushed to be hidden behind her hand. "I will be sure to pass on such a complimentary message."
She bowed again and moved to return to the large hall.
"Real quick—what's your name?"
She blinked and turned back to him, hands neatly folded at her front. "Meya, esteemed guest Peter."
"Just Peter's good," he corrected absentmindedly as he tied the pouch to his hip using the string that kept it tied shut. It'd be better to have both hands available in case a raven wanted to jump him on his way back to the guest room and no way he was ending up with a bag full of crumbs. Even if it wouldn't stop him from pouring it into his mouth like he did with the tail-end of a Hot Cheetos bag. "Thanks for giving me this, Meya! I'm going to try really hard to not eat them all in one sitting."
That startled her into another short laugh she forgot to cover, her smile bright with her slightly crooked teeth.
"I bid you good rest, Peter."
"Thanks again! I'll see you around!"
And he took down the hall, a pack of cookies richer. This had to be a sign of a normal night after he blew his cover in front of his grandma, right?
::
Halfway to the guest room Peter was ninety-five percent sure was in this direction, he stopped.
And looked around at the silent, empty, opulent hallway.
No servants. No guards. Just him in a palace he didn't belong in.
HUM.
He crouched and pressed the heels of his palms against his forehead. His spidey-sense thrummed all the way to the ends of his hair; it was like white noise curdled itself awake in his ears and fanned across his skin like needles and digging fingers into his brain. Danger, danger, danger, it hissed and spiked the edges of his vision, hurry, hurry, hurry, go, go, GO—
'Go where, go where, go where?' He demanded desperately. A second wave forced him down to one knee, his hands pulling down to cover his eyes from the soft lamplight. 'Where, where, where—'
"Breathe." He hears Mom tell him.
In out in out in out in out.
"Focus up," says Neena. "Keep it steady."
In, out. In, out. In, out. In. And. Then. Out.
"Never lose where you are. That means you're lost," Wade nods sagely. "Ground yourself. Follow your gut. No one's gonna get your shit together better than you."
He slowly peeled his hands from his sweaty skin and blinked away the fuzz in his eyes from pressing against them too hard for too long.
"So what'll it be, Boy Wonder?" Mr. Weasel drawls. "You gonna sit there and wait for the boogeyman to find you first?"
Peter slowly rose to his feet and straightened.
The whole world zoomed into perfect parity and passed him by, flowing over his shoulders like a steady stream as he searched the invisible current for the threat. Moving his feet felt like moving through muddy sand in a riptide, but his head was above water. He was breathing. He could count the waves. One foot in front of the other and the other and the other, silent, careful, heavy down a hallway he'd never been before. Thump, thump, thump, went his heart in his head, thudding dulling against his skull and amplifying the unsettling quiet.
The gaps between the lights stretched longer. The walls felt narrow. He was alone.
But it was down here, whatever it was, whatever made his spidey-sense hum and scream at the same time. It never stopped thrumming just under his skin like a wound he couldn't sew shut. For hours or minutes he couldn't tell, he traversed twists and turns and scattered flights of stairs; he was sure he was somewhere below the banquet hall, too far for anyone to hear him and too far to run even with his mutated stamina.
But down he went, encased in the splendor of soulless riches.
Until he pushed through a dark wide-set door of something like a vault. Unlike the rest of the palace, the walls here were gray and sloped, angled to give shape to a triangular prism with a pattern of warmly lit panels on both the thin strip of a ceiling and the farthest wall. Several pools of water trenched the boundaries of the dark floor, faintly illuminated two golden bowls of fire burned at the bottom of this last staircase he tread down.
Though it was the alcoves dug into the sides of the room that proved his vault theory right. Each one displayed a brightly lit artifact labeled in runes, and as he slowly passed each one, he noted at least the things he could easily recognize at a cursory glance. A flame, a chalice, a pillar, a crown…
And then the one at the end of the room that began to glow when he looked at it.
Ice, it seemed like, wreathing wisps of frigid air around it. With a furrow in his brow he drew closer, and its cool blue light undulated within its corners. Closer, even more, and its chill drew a frozen streak though his chest that felt like family.
Peter grasped its carved silver handle and lifted it.
