May ran a finger over the waxy patch of skin on her nephew's cheek. She poked and prodded and when he only beamed under all her fussing, she sighed and pinched his cheek until he whined for her to let go.

"See, May?" He said when both her hands were back on her hips. "Almost fully healed!"

"After two weeks," she stressed. May sighed again and went back to stir the pot of instant ramen at the stove. "I don't know all the details about your spider abilities, but I know that's much longer than what it usually takes to heal. Is something going on?" She slid some chopped tomatoes and sliced ham into the pot. "Or is it something like, you're more flammable because you're a bug?"

He leveled her with a look. She flapped a hand.

"You know what I mean."

And, well, he guessed he did know what she meant. But he didn't know what he was supposed to say to that; Mom and May had Girls' Nights every other Friday and sometimes Tuesdays and Mom always came over for Sunday night dinners, and as far as he knew there was no alien talk. Nothing about blue skin or ice or even as a squeak about the frostiness of it all, so he knew better than to bring it up on his own. There was a lot of Spider-Man talk, though, from May ranting about Triple J to Mom smirking as she pulled up a video of a dumpster lid whapping shut on its own after he took a swan dive into it which only happened twice and he swore he was going to find whoever—

Peter swiped his hair out of his face before picking up both ramen bowls to move them out to the coffee table and placing the significantly larger one in front of his seat. "I'm not really sure what's happening," which wasn't a lie, "but I'm definitely going to keep my distance from now on." He took the chopsticks May handed him and grabbed the blanket on the couch arm when she took her seat next to him. "Do you think I should invest in a fire-proof jacket?"

"I'll get you one as a late Christmas present or ridiculously super-duper early sixteenth birthday present."

He choked halfway through shoveling the first bite of ramen into his mouth.

"Your teeth are used for chewing, baby."

"Thanks, May," he replied dryly as he scooped up more ramen, not even finished with his initial bite. "Don't know what I'd do without you."

She settled into her own spot on the couch, fuzzy socks tucked under the other half of the fuzzy blanket as the sleeves of her fuzzy sweatshirt pooled around her wrists. "I think the usual response is to make a crack about cooking, but all I've got for you is crispy meatloaf and too-salty spaghetti." Peter nodded absentmindedly at that, and he got a flick to his ear for the trouble. "Hey! You're supposed to say Nooo, May, your cooking whips and slays."

"What voice—I don't sound like that!" His face scrunched up. "And I know you know that's not how you use those words. Who taught you that? Who's making you embarrass me?"

"What makes you think I need someone to tell me how to embarrass you? I'm a strong independent woman who knows you tried to wash your sheets behind my back when you accidentally peed the bed in fourth grade—"

"May!"

She tousled his hair, and he could feel her gaze linger on his cheek before she looked back at her bowl.

"Besides, you don't need to worry about cooking." Peter donned his best grin for her, the one he knew she couldn't see through and the one he could use when he had enough in him to pretend it was actually real. "I swear I've perfected the un-soggy nacho and a variety of other pub foods and I know what you're thinking: Peter, that's unhealthy! Where's all the green?" He stuck his tongue out at his aunt's protest that she sounded nothing like that. "But I think my meal prep speaks for itself. How was the pesto chicken yesterday?"

"Deceptively healthy. I'll never look at another Lean Cuisine again."

She was smiling again, and the line of his shoulders unwound.

Peter reached for the remote and crossed his legs so he could balance his bowl between them. "I could probably teach you how to roast vegetables at least; it tastes better than steamed and you won't burn them. Probably."

He laughed as he leaned away from her half-hearted swat and pressed play on the rom-com May picked for the night, another bundle of noodles already up to his lips.

(Can't worry May. Can't break her heart again.)

((He doesn't know if he could live with himself if he did.))

::

Peter dented the metal floor he crashed into.

"Cirque du So-Freak!" One of the goons shouted down at him. The hatch shut before one of Peter's bullets could shoot past it, and he grimaced as he moved his head to avoid the bounce-back of the rubber projectile.

"Welp," he said as he glanced at his surroundings. He didn't know what type of psycho built a hatch down into a walk-in freezer, but either way it looked like the info they got was mucked up ten ways to Sunday. The headcount was about triple of what they'd been expecting and with how many floors were in this office building they'd been at a disadvantage from the start. Weasel had warned them that the job sat on shaky foundations at best, white-collar and uppity with a political stink all over it. The Hellhouse didn't usually take jobs like that because, well. Mercs helping out people who made laws against killing people? Totally went against the business.

