A Tale of Two Lokis, Chapter 2 (Thor movie)
Title: A Tale of Two Lokis
Authors: Khilari and Persephone_Kore
Summary: Thor and Loki were not the first of Odin's loved ones to bear those names. After the events of the movie, Loki is planning his next moves when he discovers a frost giant imprisoned in a volcano, who proves to be both the uncle he was named for and Laufey's first child. Soon Loki has a new mentor, Asgard is shaking off isolationist tendencies, Jotunheim is receiving foreign aid, and Earth is suddenly and vividly reacquainted with the existence of aliens....
Authors' Note: We were partially inspired by some of the theories proposed on the TV Tropes WMG page for the movie. We have taken the movie and combined it with the Eddas, the Gesta Danorum, and bits and pieces from other Marvel sources. We're having a lot of fun with it and hope you enjoy the result.
Chapter 2
Loki’s first act was to go and look out of the window. Midgard had changed in a thousand years, at least when it came to technology. They’d discovered some brighter dyes as well, he rather liked the clothes they were sporting.
‘Where did your wife go?’ his younger namesake asked abruptly.
Loki looked up from the window. ‘To see our children, I imagine,’ he said, lying easily. ‘It’s been a long time since she’s had the chance and I’m no longer in direct need of her magic.’
‘Will she return?’
‘Perhaps. She might not care to be drawn into the edges of a binding I agreed to without consulting her,’ said Loki. She would be back, of course, when she had the chance. But the boy would never know it.
‘She knows how to world-walk?’ said the boy, pensively.
‘Evidently.’
‘What do you know of world-walking?’
‘More than you,’ said Loki. ‘That was the most ill-prepared trip between worlds I’ve ever been a part of.’
‘It’s a safe route,’ the boy said defensively. ‘I’ve used it several times.’
‘The energies of the casket are designed to ward them off,’ said Loki. ‘You weren’t using it properly, but it was enough to scare off most of the smaller ones.’ And, to be fair, the route had avoided most of the big ones.
The boy considered, eyes lowered in what was clearly a habitual gesture to hide his thoughts. ‘Is that why Odin took the casket? To prevent movement between worlds?’
Perhaps he should have kept quiet, thought Loki ruefully. Although that had never been his strong point. He didn’t really want the boy moving armies between worlds, although he clearly wasn’t allied with Jotunheim and there wasn’t anywhere else likely to provide him with one.
‘Answer,’ said the boy sharply.
‘I’d imagine so,’ said Loki. ‘The war was still going on when I was imprisoned.’
‘How many people can it move?’
‘As many as the Bifrost,’ said Loki. ‘It uses a lot of the same technology. Jotunheim and Asgard were trading knowledge for a while before Midgard was discovered and became a point of contention.’
‘That’s not true,’ said the boy. ‘Odin would not give knowledge to monsters.’
‘I could take offense at that,’ said Loki mildly. ‘Don’t forget I’m one of these monsters you speak of. Besides, most of the knowledge on world-walking was flowing the other way. He taught them rune magic as his part of the bargain.’
Really, had Odin completely neglected to give his sons any sense of their own history? What had he been thinking? Especially with this one who needed to understand the history of Asgard and Jotunheim to understand himself. The shocked looks the information was eliciting were starting to appeal to Loki’s sense of mischief, and turning this into a history lesson seemed like a good distraction from more dangerous topics.
‘Early world-walking was undertaken without much more preparation than you use,’ said Loki. ‘In a sense you’re re-inventing it, which is quite impressive. Odin was probably the first among the Asgardians to try it, and he made it to Jotunheim where it was already a developing art. We actually met in extradimensional space, the first time.’
‘The casket…you’re older than it?’ said the boy.
Loki laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Bridging the worlds was a big project when Odin and I were young.’
‘He never told me,’ said the boy. ‘He never told us anything about himself. Not from before the war with Jotunheim.’
Loki smiled. ‘He was desperately curious, about everything, and quite reckless. I suppose I was, too, and we urged one another on, competing to see who could go furthest. After his father died he was forced to settle down, somewhat. At least to the point where he couldn’t be the one trying to world-walk from Yggdrasil's roots to its crown and document everything on the way.’
The boy blinked. ‘He says Thor is too reckless. When he went to Jotunheim against orders Father was furious.’
‘So maybe that’s why he didn’t tell you.’
The boy shook his head. ‘If I can activate the Bifrost I can activate the casket?’
‘Yes,’ said Loki.
‘Then that’s all I need to know. Stay here, I need to contact Muspelheim.’
He turned to leave but Loki called after him, ‘Muspelheim?’
‘It’s none of your concern.’
‘It might be yours. The Muspel giants can’t use the casket, for one thing it uses ice magic. That’s hardly compatible with fire beings.’
The boy turned back, looking faintly embarrassed and trying to hide it. ‘I can simply lead them through the safe route, then, and use the casket to ward off danger rather than on them.’
Loki shook his head hard. ‘No, you can’t. The Muspel giants are energy beings. They’ll attract every extradimensional predator within smelling distance. There’s a reason they’ve never been able to world-walk.’
‘So I need to create something new. Something more like the Bifrost.’
‘Not unless it’s twice as strong. The Bifrost can’t carry things with their own energy, it would break under the strain.’
The boy looked at him. ‘Find a way to do this.’
‘What? You can’t order me to do the impossible,’ said Loki, suppressing the desire to laugh. ‘Have you already promised them a way between worlds?’
The boy didn’t answer that question.
‘Ah, well. On the bright side they can’t get here to take it out on you,’ said Loki.
The boy looked up, eyes suddenly sharp. ‘Be silent. Do not speak again until I tell you to.’
Loki wanted to protest that that was distinctly unfair for a little flippancy. But, well, he couldn’t talk to protest anything. He wondered whether the boy was more perceptive than he realised, to choose a punishment Loki would hate, or simply annoyed enough to want him to stop talking.
