Thor Fic: "We Are Our Own Folklore" (R, Loki/Darcy, Thor/Jane), 3b/7
LINK TO BEGINNING OF CHAPTER
*
Thor knew not what’d happened, but when he received a summons from the queen he rushed to attend on his mother right away.
The guard who had brought the message had carried with him a grim feeling, and Thor couldn’t help it as he approached with foreboding and worry already rising inside him. Had someone been injured? Had there been some sort of attack?
He knew his mind was getting the best of him by jumping to extreme possibilities. But he was starting to think that any event at Asgard where he was the center of attention was cursed.
When he reached the door to the queen’s quarters he was surprised to see his brother coming from the other way. Loki was still in the form of a woman, a fact Thor had accepted wearily, and his usually immaculate appearance was out of order enough that it hinted he’d gotten dressed in a hurry. His long hair was free-flowing and his body mostly concealed by a cloak.
Loki took in Thor without expression, but a startled note briefly flashing in his eyes. Silently they came forward and met each other.
“She sent for you too?” Thor asked.
Loki nodded. “No explanations as to why. Only the strongly implied request that I should hurry.”
“The same,” Thor returned. He fell silent as he considered his brother. There had been little chance for them to speak since the throne room. “How are you? Is Darcy well?”
Briefly Loki pulled a face. “She’s fine. I’m trying to keep her hidden,” he responded, distracted, before continuing with quiet intensity: “If at all possible, try not to mention her in front of Nanna or the other guests from Vanaheim. I’m trying not to antagonize her further.”
Almost nothing his brother had said made any sense to Thor. “Why? What would Nanna care about-?”
He interrupted himself however, head turning and mouth closed tightly as he caught the sound of voices from behind Frigga’s door. He didn’t have to look to know Loki was listening too.
From beneath layers of wood, metal and stone emerged two distinct voices. None of the words could be made out, but Thor certainly recognized how his parents sounded. The All-Father was already in the queen’s chamber.
Thor turned back and met his brother in the eye.
“That makes all of us, then,” Loki remarked, cagy. Thor knew what he was thinking: if their mother wished to gather the family together in private, it could be for no small matter.
He nodded back somberly. “Aye.” They both hesitated a moment, before he took it on himself to make the leading move. “Come. Let us see what this is about.”
They drew side-by-side and walked in together.
Inside they found Frigga already sitting down, hands pressed together over her mouth, face pale. Odin stood close by her side and watched her with an expression of concern mixed with exasperation.
“There,” the king said, the minute he glanced up to notice both his sons had walked into the room. “They are both here now. Now will you explain what it is that so troubles you, so that we may begin finding a way for the problem to be mended?”
So he had no idea what was happening either - he was only attending to the summons of his wife.
“I fear it is a solution that has no immediate way of mending,” Frigga all but whispered, her voice cracking. “There is a grave threat looming, and it is possibly all my fault.”
“Here now, what’s this?” Thor demanded. Moving closer he took up one of the hands his mother had dropped away from her mouth. “Mother. Whatever it is that ails you, please, I beg of you speak plainly. You know I will do anything to help you.” He glanced at his father, his brother. “We all will.”
Frigga did not meet her eldest son’s eyes. She gazed right past him, looking at Loki instead in a way that seemed almost desperate.
“Nanna knows. She knows the truth.” Loki went rigid, and the queen’s head swung around to look at her husband in a similar manner. “She found out where Loki came from. She knows his origins; she knows that he is not really our-”
She stopped, voice choked and heartbroken, unable to finish.
Thor’s fingers had gone limp where they held his mother’s, and tearfully she slipped her hand from his grasp. He barely noticed. He felt curiously disconnected from his body, so caught up was he in the reeling of his mind.
For anyone outside of their immediate family to know of Loki’s race was a frightening prospect. Thor had learned the hard way that the longer a secret was buried the uglier it seemed when it first came to light. That it mattered not to them where Loki’s blood had come from was meaningless - it would not sit so well with the rest of Asgard. Not once they found out they’d been deceived on so vast a scale.
And Loki still had enemies on Asgard; not the sort that hungered for his life but that watched him constantly, waiting for proof he could not be trusted. Now that he knew to listen for it Thor had seen that the prejudices of an ancient conflict were still strong with his people. If it became known that Loki was born a Frost Giant, no one would believe the false actions he took before were for anything other than treason.
There would be an outcry demanding Loki’s banishment, or worse, his life. And if the All-Father ignored these voices he ran the risk of having his subjects turn against him.
Their entire family could be threatened. All it took was for one soul to breathe the truth.
And that deadly secret was now in the hands of someone with the respect and authority to be believed when they said it, and who’d already demonstrated a vile grudge against them.
Thor stood up slowly, waiting in vain for his head to stop spinning, for the dagger of anxiety to unbury itself from his chest.
“How can this be?” Odin demanded, aghast. “Nanna could not have uncovered this on her own. She has no such resources on Vanaheim. Someone would’ve had to come to her with the information, but whom? I certainly guarded my tongue,” his one eye moved to his firstborn, “and Thor would know better than to-”
“Our allies on Earth know, but only because the fact is meaningless to them,” Thor said inanely. “But there can’t have been an opportunity for them and Nanna to cross paths.”
All the while Loki remained unnaturally silent, and still, his face cast over in shadows, his eyes glazed with fear. Of course no one asked if he had told anyone he’d originally come from the Jotun.
Frigga broke the silence. “I told someone.” She rose to her feet, expression remorseful. “My brother.”
Her husband both recoiled and whirled on her all at once. “What?”
“Frey knew that I had not given birth,” Frigga stated, intonation close to pleading. “Everyone else believed me when I said I’d been unwell, that I’d kept the pregnancy a secret, even my own maids. But Frey didn’t. He knew there’d been no sign at all I was with child. You know what they used to say.”
Slowly Odin nodded, expression unreadable, though the line of his mouth was hard. “That though Frey was born twin in body to one sister, it was to the other he was closest,” he stated, quiet.
“After Loki had been presented to the court, Frey was convinced he couldn’t possibly be…mine.” Frigga wavered on the words, stubborn: Thor knew full well his mother very much considered Loki hers. But the truth was, he wasn’t - not in the most technical sense. “He came to me with his suspicions. He was concerned, that was all, wondering what reason we could possibly have to lie.”
Her words were so insistent. Thor wondered who it was she was working so hard to convince. His father? Herself?
“You swore you would not tell anyone,” Odin said, his voice the harsh fast tone that meant he was close to yelling in his anger. “You swore.”
His children had been on the receiving end of this particular type of disapproval before - one stemming not from him as a father or even a god but as a king, one who had to enforce discipline and take it seriously whenever one of his subjects was disobedient.
Thor could never think that he’d heard this voice directed at his mother.
“I did swear,” Frigga retorted through anger of her own, bitter and restrained. “At your insistence. And likewise, by your command, I lied to everyone, and I held my tongue.” She shook her head, eyes glittering with tears she was too proud to shed. “But when Frey asked me, I couldn’t find it in my heart to lie to him as well.” Her voice softened. “There should be no secrets among family.”
From the corner of his eye, Thor saw Loki twitch.
Odin drew in a breath. His words carried the weight of a proclamation.
“So,” he declared, “you broke your promise. Your oath to me as your king, the agreement we had between us as wife and husband.”
“I never wanted that agreement!” Frigga was just as firm. “It was you who would concede to nothing else.”