"Stop," he said in his next breath. "I know you're there."
Nothing, for a moment. Then.
"Do you think you are cursed?" An old, raspy voice questioned. He didn't even consider lying.
"No."
"Then who are you?"
The voice filled the chamber with a calm baritone—even, grounded, every way a good king should speak to his subjects.
"I'm Loki's son." Peter set the artifact down and turned, blue receding from his skin as the rush of cold siphoned out of him to leave behind a muted spidey-sense and the growing awareness of the dagger on his hip. "But you already knew that."
Odin merely stood at the bottom of the staircase. Collected. Unflappable. He didn't need to be looming to be intimidating, but that didn't change the fact that he could probably murder Peter ten different ways from all the way at the other side of the room. It didn't help that he blocked the only exit. But Peter didn't come here for a fight, believe it or not. No matter how much Mom hated him—for good reason—this wasn't his fight. And if it was, he wasn't sure spiders measured up to divinity and tapping into his heritage would only solidify his place on the execution block.
"There was a time not so long ago that your parent stood where you stood, holding the Casket of Ancient Winters as you held the casket. When their skin changed to those who walked the cold waste of Jotunheim, they were distraught." Odin took one measured step forward, and Peter's heel bumped against the pedestal when he tried to step back. Odin eyed the movement but didn't take another step. "You, on the other hand, present yourself as one with nothing to fear."
Peter frowned. "What do I have to be afraid of?"
"... Yes. I suppose that would be a truth for you."
What was telling him all of this supposed to prove? So Mom stood here, so Mom held this, so Mom had to watch their skin turn frostbitten for the first time in their long, long life and they must've been so scared. Did Odin know how much Loki hated themselves? How often they apologized to their own kid for passing this down to him, calling it a curse and going legitimately green every single time they saw their own skin bloom into the color they were taught to hate?
All this time, all these hundreds of years, and Peter understood why Mom would always believe they were set up for failure.
Gods, Odin was a fucking bastard.
And said bastard turned his head and approached the third alcove to the left of the entrance, bridging the gap between them by a little more than halfway, and stared at whatever artifact kept on display there. He said nothing, just kept calm in quiet observation like he was at any old museum.
When an entire minute passed and no one moved, Peter mashed his lips together and crept forward against his better judgment. The dagger almost seemed to vibrate at his hip, invigorated by the energy from the Casket, but he wasn't going to draw it here. Or at least drawing it would be one of his last resorts; Mom and Wade both taught him that it was in poor planning to discount any option including the ones he really didn't like.
He made sure to keep a wide berth from the King at least an arm's length away and took a quick look at the…
He paused.
"What… is that?" He asked. A perfectly cut cube laid under a spotlight, glowing almost like the Casket he had in his hands but in a lighter, brighter blue. The light in it didn't move really, but it… it felt like it was… looking at him?
"Midgardians called it The Tesseract when they placed it in its capsule, and they lost it in one of your wars and unearthed it from ice alongside a warrior," Odin explained. Peter perked up—this thing had been on Earth? With Captain America? "Others around the galaxies call it the Space Stone, and it was what Loki used to draw the Chitauri to Midgard."
Peter flinched and turned back to the stone. Magic and seidr were subjects he really needed to study up on. Mom's personal library didn't all come in Earth languages and the translation books Thor was letting him borrow would take weeks to work out with his schedule, but he could probably swing that, and if Dr. Strange wasn't such a douchenozzle his wizard building would've been a great place for some light reading. But this Space Stone—how powerful was it that it could open wormholes over whole cities. Regardless of tech or some other security or containment, blending two bodies of natural universal matter…
"Yeah. Mom did. I already knew that." Peter crossed his arms tight over his middle. "Sir. Your Majesty."
"And you condone such actions against your realm?"
"I can love them and know what they did wrong," he said, mouth twisting like he popped a piece of Toxic Waste candy. "Not that it's really any of your… It was a long time ago. Sir. I was eleven years old in a shelter while the city I grew up in blew up all around me." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. People died that day and that's not going to change just because…"
Because Mom came back for him.
The Space Stone breathed on its perch, radiating some sense of unexplainable power. The more he stood near it, the more it pressed against the edge of his spidey-sense like it was an exposed nerve.
