Dog Days

Chapter 129

Loki ended up on the same meds as me. I was able to do a lot of the nighttime changes, but mom stayed over from time to time.

After a few months, Loki was finally lucid enough to take on his share of responsibilities.

He loved every moment of being a father.

He would run around after them, and build pillow forts and blanket teepees for the kids. We would lay together in our bed, reading them bed time stories, and then we would carry them up to their rooms.

The early years were amazing. Of course, things happened, but we got through them as a family.

Like when Pietro got his first boner, at nine, and started jacking it everywhere, we sat down with him and explained his changing body to him. We explained to him that these urges were natural, but also urges that should be satisfied in private.

When Wanda got her first period, at eleven, that was something I wasn't looking forward to. How the fuck are her two gay dads supposed to explain that to her?

We ended up sitting next to her bathroom door, just to make her feel supported. I think we said something about how we don't know everything, but as her dad's we will always love her, and try to learn with her.

After that, though, we sat her down and gave her the talk about how her body was changing, and how it is extremely difficult for people who have periods. They are uncomfortable, and painful, and they are viewed so negatively, when it's just an uncomfortable part of a woman's life. We explained to her that there's way to be more comfortable, stop the periods entirely, with chemical birth control inserts. We had the awkward sex talk and we talked about all the different forms of birth control and types of relationships. We even talked to her about consent.

And, of course, after that, we had the exact same conversation with Pietro. How assholes treat women, versus how to actually treat a woman, or a man, if he prefers.

The teenage years were hard. We got doors slammed in our faces, and called out for not being their biological parents, but they had never known our past, let alone their own.

Just like Jeff did with Loki, we didn't want to tell them that they were meant to die as babies, or how their parents were crushed, next to them, until tons of cement. They were caked in their blood, inches from the lifeless hand of their mother.

And even though they never knew about their past, they eventually found out about our past and asked about their own.

We just told them that their parents loved them very much, and that they passed away getting them away from the war.

They never asked after that. In their mid twenties, they finally admitted to us that they found a news article about their birth parents. They didn't want to make us feel any worse.

Mom died when they were twenty two. Dad didn't care after mom died. He handed his shares of the commune over to me and retired to the old steam shed in the back. He died when they were twenty four.

Loki and I stepped up to care for Asgard. We raised our children with the land, and luckily, they decided to stay.

Pietro got sick when he was thirty. Stage 2 Cardiac Angiosarcoma.

He had surgery to remove it, but it didn't stop. The cancer continued to develop and chemo and radiation did nothing but tear him apart.

It tore Loki apart. I would hold him every night as he wept for Pietro, and Sylvie. He would scream about how our little boy was going to die, suffering.

It reached stage three, and it metastasized to his lungs. His heart was too weak to ever recover, and we all knew it was over.

He didn't want to suffer.

And he couldn't tell Loki that it was time for him to go.

It was the night of his thirty-first birthday when he begged me to help him get the medicine for physician assisted suicide. The only place I could get it was in D.C.

Loki stayed with him, that night. And Wanda and I drove all the way to D.C., sobbing.

She kept insisting "It's what he wants! We need to respect it!"

And she was right.

When we got back, the following morning, I pulled Loki away and explained to him of our son's wishes.

He sobbed, and he screamed, and I remember him pounding his fists into my chest as he cursed me.

But eventually, we sat by his bedside in his final moments.

Loki and I went through a period of about three months where we couldn't look at each other.

He was mourning the loss of his son, and I couldn't forgive myself for not telling him before I left for D.C.

Technically, the way we got it was illegal, but he just wanted his pain to end.

Eventually, Loki found me sobbing in his childhood bedroom, one day, and he held me and reminded me that he was here for me. He reminded me that I wasn't alone.

He didn't blame me.

He admitted that he would have done the same.

And slowly, our downsized family continued to love each other.

Eventually, Loki and I were happy, again. He started returning to ourselves and we loved each other, yet again.

We put all of our focus into the commune, Wanda, and each other.

When she was thirty-four, she married this guy named Vision. He was a shroomhead who joined when she was seventeen. They started dating after Pietro passed.

Loki got onto them about grandkids, like, immediately.

To be fair, he had just turned seventy.

He was a hot old dude. Honestly, young me would fuck old him. He never lost his libido, other than the years we were grieving Pietro.

They eventually had kids, and Loki got to meet them.

Loki died when he was eighty. We made slow old sex, one night, and I woke up the next morning to find he had passed in his sleep.

As for me, everything got a little fuzzy after that. I had good days and bad, and then they were all bad.

I know it hurt Wanda, watching me wither away. She took care of me, even when I didn't recognize her.

It didn't take long.

I passed away at seventy-six, two years after Loki.

But that's not the point.

As I put Loki in the ground, I honestly just decided that I had a good go of it.

Desperate all the pain and suffering, I had an amazing life, and an amazing family.

Even if I died without dignity, I am very proud of the life I had. My daughter gets to live a long and healthy life, and, who knows...

Maybe there is an afterlife.

Maybe I'll get to see my son, again.

Maybe he and Loki are waiting on me on the other side.

If not, maybe I'll meet him, again, in another life.

Maybe.

The End...
Maybe...