Later that day he was given permission to talk again, with a simple, ‘What other ways are there of travelling between worlds? There are nine worlds, Jotunheim and Asgard can’t be the only ones to travel.’
Loki paused. ‘The Vanir had falconskins. The Dwarves never cared to travel, and the residents of Niflheim can world-walk by their nature, although few of the worlds they find are to their liking. The Norns and Elves bought technology from the Vanir.’
‘What are falconskins?’ asked the boy.
‘Single-person energy capsules. They’re less safe than the Bifrost but a lot more flexible. You can explore in them, they don’t just dump you at your destination. If you ever see one you’ll see where they get the nickname, they’re very streamlined.’
The boy nodded. ‘Do you know how to make one?’
‘No,’ said Loki, keeping the relief out of his voice. ‘The Vanir are very protective of their technology. They sell the finished falconskins, but not the design.’
‘Could they be adapted for use by Muspel giants?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Loki truthfully. ‘I’ve used one, but I have no idea how they work.’
'Didn't you and Odin ever try to reverse-engineer one?'
'At length. And when I say protective... well, the security features would probably have killed anyone else. Or either of us working alone.'
‘Then we’ll go to Vanaheim,’ said the boy. ‘Be ready to travel tomorrow. And glamour yourself.’
Loki rolled his eyes as the boy swept out. He did know better than to wander around Vanaheim blue these days. Those days. And probably these days as well. Anyway there was no reason for the look of disgust in the boy’s eyes. Glamour was a way of fitting in, and sometimes fun, but there was nothing wrong with being blue.
The problem with going to Vanaheim would be that Sigyn wouldn’t know about it. Currently she was the only one he was sure was on his side and Loki was reluctant to lose contact with her. There were sensible reasons, such as wanting Odin to know what his son was doing, but it was mostly emotion that was leading him to do something…well, rather stupid.
Loki stepped out beyond the slumbering coils of Jormungand and let off a burst of magic. It was a honed one, subtle enough for most of the creatures here not to feel it. The response was immediate.
A being came at him in a twitchy flurry of motion, a being composed mostly of curiosity and restless energy. It grabbed at his mind, gnawing at it like a nut as it tried to break through to the thoughts beneath. They had described it to the Norsemen as a squirrel, but they had been trying for comprehensible rather than accurate. Loki summoned up the power to grapple with it and push it back.
‘A message,’ he said. ‘Carry a message. Tell Verdrfolnir to tell Heimdall that Loki is in Vanaheim trying to borrow a falconskin.’
The response was immediate and enthusiastic. Ratatosk loved carrying messages, loved holding the information and passing it on. It was gone in a violent flurry leaving Loki to slink back behind Jormungand’s coils utterly exhausted.
Thor was trying to be patient. It had never been one of his strong points, but this did seem to be the time to exercise it. Going immediately to look for his wayward brother was not an option, as the most specific thing he knew about Loki's location was that he couldn't get there.
Sigyn could. Odin could. Odin had gone an entire month without even a hint that Asgard was not completely cut off from other realms by the Bifrost's destruction. Sigyn....
Among other things, Sigyn was asleep. However he chafed at the inability to do anything, Thor had hardly been going to interfere with offering her appropriate hospitality, and he rather suspected she had enough cause for frustration without adding sleep deprivation to the mix.
So when afternoon had drawn into late evening and it had become clear she wasn't simply taking a nap to recover, he'd gone to bed himself. He hadn't slept. Two hours before dawn, he'd stalked into the library. The history section seemed erratically used and not very well cleaned; half a shelf might be pristine and the other half coated in grey.
By the time the sun rose, Thor had located several books that might be useful, surrounded himself in a cloud of dust, chased it out the window on a brisk breeze, and apologised to a coughing and very confused gardener. He was starting to think it might have been more efficient to make another try at asking his father questions. It wasn't as if Odin slept nights.
He'd been reading for an hour and still didn't really know what was going on -- possibly in part because he wasn't concentrating terribly well -- when he was startled by Sigyn herself speaking to him. 'Perhaps this is an unfair comparison to your older brother,' she said, 'but I was surprised to be told you were in the library.'
'Ah,' Thor said, looking up and trying not to be flustered. He hadn't expected her to come and find him. Maybe that was a good sign? 'Good morning. No, it's unusual for me too, but yesterday's explanations raised more questions for me than they answered.'
'That's not very unusual. I suppose Odin and I were not giving you much help, but I'd have expected you to know the basics of the history involved. Though I imagine Loki's imprisonment might have been something Odin did not care to talk about much.' She looked over his shoulder. 'Found any of your answers?'
Thor looked down at the book ruefully. 'Not really.'
Sigyn took the next chair and rested her chin on her hands. 'Do you want to ask me any of the questions?'
'I wasn't sure you'd want to talk to me at all, but if you're offering.' Then it was a matter of choosing something. Herself, her Loki, his Loki. Walking between worlds. Baldr. 'Where on Earth are they?' he asked finally. 'He threatened... one of my friends. He said it to provoke me, I think, but I am not sure he wouldn't do it to provoke me now.'
'I didn't stop to ask what they're calling the area now, but it was on the continent we used to visit most often, and nowhere near the most recent residues from the Bifrost.' She shrugged, looking sympathetic. 'Not that it would be very difficult for them to go there.'
Thor nodded. 'Still something of a relief.' He hesitated, trying again to narrow down to a single question that requested only information. One topic predominated this time, at least, though even so it was hard to know where to start. 'Baldr,' he said. 'I have not heard much about him and... his mother's people.'
'He'd be terribly disappointed by that. He was quite famous at the time.' Sigyn's mouth quirked. 'His mother was a mortal princess. Rindr. Odin was quite taken with her. She decked him three times and tricked him into a rendezvous with a goat before he stopped courting her father and tried actually wooing her.'
