Chapter Text
There’s this old movie called Mad Max that Peter Parker once watched with Aunt May. Well, he kind of watched it. He more so spent the movie watching through her fingers than with her, since it ended up being a bit more violent than she remembered and she spent most of the evening with palms over his young eyes like a makeshift Aunt May blindfold.
Anyway, Mad Max was about this crazy derelict place that looked suspiciously like Australia where nothing spanned out to the horizon except for the occasional something. Again, usually something violent. Sometimes not. Sometimes it was grody and weird with guys named things like Toecutter and Mudguts.
Death was a bit like that, it turned out. Minus Toecutter and Mudguts, of course.
Peter rocketed into awareness. He stood amongst the nothingness of blue tinged dirt, or mud, or something--it didn't feel like Earth, at least--and then immediately rolled into a crouch with his arms out and ready to attack. The hair on his back prickled up and moved back and forth like through the wind. His spidey-sense could feel the most subtle changes, but he didn't need them for this. Something was obviously wrong here.
He reached his fingers down, still clothed in the Iron Spider suit made by Mr. Stark, and dug into the soil. The blue granules came up in his palm like sugar. Peter pressed his other hand on top of it until it fell back into the ground like kinetic sand. He swallowed, looked around, and called out, “Mr. Stark?”
His voice echoed back to him, choking him. Mr. Stark-ark-ark-ark. Peter fell backwards into the dirt. Hands shaking, still holding the dirt, he tried again.
“M-Mr. Stark? Are you there?”
Mr. Stark-ark-ark. Are you there-ere-ere?
His chest tightened, sobs already threatening to erupt. Peter wiped away his tears, and whispered, “Oh God.”
“Mr. Stark!” Peter’s fists dug into the sand and his voice keened out, so high he felt like his vocal cords might snap. “Anybody?! Mr—I mean—Doctor—oh God, I don’t know your real name I-I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
Tony’s face above him, his hands holding onto Peter like he was all there was left in the world, and Peter saying over and over “I’m sorry,” because in those last moments he remembers Tony saying on that dock, “And I feel like, if you die, that’s on me.”
Peter crumbled back to the ground. The sand rubbed into the soft cradling of Tony Stark’s suit—the one he made to take him home even though Peter didn’t listen—and he wept until his tears made a puddle in the blue sand. He shut his eyes, pulled his knees to his chest, and thought of how absolutely unfair it was that he could be dead and still cry so hard that it hurt his ribs.
It was hard to feel through the agony when he cried. Hard to listen to the instinct in his heart that told him something might be wrong. How could things be any more wrong? But still, something curled in his gut and made him nauseous with wrongness, of something Other, floating in the air around him.
Sniffing, his lips pouting out on his face so his bottom lip trembled like some stupid, scared little kid, he looked up from the dirt and met the gaze of a eye green-eyed, pale stranger. His unkempt black hair hung in his sharp-featured face, shadowing one eye partly from view. His leather tunic clung tightly to his body and looked like it once covered every part of him, including his neck, except it had since been torn to reveal an ugly, crawling blue and yellow bruise in the shape of a nearly comically giant hand print. Only comical if Peter didn’t know just whose hand it belonged to.
“Th…” Peter shakily motioned to the man’s neck. The stranger coiled back, going from indifferent to disgusted, a bit like a huffy house-cat. “Thanos?” he asked, still embarrassingly weak from his tears.
The name sent the stranger rocking back until he sat cross-legged in front of Peter. He curled his thin lips inward until his mouth was a small line that bit back whatever he was thinking. Finally, in a hoarse voice that reminded Peter of Shakespeare, the stranger said, “You’re a little young to know about that kind of cruelty, boy.”
Peter crumbled again, the tears overflowing like an endless fountain. “A-am I d-dead?” he whimpered.
The man frowned at him. After great contemplation, he replied, “For now.”
Peter bent forward and groaned, hoping that might make the tears stop, but it only started him up again. “I left M-mr. Stark-k al-lone. Oh God, and Aunt May—Ned—Oh no no n-no!”
Remembering the stranger, Peter wiped at his face all over again. “I’m sorry, mister, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t n-normally d-d-do thi-i-s, I swear. I s-swear.”
“It’s alright,” the man murmured. “The first death is the hardest.”
“The f-first?” Peter stared at him, really seeing him now. The look of him, the leather and the presence, and he gasped. “Are you…?”
The man reared back, eyebrows raised. “Am I what?”
“Are you a god?”