Odin’s patience finally broke through in a roar. “Do you not perhaps now see why?”
For some reason Thor’s mind went back, back to the day of his banishment to Earth. He and his father shouting at one another - and the whole time Loki had been there, a silent witness, presence uncared for by them both. He wondered, had this been what that moment had been like for his brother?
Had Loki felt the same sick horror he did now?
“I had Frey’s word,” Frigga protested, but with far less conviction now. “He said he would take it to his grave.”
“Except he didn’t. He took it to Balder’s,” Odin growled. His wife could no longer meet his eye, shamed by the knowledge she had made a careless if heartfelt, costly mistake. “That’s the way of it, isn’t it? He told his wife, and now Nanna knows. If she wanted to she could make all of Vanaheim our enemy! Perhaps more! All she need do is find the right way to twist this all around…”
“There’s irony in that, truly.”
Loki suddenly speaking out, voice thick with black humor, shaking with laughter he couldn’t force to come, brought the argument grinding to a halt.
Slowly Thor turned to look at him, dreading what he would see in Loki’s face.
Frigga glanced to her second child with something akin to abject fear. Odin’s face was more guarded, angry still but restraining himself, and weariness appearing in the space left behind.
Loki stared back at them with glassy eyes, shoulders drawn away from his ears, fingertips moving spasmodically, lower lip trembling.
“So once again it’s all my fault,” he said in an awful tone of voice. “I’ve ruined everything. Asgard, on the brink, because of me.” For a few seconds he managed a rueful smile. “And this time, all I had to do was exist.”
Thor’s feet were rooted to the floor, his tongue too thick to reply.
Frigga moved toward Loki, reaching out to him. “Loki…”
But he shied back from her grasp, gazing blankly at her. Whatever Frigga saw in his eyes, it made her expression crumble, guilt-stricken. “I am sorry that this is happening. Please forgive me-”
He did not. Once again, speechless, he turned his back on his family and fled the room.
Thor watched him go and recalled when the celebrations for his engagement had first begun, how happy it had made him.
Not because it was in his honor, but because it was the first time since Loki had returned that there’d been such an occasion. Thor had looked forward not only to sharing the good times with Jane but together with his entire family, united.
But now this event had become a disaster.
*
When he retreated to his room, Loki found it empty. Darcy was gone.
She had left a note for him on the bed, claiming boredom and telling him she planned to spend the day with Jane. She promised to be careful; he could as good as read her eyes rolling between the lines written on the page, but he knew Darcy had decent sense in her. It was only a matter of getting her to use it.
She could joke all she liked but she knew Nanna was a potential threat to her. She would be cautious.
Loki was glad for the moment that she wasn’t there. He was in no mood to explain what’d happened to her.
He couldn’t give name to what emotion he was feeling. It was heavy in his chest, hot, threatening to strangle him. But he didn’t know how to best exorcise it when he didn’t know what it was.
There was aggravated tension in him, and partly he wanted to cause damage. He could tear the tapestries from his wall, throw things, turn over furniture, sweep the books from his shelves, scream and yell and curse. It was certainly a possibility.
In the end, though, he bypassed those options. Instead he climbed directly into bed, flopping down on the mattress and pulling the coverlet tight around his shoulders.
He drifted in some restless state halfway between a trance and dreaming. It was preferable, since it meant he didn’t need to think.
Hours later there came a knock at his door, and Loki’s eyes flew open, refocusing.
He didn’t feel like using his voice. He cast out a tendril of magic, curling unseen through the air, searching, to get a read on whoever stood outside his door.
Mother.
He breathed in sharply.
“Loki, please,” she called from the other side, begging, he having taken too long to respond. “Let me in.”
For a few seconds he stayed where he was, face halfway into his pillow, letting her worry. Then he twisted his one hand, using a gesture to distantly unlock his door.
“Let yourself in,” he told her, dully, and sat up.
He wouldn’t let her apologize to him. Every time she tried he turned away, refusing to meet her eyes, and wordlessly shook his head.
He was upset. But he wouldn’t make her feel sorry for what she had done - he knew she’d meant him no harm by it.
Finally she took the hint and fell silent. Loki remained where he was, sitting up in bed with hands resting in his lap, and his mother moved a chair so she could sit down beside him.
First she reached out to him, petting in a reassuring gesture, smoothing his now-longer hair. When he neither pulled away nor was inclined to speak, she seemed struck by quiet inspiration. Producing a brush she ran it through his hair in gentle, even strokes.
Loki waited until she was halfway through, and then he said, flat, “Shame you couldn’t have raised me as a daughter instead. Everyone would have been much better off.”
Frigga gave him a look more reproachful than chagrined, and for one instant her hand ceased being so kind with the brush: his scalp stung as his hair was yanked, hard.
Without pause Frigga returned to her measured strokes.
“You were raised as what you are. Cruel words spoken by your tutors and other children aside, do you really think you would’ve made so much a better girl?” his mother remarked, serene. “I’ve no doubt you would have been a hellion, full of mischief, no matter what. Do you imagine you’d have enjoyed lessons in the women’s circle, hours spent sitting and quietly practicing weaving or embroidery? Do you think your scholarly pursuits would’ve been mocked less were you a princess instead of a prince?”
Peaceably she finished what she was doing and dressed his hair in a long braid that fell before his left shoulder.
“And what of fighting? Oh, I know you think yourself so different from your brother in that regard, but the truth is sometimes you love a good spar much as he does. No,” she concluded, “I think all that would change is that we’d find ourselves with two Lady Sifs.”
“All right, all right,” Loki muttered testily, sinking back a bit into the pillows. Visible sulking aside though, he conceded. He knew she was right.
A smile faintly graced the queen’s lips. But then she grew more serious, brow creasing.
“You can’t help what you were born to be, Loki.” She reached out, cupping fingers under his chin and turning his face so he couldn’t avoid her eyes. She gazed at him insistently. “And there is nothing wrong with that.”
He swallowed, voice thick. “Is that really what you think?” He’d meant the question to sound sardonic, almost disdainful, but instead it came out like an inquisitive plea.
“Yes,” she insisted. “And so does everyone who cares for you.” He fidgeted under her centered focus, uncomfortable, and she released him. “You are loved as you are. You need be nothing else. I thought you had learned that.”
Tightly, he whispered, “Things would be so much different if only I wasn’t a Frost Giant.”
Frigga kept her head up, conviction firm. “I do not want ‘different’. I want the child I raised.”
That she could say that while he was sitting there shapeshifted into a woman, showing no trace of hesitation or even acknowledgement of the irony, almost made him laugh. But, oh, she had always been the one to rarely bat an eye in the face of all his previous…oddities.
Instead he remained quiet and where he was, and allowed her to lean in and hug him.
“I will leave you, to your peace,” Frigga said, rising after she was done, “and your thoughts, whatever they may be. I only wanted to be certain you were all right.”
“For now,” he told her softly, truthful enough, head lifting to meet her eyes.
Though such a response probably gave her no joy to hear she accepted it. True to her word, she left him.
Alone in the now deathly silent room, Loki contemplated matters. For a while he sat propped where he was, limbs stretched out like a discarded doll’s; a glum and half-focused look on his face like a moping child’s.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? He was acting like a child. How many times had he been faced head on with the difficulties of this current situation, and instead of saying or doing anything about it turned tail and fled?
Too many times, that was how many. What had happened to him?