Thor choked, partly at the idea of Odin with someone besides Frigga -- he knew it had happened, he just wasn't sure he wanted to imagine it -- and partly at the mental image itself. 'She sounds like Sif.' Mostly the violence, though Sif actually had pulled a trick on an importunate suitor involving a goat. Loki had helped. Well, Loki had done most of it. Thor sighed. That had been a good week.
Sigyn blinked. 'Er.. in what way?'
Thor spent a confused moment before remembering that Sif was named for his own namesake's wife -- well, he hadn't forgotten that, after the entertainment it had provided half the rest of Asgard -- and that Sigyn presumably knew one and not the other. 'I'm sorry. My friend Sif. My age. She is one of Asgard's fiercest warriors -- with blades, not sorcery.'
'Oh, I see. Interesting. Perhaps I'll meet her.' Sigyn picked up the previous thread of conversation. 'But Baldr. He grew up with his mother's family, mostly. He was very handsome, charming, very kind outside of battle and very fierce in it. He was nearly as sturdy as a full Asgardian and eager to help defend his home against the Jotun invaders, but a little taken aback on learning Loki was a friend. And Nari.' At Thor's confused look, she added, 'Our child. Took after Loki physically. Vali looked Asgardian and was thus somewhat less of a shock.' A smile. 'And Leikin was... unique. Anyhow, at a time when the larger war was being fought elsewhere, Baldr was competing with a human friend of Loki's for both a woman and a kingdom.'
'...And Loki decided to make things fairer.'
'Well, I don't think Hod needed his help with Nanna. He was charming enough himself, and she had heard Odin did not marry Baldr's mother and told him that relationships between gods and mortals would not work out. Because the gods were at once too illustrious and too untrustworthy, I think, which strikes me as a bit muddled. He didn't take it well, especially given how many women in Asgard thought he was an adorable child.'
Thor winced.
'And neither Hod nor Baldr saw any reason they shouldn't use gifts from the gods to preserve their own people and gain them glory and victory,' Sigyn concluded. 'And when some of Asgard's warriors fought on Baldr's side -- thinking to recapture the sword Mistilteinn -- Hod actually damaged Mjolnir with it and routed them.'
Thor glanced down at the hammer beside him in disbelief. 'Damaged Mjolnir?'
Sigyn flicked one hand out, palm up. 'It's a very good sword. Hod and his army, I think, got rather carried away. Asgard was more than a bit alarmed. And as it seems now... Loki thought Odin intended Baldr to take Midgard, Odin thought Loki meant Hod to turn on Asgard, neither of them knew everything that was going on, and things only got worse once they each assumed their own point of view was obvious and started shouting at each other.'
'That sounds like my arguments with Father,' Thor muttered, then looked at her thoughtfully. 'And your point of view?'
'Hah. Much like Loki's, with less yelling, as that's the side of things I was there to see. I only put much of this together yesterday.' She grimaced. 'Otherwise, I'd have made more of an effort to clear things up before now.' She returned his scrutiny. Thor got the feeling she was better at it. 'Your friends in Midgard. Would they include a lover?'
Definitely better at it. 'Someone I want to be.' Then, 'How did you guess?'
'A little by tone, a little by the look in your eyes. The interest in how your half-human brother lived.' She smiled sadly. 'Is that the friend your brother threatened?'
Thor nodded. 'And the one I promised to return to.'
'Before you broke the Bifrost to save Jotunheim.' A pause. 'My Loki would appreciate that.'
Thor looked away from her. 'Mine had reason to be surprised I would stop him.'
'I said some intemperate things about the Vanir in my youth,' Sigyn said after a moment, 'but no one ended up incorporating them into an identity crisis.'
'Mm.' Thor closed the book he'd been ignoring. That reminded him of another comment. 'You said another of Odin's sons had gone crazy. Did you mean Baldr was, for trying to conquer Midgard?'
'Well, I may not have been completely fair. I did think he should know better, but it wasn't exactly surprising that he'd want a kingdom. That he obsessed over Nanna to the point of making himself deathly ill, on the other hand....' Sigyn shrugged. 'He was handsome, charming, brave, and very competent at nearly everything he tried. He was also emotional, dramatic, and unsure of his place in the world.'
That did sound uncomfortably familiar. 'I would prefer to find my brother before he tries to conquer Earth or makes himself ill over his obsessions.' Thor grimaced. 'Or for that matter, provokes your husband to the point of getting him killed.'
'I'll take you to Midgard,' Sigyn said, 'but you must promise to do as I tell you between the worlds. Don't wander off, don't try any magic of your own, and if anything tries to eat us, smash it.'
Thor blinked. Those were easier instructions than he’d expected. 'I think I can handle that.'
They left immediately after a quick breakfast. The journey was strange, darker than the Bifrost and full of the sensation of being watched. They were attacked by nothing very formidable; he feared for a moment that something like a swarm of leeches would prove too immaterial for Mjolnir, but they splattered aside. One greater creature seemed to raise its head as they passed, suddenly alert; Sigyn smiled, and then light broke around them and they were in a cold room with furniture surprisingly like some of Jane's. And... no one else there.
Sigyn's smile dropped away. She went and opened all the doors, shut them again with more force than was really necessary, and then stood in the middle of the first room and swore. 'I can't tell where they've gone.' She ground her teeth, then took a long breath. 'Well, as we're already here -- let's go find your friend.'
Jane frowned and raised her head as she realised someone was steadily knocking at her lab door.
One of the better sides of pursuing a discipline that frequently wrecked your sleep schedule was the ability to work without interruptions. Generally speaking, nobody spontaneously phoned to break her concentration at one in the morning, much less turned up in person. Although SHIELD was a lot more likely to do either one than your average funding agency.
She sighed, saved her work, and picked up her mug for a gulp of coffee on the way to the door. To avoid a lecture on security, she checked the peephole -- and was confronted by a pair of heartstopping blue eyes.