The guy actually snorted. Sure, it was a cynical sound, but it felt so light in the face of Peter's sorrows. “There’s been some argument about that designation lately.”
Peter grabbed that distraction with hungry hands and a desperate mind. “Do you know Thor?”
Melancholy colored the man’s soft smile. “Mhmm.”
“Oh man, that’s gotta be so cool!” Peter sniffed and wiped at his nose. “I never got to meet him, but my friend worked with him! Is he as big as he looks in pictures?”
“I can’t speak for how he appears in pictures,” the man said, “but he is very large. Like a stumbling bull at times.”
“Oh man, that’s awesome!” Peter laughed. “How long did you know him?”
The man flashed his teeth, something almost predatory about it, but Peter wasn’t about to turn him away. Not when the emptiness of death’s chasm had nearly swallowed him up moments before. “My entire life,” the man answered.
Then, like he was revealing a punchline, the man spread his arms out wide and said, “I am Loki.”
Oh shit.
Peter’s lips sputtered like a dying train, puffing away around the name.
“L-l-l-l-loki-i? Like, L-loki Loki? Like New York? Like—”
Loki, still grinning, nodded. He hummed another affirmation and lifted his chin up more.
“That was, uhm, a pretty big deal," Peter stumbled. "I don’t know if you know. My school did a field trip where we helped restore people’s houses and-and- and uhm.” Peter rubbed the back of his neck. “This was pre-spider me, by the way.”
“Of course,” Loki replied patiently. His hands folded in front of him like a school teacher.
“Anyway, I met this lady who made me and Ned a plate of brownies, but she had mixed them up with edibles.”
“Edibles?” Loki questioned.
“Weed.” Loki’s confusion didn’t alleviate. “Do you guys not smoke weed in Asgard?” Before Loki could respond, Peter scoffed at himself. “Of course not! You wouldn’t have the same plants. I’m sorry. This is a lot right now. It’s, like, uhm. Uhm. Do you guys have, like, peyote?”
Loki shook his head.
“That’s another Earth thing! Ugh!” Peter stared up at the endless sky. “It’s like. Uhm. You take this plant—it kind of looks like a leaf—I mean, it is a leaf—and you uhm… You crunch it up? I don’t actually know how people do it. I don’t do drugs, Mr. Loki—”
“Mr. Loki,” he echoed with the briefest of smiles.
“It chills you out, anyway, and gets you high. You know what getting high is, right? Do you have coke in Asgard? I mean, I don’t do coke either! Or weed! I mean, other than the edibles—”
Mercifully, Loki finally understood. “Intoxicated."
“Yeah!”
Peter pointed at him. Loki reared back, still wearing that smirk that Peter was beginning to understand as the ‘harmless and amused adult’ smile. It was different than the exasperation Tony wore when Peter went on babbling, though Tony was fond as well. Loki’s patience and focus appeared far more grounded than most others, but he was probably way older too.
“So, we ate these edible brownies, thinking they were normal brownies, so we ate… a lot. More than we should have, even if they were just normal brownies.”
“That is a lot of brownies,” Loki concurred.
“Right!? So, it didn’t kick in until after I got home, and my Aunt May thought I was having a stroke, so she took me to the ER—which is like, a uh, it’s like an emergency place for uhm… emergencies,” he finished lamely.
Loki nodded. “Naturally.” Peter was starting to feel like Loki was making fun of him.
He continued anyway, like he might be able to cling to the memory enough that he could escape this horrible, empty place. “And the doctor told us that I was high, and then Aunt May grounded me for six months.”
“That’s nearly half of your lifespan,” Loki said, deadly serious.
Pouting, Peter crossed his arms. Oh yeah, Loki was definitely making fun of him. “It sure felt like it.”
He uncurled from himself, noting in the back of his head the sheer ridiculousness of sitting in the afterlife across from the Loki, of all people. Or gods. Or whatever.
“Mr. Loki?”
Loki’s head tilted ever so slightly. “Yes?”
“You said ‘the first time’, right? Have you died before?”
Loki steepled his hands in his lap and chewed on the inside of his cheek. Peter’s eyes wandered back to that ugly bruise on his neck, the way his bloodshot eyes glimmered with something that looked suspiciously wet. Loki’s bite released, and he breathed out a harsh laugh. When he smiled, it was all bared teeth.
“If we forgo permanence, then yes.”
“'Forgo permanence,'” Peter quoted with a gust of air. “Do you write poetry?”