After his fall he had been so full of desire and determination to prove himself. To show he was not the weak brother Thor and the others had so often shunted aside. He was a warrior, a man, a god; his every action was a show of strength, or power, or cunning. He fought his battles alone.
He was full of rage and what he thought was righteous anger, driven by a single-minded purpose of being taken seriously. He would not be ignored any longer; they would see him, and if he could not have their respect then he would take their fear, their revulsion.
When he came back he was forced to acknowledge how wrong-footed he’d been.
But more than that, Loki now realized that he had been trying, in vain, to turn back the clock.
He let himself go back to his old role, his old habits. Where before he’d had a voice he was determined to use, now he fell silent. In trying to fit back into the space he’d left behind he had gone too far in the other direction.
On Earth or any of the other realms he stood tall, he fought, he accepted attention without a second thought. But on Asgard…he let his old home comfort him like a warm blanket he was wrapped in, fearful of change, allowing himself to never be asked to do anything.
He slipped in with the shadows, lay hidden, safe, still. He let himself be ignored. He let himself become a child in his parents’ home again, not a man with his own agenda. The way they treated him reflected that more than anything: his mother coddled him, his father was too afraid to discipline him.
He knew in his heart his mother meant well, and he supposed the same was true of Odin. But enough was enough.
He didn’t want to be protected any more. He didn’t need it. More than that, right now his family and loves ones needed him.
Loki rose from the bed and walked halfway to his window, staring out at the view with a half-focused gave. One hand he made into a fist and brought closer to his face; he glanced down at it then looked in front of him again. He burned with concentration, thoughts shifting.
The whole reason the people that defended and accepted him after all he did were now facing difficulties was because of him. He was the lodestone for Nanna’s anger. He knew that clearly. Whatever of her vitriol she directed at the others was only incidental.
But if she wanted Loki, the trickster, the monster, then so be it. He would deal with her.
He could take care of this, and when he was finished the others could rest well and know their safety was assured.
Loki went straight to the area of the palace where his aunts were staying. No one tried to stop him - no one even saw his passing, for he kept himself shrouded in glamour.
He knocked on the door and hid his dismay when no servant or lesser guard but Freya herself answered.
He drew himself up and stared loftily into her pale eyes. “Most noble Lady Freya,” he showed her courtesy in his greeting, “I am desirous of an audience with your mistress. Will you let me pass?”
The leader of the Shieldmaids stared at him, harsh and judgmental. Loki tried to ignore how dry his throat felt.
Between her warrior nature and apparent lack of any sense of humor, it was no surprise Freya had always disapproved of him. Loki knew his chances of her permitting him by were weak at best, but there was nothing to be lost at this point in trying the straightforward approach.
But though her expression didn’t relax the slightest, without a word Freya moved back, allowing him space to enter.
Loki glided past her and resisted the urge to glance behind him when he heard the door close.
Nanna stood near the center of the room, apparently doing nothing. But she flinched when she looked up and saw Loki there.
“You.” Her eyes widened, nostrils flaring slightly as she breathed out, every muscle in her face twisting in a portrait of livid disgust. “You have the nerve to come this way, and bring yourself within my sight?”
“I do,” Loki replied. “After all Nanna of Vanaheim, with all due respect, it is not I that is a guest in this palace but you.”
“And yet I have more rightful claim to it than you,” she declared. “By virtue of not being a criminal, or a murderer, and being at least of the right species.”
Loki almost expected her to spit at him. Certainly her face looked hateful enough.
“I know what you are,” she continued, heated. “What’s more, we both know what you did.”
Evenly, Loki began, “I never meant to harm your-”
“Lies!” Nanna shouted. “Nothing but lies! Who could believe a word from your mouth, when it’s all you have ever been capable of.” She moved anxiously to one side, head turning to keep her glare fixed on Loki. “As if I could think what you did to Balder was an accident: everyone knew you were jealous of him!”
“I won’t waste my breath trying to convince you of what you are so if wrongly certain,” Loki murmured. “But I will not be sent away until I have been given a chance to speak.”
Nanna glowered at him with her haggard, haunted face. He could feel the weight of Freya’s eyes, unwavering, at his back.
“And what could you possibly have to say?” was Nanna’s demand. “You took my son from me. I never had a chance to see the handsome man he was destined to become. Your kind stole my husband. What is it that you have to say?”
Loki inhaled, and kept his words calm and reasoned, even as he allowed a strain of emotion in so that what he said would become a heartfelt plea.
“Your presence here, your actions; they threaten to disrupt the entire court. Maybe even more. This is my father’s kingdom, my mother’s household. The entire purpose of this gathering was to celebrate one of the happiest days in my brother’s life. Yet you would spoil that happiness for him and his intended.” He forced his shoulders to relax, lifting his chin up.
“Your quarrel is with me, Aunt. Not them. I know better than to ask if there is anything I can do to make amends with you - for there is nothing, at least not that I would willingly undertake.”
Guilty though he was in Balder’s demise, he wouldn’t offer his throat to her. His life and his liberty were his own at present and he would not trade them to soothe one woman’s wrath.
“But there must be some way I can appease you, for now. Satisfy you in the short-term so that you can keep your grudge stilled until after these celebrations are over.” Loki said earnestly, “Please, for the sake of my family and not to ruin this for them. It’s all I ask.”
He was betting in part of there being something left of Nanna’s honor. If she truly wanted to see the palace in ruins there was nothing he could do. But did she really want to destroy everything and unleash so much chaos over what she felt Loki had done to her?
All he could do was wait for her response and pray his hopes and his thoughts weren’t wrong.
Nanna was silent long enough that Loki began to feel anxious. But then her hands curled into fists, she drew her back straight, breathed in through her nose and spoke.
“You want to know what it is you can do, to appease me? So that I can make it through these wretched celebrations without ruining Thor’s delights, and remain quiet and out of the way?”
She raised her head again and met his eyes.
“Leave,” she stated, cold. “Remove yourself from Asgard. I will not remain here peaceably so long as you are anywhere on this planet, let alone under the same roof.”
There were certainly worse things she could’ve asked. Still Loki felt a hole in his stomach. “When?”
“Immediately.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “If my son did not get to make his farewells, why should you?”
Loki felt both dejected and, frankly, annoyed. He would not be banished forever: even if that was what Nanna was intending, the boundaries of the Nine Realms would not hold him for long. He would sneak back on the secret passages he’d mastered with his magic, the ways between worlds.
But it could take a while, depending where he landed. And in the meantime Thor and Darcy and the rest would not know what had happened to him. They might worry.
Or worse, they might think he had run away.
“I will do as you ask,” Loki sighed. It was a small price to pay for peace. “Shall I go now, then?”
“Oh yes.” Nanna gave an awful smile that had more the nature of a grimace. Over Loki’s shoulder she exchanged a look with Freya. “We’ll escort you to the Bifrost.”
“To make certain you don’t slight on your end of the bargain, Fork-Tongue,” Freya finished, terse. There was a glint of light against steel as she clutched the hilt of her weapon.
That glance between the two of them made Loki suddenly nervous.
It occurred to him this might be too easy. There definitely seemed to be more going on than had first appeared.
But it was too late to back out of it now.
*
At the furthest reaches of Asgard where the long arm of the rainbow bridge met the edge of what appeared to be an endless void, Heimdall the guardian stood his usual watch alone.