But the money was too good and the sketchiness was bad enough to end up in their alley, so he and Weasel came to the general consensus that the job would go out to one of the top runners at the bar.

Ergo, Deadpool. But it was a little too big for a one-man mission. Ergo-er, Deadpool's "sidekick" tagged along.

He didn't mind another assignment and if he was being honest, he actually kind of enjoyed it. Wade swore there wouldn't be a surprise murder at the end like last time and Weasel, having seen that his first mission hadn't reduced his dish boy into a teenage crisis puddle, gave his blessing in the form of the tiredest sigh and the thunk of his head on the bar.

Peter promised he'd give a full report when he got back. His boss sighed so loud he sent himself into a coughing fit.

Ice plastered to the plastic shelves and frosted the floor, and the stacked crates filled with spare boxes and loose bubble wrap. There were a couple containers of clear ice cubes cut into perfect squares, but those didn't show up as often as the nondescript boxes sealed shut with layers upon layers of packaging tape.

"Come on," he muttered to himself. He slid a medium sized box off a middle shelf and turned it over in his hands—weirdly heavy, solid, probably something valuable. "Did you miss out on reading the Goon Manual? It's like you're asking for a search under probable cause."

He slipped his dagger from his calf, the hilt cool even through his gloved grip as the now-familiar hiss of snakes echoed faintly past his ears. It sliced through the layers of tape like butter, and he was only half-surprised there weren't any drugs.

Just a solid gold bar.

A few more boxes were cut open after that, leaving Peter staring through his tinted goggles at an assortment of precious jewels and more gold bars.

"Oh." He blinked. "So at least the money laundering part was right."

And just after he snapped a few pictures of the freezer-safe and the hidden wealth inside it, the faint trickle that spread out from all along his spine made him pause.

It wasn't quite his spidey-sense, wasn't quite a warning, but a cue that something was happening. The something he wasn't sure of but the nudging at the back of his head told him it happened before more than once or twice but not enough for him to be comfortable and that though alone forced his breath to shallow and quicken.

No, don't panic. Panic wasn't going to do anything for him right now. He was alone in a freezer worth more than anything he'd ever make at the bar with both a phone and comm that boasted dead signals. Wade probably made it to the upper floors to sweep for some physical documents to serve as more evidence the job wanted them to scout for, and Peter hoped he didn't freak out when he realized the comms on his end fizzled out—when were these made? The 90s? He was going to work on them the minute they got back to the bar, this was so embarrassing.

He cast another searching look around. They probably killed a lot of people by freezing them to death down here, now that he was thinking about it. The temperature was far lower than it needed to be and if the only thing they were keeping in here were precious metals and stones and weird rich people ice, it wouldn't be a stretch to use this as a cleaner method of getting rid of people. Thick steel walls, a door that looked like it had water pouring down the seams on the regular to keep freezing over so there'd be a lesser chance of anyone getting out, and a hatch on the ceiling to drop people through.

Completely. Psycho.

Depending on how many layers a victim wore and just how low this room shot down to, someone could get hypothermia in as little as ten minutes and frostbite could permanently damage skin and blister tissue—

Peter slowly raised his head.

He cracked his mask and breathed out, and he waited for the cloud puffs that would normally squeeze into his vision.

It never came.

"... Okay. Okay, this is fine. This hasn't happened in a while, but it's normal. Is it normal?" He shook his head. "No, bad, panic later. First step: check if you've gone blue."

He pushed his goggles to his forehead and flipped his phone camera forward.

A stranger stared back, raised lines in perfect symmetry on both sides of his face, and his face—it was completely, utterly blue. Blue from deep cracks in glaciers, from arctic waters, from ice cut jagged against biting winds, and he wouldn't have almost dropped his phone if he hadn't been thinking his eyes would be blue too, because why wouldn't they be? But not, not even close, because his eyes went from dark to darker to darkest red, sclera to iris to pupil, and the ice starting to crust on the sides of his phone crept and spiked and—

He stuffed it back onto his belt and held his hands away from his body as he tried to back up, but his legs didn't listen.