Galvanised, she suddenly had the door open without quite remembering how she'd undone the interior lock, and was holding on to the edge of it for support. It really was him. Thor. After a month. 'My God,' she said, 'it's you. You're here.' Her mug slipped from suddenly clumsy fingers.
Thor crouched and caught it, lightning quick -- Jane suppressed a wild urge to giggle at the thought. Coffee slopped onto his hand. 'I thought you said no smashing things,' he said, smiling.
Jane did laugh then. 'Hey, at least I didn't throw it. How -- uh --' How are you, how did it go with your brother, what kept you? She'd lost the question. There was a woman she didn't know standing behind Thor and looking amused. 'I'm sorry, I didn't see you. I'm Jane Foster.' She gathered the presence of mind to step back from the door and let them in.
'I know,' said the woman. 'I'm Sigyn.' Then, as Jane's eyes widened, 'Not his brother's wife, his uncle's.' Jane blinked. 'You looked as if you'd been doing some reading about us.'
'Some,' Jane said. 'I haven't been sure how much was accurate.' She hesitated, heading toward the coffee maker to give herself a moment to think. 'The main one I found about you involved keeping Loki from being tortured by a snake dripping venom in his face.' Which had clearly not been happening to Thor's brother Loki, but if there was another one....
Sigyn looked rather startled. 'I made his imprisonment more comfortable than it could have been,' she said. 'The prison was located in a volcano to weaken him, but he wasn't being deliberately tortured otherwise. Certainly not by snakes. But that's part of why we've come now.' She accepted the coffee Jane offered her and smelled it curiously. 'Thor's brother Loki... altered my husband's bindings. And last I knew, they were on Earth.'
Jane concluded that she was probably not getting back to work tonight. She was right. They went through three pots of coffee while Thor and Sigyn caught her up. Jane was absorbing the news and trying to think how and whether to break it to SHIELD when the air around Sigyn appeared to twist, and Sigyn herself flickered not quite out of visibility for a moment. Jane saw colour-bursts a little like those from pressing on closed eyelids, glimpsed one rather gruesome vision of what looked like an anatomical cross-section, and then Sigyn was sitting in the chair again, perfectly visible but rather pale. 'Are you all right?' Jane asked cautiously.
Sigyn nodded once, hard. 'Heimdall sends word,' she said, 'that Loki -- both Lokis, probably, have gone to Vanaheim.'
'Oh,' said Jane. 'Is that bad?'
Thor was frowning. 'In itself, not obviously, unless they intend to attack.'
Sigyn shook her head. 'Not to attack. To seek a falconskin -- the Vanir's way to travel between worlds,' she explained. Jane bit her tongue hard. The Bifrost was broken, but people were traveling between planets and dimensions on their own power, and now some third method. Surely she should be able to come up with something. At least the theory. If she had the theory, she'd bet Stark could implement it. But another way to travel didn't seem to account for how shaken Sigyn looked. 'If anything,' Sigyn added, 'that might make them both safer. But Loki sent the message by Ratatosk!'
Jane bit her lip, then asked carefully, 'Is that not a squirrel?'
Sigyn looked at her and then put her head down on one hand and laughed, although not really as if she thought it was funny. 'We did describe him that way. He is something like a squirrel. Only squirrels eat nuts, and he prefers thoughts. People who come into contact with him sometimes come away with less of them than they had going in.'
Jane winced. 'Okay, I can see why you're disturbed.'
'Loki's good at dealing with him. He's probably fine. I hope.' Sigyn sighed. 'And at least extradimensional space around Vanaheim shouldn't be as bad as around Asgard right now.'
'It didn't seem that bad,' Thor said. 'What did I miss?'
Sigyn looked up at him and chuckled. 'Those creatures you drove off were less trivial than you seem to think.'
'Are you going to Vanaheim to look for -- well, Loki and Loki?' Jane asked.
'If I'm to keep hunting all over Yggdrasil,' Sigyn groaned, 'I want a falconskin. Or at least more of this coffee stuff.' Jane might have taken this as a hint for a refill if the next pot hadn't still been brewing. 'I think we'd better. We need to find out what Thor's little brother is doing--'
'I was thinking we need to take him home,' Thor put in.
Sigyn raised an eyebrow at him. '--And anything else will probably be simplified if I can tell my husband Odin doesn't plan to imprison him again.' Well. That certainly made sense.
The next thing Thor said was, 'What about Jane?'
'What about me?' Jane replied, rather startled.
'That's a good question,' Sigyn said, eyebrows drawing together as she looked at Jane, nails drumming the handle of her mug. 'You may be in danger from the younger Loki; he seems to have taken offence at you. He is alive, travelling, and... erratic. On the other hand, he's been that way for a month, and right now we know he isn't even on your planet. Unassisted extradimensional travel is definitely dangerous.'
She hadn't thought they'd even consider taking her to Vanaheim, but now she really wanted to go. 'I'd like to try extradimensional travel,' she began.
'You will see Asgard one day, Jane,' Thor murmured.
'Ah -- well, that would be nice, definitely, but I actually meant I'd really like to see extradimensional space.'
Sigyn was grinning by that point. 'That could actually make it easier to take you. As long as you don't will yourself anywhere we're not going. It's partly a question of mindset,' she explained. 'I'd hate to discover you had potential as a sorcerer by misplacing you.'
Jane tried not to look too eager or to frown. The thought of seeing other worlds, other spaces, fascinated her. But it wasn't a pleasure trip. She also remembered knowing it was stupid not to run, and being unsure if it would help if she did. She remembered seeing huge, solid Thor thrown and broken by what almost looked like a casual, impulsive blow from a giant robot. Not even its main attack. 'I wouldn't want to get in your way, either.'
'Even if we took you to Vanaheim,' Sigyn said, with an air of thinking aloud, 'we'd hardly take you along for any confrontations. The first thing would be find out what the Vanir mean to do. Odin must have contacted them by now.' She eyed Thor. 'Then I might leave you both behind while I talk to my husband.'