"Look, is this really what you wanted to talk to me about? You lead me all the way to this secret vault to show me the artifact Mom used to try and take over New York?"
Odin faced him fully and Peter shifted his weight to the tips of his toes for a faster dodge.
"You must understand the curiosity you are, child. You are but fifteen gravitational turns around the largest object of your solar system. A Jotunn walks on Midgard with the gait of a warrior and the heart of a human," said the King. "Loki's born, a contradiction, opposed to the violence of his mother."
Peter's cheeks began to burn, but not because of embarrassment or shame.
"There are many wrongs I have done in my life," he remembered Mom telling him when they first revealed who they really were, "but I would not have invaded had I not been under the Mind Stone's influence, and by that extension, the mad titan."
How could this guy talk about his own kid like this? All of it just to bring up the attack and how they did it and—
Wait. Hold on.
"The Space Stone," he muttered to himself, his thoughts running far too fast for his brain to parse through them quick enough. "If that's the Space Stone, is it related to the Mind Stone?"
Odin tilted his head. "Your knowledge of the Infinity Stones puts you in a more precarious position, then." There was an uncomprehending weight to those words. The Infinity Stones. "There are few on Midgard who truly understand the extent of their power." He eyed the boy with a critical gaze. "Are you one of those few?"
Peter pursed his lip, then slowly shook his head.
"When the universe dawned," he began, the fires illuminating his metal eyepatch with a glimmering sheen, "it came like a tide of war—fiery, explosive, creation instead of destruction. And from such creation spawned powerful, gem-like objects from six separate singularities: Space, Reality, Power, Soul, Mind, and Time, aptly named after what constitutes the living existence."
Peter never thought of existence that way.
"One stone, as you have already witnessed, is already more powerful than any one entity has the right to control. But due to their nature, the beings that wield them must hold a power of equal intensity lest they find themselves cursed, or ill, or dead. However, the cosmos are greedy. There will be battles over them, the hungry and desperate clamoring for a scattered piece of the universe with vain hope that they will be absolute." For the first time since coming down here, a furrow creased his brow. But he dismissed it the next moment. "Perhaps one will be after gathering all six, but it is a fool's thought and a villain's game."
"Is there anyone?" Peter asked quietly. "Actively trying to get all the Infinity Stones, I mean," he clarified after a beat.
"There are rumors of a Mad Titan." Odin was even more relaxed than before, like the thought was even more ridiculous than his last. "Unless they prove more fact than rumor, I will not hear things that waste my time."
Funny he said that when he wasted Peter's time just fine enough.
Peter pursed his lips and pulled his shoulders back, straightened up, raised his chin when all he wanted was to sink into the ground.
"Is that all, Your Majesty?" Peter asked coolly. "I wouldn't want to overstay my visit, especially in a vault I'm not supposed to be in."
That made Odin stare at him consideringly for a long, long few moments before he turned back to the gleam of the Space Stone.
"You may go."
Finally.
Peter stepped back and kept his guard up all the way to the stairs where he hopped up them two at a time, his spidey-sense like an extra six eyes all around his head, wide-eyed and waiting. As he reached the top and placed his hand on the heavy door, Odin spoke to him one last time.
"I believe you are destined for great things, Peter Benjamin Parker Lokison."
Somehow, his full name sounded like a curse, and a foreboding shiver curled up his spine. Odin, the old, gray, wizened God, gazed through him and everything that he was. Peter wondered what he saw.
"But greatness comes at a cost that you must decide is worth it to pay."
::
The boy dropped himself on one of the golden stairs and sighed around the bite of a baked good, mindful to angle it so the honey and berry bits did not spill all over his lap.
Heimdall raised a brow and glanced down at him. "Hello, young Peter. Are you not enjoying the festivities?"
"Oh no, it was really cool. Spilled beer, loud drunks, fist fighting." He grinned. "Just like the bar back home."
He offered up a satchel of treats. Heimdall looked at it, lost for the briefest second before he allowed himself a single one. Upon closer inspection, he found it to be the Queen Mother's preference. So they had met.