Not his fault since apparently his feet were encased in ice and practically fused to the floor.

"Nope. Not fine and panicking, that's two strikes. Super praying there's not a third."

He yanked one foot out the block, splintering the ice beneath him. His other foot freed easier and in, out, in, out, he was fine. In, out, in, out. The powers correlated with his alien side. Think: the best thing they could've done was throw him down here because he was one of the only ones out there who could survive unscathed.

"Second step: get out of here."

About fifteen minutes had already passed. They probably thought he was already dead.

Peter trained his eyes on the hatch.

"You got this," he whispered under his breath. "You learned to wall-crawl no sweat, and you're going to learn this too."

He leapt up next to the opposite side of the hatch hinge and stuck to the ceiling with a single hand. Ice, he'd discovered, was an interesting solid type in relation to his spider abilities. Him and Ned have notebooks full of theories about how they think he worked, and the fact that the information was firmly rooted in scientific explanation? That meant that they could get their answers through their ballpark of procedural experimentation.

The setules all over his body, microscopic and in the millions and enhanced through extensive genetic manipulation amplified in his human genome and double-walled by his alien one, participated in Van der Waals interactions that typically required dry and unmoving surfaces so the points he adhered to wouldn't shift.

In one early experiment, he squeezed a dry soap bar and ended up with crushed soap bits. Ned wrote that down. In the next phase of the same experiment, he squeezed a wet soap bar and nailed himself in the eye. Ned laughed before writing that down too.

So the goons messed up again without even knowing, because with the freezer so cold with no chance of the ice thawing or being thawed by the average person's body heat, both spider and ice were playing the game at their strongest.

Peter swung his body back, then forward, back, forward, back, SLAM!

He sprung both feet against the hatch and launched it down whatever hallway he got jumped on in the first place and landed in a crouch above the new hole in the floor, soft white crystals twining the carpet threads beneath his feet and fingertips.

In, out, in, out.

He went for his gun first, but the moment he made contact ice exhaled along the grip and he snatched his hand back before he made any severe damage.

"Dang," he muttered. He switched hands and hesitated over the dagger. He didn't want to ruin a gift from Mom, but... his fingers curled firmly around the hilt before he slid it from his sheath and leveled the blade across from his eyeline.

And, just. It was the wildest thing.

He could feel the light tug on his veins when the cold pulled out from his left hand, swirling past polished black wood until a thin coat began to drag along the metal. The sheet couldn't be thicker than half a centimeter at most, serrated edges biting into a normally flat side. Sharper, rawer, deadlier—and when he peered closer at the pit of engraved snakes he swore writhed when he wasn't quite looking now stared back at him with bright red eyes.

"I," he said, "am going to lose my entire shit later."

Later was the important word there. If he didn't get his head in the game now, he wasn't going to deserve a spot on any other job in the future.

Peter didn't even risk tapping his comms at this point. Forget it getting busted because of the signal, it was probably an ice sphere that not even Wade tone-deaf singing Thank You For Being A Friend would be enough to blow past it. Crackle, crack, crack rang out softly and he whipped off his goggles just as the lenses blinded with frost, and his eyes crossed to try and peek down at his black mask. He could only catch flashes of pointy and white.

"Oh my god," he whispered. It was a wonder his voice modulator still functioned. "I'm Sub-Zero."

Wasn't Sub-Zero sort of an alien too?

Later, he berated himself as he darted down the hallway towards where he was sure there was a stairwell entrance. The security feed would've picked him up the second the hatch lid flew on the other side of the world and if that wasn't enough to track him—

Peter threw a look over his shoulder, rolled his eyes, and burst through the metal stairway door to start his ascent to the top floor.

—then the white footprints in his wake were a good enough bread crumb trail.

Six floors up was when he first heard the shouting. Seven, the footsteps got louder. Eight, the doors below him were getting thrown open. Nine, the first shot missed.

"Alright," he said as he glanced down the spirals of stairs. Goons dressed in black with hairlines of all recessions were filing after him and soon enough they'd be streaming down his front too. "Let's make you like a stack of dishes and hang you out to dry."