Everyone else in the Nine Realms, if they could, was going to the palace. Everyone else of rank wanted to be there to honor the Mighty Thor’s betrothal. Everyone else was more than happy to leave their regular duties and lives behind.
Heimdall did not, and would not. He had a job to do.
One of these days, it was to be assumed, there would finally come a celebration ceremonial and important enough that he would leave his post and join in. If not by choice then on order from his king.
Of course the king could always command him to attend any feast, but none would. No matter how it was intended it would offend the watcher. So until the near-fabled day of significance came, Heimdall was left to his own devices.
Not that the isolation seemed to bother him in the slightest. He held his spot, back ramrod-straight, sword firmly between his hands, his eyes unblinking and unwavering as he gazed ahead.
Most assumed duty was enough to sustain Heimdall, but a few did wonder, quietly (as if that made any difference), how he could stand to be out there on his own all the time.
If asked, Heimdall might answer that how could he ever be lonely, with the sights and sounds of an entire universe for company.
But nobody ever asked.
In the early afternoon on Asgard a small company began making its way down the rainbow road toward the Bifrost. They travelled on foot not horseback, promising a long and awkward journey. From peering midway across the galaxy Heimdall refocused his gaze upon them to determine their identities.
No known enemies to Asgard, though that was hardly a surprise; he recognized the figures of Freya Njorthsdottir and Lady Nanna Nepsdottir of Vanaheim.
The third person who was with them - even cloaked in seiðr and glamour, Heimdall could see who it was, especially when they were making no effort at all to hide their identity. The second prince of Asgard wore a woman’s shape, hair in a long braid as he walked alongside his aunts, glancing over at them from time to time as he kept his distance but matched their pace evenly.
Though not a single other muscle moved a thin crease formed on Heimdall’s forehead, the precursor to a contemplative frown.
The dislike both women had for Loki was notable, and well-known, especially to one who saw as much as Heimdall. What purpose could bring the three out here together was a mystery. Loki was the last person they would choose for an escort, and if they were leaving Asgard, it would not be with such little fanfare. But he could not think why the Vanaheim nobles would be leaving now anyway, so soon after they arrived.
Though Heimdall was known to be all-seeing, even his skillful eyes came with limits. Despite popular rumor he could not look into the future, and he could not truly see everywhere all at once.
Whatever conversation had taken place between the three that led them to this point, Heimdall had missed it.
Since he was not the sort to guess blindly, he waited for them to reach him, and more information to come from there.
When finally they came within reach of the observatory Nanna ceased walking and fell back, hands folded together within her sleeves, a composed look on her face. Loki stopped as well, mouth set, face wan. He gazed at the glittering crystals beneath his feet.
Did he remember every time the destructive battle he’d had here with his brother? Or did he do his best not to think on it? Heimdall could not say; Loki was well-versed in concealing emotions, and Heimdall could no more gaze inside someone’s heart or mind than he could see what was yet to come.
Leaving the other two at her back Freya kept walking. She came until there was a respectful distance between her and the watchman, and looked him eye to eye.
“Lady Freya,” he greeted her. “As always it is an honor for our paths to meet. Though I did not expect you to come again this way so soon.”
“It is business that brings me out here, noble Heimdall,” she returned, voice purposeful but detached. Her gaze drifted aside for a moment, not as if she had trouble holding the gatekeeper’s eyes but like her thoughts moved too fast to allow her own to hold still. When she looked again at him she was resolute.
“You swore to me once that I was indebted by you a favor. One that I had but to name.”
“Yes,” Heimdall assured, close to perplexed as his nature would allow to show. “For how you stood by me in defense of my watch when all others fell, I will do for you once anything you can ask of me. So long as it is not contrary to my duty or any of my other oaths.”
Freya gave a stiff nod after he confirmed these details. “Then on this day I wish to invoke that debt,” she stated.
“That is your right,” Heimdall breathed, steady.
For those inclined such as them that type of debt was usually intended to be ceremonial. Though he did not hold it against Freya for calling upon it, when he had made that promise he honestly never expected her to use it. There was nothing she would ever desire it for.
Without actually moving his eyes Heimdall glanced over at Nanna.
Unless, it was on the behalf of someone else, someone who she was honor-bound to follow, that she did it.
“Here is what I ask of you,” Freya said. Her voice was precise, words she had obviously weighed over, and rang clearly with the experienced act of command. “The next person who crosses through the Bifrost, you shall make yourself symbolically blind to their passing. You shall not tell anyone they were here or where they went after. No matter who asks you did not see them then, and you shall not see them wherever they are.”
Heimdall’s expression grew solemn and darkened. There was mischief afoot in this request; that much he could see clearly. But it did not break any of his oaths to obey.
“That is within my power to grant,” he told her. “I cannot ignore what is there, but I will hold my tongue.”
“Good,” said Freya, a fraction softer. “Then now and forevermore, we are even.”
Quickly she stepped aside, as if expecting him to speak in response and wanting no part of it.
Nanna came forward, Loki trailing her with the greatest reluctance. He had listened as Freya spoke, and several times did Heimdall see his jaw clench with displeasure.
“As representative of Vanaheim, Heimdall,” Nanna said in her reedy voice, “I command you to open the Bifrost.”
Heimdall bowed his head to her respectfully. The pieces, he thought, were beginning to fall into place. “And where do you wish me to open it to, my lady?”
Nanna gave a tight mirthless smirk. There was no word for how her eyes looked save ‘cruel’.
“Jotunheim.”
Loki drew a breath, shallow, and looked as if he felt sick. Nanna turned to him unsympathetically.
“That’s right,” she sneered, “I’m sending you home. To the world you belong to, and should have always remained on.”
With steady golden eyes Heimdall gazed at Loki. He waited for the young sorcerer to speak. Travel to Jotunheim from Asgard was forbidden by the King’s treaty, but Nanna had the authority to overrule that on her own behalf. But then in turn Loki’s authority overruled hers. As prince he could tell Heimdall not to activate the Bifrost.
Likely knowing what Heimdall was thinking, Loki gave an unhappy shake of his head. “Go on,” he told him. “You may do as she asks.” Then he went forward beneath the great dome to take his place for the journey.
For long as he could he looked back over his shoulder, not at Nanna and Freya but past them, back at the skyline and the city he was leaving behind.
Heimdall gave one last hard look at the noblewomen, but he couldn’t pick out the signs of whatever it was they held over Loki. He turned his back on them and went inside.
On the column at the center he sheathed his sword inside the mechanism, feeling the power thrum through his hands as the energy crackled and the air came alive. The walls began to spin.
Loki stood on the far side of the outer transport ring, hands fisted and head up in a way that was stubborn and purposeful, his back to Heimdall. But despite that Heimdall could see all around him, and he saw Loki’s face quite clearly: the way his eyes glistened, the sobs swallowed back in his throat.
It was not Heimdall’s place to judge, or make an account of anyone. He knew what was and what was not and understood the thousand details that lay beneath any story, and that none of them changed what was right and what was wrong.
It was not his to care to what race Loki belonged. Not his to care what choices he made. When Loki was king it’d been his duty to obey him; when he was a traitor it’d been his duty to protect the realm from him. Now that Loki was returned and pardoned it was Heimdall’s duty to respect him and act as if he had never left. And so that was exactly what he did.
But within the confines of his duty, though he was not supposed to, Heimdall could pick a side.