He looked back at this peculiar Midgardian. Dressed in Asgardian fineries and armor of the warrior class, he painted a canvas of one who could have very well grown in the halls of Valaskjalf. Had Loki remained, perhaps those halls would have been filled with childish laughter and the royal family would not have been upturned by the loss of one prince and the ever-growing absence of the other.
But he was The Watcher of Worlds, not The Watcher of Possibilities. While his loyalties remained with Odin, son of Bor, he was well aware that the King was not known for his leniency. A half Midgardian, half Jotunn would not be allowed sanctuary here.
"Then what troubles you this celebratory night?" He questioned.
The boy rested his arms on bent knees and pillowed his head on the crook of his elbow. Brown hair sat mussed and curled and the back stuck up like he ran a hand over it too many times. Though in spite of all that worried him, his eyes gazed out into the unending macrocosm and the gaseous bodies so close that it would not be inconceivable to reach out for their stellar coronae.
"It just… gets kind of tiring dealing with people's agendas. I mean everyone's got one, yeah, but that doesn't mean they've got to be so… so…" He flopped backwards, stretching out across the raised platform within Himinbjörg without a care for how its edges dug uncomfortably into his person. "Can I ask you something, Mr. Heimdall?"
Heimdall smiled a bit and tipped his head at the inverted visage beside his feet.
"You may, young Peter."
"You know about the Infinity Stones, right?"
"I do."
"And about the people out there who wanted to… to collect all six? And use it for, like, total universal power?"
"I do know about those sorts as well."
Peter stared up at the ceiling and at the winding, intricate murals on the underside of the dome for a long while before he sighed and his eyebrows began to droop, his arms crossed loosely over his middle. "Do you believe the rumors about the Mad Titan?"
"I believe that Thanos believes he will be able to capture the power of the Stones," Heimdall responded. He peered closely at the expressions slowly phasing across Peter's face. Gone was the elation of his inquiries of science and magic he was so enthused by earlier, replaced by a world-weariness that pressed heavily against his shoulders.
"Thanos," he repeated quietly. "So that's his name."
The galaxies flowed. The stars shone. The universe continued to swamp even the grandest of civilizations, leaving the individual the barest speck in its grand design.
"Mr. Heimdall, sir?"
"Yes, young Peter?"
"Thanks for being a pretty cool dude."
And even awkwardly positioned in a way that contorted his usual shape, his eyes shut fully under a blanket of starlight and gold. Heimdall watched him with his all-seeing eyes of molten constellations for a moment longer before he turned his gaze back out to the careful strokes of nebulae against the void.
"I hope you persevere," he told the boy once he had fallen into the hush of sleep. "And that you will not be lost in everything else you have to become."
For the rest of the night, Heimdall kept at his station. The Watcher of Worlds.
(And perhaps still, the Watcher-Over of Peter Benjamin Parker Lokison, as he so promised that short time ago.)
::
"Now, Sister—"
"Do not Sister me, you empty-headed wretch!" Loki snapped. "Asgard! Of all the places in the infinite cosmos!"
"Heimdall is not one so easily swayed—"
"Heimdall is a presumptuous tool and you are a fool! As if that gatekeeper does not work under your command, you allow him to—"
Peter's tongue stuck out as he focused on untying one of the lengths of twine wrapped around a basket-shaped package. The quick zap back to Earth was just as disorienting as the first and it wouldn't have been so bad if he didn't get loaded with a bunch of stuff he got to take back with him. Not that he was ungrateful or anything! Everything was super thoughtful, he just didn't think he'd have, well, stuff to take back.
After an out of breath Thor found out he'd fallen asleep at Heimdall's after apparently running around with a hangover for any sign of him and subsequently began to lecture him on pulling disappearing acts with no notice, he froze halfway and muttered something about sounding like his parents and marched him right back to the palace so they could freshen up before they left.
Peter swore he didn't take half an hour getting ready when he saw his unused guest bed neatly filled with more than just the books Thor was letting him borrow—reddish-orange berries from Kvistr and Meya, dried meats from Volstagg, what he was told was a rune of protection carved on a small maroon stone the size of a quarter from Sif, more cookies from the Queen.