At the top of one staircase he pivoted, jumped, and catapulted off the back wall to completely body the first person in the line following behind him. The force blasted them off their feet and dominoed almost a third down the line, and he flipped and hit the ground running. Bullets spun past his head, his arms, his thighs—but none of them landed. None of them would land if he had anything to say about it; just a couple weeks ago he'd managed to convince Wade and Neena to team up and help him practice dodging by having him be their moving target.

"You sure?" Neena asks. "I'd feel pretty bad if I was the second reason you ended up on my couch with a bullet in your stomach."

"You got shot?!" Wade whipped his head around. "Non-consensually?!"

"And I'm trying to not get that second shot on my record, so will you help me? Please?" He peers up at both of them. "I trust you guys, and I'll be the best moving practice dummy!"

Neena stared at him for a few beats before turning to Wade. "Do his eyes always do that thing when he asks for stuff?"

"Uhuh."

"But I can't say no to those."

"Yeah, welcome to the fucking shitshow, Dom. FastPass is out of season so you've gotta wait in the regular line with no sunscreen like the rest of us."

Peter dodged the punch thrown from the first person to leap out from in front of him and flipped them over his shoulder to collide into the stream of people still coming up his rear. The ice blade blocked the downward swing of another knife, solid ice chipping straight into the metal as the goon across from him met him eye to red eye.

They blanched. "What the fuck—"

He broke out of his block and kicked before ducking, the punch aimed at the back of his head swinging instead to hit one of their own friendlies and he threw a hard elbow into their gut to send another domino collapse down the way. He took the distraction to heft himself onto the railing and boosted himself to the stairs overhead, swinging himself over the other railing like he weighed nothing at all.

"What the hell's with that acrobatics shit? And is he—is he fucking blue?!"

"Told you Deadpool's sidekick's a fucking freak. Hurry up before he makes it back to his goddamn Batman!"

Yup, gotta go, and gotta make it speedy.

Peter shouldered though the closest door onto another floor, three down from the very top, and pushed his back against it with his heels dug deep in the carpeting to hold his place.

He left too many of them standing. With the stairs so narrow and the middle drop so far down that any fall from any height might result in a broken neck, the risk of accidentally killing someone was too high.

Thud.

If he was Spider-Man, he'd be dangling those goons in the stairway like they were popcorn streamers and the door would be webbed shut with no amount of manpower short of the Hulk able to knock it down. Still too risky and would get too political if it ever got out that a vigilante was taking an actual stab at government proceedings.

THUD.

The push against the door was barely enough to jostle him, so he was left to think. Elevator was too slow, too finicky, too cramped for how many people were available to jump him, so the stairs were the best bet and comparing the first push against the second, their troop was growing. But what else could he do to keep the door shut?

THUD!

water pouring down seams on the regular to keep freezing over

Peter shoved his left hoodie sleeve up to his bicep and unlatched the band above his elbow guards with a crispier-than-usual click to peel off the bottom section of his sleeve, shedding off layers of powdered ice. He dutifully ignored his churning stomach at the unwavering blue of his skin and held his palm against the door handle and shut his eyes.

In, out, in, out.

Think of deep cracks in glaciers. Think of arctic waters. Think of ice cut jagged against biting winds.

Think that you need to be better, because if you had been, maybe Eli wouldn't be dead.

In. Out.

He opened his eyes and stepped back to the sight of the stairwell door frozen from the floor to the ceiling.

The corner of his lips quirked humorlessly beneath his mask as he took his first real steps onto the floor, straight into the seas of prone bodies. Their shallow breathing couldn't be louder with each body he passed by and he was—he really was thankful for what Wade was willing to put up with for him. He knew that every mission from here on out that if Deadpool brings his "sidekick", it was going to be marked non-lethal because he asked, and he wasn't stupid enough to think that because of a sudden change of heart. Wade was doing this because they were friends, and not a day went by where he wasn't grateful that the craziest merc he's ever met also happened to be one of the good ones.

His grip tightened around his dagger. The snakes hissed louder.

He didn't stop walking until he was at the elevator.

And then, he'd remember later, it happened too quick.

He jabbed the up button with his dagger hilt and shoved his loose sleeve into his front pocket. All that walking jiggled his hoodie sleeve back down to full length and his hand was a close enough color to his suit that it wouldn't draw attention.

He was ready when the door opened and three people lunged at him.

He was ready when he swept the legs of the first and knocked the side of their head with the butt of his dagger.