Thor looked displeased, but said, 'Especially if the plan is capture.'
Authors: Khilari and Persephone_Kore
Summary: Thor and Loki were not the first of Odin's loved ones to bear those names. After the events of the movie, Loki is planning his next moves when he discovers a frost giant imprisoned in a volcano, who proves to be both the uncle he was named for and Laufey's first child. Soon Loki has a new mentor, Asgard is shaking off isolationist tendencies, Jotunheim is receiving foreign aid, and Earth is suddenly and vividly reacquainted with the existence of aliens....
Authors' Note: We were partially inspired by some of the theories proposed on the TV Tropes WMG page for the movie. We have taken the movie and combined it with the Eddas, the Gesta Danorum, and bits and pieces from other Marvel sources. We're having a lot of fun with it and hope you enjoy the result.
Chapter 2
Loki’s first act was to go and look out of the window. Midgard had changed in a thousand years, at least when it came to technology. They’d discovered some brighter dyes as well, he rather liked the clothes they were sporting.
‘Where did your wife go?’ his younger namesake asked abruptly.
Loki looked up from the window. ‘To see our children, I imagine,’ he said, lying easily. ‘It’s been a long time since she’s had the chance and I’m no longer in direct need of her magic.’
‘Will she return?’
‘Perhaps. She might not care to be drawn into the edges of a binding I agreed to without consulting her,’ said Loki. She would be back, of course, when she had the chance. But the boy would never know it.
‘She knows how to world-walk?’ said the boy, pensively.
‘Evidently.’
‘What do you know of world-walking?’
‘More than you,’ said Loki. ‘That was the most ill-prepared trip between worlds I’ve ever been a part of.’
‘It’s a safe route,’ the boy said defensively. ‘I’ve used it several times.’
‘The energies of the casket are designed to ward them off,’ said Loki. ‘You weren’t using it properly, but it was enough to scare off most of the smaller ones.’ And, to be fair, the route had avoided most of the big ones.
The boy considered, eyes lowered in what was clearly a habitual gesture to hide his thoughts. ‘Is that why Odin took the casket? To prevent movement between worlds?’
Perhaps he should have kept quiet, thought Loki ruefully. Although that had never been his strong point. He didn’t really want the boy moving armies between worlds, although he clearly wasn’t allied with Jotunheim and there wasn’t anywhere else likely to provide him with one.
‘Answer,’ said the boy sharply.
‘I’d imagine so,’ said Loki. ‘The war was still going on when I was imprisoned.’
‘How many people can it move?’
‘As many as the Bifrost,’ said Loki. ‘It uses a lot of the same technology. Jotunheim and Asgard were trading knowledge for a while before Midgard was discovered and became a point of contention.’
‘That’s not true,’ said the boy. ‘Odin would not give knowledge to monsters.’
‘I could take offense at that,’ said Loki mildly. ‘Don’t forget I’m one of these monsters you speak of. Besides, most of the knowledge on world-walking was flowing the other way. He taught them rune magic as his part of the bargain.’
Really, had Odin completely neglected to give his sons any sense of their own history? What had he been thinking? Especially with this one who needed to understand the history of Asgard and Jotunheim to understand himself. The shocked looks the information was eliciting were starting to appeal to Loki’s sense of mischief, and turning this into a history lesson seemed like a good distraction from more dangerous topics.
‘Early world-walking was undertaken without much more preparation than you use,’ said Loki. ‘In a sense you’re re-inventing it, which is quite impressive. Odin was probably the first among the Asgardians to try it, and he made it to Jotunheim where it was already a developing art. We actually met in extradimensional space, the first time.’
‘The casket…you’re older than it?’ said the boy.
Loki laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Bridging the worlds was a big project when Odin and I were young.’
‘He never told me,’ said the boy. ‘He never told us anything about himself. Not from before the war with Jotunheim.’
Loki smiled. ‘He was desperately curious, about everything, and quite reckless. I suppose I was, too, and we urged one another on, competing to see who could go furthest. After his father died he was forced to settle down, somewhat. At least to the point where he couldn’t be the one trying to world-walk from Yggdrasil's roots to its crown and document everything on the way.’
The boy blinked. ‘He says Thor is too reckless. When he went to Jotunheim against orders Father was furious.’
‘So maybe that’s why he didn’t tell you.’
The boy shook his head. ‘If I can activate the Bifrost I can activate the casket?’
‘Yes,’ said Loki.
‘Then that’s all I need to know. Stay here, I need to contact Muspelheim.’
He turned to leave but Loki called after him, ‘Muspelheim?’
‘It’s none of your concern.’
‘It might be yours. The Muspel giants can’t use the casket, for one thing it uses ice magic. That’s hardly compatible with fire beings.’
The boy turned back, looking faintly embarrassed and trying to hide it. ‘I can simply lead them through the safe route, then, and use the casket to ward off danger rather than on them.’
Loki shook his head hard. ‘No, you can’t. The Muspel giants are energy beings. They’ll attract every extradimensional predator within smelling distance. There’s a reason they’ve never been able to world-walk.’
‘So I need to create something new. Something more like the Bifrost.’
‘Not unless it’s twice as strong. The Bifrost can’t carry things with their own energy, it would break under the strain.’
The boy looked at him. ‘Find a way to do this.’
‘What? You can’t order me to do the impossible,’ said Loki, suppressing the desire to laugh. ‘Have you already promised them a way between worlds?’
The boy didn’t answer that question.
‘Ah, well. On the bright side they can’t get here to take it out on you,’ said Loki.
The boy looked up, eyes suddenly sharp. ‘Be silent. Do not speak again until I tell you to.’
Loki wanted to protest that that was distinctly unfair for a little flippancy. But, well, he couldn’t talk to protest anything. He wondered whether the boy was more perceptive than he realised, to choose a punishment Loki would hate, or simply annoyed enough to want him to stop talking.