“Know this,” he said to Loki, aware the sound of the Bifrost would drown it out to those who still stood outside, “I may be forbidden to tell all where you have gone, but so long as you do not cloak yourself from my sight with your magic I will know where you are. And save few, all oaths are less than absolute.”
Loki flinched in surprise, but after a moment he gave a weak ironic smile.
“Oh believe me, Guardian,” he said, “I know.”
White lightning struck down and the Bifrost’s energy filled the room. And when it cleared, Loki was gone.
*
Despite their best efforts Jane and Darcy had managed to get on each other’s nerves after a few hours, though neither of them came out and actually said so.
Maybe it wasn’t that surprising. It could be annoying enough when they were working together. If they hadn’t met through Jane’s research they probably never would’ve been friends: theirs was a camaraderie that could only be forged by having gone through a weird, life-altering experience together, in spite of clashing personalities. Still, sometimes it was a bad thing when they felt somehow obligated to hang out.
Or maybe nowadays they were just making even more of an effort because both were aware of the possibility that one day they were going to be in-laws.
And wasn’t that a strange thought, Jane ruminated. Even the fact that she was going to have in-laws, actually. It almost didn’t sound like her.
In only a year, two at the most, she was going to be a married woman. That knowledge both scared and thrilled her.
If she dwelled on it too long she threatened to be overwhelmed.
Darcy had excused herself and gone off in search of her boyfriend. Jane once again pulled out her notebook, hoping this time she could make some progress before she got interrupted.
To her supreme frustration however she found she couldn’t focus. She stared and scribbled at her page but the answers wouldn’t come.
Eventually she set the notebook down in a huff.
Never mind that she’d only just gotten started. Clearly she needed a break.
She halfheartedly ran a brush through her hair, slipped on her shoes, and went out the door for a walk.
Leery of the crowds she stuck to the smaller back halls, the ones she was pretty sure were used exclusively by servants. Despite not knowing her way at all she wasn’t worried about getting lost. She’d just have to ask for directions from somebody.
Or, barring that, keep wandering until she ended up back in a main area. Once somebody recognized her she was sure Thor would come running.
That thought brought a fond smile to her lips.
As exasperating as he could be at times, she kind of liked having her own personal hero.
Jane was shaking her head with recollection and laughing to herself when all of a sudden she heard a voice.
“There you are.”
It was a sultry smug feminine tone, and one Jane definitely didn’t recognize. She whirled in alarm.
“I was wondering how long it would take before I was fortunate enough to find you alone.”
A woman stood there with flowing blond hair and a curvy figure made all the more noticeable by how her sleeveless white dress was cut to call attention to it. She watched Jane with piercing green eyes.
Taking a step forward, she moved with the lazy danger of a jungle cat. “So,” she mused, “you are the little mortal that Thor is so fond of.” The look she cast up and down was clearly unimpressed. “Well. I must say that I can’t really see what your appeal is, but I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.”
Jane backed up, uneasy. “Who are you?” She glanced around but there was no one else in sight.
“Oh, don’t trouble yourself, darling. In a minute it isn’t going to matter.”
Before Jane could even consider yelling for help the woman reached out with her slender but surprisingly strong arms and grabbed her.
She forcefully cupped Jane’s face in both hands, fingertips brushing her cheekbones. As Jane let out a shocked squeak of dismay she pressed a hard kiss fully covering her mouth.
Instantly her vision swam and faded. Her head felt dizzy and light. A mist seemed to settle over her: she could feel it, itching against her skin, tingling. At the same time her breath was being drawn hard, harder than should be possible, up out of her lungs. Like the woman was pulling something out of her, taking it for her own.
Where their lips met came a bruising heat. Jane couldn’t cry out as it was force-fed into her, scorching the back of her throat.
Abruptly the woman let go and shoved her away. Still seeing dancing spots Jane lost her balance, falling back to the floor, barely able to catch herself with her arms as she landed on her bottom.
She coughed, in pain and breathless, and lifted her head to stare upward with wide open eyes.
The woman tossed her hair, smiling, and before Jane’s very eyes she changed.
Her locks grew shorter, darker. Green eyes faded to brown. Her proportions became more petite. Her skin went from the unearthly pale of alabaster and cream to the more expected shade for a woman who worked in New Mexico but still never seemed to get enough sun. Even her clothes changed, from her filmy white dress with the golden accents to Jane’s button-down shirt and baggy jeans.
As Jane gaped at her, speechless, the woman who now looked exactly like her put one hand on her hip and stretched the other out in front of her, fingers curled back as she looked with a discerning eye.
“Hmmph,” she murmured - in Jane’s voice, at that, “it’s not much, is it?” She turned to where the nearby polished wall’s surface was slightly reflective, sticking her chest out and pouting and striking poses that were decidedly un-Jane-like. “If not for the crown, frankly, I think you’re getting the better end of this deal.”
“What do you mean?” Jane started to ask, but stopped in astonishment when her voice came out wrong.
She looked down and saw strands of blond hair and white lace and more cleavage than she’d ever had in her life.
“Oh,” she said in realization, voice tiny.
Looking back up she found the other woman grinning at her with her kidnapped face.
“That’s right. You get to keep my body. Enjoy it while you can.” Meaningfully she stretched out her left hand and wiggled her ring finger. “Because in the meanwhile, I’m going to marry Thor in your place.”
LINK TO PART FOUR
*
Thor knew not what’d happened, but when he received a summons from the queen he rushed to attend on his mother right away.
The guard who had brought the message had carried with him a grim feeling, and Thor couldn’t help it as he approached with foreboding and worry already rising inside him. Had someone been injured? Had there been some sort of attack?
He knew his mind was getting the best of him by jumping to extreme possibilities. But he was starting to think that any event at Asgard where he was the center of attention was cursed.
When he reached the door to the queen’s quarters he was surprised to see his brother coming from the other way. Loki was still in the form of a woman, a fact Thor had accepted wearily, and his usually immaculate appearance was out of order enough that it hinted he’d gotten dressed in a hurry. His long hair was free-flowing and his body mostly concealed by a cloak.
Loki took in Thor without expression, but a startled note briefly flashing in his eyes. Silently they came forward and met each other.
“She sent for you too?” Thor asked.
Loki nodded. “No explanations as to why. Only the strongly implied request that I should hurry.”
“The same,” Thor returned. He fell silent as he considered his brother. There had been little chance for them to speak since the throne room. “How are you? Is Darcy well?”
Briefly Loki pulled a face. “She’s fine. I’m trying to keep her hidden,” he responded, distracted, before continuing with quiet intensity: “If at all possible, try not to mention her in front of Nanna or the other guests from Vanaheim. I’m trying not to antagonize her further.”
Almost nothing his brother had said made any sense to Thor. “Why? What would Nanna care about-?”
He interrupted himself however, head turning and mouth closed tightly as he caught the sound of voices from behind Frigga’s door. He didn’t have to look to know Loki was listening too.
From beneath layers of wood, metal and stone emerged two distinct voices. None of the words could be made out, but Thor certainly recognized how his parents sounded. The All-Father was already in the queen’s chamber.
Thor turned back and met his brother in the eye.
“That makes all of us, then,” Loki remarked, cagy. Thor knew what he was thinking: if their mother wished to gather the family together in private, it could be for no small matter.
He nodded back somberly. “Aye.” They both hesitated a moment, before he took it on himself to make the leading move. “Come. Let us see what this is about.”