He was ready when he kicked the second into the nearest wall hard enough to bruise, sending them into unconsciousness when they landed the wrong way.

He was ready when his left hand surged forward to grab the last person around the neck, never tight enough to choke but enough to—

A desperate scream barely ripped its way out of number three's mouth before they fell eerily silent, thrashing and clawing at his arm and trying to scream again but nothing and they're sobbing and paling and fading and Peter dropped them like he'd touched fire again, eyes wide as he cradled his arm close to his chest.

Their skin was burnt. Pitch black in the shape of a hand wrapped the front of their neck and the tips of their fingers matched from the skin to the nail to the way it pulled rigid just having glanced Peter's skin for mere seconds.

Not burnt, he realized faintly. Frostbitten.

Ding.

The elevator doors started to close, and.

And.

"I'm so sorry," he croaked before he slipped into the elevator, the doors sliding shut behind him. He jabbed the top floor button, and he swore he was frozen to the floor because he couldn't move. Couldn't bring himself to face the doors.

I've seen it before, it happens all the time, the tinny speakers sang. You're closing the door, you're leaving the world behind.

He'd been thinking non-stop the moment he dropped into the freezer.

It was... weird. Having done that on accident and ending up not thinking much after.

You're digging for gold, you're throwing away.

One floor up.

A fortune in feelings, but someday you'll pay.

Another floor up.

You're as cold as—

Ding.

Peter caught himself as he stumbled onto the top floor, half his head trying to keep his breathing even and the other on the assignment because he already told himself once, this wasn't going to be the last time he was getting sent out. He had to do this—needed to—because at the end of the day it wasn't about the experience or the paycheck. Wade trusted him, Weasel trusted him, and it was just like Neena said when she hadn't known he was Spider-Man.

His position as Weasel's assistant was dangerous. He needed to know the job cover to cover and be prepared to make the right calls if anything came up, and now that he was out in the field with all he knew about the paper-pushing side of the business?

He represented Sister Margaret's in all facets of his life that didn't use the word spider.

Wade wasn't on the floor yet, and a small part of him was relieved that he wasn't the only one struggling through their bad intel. But as it was, it wasn't like he could rifle through the documents unless he wanted to deliver literal sheets of ice. He looked at the hilt of his dagger and sighed, then flipped it around so that his pointer and middle finger held down the cross-guard as he used it to open drawers and push things around to look for more of that incriminating evidence.

Peter was in the middle of typing a password into the main computer key by agonizing key when the window beside him shattered inward. His spidey-sense remained politely silent, so he kept typing as he turned to look at how Wade dragged himself up and over and then into the pile of glass with a heavy crunch. Ouch.

"Do you know how long it took my ass to get up here?" He wheezed. The Deadpool suit was ripped on the chest and both his gloves were missing. "After we split they threw me out a fucking window! Left me to crumple like a ball of fucking foil." He stuck a katana—Dorothy, Peter thinks—into the floor and pushed himself to his feet with a grunt. "Did you know that if you microwave a ball of aluminum foil it makes it smooth?"

"Nice try. You know you'd be the one who'd have to replace my microwave after it exploded, right?"

"Aluminum explodes microwaves?"

"... Dude." Peter tapped the enter key on the keyboard and the profile loaded in on screen. "The money laundering was right, by the way. They've got an entire freezer full of solid gold bars and gems, probably as safer storage from all the liquidated assets. I took a bunch of pictures."

"You think we could snag some of that pocket change on the way out?"

"Pool."

"Ugh, fine."

"While I'm logging in, can you look through all the paper files? I, uh. Can't," he finished lamely.

"Can't? Why?" Wade finally raised his head after yanking out the bigger pieces of glass out of his face and chest and looked him straight in the— "OH what the FUCK."

"I... Yeah."

"The Avatar sequel doesn't come out until 2022! When the hell did you put on cosplay? Or did you slip in a blue paint puddle and roll in it, imagining you were going down a grassy hill like you're in Little House on the Prairie? Gotta give you credit for putting on those red contacts for whatever reason, y'know, commit to the bit, but, c'mere, you can't keep wearing those if they're giving you pink eye—"

"Wait, don't, I—!"