Later that day he was given permission to talk again, with a simple, ‘What other ways are there of travelling between worlds? There are nine worlds, Jotunheim and Asgard can’t be the only ones to travel.’
Loki paused. ‘The Vanir had falconskins. The Dwarves never cared to travel, and the residents of Niflheim can world-walk by their nature, although few of the worlds they find are to their liking. The Norns and Elves bought technology from the Vanir.’
‘What are falconskins?’ asked the boy.
‘Single-person energy capsules. They’re less safe than the Bifrost but a lot more flexible. You can explore in them, they don’t just dump you at your destination. If you ever see one you’ll see where they get the nickname, they’re very streamlined.’
The boy nodded. ‘Do you know how to make one?’
‘No,’ said Loki, keeping the relief out of his voice. ‘The Vanir are very protective of their technology. They sell the finished falconskins, but not the design.’
‘Could they be adapted for use by Muspel giants?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Loki truthfully. ‘I’ve used one, but I have no idea how they work.’
'Didn't you and Odin ever try to reverse-engineer one?'
'At length. And when I say protective... well, the security features would probably have killed anyone else. Or either of us working alone.'
‘Then we’ll go to Vanaheim,’ said the boy. ‘Be ready to travel tomorrow. And glamour yourself.’
Loki rolled his eyes as the boy swept out. He did know better than to wander around Vanaheim blue these days. Those days. And probably these days as well. Anyway there was no reason for the look of disgust in the boy’s eyes. Glamour was a way of fitting in, and sometimes fun, but there was nothing wrong with being blue.
The problem with going to Vanaheim would be that Sigyn wouldn’t know about it. Currently she was the only one he was sure was on his side and Loki was reluctant to lose contact with her. There were sensible reasons, such as wanting Odin to know what his son was doing, but it was mostly emotion that was leading him to do something…well, rather stupid.
Loki stepped out beyond the slumbering coils of Jormungand and let off a burst of magic. It was a honed one, subtle enough for most of the creatures here not to feel it. The response was immediate.
A being came at him in a twitchy flurry of motion, a being composed mostly of curiosity and restless energy. It grabbed at his mind, gnawing at it like a nut as it tried to break through to the thoughts beneath. They had described it to the Norsemen as a squirrel, but they had been trying for comprehensible rather than accurate. Loki summoned up the power to grapple with it and push it back.
‘A message,’ he said. ‘Carry a message. Tell Verdrfolnir to tell Heimdall that Loki is in Vanaheim trying to borrow a falconskin.’
The response was immediate and enthusiastic. Ratatosk loved carrying messages, loved holding the information and passing it on. It was gone in a violent flurry leaving Loki to slink back behind Jormungand’s coils utterly exhausted.
Thor was trying to be patient. It had never been one of his strong points, but this did seem to be the time to exercise it. Going immediately to look for his wayward brother was not an option, as the most specific thing he knew about Loki's location was that he couldn't get there.
Sigyn could. Odin could. Odin had gone an entire month without even a hint that Asgard was not completely cut off from other realms by the Bifrost's destruction. Sigyn....
Among other things, Sigyn was asleep. However he chafed at the inability to do anything, Thor had hardly been going to interfere with offering her appropriate hospitality, and he rather suspected she had enough cause for frustration without adding sleep deprivation to the mix.
So when afternoon had drawn into late evening and it had become clear she wasn't simply taking a nap to recover, he'd gone to bed himself. He hadn't slept. Two hours before dawn, he'd stalked into the library. The history section seemed erratically used and not very well cleaned; half a shelf might be pristine and the other half coated in grey.
By the time the sun rose, Thor had located several books that might be useful, surrounded himself in a cloud of dust, chased it out the window on a brisk breeze, and apologised to a coughing and very confused gardener. He was starting to think it might have been more efficient to make another try at asking his father questions. It wasn't as if Odin slept nights.
He'd been reading for an hour and still didn't really know what was going on -- possibly in part because he wasn't concentrating terribly well -- when he was startled by Sigyn herself speaking to him. 'Perhaps this is an unfair comparison to your older brother,' she said, 'but I was surprised to be told you were in the library.'
'Ah,' Thor said, looking up and trying not to be flustered. He hadn't expected her to come and find him. Maybe that was a good sign? 'Good morning. No, it's unusual for me too, but yesterday's explanations raised more questions for me than they answered.'
'That's not very unusual. I suppose Odin and I were not giving you much help, but I'd have expected you to know the basics of the history involved. Though I imagine Loki's imprisonment might have been something Odin did not care to talk about much.' She looked over his shoulder. 'Found any of your answers?'
Thor looked down at the book ruefully. 'Not really.'
Sigyn took the next chair and rested her chin on her hands. 'Do you want to ask me any of the questions?'
'I wasn't sure you'd want to talk to me at all, but if you're offering.' Then it was a matter of choosing something. Herself, her Loki, his Loki. Walking between worlds. Baldr. 'Where on Earth are they?' he asked finally. 'He threatened... one of my friends. He said it to provoke me, I think, but I am not sure he wouldn't do it to provoke me now.'
'I didn't stop to ask what they're calling the area now, but it was on the continent we used to visit most often, and nowhere near the most recent residues from the Bifrost.' She shrugged, looking sympathetic. 'Not that it would be very difficult for them to go there.'
Thor nodded. 'Still something of a relief.' He hesitated, trying again to narrow down to a single question that requested only information. One topic predominated this time, at least, though even so it was hard to know where to start. 'Baldr,' he said. 'I have not heard much about him and... his mother's people.'
'He'd be terribly disappointed by that. He was quite famous at the time.' Sigyn's mouth quirked. 'His mother was a mortal princess. Rindr. Odin was quite taken with her. She decked him three times and tricked him into a rendezvous with a goat before he stopped courting her father and tried actually wooing her.'