They drew side-by-side and walked in together.
Inside they found Frigga already sitting down, hands pressed together over her mouth, face pale. Odin stood close by her side and watched her with an expression of concern mixed with exasperation.
“There,” the king said, the minute he glanced up to notice both his sons had walked into the room. “They are both here now. Now will you explain what it is that so troubles you, so that we may begin finding a way for the problem to be mended?”
So he had no idea what was happening either - he was only attending to the summons of his wife.
“I fear it is a solution that has no immediate way of mending,” Frigga all but whispered, her voice cracking. “There is a grave threat looming, and it is possibly all my fault.”
“Here now, what’s this?” Thor demanded. Moving closer he took up one of the hands his mother had dropped away from her mouth. “Mother. Whatever it is that ails you, please, I beg of you speak plainly. You know I will do anything to help you.” He glanced at his father, his brother. “We all will.”
Frigga did not meet her eldest son’s eyes. She gazed right past him, looking at Loki instead in a way that seemed almost desperate.
“Nanna knows. She knows the truth.” Loki went rigid, and the queen’s head swung around to look at her husband in a similar manner. “She found out where Loki came from. She knows his origins; she knows that he is not really our-”
She stopped, voice choked and heartbroken, unable to finish.
Thor’s fingers had gone limp where they held his mother’s, and tearfully she slipped her hand from his grasp. He barely noticed. He felt curiously disconnected from his body, so caught up was he in the reeling of his mind.
For anyone outside of their immediate family to know of Loki’s race was a frightening prospect. Thor had learned the hard way that the longer a secret was buried the uglier it seemed when it first came to light. That it mattered not to them where Loki’s blood had come from was meaningless - it would not sit so well with the rest of Asgard. Not once they found out they’d been deceived on so vast a scale.
And Loki still had enemies on Asgard; not the sort that hungered for his life but that watched him constantly, waiting for proof he could not be trusted. Now that he knew to listen for it Thor had seen that the prejudices of an ancient conflict were still strong with his people. If it became known that Loki was born a Frost Giant, no one would believe the false actions he took before were for anything other than treason.
There would be an outcry demanding Loki’s banishment, or worse, his life. And if the All-Father ignored these voices he ran the risk of having his subjects turn against him.
Their entire family could be threatened. All it took was for one soul to breathe the truth.
And that deadly secret was now in the hands of someone with the respect and authority to be believed when they said it, and who’d already demonstrated a vile grudge against them.
Thor stood up slowly, waiting in vain for his head to stop spinning, for the dagger of anxiety to unbury itself from his chest.
“How can this be?” Odin demanded, aghast. “Nanna could not have uncovered this on her own. She has no such resources on Vanaheim. Someone would’ve had to come to her with the information, but whom? I certainly guarded my tongue,” his one eye moved to his firstborn, “and Thor would know better than to-”
“Our allies on Earth know, but only because the fact is meaningless to them,” Thor said inanely. “But there can’t have been an opportunity for them and Nanna to cross paths.”
All the while Loki remained unnaturally silent, and still, his face cast over in shadows, his eyes glazed with fear. Of course no one asked if he had told anyone he’d originally come from the Jotun.
Frigga broke the silence. “I told someone.” She rose to her feet, expression remorseful. “My brother.”
Her husband both recoiled and whirled on her all at once. “What?”
“Frey knew that I had not given birth,” Frigga stated, intonation close to pleading. “Everyone else believed me when I said I’d been unwell, that I’d kept the pregnancy a secret, even my own maids. But Frey didn’t. He knew there’d been no sign at all I was with child. You know what they used to say.”
Slowly Odin nodded, expression unreadable, though the line of his mouth was hard. “That though Frey was born twin in body to one sister, it was to the other he was closest,” he stated, quiet.
“After Loki had been presented to the court, Frey was convinced he couldn’t possibly be…mine.” Frigga wavered on the words, stubborn: Thor knew full well his mother very much considered Loki hers. But the truth was, he wasn’t - not in the most technical sense. “He came to me with his suspicions. He was concerned, that was all, wondering what reason we could possibly have to lie.”
Her words were so insistent. Thor wondered who it was she was working so hard to convince. His father? Herself?
“You swore you would not tell anyone,” Odin said, his voice the harsh fast tone that meant he was close to yelling in his anger. “You swore.”
His children had been on the receiving end of this particular type of disapproval before - one stemming not from him as a father or even a god but as a king, one who had to enforce discipline and take it seriously whenever one of his subjects was disobedient.
Thor could never think that he’d heard this voice directed at his mother.
“I did swear,” Frigga retorted through anger of her own, bitter and restrained. “At your insistence. And likewise, by your command, I lied to everyone, and I held my tongue.” She shook her head, eyes glittering with tears she was too proud to shed. “But when Frey asked me, I couldn’t find it in my heart to lie to him as well.” Her voice softened. “There should be no secrets among family.”
From the corner of his eye, Thor saw Loki twitch.
Odin drew in a breath. His words carried the weight of a proclamation.
“So,” he declared, “you broke your promise. Your oath to me as your king, the agreement we had between us as wife and husband.”
“I never wanted that agreement!” Frigga was just as firm. “It was you who would concede to nothing else.”
Odin’s patience finally broke through in a roar. “Do you not perhaps now see why?”
For some reason Thor’s mind went back, back to the day of his banishment to Earth. He and his father shouting at one another - and the whole time Loki had been there, a silent witness, presence uncared for by them both. He wondered, had this been what that moment had been like for his brother?
Had Loki felt the same sick horror he did now?
“I had Frey’s word,” Frigga protested, but with far less conviction now. “He said he would take it to his grave.”
“Except he didn’t. He took it to Balder’s,” Odin growled. His wife could no longer meet his eye, shamed by the knowledge she had made a careless if heartfelt, costly mistake. “That’s the way of it, isn’t it? He told his wife, and now Nanna knows. If she wanted to she could make all of Vanaheim our enemy! Perhaps more! All she need do is find the right way to twist this all around…”
“There’s irony in that, truly.”
Loki suddenly speaking out, voice thick with black humor, shaking with laughter he couldn’t force to come, brought the argument grinding to a halt.
Slowly Thor turned to look at him, dreading what he would see in Loki’s face.
Frigga glanced to her second child with something akin to abject fear. Odin’s face was more guarded, angry still but restraining himself, and weariness appearing in the space left behind.
Loki stared back at them with glassy eyes, shoulders drawn away from his ears, fingertips moving spasmodically, lower lip trembling.
“So once again it’s all my fault,” he said in an awful tone of voice. “I’ve ruined everything. Asgard, on the brink, because of me.” For a few seconds he managed a rueful smile. “And this time, all I had to do was exist.”
Thor’s feet were rooted to the floor, his tongue too thick to reply.
Frigga moved toward Loki, reaching out to him. “Loki…”
But he shied back from her grasp, gazing blankly at her. Whatever Frigga saw in his eyes, it made her expression crumble, guilt-stricken. “I am sorry that this is happening. Please forgive me-”
He did not. Once again, speechless, he turned his back on his family and fled the room.
Thor watched him go and recalled when the celebrations for his engagement had first begun, how happy it had made him.
Not because it was in his honor, but because it was the first time since Loki had returned that there’d been such an occasion. Thor had looked forward not only to sharing the good times with Jane but together with his entire family, united.
But now this event had become a disaster.