But just like with the webshooters, Wade always moved too quick and it was almost always too late, and his hand wrapped loosely around Peter's smaller left wrist for a millisecond before he jerked his hand back and dropped to his knees. "GOD, FUCK, OW, FROSTY THE SNOWSHIT."

"—give people... frostbite." Peter crouched down next to him and tucked his arms close to his body as he cocked his head, brown hair stringy with sweat. "I'm so sorry. You really have to wait for me to finish my sentences."

"You can talk faster, I believe in you," Wade groaned, both of them staring at his hand. The thick black splotch on his palm was already slowly receding at the edges. "So is this, like, permanent, or...?"

"I usually go back to normal within half an hour but I've never turned completely blue like this before. I'm going to talk to... someone about it but, uh. Yeah, so, apparently I'm immune to the cold and can make ice weapons and I've got to have a current internal temperature close to dry ice and there's probably more? I'm not sure, but this only happened because they threw me down in their safe-death-freezer thing. But I'll figure it out. I promise." His shoulders dropped. "I'm really sorry, Pool."

"Nah, no worries." Wade reached out to pat his head, but thought better of it at the last second. "I'll wait until you're back at a toasty ninety-eight degrees." He paused. "Oh my god," he whispered. "You're Sub-Zero."

Peter hoped that Wade didn't call him out on how his answering laugh almost broke into a sob.

::

When he did not hear a vibrant greeting as the front door shut, Loki immediately slid a strip of leather between the pages of his current book and set it atop the low table at his side.

It is early—or late, he noted as his gaze drifted to the minimalist gold wall clock mounted across from the chaise lounge. Most days his bar duties carried well into the second morning hour and if he stayed the night, he tended to appear through the doorway with a skip in his step near half past. His enthusiasm rarely snuffed out regardless of the exploits of his night, and he supposed his son had his heritage to thank that just a few hours rest was enough to sustain his boundless energy.

But now it is barely midnight, and it is quiet.

"Peter," he greeted warmly as brown hair rounded the corner. "How was your night?"

The boy's pack was slung on one shoulder as he clasped the straps with both hands, twisting his grip this way and that. His head remained bowed, sweat-dried hair hanging limp over his brow. "Oh, it was..." He chewed on his lip for a brief moment, dark brown irises searching the floor and the piles of books and somewhere far off to the right. "Not great?"

Loki frowned, stepping forward as he searched for any injury. Not that he could deign to find any with the ill-fitting ensembles the boy favors; tonight's consisted of a dark oversized flannel over a dark oversized sweatshirt, that unseemly snowman scarf so loose around his neck that the fringes sway near his hips. His face was unblemished save for the finally-fading scorch mark on his cheek—a miracle in itself with how often and how casually he walked around with injuries he sustained from entering altercations on purpose.

(It reminds him of Thor, a bit, back in their youth when his brother flashes wide grins through blood-stained teeth, their war trophies scavenged from ravaged battlefields and those slain by their hand.)

"What troubles you?" He questioned. He laid a hand on a narrow shoulder, but that bowed head did not raise. "Peter?"

"I turned blue today," came the blunt statement.

Loki flinched.

"I was just on another assignment with Wade and he promised me there was no one to kill this time. I don't know if you already knew that part where I, like, don't kill people but I don't and I wouldn't and I know mercs don't think the same and, I mean, it's not like I blame them or anything because I knew what I was getting into when I first got this job and at least they respect my decision as much as I respect theirs and I'm—um—it's." Peter shook his head as if the notion could knock loose whatever overgrowth teemed behind his eyes. "We, uh, our info was bad and we walked into a building with so much security that when we split we got overwhelmed and they threw me down a hatch into a freezer. Like, what kind of rich do you have to be to have whole freezer floors walled with steel? But the freezer was still both a laundering-safe and a murder-box and I could've gotten out with just my strength and my wall crawling but I wasn't even in there twenty minutes before my whole body went blue and I had no idea what to do and when I did get out it wouldn't go away. I was leaving snow-prints and my eyes were red and I could make and control ice and I..."

Peter he could trust to ramble until the end of the world, and that endearing thought usually warmed his heart so thoroughly it tethered him to the earth and convinced him there was still goodness to be had for the one cursed to carry his blood.