Thor choked, partly at the idea of Odin with someone besides Frigga -- he knew it had happened, he just wasn't sure he wanted to imagine it -- and partly at the mental image itself. 'She sounds like Sif.' Mostly the violence, though Sif actually had pulled a trick on an importunate suitor involving a goat. Loki had helped. Well, Loki had done most of it. Thor sighed. That had been a good week.
Sigyn blinked. 'Er.. in what way?'
Thor spent a confused moment before remembering that Sif was named for his own namesake's wife -- well, he hadn't forgotten that, after the entertainment it had provided half the rest of Asgard -- and that Sigyn presumably knew one and not the other. 'I'm sorry. My friend Sif. My age. She is one of Asgard's fiercest warriors -- with blades, not sorcery.'
'Oh, I see. Interesting. Perhaps I'll meet her.' Sigyn picked up the previous thread of conversation. 'But Baldr. He grew up with his mother's family, mostly. He was very handsome, charming, very kind outside of battle and very fierce in it. He was nearly as sturdy as a full Asgardian and eager to help defend his home against the Jotun invaders, but a little taken aback on learning Loki was a friend. And Nari.' At Thor's confused look, she added, 'Our child. Took after Loki physically. Vali looked Asgardian and was thus somewhat less of a shock.' A smile. 'And Leikin was... unique. Anyhow, at a time when the larger war was being fought elsewhere, Baldr was competing with a human friend of Loki's for both a woman and a kingdom.'
'...And Loki decided to make things fairer.'
'Well, I don't think Hod needed his help with Nanna. He was charming enough himself, and she had heard Odin did not marry Baldr's mother and told him that relationships between gods and mortals would not work out. Because the gods were at once too illustrious and too untrustworthy, I think, which strikes me as a bit muddled. He didn't take it well, especially given how many women in Asgard thought he was an adorable child.'
Thor winced.
'And neither Hod nor Baldr saw any reason they shouldn't use gifts from the gods to preserve their own people and gain them glory and victory,' Sigyn concluded. 'And when some of Asgard's warriors fought on Baldr's side -- thinking to recapture the sword Mistilteinn -- Hod actually damaged Mjolnir with it and routed them.'
Thor glanced down at the hammer beside him in disbelief. 'Damaged Mjolnir?'
Sigyn flicked one hand out, palm up. 'It's a very good sword. Hod and his army, I think, got rather carried away. Asgard was more than a bit alarmed. And as it seems now... Loki thought Odin intended Baldr to take Midgard, Odin thought Loki meant Hod to turn on Asgard, neither of them knew everything that was going on, and things only got worse once they each assumed their own point of view was obvious and started shouting at each other.'
'That sounds like my arguments with Father,' Thor muttered, then looked at her thoughtfully. 'And your point of view?'
'Hah. Much like Loki's, with less yelling, as that's the side of things I was there to see. I only put much of this together yesterday.' She grimaced. 'Otherwise, I'd have made more of an effort to clear things up before now.' She returned his scrutiny. Thor got the feeling she was better at it. 'Your friends in Midgard. Would they include a lover?'
Definitely better at it. 'Someone I want to be.' Then, 'How did you guess?'
'A little by tone, a little by the look in your eyes. The interest in how your half-human brother lived.' She smiled sadly. 'Is that the friend your brother threatened?'
Thor nodded. 'And the one I promised to return to.'
'Before you broke the Bifrost to save Jotunheim.' A pause. 'My Loki would appreciate that.'
Thor looked away from her. 'Mine had reason to be surprised I would stop him.'
'I said some intemperate things about the Vanir in my youth,' Sigyn said after a moment, 'but no one ended up incorporating them into an identity crisis.'
'Mm.' Thor closed the book he'd been ignoring. That reminded him of another comment. 'You said another of Odin's sons had gone crazy. Did you mean Baldr was, for trying to conquer Midgard?'
'Well, I may not have been completely fair. I did think he should know better, but it wasn't exactly surprising that he'd want a kingdom. That he obsessed over Nanna to the point of making himself deathly ill, on the other hand....' Sigyn shrugged. 'He was handsome, charming, brave, and very competent at nearly everything he tried. He was also emotional, dramatic, and unsure of his place in the world.'
That did sound uncomfortably familiar. 'I would prefer to find my brother before he tries to conquer Earth or makes himself ill over his obsessions.' Thor grimaced. 'Or for that matter, provokes your husband to the point of getting him killed.'
'I'll take you to Midgard,' Sigyn said, 'but you must promise to do as I tell you between the worlds. Don't wander off, don't try any magic of your own, and if anything tries to eat us, smash it.'
Thor blinked. Those were easier instructions than he’d expected. 'I think I can handle that.'
They left immediately after a quick breakfast. The journey was strange, darker than the Bifrost and full of the sensation of being watched. They were attacked by nothing very formidable; he feared for a moment that something like a swarm of leeches would prove too immaterial for Mjolnir, but they splattered aside. One greater creature seemed to raise its head as they passed, suddenly alert; Sigyn smiled, and then light broke around them and they were in a cold room with furniture surprisingly like some of Jane's. And... no one else there.
Sigyn's smile dropped away. She went and opened all the doors, shut them again with more force than was really necessary, and then stood in the middle of the first room and swore. 'I can't tell where they've gone.' She ground her teeth, then took a long breath. 'Well, as we're already here -- let's go find your friend.'
Jane frowned and raised her head as she realised someone was steadily knocking at her lab door.
One of the better sides of pursuing a discipline that frequently wrecked your sleep schedule was the ability to work without interruptions. Generally speaking, nobody spontaneously phoned to break her concentration at one in the morning, much less turned up in person. Although SHIELD was a lot more likely to do either one than your average funding agency.
She sighed, saved her work, and picked up her mug for a gulp of coffee on the way to the door. To avoid a lecture on security, she checked the peephole -- and was confronted by a pair of heartstopping blue eyes.
Galvanised, she suddenly had the door open without quite remembering how she'd undone the interior lock, and was holding on to the edge of it for support. It really was him. Thor. After a month. 'My God,' she said, 'it's you. You're here.' Her mug slipped from suddenly clumsy fingers.