*
When he retreated to his room, Loki found it empty. Darcy was gone.
She had left a note for him on the bed, claiming boredom and telling him she planned to spend the day with Jane. She promised to be careful; he could as good as read her eyes rolling between the lines written on the page, but he knew Darcy had decent sense in her. It was only a matter of getting her to use it.
She could joke all she liked but she knew Nanna was a potential threat to her. She would be cautious.
Loki was glad for the moment that she wasn’t there. He was in no mood to explain what’d happened to her.
He couldn’t give name to what emotion he was feeling. It was heavy in his chest, hot, threatening to strangle him. But he didn’t know how to best exorcise it when he didn’t know what it was.
There was aggravated tension in him, and partly he wanted to cause damage. He could tear the tapestries from his wall, throw things, turn over furniture, sweep the books from his shelves, scream and yell and curse. It was certainly a possibility.
In the end, though, he bypassed those options. Instead he climbed directly into bed, flopping down on the mattress and pulling the coverlet tight around his shoulders.
He drifted in some restless state halfway between a trance and dreaming. It was preferable, since it meant he didn’t need to think.
Hours later there came a knock at his door, and Loki’s eyes flew open, refocusing.
He didn’t feel like using his voice. He cast out a tendril of magic, curling unseen through the air, searching, to get a read on whoever stood outside his door.
Mother.
He breathed in sharply.
“Loki, please,” she called from the other side, begging, he having taken too long to respond. “Let me in.”
For a few seconds he stayed where he was, face halfway into his pillow, letting her worry. Then he twisted his one hand, using a gesture to distantly unlock his door.
“Let yourself in,” he told her, dully, and sat up.
He wouldn’t let her apologize to him. Every time she tried he turned away, refusing to meet her eyes, and wordlessly shook his head.
He was upset. But he wouldn’t make her feel sorry for what she had done - he knew she’d meant him no harm by it.
Finally she took the hint and fell silent. Loki remained where he was, sitting up in bed with hands resting in his lap, and his mother moved a chair so she could sit down beside him.
First she reached out to him, petting in a reassuring gesture, smoothing his now-longer hair. When he neither pulled away nor was inclined to speak, she seemed struck by quiet inspiration. Producing a brush she ran it through his hair in gentle, even strokes.
Loki waited until she was halfway through, and then he said, flat, “Shame you couldn’t have raised me as a daughter instead. Everyone would have been much better off.”
Frigga gave him a look more reproachful than chagrined, and for one instant her hand ceased being so kind with the brush: his scalp stung as his hair was yanked, hard.
Without pause Frigga returned to her measured strokes.
“You were raised as what you are. Cruel words spoken by your tutors and other children aside, do you really think you would’ve made so much a better girl?” his mother remarked, serene. “I’ve no doubt you would have been a hellion, full of mischief, no matter what. Do you imagine you’d have enjoyed lessons in the women’s circle, hours spent sitting and quietly practicing weaving or embroidery? Do you think your scholarly pursuits would’ve been mocked less were you a princess instead of a prince?”
Peaceably she finished what she was doing and dressed his hair in a long braid that fell before his left shoulder.
“And what of fighting? Oh, I know you think yourself so different from your brother in that regard, but the truth is sometimes you love a good spar much as he does. No,” she concluded, “I think all that would change is that we’d find ourselves with two Lady Sifs.”
“All right, all right,” Loki muttered testily, sinking back a bit into the pillows. Visible sulking aside though, he conceded. He knew she was right.
A smile faintly graced the queen’s lips. But then she grew more serious, brow creasing.
“You can’t help what you were born to be, Loki.” She reached out, cupping fingers under his chin and turning his face so he couldn’t avoid her eyes. She gazed at him insistently. “And there is nothing wrong with that.”
He swallowed, voice thick. “Is that really what you think?” He’d meant the question to sound sardonic, almost disdainful, but instead it came out like an inquisitive plea.
“Yes,” she insisted. “And so does everyone who cares for you.” He fidgeted under her centered focus, uncomfortable, and she released him. “You are loved as you are. You need be nothing else. I thought you had learned that.”
Tightly, he whispered, “Things would be so much different if only I wasn’t a Frost Giant.”
Frigga kept her head up, conviction firm. “I do not want ‘different’. I want the child I raised.”
That she could say that while he was sitting there shapeshifted into a woman, showing no trace of hesitation or even acknowledgement of the irony, almost made him laugh. But, oh, she had always been the one to rarely bat an eye in the face of all his previous…oddities.
Instead he remained quiet and where he was, and allowed her to lean in and hug him.
“I will leave you, to your peace,” Frigga said, rising after she was done, “and your thoughts, whatever they may be. I only wanted to be certain you were all right.”
“For now,” he told her softly, truthful enough, head lifting to meet her eyes.
Though such a response probably gave her no joy to hear she accepted it. True to her word, she left him.
Alone in the now deathly silent room, Loki contemplated matters. For a while he sat propped where he was, limbs stretched out like a discarded doll’s; a glum and half-focused look on his face like a moping child’s.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? He was acting like a child. How many times had he been faced head on with the difficulties of this current situation, and instead of saying or doing anything about it turned tail and fled?
Too many times, that was how many. What had happened to him?
After his fall he had been so full of desire and determination to prove himself. To show he was not the weak brother Thor and the others had so often shunted aside. He was a warrior, a man, a god; his every action was a show of strength, or power, or cunning. He fought his battles alone.
He was full of rage and what he thought was righteous anger, driven by a single-minded purpose of being taken seriously. He would not be ignored any longer; they would see him, and if he could not have their respect then he would take their fear, their revulsion.
When he came back he was forced to acknowledge how wrong-footed he’d been.
But more than that, Loki now realized that he had been trying, in vain, to turn back the clock.
He let himself go back to his old role, his old habits. Where before he’d had a voice he was determined to use, now he fell silent. In trying to fit back into the space he’d left behind he had gone too far in the other direction.
On Earth or any of the other realms he stood tall, he fought, he accepted attention without a second thought. But on Asgard…he let his old home comfort him like a warm blanket he was wrapped in, fearful of change, allowing himself to never be asked to do anything.
He slipped in with the shadows, lay hidden, safe, still. He let himself be ignored. He let himself become a child in his parents’ home again, not a man with his own agenda. The way they treated him reflected that more than anything: his mother coddled him, his father was too afraid to discipline him.
He knew in his heart his mother meant well, and he supposed the same was true of Odin. But enough was enough.
He didn’t want to be protected any more. He didn’t need it. More than that, right now his family and loves ones needed him.
Loki rose from the bed and walked halfway to his window, staring out at the view with a half-focused gave. One hand he made into a fist and brought closer to his face; he glanced down at it then looked in front of him again. He burned with concentration, thoughts shifting.
The whole reason the people that defended and accepted him after all he did were now facing difficulties was because of him. He was the lodestone for Nanna’s anger. He knew that clearly. Whatever of her vitriol she directed at the others was only incidental.
But if she wanted Loki, the trickster, the monster, then so be it. He would deal with her.
He could take care of this, and when he was finished the others could rest well and know their safety was assured.
Loki went straight to the area of the palace where his aunts were staying. No one tried to stop him - no one even saw his passing, for he kept himself shrouded in glamour.
He knocked on the door and hid his dismay when no servant or lesser guard but Freya herself answered.