But he felt the muscles in his neck string taut and the edges of his palms grew wet with dug crescents his own nails carved. His gaze strayed to a frayed thread on the boy's sleeve, his brow knitted and anger and guilt and shame and hate coalesced into a ball in his sternum so true in its mission to pull him down to sink.

How could he let this happen? Even before the discovery of his damned legacy he should have thought, should have planned, should have already known as the shadow of a golden prince that the only thing he could offer a child of his own was quarrel and grief.

(And he should have known then that he could only ever deserve to be Jotunn.)

A hand grasped the silk sleeve of his robe. "Loki?"

He refocused, his no doubt wrought expression cycling and clearing as he tried to pull on his cool aloofness.

He is not as persuasive this time.

"I know you won't talk about it. I don't know why you won't or why it bothers you so much and I'm sorry for bringing it up like this, but. But you have to tell me what it is." Peter looked up at him, baby fat in his cheeks and haunted eyes, and Loki tired of seeing the one he loved most live a life more than unfair. "I think I... I might have..." His bottom lip wobbled. "Someone got hurt today because I don't know what I am. Please, I—It's just this once, I promise, just tell me what it is this one time and I'll never bring it up again." He drew in a shaky breath. "Why do you hate wh-whatever's going on with us?"

And he crumbled like mountain edges against a windstorm.

Us. No longer just I.

"I hate it because I am Laufey's child," Loki told him, quietly, like it was not the secret that tore his whole world apart. "The high king of a cold waste."

::

"There is one story of the Frost Giants that all Asgardians know. It is not long, or moving, or crafted into the stars, but it is important.

There had been a battle on Jotunheim. There had always been battles on Jotunheim, just as there will always be battles throughout the numerous galaxies.

But this took place in your timeline, nine-sixty-five, after death. The Frost Giants arrived on Midgard, led by their King Laufey, looking to plunge it into another ice age and call it their new homeworld. Many Midgardians perished in that initial attack, their blood frozen solid in their veins and their skin blackening burnt at the single brush of their invaders, and those who dared to survive were to live the rest of their lives in servitude. And here, so long before your iron men and your captains, they would have succeeded.

Had it not been for the defensive charge of Asgardians led by the mighty Allfather; Odin, son of Bor.

Odin and his armies drove them away from your realm, back into the cold darkness of the heart that was their own world where it was atop a temple that Odin himself bested Laufey in single-combat. Laufey, in exchange for his life, agreed to a treaty for peace between Jotunheim and Asgard, its earliest expiration to be a thousand years from that day.

And with their seized peace, the Asgardians took the Jotunn's source of power as well: the Casket of Ancient Winters.

Then.

Well, what more than that?

Then Odin went home to rule and raised two sons with his wife Frigga, both to rule as kings in their own time."

::

Peter sat on the couch, his eyes trailing his mother as they stood at the window to overlook Queens' dark morning.

"But?" He asked.

"But," Loki repeated. "I will tell you the version I learned when my brother was cast to Midgard."

::

"Odin and his armies drove them away from your realm, back into the cold darkness of the heart that was their own world where it was atop a temple that Odin himself bested Laufey in single-combat. Laufey, in exchange for his life, agreed to a treaty for peace between Jotunheim and Asgard, its earliest expiration to be a thousand years from that day.

And with their seized peace, the Asgardians took the Jotunn's source of power as well: the Casket of Ancient Winters.

But alas, Odin must have thought. Those were not enough spoils for a greatest conqueror of them all. So before he left, back to his golden throne, back to his golden son, he also took the abandoned son of Laufey, a nameless child left to die.

For peace, he said to me. For a brighter future for both our worlds, he told me.

But he could not have glimpsed the future to see that his stolen relic would grow to be one more disappointment. They crafted magicks while their brother crafted swordsmanship. They read and studied and learned, their brother fought and killed and won. Both meant to be ruling warriors, champions of Asgard and princes to behold.

While I did not know I was masking demon skin, I did know that I never stood a chance against Thor."

::

Loki had that look again, the one they had when Thor said he would never leave them again, and Peter glanced away.

Resigned, resentful, so painfully lonely—

::

"Hundreds of years I thought I was letting everyone down because I could not be better. Odin would never be proud of me. Thor would never respect me. Frigga would never cease to pity me even though it was her love that helped me through.

In the beginning, I never wanted the throne when it was given to me. Later when I tried to take it, it was because it could have never been mine.

