The serpent
Loki wrings his hands nervously, mind everywhere and yet nowhere all at once. He can barely hear the wind whipping outside the jet Tony graciously offered to get him to Norway in, even though when they first got up into the air it had rather worried him. He doesn’t think about how much trouble he could get in with S.H.I.E.L.D. for doing this, and he doesn’t think about how Tony has been staring at him for the past hour and a half of their flight, checking in on him. He can only focus on how finally, after searching for so long, after traveling all over the galaxy trying to find a way back to how things were, he could pick up one of those shattered pieces and hopefully repair it.
Tony had readily offered up one of his private jets for use in getting there, as it would take far longer by mode of public transportation to get to Norway, and he had found a way to super rigg something not far from sci-fi movie turbo boosters onto it not too long ago. Loki was assured they had been tested many times and would not fail in the middle of the ocean. Being this high up, over just an endless ocean, reminds him heavily of his fall off the bi-frost, and with the added threat of new machinery going wrong? All that's keeping him on this jet is the thought that if he turns back now, when's the next time he’ll get an opportunity like this?
Either way, they’re as prepared as possible. Not trusting anyone else to witness what they’re about to do and not blab, Tony had suggested getting another Avenger to fly the jet. He left it up to Loki to decide, and after careful consideration of who he trusted the most, (and Bruce’s lack of knowledge on how to fly a jet + Tony’s quip about how the last time Steve flew anything he crashed it,) Loki had settled on Natasha. When she was briefed on what their little escapade was set out to retreive, they could see her already mentally steeling herself.
Needless to say she agreed, and is now sitting at the helm with a set of headphones placed over her ears telling them that touch down is in 15 minutes. As soon as the words reach Loki’s ears, Tony can see his eyes widen in panic.
He starts wringing his hands harder, palms rubbed red. His breathing gets a bit faster, and the rise and fall of his back under the pressure of the quickened breaths is making even Natasha nervous. So Tony reaches out, patting Loki’s shoulder blade. He looks up. Fear and confusion, panic and stress, eagerness and regret dot his face, too many emotions happening for his muscles to choose just one to express.
“What's going on señor dios?”
“I… it’s fine.”
Tony doesn’t believe that for a second, as is evident by his Dwayne the rock johnson level raised eyebrows.
“We're about to go into uncharted waters, literally and physically. We don’t know what awaits us or WHO awaits us, and we don’t know how exactly to deal with the situation we’ve got at hand. I’d be more worried if you truly are fine.”
Silence.
“Is it about…?”
Loki huffs, putting his face in his hands, dragging them down until they come to rest on only his mouth and nose. He nods, weary and anxious.
“What if he hates me? What if he's too hurt to commune with us? What if he’s forgotten me? What if he's ....”
His voice cracks.
“What if he’s gone?”
“He’s not.”
“How do you know!”
“Did you see those readings? Sure activity dipped sometimes, but it always came back! And there's been an upswing in quakes lately, definitely unnatural in manner. They couldn’t have been caused by the Earth itself, so it has to be him! I don’t think you have anything to worry about. From the little you’ve told me about them, all of your children loved you greatly. I doubt he’ll be anything but happy to see you, Loki.”
“He has every right to hate me.”
“But he won’t.”
“I couldn’t save him.”
“That’s not your fault!”
“I wasn’t strong enough to protect them!”
Tony sighs, hand flying to massage his forehead.
“Listen. I’m not good at these things. You just have to ask yourself, history has yet to lay eyes on a single perfect being, so why do you hold yourself to a standard no one can achieve? He won’t hate you, he won’t be gone, and he won’t (hopefully) eat us all. I don’t think.”
Loki looks up at Tony appreciatively, face relaxing a little bit, but not much. When they land, Natasha stops Loki on his way out of the jet.
“If it’s any consolation, that's the most sincere I've heard him sound like, ever. He truly believes it’s gonna be okay. And for the record, I do too.”
She walks off, leaving Loki to trail behind her nervously like a kicked puppy. All this support is very new to him, he’s not entirely sure how to feel about it, but he knows he doesn’t dislike it.
To get to where they’re going, they need to rent a boat. And as it turns out, they’ll be needing a rather big one. Loki says that past a certain point, when they approach a place that he’ll be able to feel the closer they get, the waves will get choppy and large, a reaction to his son's seídr. Jormungandr always did have a very violent aura, and it would slither all over his body, undulating and changing constantly.
As they set off on their newly bought boat, as Tony of course couldn’t have just rented the damn thing, they see what Loki was talking about. The farther out from shore they go the angrier it gets, and sea sprays over the side of the boat in every direction. The wind rushes in Loki’s ears, but it grows silent when he closes his eyes to feel the familiar pull to his left. He points to the port side, a faint heartbeat growing louder in his soul guiding his direction. Tony, from his perch in the Iron man suit conveys Loki’s unspoken message to Natasha, and with Loki controlling the various riggings and ropes of the boat through his object manipulation, the boat lurches left and crashes right over a particularly big wave.
And suddenly, Loki can feel it. The temperature drops, the waves start to come in more predictable patterns, no less in tenacity but more uniform in size and in distance between them. Finally, Loki can hear himself again, and with it comes the crackling of Tony’s voice in the ear piece he gave him.
“From up here it looks like… like… Loki is this it? The waves… they look like scales!”