"It is not as if any one of them suspect you are his mother," Thor pleaded and definitely didn't whine. "Is that not the truth, Peter?"
"I don't think anyone suspects," Peter answered honestly. It wasn't like Odin and Frigga could suspect anything if they already knew the truth. "But everyone totally thinks you're my dad."
"See! I—" Thor blinked owlishly and looked at him. "... What?"
Dark clouds brewed over Loki's face as a dagger materialized in one hand.
"Wait—no—Sister—I did not—! Sister!"
Peter fist pumped triumphantly to himself when he finally managed to untie the knot without having to slide a knife through it. Take that, Boy Scouts. Wade probably had a knot-tying Boy Scout badge he stole, he could probably throw down the gauntlet and challenge him over it. There had to be a knot-tying badge, right?
"Hey, Mom," he called out as he slipped the basket out of its packaging and let all the perfect, unbruised berries finally breathe. "Are we supposed to leave these out or should we put them in the fridge?"
Loki paused in wrestling her brother in trying to stab him directly in his side and glanced over her shoulder. At the sight of Peter patiently waiting with a smile, she stopped fully, hesitated, then sighed before she flicked her wrist to dissipate the dagger. Thor breathed a sigh of relief that wasn't subtle enough and got the flat of a hand smacked into his face for his troubles.
He tumbled dramatically over the arm of the couch and splayed over the cushions.
"How I could have perished!" He bemoaned.
"Shut up, you blubbering oaf, do not believe for a moment that I am finished with you."
"Shutting up, dear Sister."
She huffed and rolled her eyes as she strode into the kitchen, long black hair swishing decisively around her shoulders. Her expression thawed slightly at the sight of the berries, and even more at the bright smile that always came so easily to her heart.
"Fruits grown on Asgard hold up much longer than those on Earth," she said, eyeing the basket and lifting up one of the bitter berries. "These rönnbär are from the palace?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure? They told me about the orchards but I didn't get a chance to see them."
"They are tended to year round for bountiful harvests whenever the palace pleases." Loki's brow furrowed and she dropped it back into the basket. "They have always been in my favor, though it has been some time since I have partaken."
Peter hummed. Didn't the Queen say these were her favorite too?
"I had a drink made of these at the banquet—" Banquet, Loki mouthed as she sent a withering glare back into the living room— "but can I eat one as is?"
"Raw, no. They maintain toxic properties that will very much disagree with your human side. And are unpalatably bitter as well, though they are much sweeter after a frost," she said. "They will be much more enjoyable as a tart or a jam, whichever you prefer."
"Hell yeah, either one sounds great!" Peter grinned. Sweeter after a frost, did that only apply while it was still on the tree or would it have the same effect if it was already picked?
He plucked a berry from the top and carefully held it between his thumb and pointer finger. The ice in his veins already began to stir just at the thought of its power and the tips of his fingers bled that frostbitten blue so he could maybe—
The berry encased in ice, doubling its size. He tapped it on the table. Crack crack crack.
"Well," he said as he rolled it across the table like a marble. "That's a lot better than accidentally freezing myself to the ground, right?"
Loki chuckled and rested a light hand against the edge of the basket, and with only the slightest pained pinch to her face, drew an easy wave of frost over the berries.
"Call to it gentler," she said and brushed a few mussed strands from his forehead. "Next time, try asking rather than demanding. Sometimes this side of you demands its," her face screwed up more, "respect. You must be in tuned. Delicate."
"Delicate," Thor snorted from the couch. Peter pressed a fist to his lips to hide his laugh as Loki slowly turned around with two daggers at the ready.
"Come again, dear Brother?" She questioned with dangerously false sweetness. "Because I do not think there is a working brain under that hay bale on your head!"
"Hay bale?!" Thor gasped. "You have gone too far you cow-horned snake—"
(As she stormed back into the living space she caught sight of the honey-glazed cookies that had also come back into this atmosphere with her son. The taste was already on her tongue, soft and spiced and even sweeter when stolen fresh from the kitchen, from when it dabbed at her tears after disappointing the Allfather once more, from when they were enjoyed on warm balconies where Mother loved to—)
((Her eyes burned. She feverishly wiped the memories away.))