I was the very thing I was taught to hate, the monster in the stories parents told their children at night, the enemy who lost the war. A relic cannot rule a kingdom, nor can a captive believe themselves to be more than what they truly are."

::

Loki met his eyes. "Do you know what I had done to prove my worth?" The teen gulped and shook his head, and the God of Mischief breathed out a humorless laugh. "I set out to destroy Jotunheim. I was close. And if given the chance to complete the task, they would already be reduced to a shrinking core in the center of its supernova."

Peter swallowed, his mouth cotton-dry as the story settled like ice cold chips at the bottom of a glass. This story was supposed to clear up everything, give him an idea of where he was from and who he was and he did ask for it, it was just...

Loki was still, and always would be, Loki. The God who led an alien invasion on Earth, the Trickster imprisoned on Asgard for the wrongs he never denied committing, the brother who was supposed to have died on Svartalfheim. Peter wasn't making any excuses for them—their actions have consequences and Earth should've never been the target for their misplaced anger even though they deserved to be angry.

"Do you think the worst of me?"

"How can I?" Peter replied. "After all of that, no matter how bad a lot of it was, you..." He ducked his head and resumed toying with that frayed thread on his sleeve. "It's going to sound so selfish, but—but you're here. You work as a conservator and historian, you visit me at work, you support Spider-Man even though you don't support why I keep being him." Loki's shoulders trembled, and the way they kept their face half turned towards the window didn't stop him from spotting the mist in their eyes. "You've been doing the best you can, and that's more than enough for me."

"Enough to amount to this blight I brought upon you?"

"Loki—"

"The Jotunn are a disease," they hissed, and the worst part was that they really believed it. "And I have given mine to you."

Their hatred spat out like the lick of a flame, bright and sharp in a chronic loop around their heart. Peter had been helping people for a pretty long time now and he'd watched both Ben and May help people for even longer, but this? This was so out of his depth that the problem wasn't even rooted in his own star system.

He'd gotten his answers, though. Frost Giants. Jotunn. But the rest that came after it...

"Thank you for telling me. For all of this," Peter said as he stood. "It's a lot, but we can work through it. Now we just have to figure out what we're going to do next."

Loki paused before finally turning away from the window, mistiness clearing its way for confusion. "What is there left to figure?"

"How to be a Frost Giant, I guess?" He hummed. He missed the slack-jawed expression on his mom's face when he reached for his bag. "You probably have better control over it so you can probably teach me that, if you can. But do you know the limits of how your powers work? I already mentioned the controlling ice thing and not being susceptible to freezing, and there's probably more, right? If you don't know, though, we can definitely find out."

"Do you hear yourself? Did you not listen?" Loki closed the gap between them, face pinched and mouth curled. "Nothing good comes from association with their kind.

"But we are their kind."

Loki flinched again, and Peter grabbed one of their hands.

"There's probably nothing I can say that'll change how you feel, but have you ever looked at it from the brighter side? You've got all these powers you can use, and figuring them out doesn't mean you have to get rid of what you already have. I might be able to use it to my advantage for the missions I get to tag along on with Wade, but, um." He squeezed their hand lightly. After a beat, they squeezed back. "I'm just trying to say we could make something out of this. We don't have to be like the Frost Giants from your stories; we can be us. And, you know, maybe you won't have to hold onto all this hate."

Loki never dared to hope for much anymore. Falling from the Bifröst had twisted him irreversibly and when they'd been left floating the unyielding vastness of space, they had thought...

They quirked an unamused lip. "A thousand years of hate does not go away in one morning."

"But you can start," Peter smiled, his endless optimism bubbling up as easy as he breathed. "And it's never too late to try."

He sputtered when Loki raised his free hand to rap their knuckles against his forehead.

"You," they said, unable to contain the utter fondness leaking into their voice, "are a ridiculous boy."

Peter's smile turned blinding as he wrapped his arms around them. "And you're a great mom," he murmured into Loki's shoulder. Some of his tension finally began to slide off his shoulders and his weariness gave way to fatigue when his lean forward became more of a slump. "I'm glad you're here."

The arms that come around him are hesitant at first, but they coiled tightly around him in less than a moment and tucked him close.

"I am glad you brought me back," Loki whispered, but by then, Peter's eyes had already fallen shut.