His heart beat threatens to drown him out now, the only thing left to do being to call him. All his worries rush through his head all at once, and then nothing at all. Backing down is suddenly impossible, even if he wanted to, because with one shriek from Tony, still in the sky with the best view of all and with a shudder of his seídr that could only mean the awakening of a part of his soul previously asleep, tells him the moment for decisions is over. And as he looks down off of the side of the boat, all he can see is yellow. A giant eye, directly below the boat, sets his heart ablaze. Here, where no one can tell the difference between one salty water versus another, his tears are still evident.
One drop, glittering and green, falls to the floor of the boat, and instead of being washed away it spreads.
It spreads over the deck, spilling over the sides of the boat.
It flows up the rigging and into the sails, from rope to rope until the entirety of the boat is covered.
Every drop that splashes over the edge of the railings glows the same green, and every drop falling out of the boat spreads the magic to the next, again and again and again until to every side of the boat is water that glows Loki colored green.
In a transformation so fast that even if you hadn’t blinked you would have still missed the exact moment it happened, Loki is no longer small, nor tan. He’s his true size, big blue and unavoidable as he raises one arm, and with it comes the rumbling. All around them the boat quakes, the sea churns and froths with a renewed vigour, and the balance of the Earth itself seems to shake. Even looking down on it from the sky, Tony starts to feel nauseous, ever unsure that what their doing is at all safe. But he trusts Loki not to lie about this, not after all the pain in his voice when he talked about it. So he waits, and he watches.
But he doesn’t have to wait long. Not too far off from the front of the boat, the sea rises. Just a dome of water at first, but slowly all of the water slops off of a scaled head. Smaller than what Tony had heard, Jormungandr is still, true to his name, ginormous. His head alone is at least seven times the size of the boat, and it’s still looming in the distance.
His body, only part of it from what Tony can see, is out of the water, scars and gashes made by something unknown visible everywhere one looks. His scales are humongous and many, and they vary from shades of blue and green to a bit of light purple. His eyes, large and partially open like he’s sleeping, have no pupils. They only shine down on the gang like lighthouses.
They hear him breathe out and in, the breathes heavy, and as they pass over Tony he can feel himself get pushed back by the gust of wind. Suddenly, he lunges, a venerable tidal wave emitting from the water in the direction he’s going, which regrettably is right at them. The wave moves faster than the snake, getting to the boat before he does.
The boat tips, creaking and groaning to one side, water swelling under them. The serpent hisses, loud, and it rings in their ears as it continues to charge. Tony does his best to push from the opposite side of the boat, although his effort to keep the boat from tipping any further is fruitless and for a second all seems hopeless. Then, a voice cuts through the mayhem, the waves roll to a stop, and the charging sea monster stops in its tracks.
“Jormungandr!” Loki roars, and the serpent takes notice. He tilts his head, left, then right, then left again, hissing and drawing closer with every second passing. Although he no longer approaches in a hostile manner, he jerks and dips every now and then in an almost cautious manner.
“Jormungandr!” Loki’s voice is cracked with grief and anxiety.
“I know you can hear me! You have to hear me! WAKE UP!”
The serpent just shakes his head like something annoying is trying to get at him, a bug or a ray of sun in his eyes. Loki calls his name again, and once more before he takes a breath in, and as loud as he can muster he screams,
“ᛃᛟᚱᛗᚢᛝᚨᚾᛞᚱ!”
A low grumble and a whine comes from the snake, as a thin film, his secondary eyelids, uncover his eyes which now roll forward into the eye sockets properly. This reveales slits, almond shaped pupils that seem to stare right into Loki’s being. All is frozen in more ways than one, as the cold truly begins to seep into the other passengers bones, past any and all protective layers they brought. This staring contest lasts for what feels like an eternity, when finally Loki lets go of his hold on the waves, and they’re slowly lowered back down to the level the water was originally. Tony, ever carefully, floats closer to Loki, seeking reassurance, and Natasha is not far behind.
Slowly, so slow that at first none noticed it but Loki, Jormungandr brings his head close to sniff at the folds of Loki’s close. He nudges the very tip of his snout against Loki’s chest, releasing an exhale of air that Tony takes as a good sign, and when Loki takes his (at the moment) gigantic hands and grabs just the very edges of Jor’s face, pressing his own forehead against his son’s nose, Tony can’t help but exhale a sigh of his own.
Jor brings his head back up and seems to stretch out to his full height, Loki still wiping tears on the back of his sleeve. When he’s done stretching, Jor shakes. Like a wet puppy dog. With every slow shake he gets smaller, and little by little his body shrinks, his head rounds off, fangs become slightly less sharp teeth and a tube like body become limbs, skin pale and almost icey looking in nature. His tail seems to disappear, right in midair from the tip, (which is presumably underwater somewhere halfway across the earth) to his head, and Jormungandr falls straight out of the air and into his father’s arms. He thumps violently against Loki, catching him off guard and knocking him down, but Loki doesn’t care. He just leans, large as ever, against the main command area of the ship, cradling a humanoid looking Jormungandr less than half his size in his arms. Tears as big as full buckets of water roll down his cheeks and splash onto the deck, getting water all over the other two. But even if they hadn’t already been thoroughly, bone chillingly soaked, they wouldn’t have cared.
Loki, miraculously still dry, starts to shrink in size just as his son had done seconds before, and now he holds a more teenage looking kid just as tight as before, but in a more comfortable position now that he’s the right size. Loki pulls away ever so slightly, and brushes pale, snow white hair out of his son's face to get a look at him. Neither of the two’s eyes are dry, as they just look at each other, like a single blink and the other won’t be there anymore. Jor gives in first, lunging back into the bear hug Loki had him in second before. Into his collar he muffles,
“Father…”
Loki leans down to kiss the top of his head, whispering,
“I know… I will not let you go, my son…”