Thor crouched and caught it, lightning quick -- Jane suppressed a wild urge to giggle at the thought. Coffee slopped onto his hand. 'I thought you said no smashing things,' he said, smiling.
Jane did laugh then. 'Hey, at least I didn't throw it. How -- uh --' How are you, how did it go with your brother, what kept you? She'd lost the question. There was a woman she didn't know standing behind Thor and looking amused. 'I'm sorry, I didn't see you. I'm Jane Foster.' She gathered the presence of mind to step back from the door and let them in.
'I know,' said the woman. 'I'm Sigyn.' Then, as Jane's eyes widened, 'Not his brother's wife, his uncle's.' Jane blinked. 'You looked as if you'd been doing some reading about us.'
'Some,' Jane said. 'I haven't been sure how much was accurate.' She hesitated, heading toward the coffee maker to give herself a moment to think. 'The main one I found about you involved keeping Loki from being tortured by a snake dripping venom in his face.' Which had clearly not been happening to Thor's brother Loki, but if there was another one....
Sigyn looked rather startled. 'I made his imprisonment more comfortable than it could have been,' she said. 'The prison was located in a volcano to weaken him, but he wasn't being deliberately tortured otherwise. Certainly not by snakes. But that's part of why we've come now.' She accepted the coffee Jane offered her and smelled it curiously. 'Thor's brother Loki... altered my husband's bindings. And last I knew, they were on Earth.'
Jane concluded that she was probably not getting back to work tonight. She was right. They went through three pots of coffee while Thor and Sigyn caught her up. Jane was absorbing the news and trying to think how and whether to break it to SHIELD when the air around Sigyn appeared to twist, and Sigyn herself flickered not quite out of visibility for a moment. Jane saw colour-bursts a little like those from pressing on closed eyelids, glimpsed one rather gruesome vision of what looked like an anatomical cross-section, and then Sigyn was sitting in the chair again, perfectly visible but rather pale. 'Are you all right?' Jane asked cautiously.
Sigyn nodded once, hard. 'Heimdall sends word,' she said, 'that Loki -- both Lokis, probably, have gone to Vanaheim.'
'Oh,' said Jane. 'Is that bad?'
Thor was frowning. 'In itself, not obviously, unless they intend to attack.'
Sigyn shook her head. 'Not to attack. To seek a falconskin -- the Vanir's way to travel between worlds,' she explained. Jane bit her tongue hard. The Bifrost was broken, but people were traveling between planets and dimensions on their own power, and now some third method. Surely she should be able to come up with something. At least the theory. If she had the theory, she'd bet Stark could implement it. But another way to travel didn't seem to account for how shaken Sigyn looked. 'If anything,' Sigyn added, 'that might make them both safer. But Loki sent the message by Ratatosk!'
Jane bit her lip, then asked carefully, 'Is that not a squirrel?'
Sigyn looked at her and then put her head down on one hand and laughed, although not really as if she thought it was funny. 'We did describe him that way. He is something like a squirrel. Only squirrels eat nuts, and he prefers thoughts. People who come into contact with him sometimes come away with less of them than they had going in.'
Jane winced. 'Okay, I can see why you're disturbed.'
'Loki's good at dealing with him. He's probably fine. I hope.' Sigyn sighed. 'And at least extradimensional space around Vanaheim shouldn't be as bad as around Asgard right now.'
'It didn't seem that bad,' Thor said. 'What did I miss?'
Sigyn looked up at him and chuckled. 'Those creatures you drove off were less trivial than you seem to think.'
'Are you going to Vanaheim to look for -- well, Loki and Loki?' Jane asked.
'If I'm to keep hunting all over Yggdrasil,' Sigyn groaned, 'I want a falconskin. Or at least more of this coffee stuff.' Jane might have taken this as a hint for a refill if the next pot hadn't still been brewing. 'I think we'd better. We need to find out what Thor's little brother is doing--'
'I was thinking we need to take him home,' Thor put in.
Sigyn raised an eyebrow at him. '--And anything else will probably be simplified if I can tell my husband Odin doesn't plan to imprison him again.' Well. That certainly made sense.
The next thing Thor said was, 'What about Jane?'
'What about me?' Jane replied, rather startled.
'That's a good question,' Sigyn said, eyebrows drawing together as she looked at Jane, nails drumming the handle of her mug. 'You may be in danger from the younger Loki; he seems to have taken offence at you. He is alive, travelling, and... erratic. On the other hand, he's been that way for a month, and right now we know he isn't even on your planet. Unassisted extradimensional travel is definitely dangerous.'
She hadn't thought they'd even consider taking her to Vanaheim, but now she really wanted to go. 'I'd like to try extradimensional travel,' she began.
'You will see Asgard one day, Jane,' Thor murmured.
'Ah -- well, that would be nice, definitely, but I actually meant I'd really like to see extradimensional space.'
Sigyn was grinning by that point. 'That could actually make it easier to take you. As long as you don't will yourself anywhere we're not going. It's partly a question of mindset,' she explained. 'I'd hate to discover you had potential as a sorcerer by misplacing you.'
Jane tried not to look too eager or to frown. The thought of seeing other worlds, other spaces, fascinated her. But it wasn't a pleasure trip. She also remembered knowing it was stupid not to run, and being unsure if it would help if she did. She remembered seeing huge, solid Thor thrown and broken by what almost looked like a casual, impulsive blow from a giant robot. Not even its main attack. 'I wouldn't want to get in your way, either.'
'Even if we took you to Vanaheim,' Sigyn said, with an air of thinking aloud, 'we'd hardly take you along for any confrontations. The first thing would be find out what the Vanir mean to do. Odin must have contacted them by now.' She eyed Thor. 'Then I might leave you both behind while I talk to my husband.'
Thor looked displeased, but said, 'Especially if the plan is capture.'