Loki barked a laugh. “It has been very quiet here,” he dodged the question. “For what feels like ages. I must be losing my grip.”
“Grip on what?”
Loki untangled his long fingers and rested his chin on his palm while he watched Peter. “You can’t possibly be here, boy. Not in this way. Not with such light.”
Peter frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You and I could never occupy the same after-life.” Loki spoke in a way that filled the air like the recital of a monologue. His voice was grand, the kind of smooth movement that reminded Peter of someone on skates. Loki shut his eyes and with a sudden horror, Peter spotted a tear slip from the corner of his eye despite the teeth-gritting grin Loki wore. “Not unless my mind has made a new illusion. I am used to the ghosts of my parentage. I am used to the overwhelming presence of my brother… I am used to the demons of my past, the shadow of the hand on my throat. I am not sure what to do with you.”
“… Mr. Loki?”
Loki’s eyes opened again. Looked surprised Peter still sat in front of him.
“I… I am here. We were…” Peter gritted his teeth. “Thanos won.”
Loki’s chest curled in like Peter had physically punched him. His hand moved up to cover his mouth and he shut his eyes again. When he finally spoke, it was desolate, “Of course he did.” He let out a breath that shook towards the end.
“Mr. Loki… How did you come back to life before?” Peter hoped maybe that would make Loki a bit bigger again. That it would bring back that bemused English Professor smug look on his face. Loki shrugged lifelessly.
“With great energy and spite, I suppose. I had a father to usurp and a brother to bother. A kingdom to rule.” Loki snorted again and, eyes still shut, waved his other hand outward in a grand gesture. “I built a statue of myself. It was magnificent. No one questioned it.”
“I don’t know if I’d want a statue of myself,” Peter blurted out. Loki’s eyes opened with a ghost of irritation. “Not that you shouldn’t! I just… I look so bad in selfies, I can’t imagine liking a statue of me. Although the spider-man toys they make are pretty cool. Have you seen them?”
“Who is spider-man?” questioned Loki.
“Me!" Peter deflated. "Oh… Well, he was me I guess. I uhm… I saved people. Kinda like a mini-avenger. I had to go to school, so I couldn’t be ready all the time, but I stopped people from getting mugged. Well, not just getting mugged. I did lots of stuff. One time I saved this guy from getting hit by scaffolding, which was pretty neat, but he was afraid of spiders, so the web really freaked him out.”
“The web.”
“I shoot webs!” Peter chirped as he again clung to Loki’s insatiable curiosity. “Like—Well, it’s easier if I show you.”
Peter turned his wrist over and, as quick as a blink, his web shooter shot Loki’s arm, creating an additional wrap around his forearm. Loki’s eyes widened, and he lifted his arm to examine it. After a few seconds of turning his arm in the air, his other hand plucking at the web to watch it spring back to its original placement, he looked up at Peter.
“Useful, but slightly disgusting.”
“That guy thought it was super disgusting. He smacked me over the head with his arm and I almost dropped him. That would have been bad publicity for spider-man. I don’t think I’d have many toys made of me then.”
Loki laughed again. It was a brittle sound. “No, I don’t suppose you would.” He ran a hand through his hair and pulled it away from his face, unveiling sharp cheekbones and a stark black hairline traced over a pallid face. He looked at Peter, consideration painted on his expression.
“Mr. Loki?” Peter wrapped his arms loosely around his gut.
“Yes?”
“I need to go back home.”
After so much back and forth, the silence felt suffocating; as though their conversation had sucked all the oxygen out of the afterlife. Peter clenched and unclenched his hands, hoping this wouldn’t be the mystery trigger that set Loki off and turned him into the monster so many had claimed he was in that battle in New York.
Not that Peter didn’t believe New York’s aftermath had been monstrous or anything! It was just that… well, Loki seemed to know what it meant to curl up after death and sob until his ribs broke, and that struck Peter as shockingly human for a god.
Loki’s mouth curved down into a sturgeon’s frown. He nodded a few times and, web still curled around his arm, he pushed himself onto his feet. “Dying is not a good look for Earth’s Spider-man, I imagine.”
Peter scrambled to his feet. “Yes! I mean--No, it’s not! Will you help me, then?!”
Loki had already turned succinctly on his heel, now walking further towards the horizon of this barren wasteland. He shrugged.
“Why not?” Loki flashed a grin down towards Peter. He was surprisingly tall, considering his leanness. “It’s not as though I have much else going on.”