He drew himself up and stared loftily into her pale eyes. “Most noble Lady Freya,” he showed her courtesy in his greeting, “I am desirous of an audience with your mistress. Will you let me pass?”
The leader of the Shieldmaids stared at him, harsh and judgmental. Loki tried to ignore how dry his throat felt.
Between her warrior nature and apparent lack of any sense of humor, it was no surprise Freya had always disapproved of him. Loki knew his chances of her permitting him by were weak at best, but there was nothing to be lost at this point in trying the straightforward approach.
But though her expression didn’t relax the slightest, without a word Freya moved back, allowing him space to enter.
Loki glided past her and resisted the urge to glance behind him when he heard the door close.
Nanna stood near the center of the room, apparently doing nothing. But she flinched when she looked up and saw Loki there.
“You.” Her eyes widened, nostrils flaring slightly as she breathed out, every muscle in her face twisting in a portrait of livid disgust. “You have the nerve to come this way, and bring yourself within my sight?”
“I do,” Loki replied. “After all Nanna of Vanaheim, with all due respect, it is not I that is a guest in this palace but you.”
“And yet I have more rightful claim to it than you,” she declared. “By virtue of not being a criminal, or a murderer, and being at least of the right species.”
Loki almost expected her to spit at him. Certainly her face looked hateful enough.
“I know what you are,” she continued, heated. “What’s more, we both know what you did.”
Evenly, Loki began, “I never meant to harm your-”
“Lies!” Nanna shouted. “Nothing but lies! Who could believe a word from your mouth, when it’s all you have ever been capable of.” She moved anxiously to one side, head turning to keep her glare fixed on Loki. “As if I could think what you did to Balder was an accident: everyone knew you were jealous of him!”
“I won’t waste my breath trying to convince you of what you are so if wrongly certain,” Loki murmured. “But I will not be sent away until I have been given a chance to speak.”
Nanna glowered at him with her haggard, haunted face. He could feel the weight of Freya’s eyes, unwavering, at his back.
“And what could you possibly have to say?” was Nanna’s demand. “You took my son from me. I never had a chance to see the handsome man he was destined to become. Your kind stole my husband. What is it that you have to say?”
Loki inhaled, and kept his words calm and reasoned, even as he allowed a strain of emotion in so that what he said would become a heartfelt plea.
“Your presence here, your actions; they threaten to disrupt the entire court. Maybe even more. This is my father’s kingdom, my mother’s household. The entire purpose of this gathering was to celebrate one of the happiest days in my brother’s life. Yet you would spoil that happiness for him and his intended.” He forced his shoulders to relax, lifting his chin up.
“Your quarrel is with me, Aunt. Not them. I know better than to ask if there is anything I can do to make amends with you - for there is nothing, at least not that I would willingly undertake.”
Guilty though he was in Balder’s demise, he wouldn’t offer his throat to her. His life and his liberty were his own at present and he would not trade them to soothe one woman’s wrath.
“But there must be some way I can appease you, for now. Satisfy you in the short-term so that you can keep your grudge stilled until after these celebrations are over.” Loki said earnestly, “Please, for the sake of my family and not to ruin this for them. It’s all I ask.”
He was betting in part of there being something left of Nanna’s honor. If she truly wanted to see the palace in ruins there was nothing he could do. But did she really want to destroy everything and unleash so much chaos over what she felt Loki had done to her?
All he could do was wait for her response and pray his hopes and his thoughts weren’t wrong.
Nanna was silent long enough that Loki began to feel anxious. But then her hands curled into fists, she drew her back straight, breathed in through her nose and spoke.
“You want to know what it is you can do, to appease me? So that I can make it through these wretched celebrations without ruining Thor’s delights, and remain quiet and out of the way?”
She raised her head again and met his eyes.
“Leave,” she stated, cold. “Remove yourself from Asgard. I will not remain here peaceably so long as you are anywhere on this planet, let alone under the same roof.”
There were certainly worse things she could’ve asked. Still Loki felt a hole in his stomach. “When?”
“Immediately.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “If my son did not get to make his farewells, why should you?”
Loki felt both dejected and, frankly, annoyed. He would not be banished forever: even if that was what Nanna was intending, the boundaries of the Nine Realms would not hold him for long. He would sneak back on the secret passages he’d mastered with his magic, the ways between worlds.
But it could take a while, depending where he landed. And in the meantime Thor and Darcy and the rest would not know what had happened to him. They might worry.
Or worse, they might think he had run away.
“I will do as you ask,” Loki sighed. It was a small price to pay for peace. “Shall I go now, then?”
“Oh yes.” Nanna gave an awful smile that had more the nature of a grimace. Over Loki’s shoulder she exchanged a look with Freya. “We’ll escort you to the Bifrost.”
“To make certain you don’t slight on your end of the bargain, Fork-Tongue,” Freya finished, terse. There was a glint of light against steel as she clutched the hilt of her weapon.
That glance between the two of them made Loki suddenly nervous.
It occurred to him this might be too easy. There definitely seemed to be more going on than had first appeared.
But it was too late to back out of it now.
*
At the furthest reaches of Asgard where the long arm of the rainbow bridge met the edge of what appeared to be an endless void, Heimdall the guardian stood his usual watch alone.
Everyone else in the Nine Realms, if they could, was going to the palace. Everyone else of rank wanted to be there to honor the Mighty Thor’s betrothal. Everyone else was more than happy to leave their regular duties and lives behind.
Heimdall did not, and would not. He had a job to do.
One of these days, it was to be assumed, there would finally come a celebration ceremonial and important enough that he would leave his post and join in. If not by choice then on order from his king.
Of course the king could always command him to attend any feast, but none would. No matter how it was intended it would offend the watcher. So until the near-fabled day of significance came, Heimdall was left to his own devices.
Not that the isolation seemed to bother him in the slightest. He held his spot, back ramrod-straight, sword firmly between his hands, his eyes unblinking and unwavering as he gazed ahead.
Most assumed duty was enough to sustain Heimdall, but a few did wonder, quietly (as if that made any difference), how he could stand to be out there on his own all the time.
If asked, Heimdall might answer that how could he ever be lonely, with the sights and sounds of an entire universe for company.
But nobody ever asked.
In the early afternoon on Asgard a small company began making its way down the rainbow road toward the Bifrost. They travelled on foot not horseback, promising a long and awkward journey. From peering midway across the galaxy Heimdall refocused his gaze upon them to determine their identities.
No known enemies to Asgard, though that was hardly a surprise; he recognized the figures of Freya Njorthsdottir and Lady Nanna Nepsdottir of Vanaheim.
The third person who was with them - even cloaked in seiðr and glamour, Heimdall could see who it was, especially when they were making no effort at all to hide their identity. The second prince of Asgard wore a woman’s shape, hair in a long braid as he walked alongside his aunts, glancing over at them from time to time as he kept his distance but matched their pace evenly.
Though not a single other muscle moved a thin crease formed on Heimdall’s forehead, the precursor to a contemplative frown.
The dislike both women had for Loki was notable, and well-known, especially to one who saw as much as Heimdall. What purpose could bring the three out here together was a mystery. Loki was the last person they would choose for an escort, and if they were leaving Asgard, it would not be with such little fanfare. But he could not think why the Vanaheim nobles would be leaving now anyway, so soon after they arrived.
Though Heimdall was known to be all-seeing, even his skillful eyes came with limits. Despite popular rumor he could not look into the future, and he could not truly see everywhere all at once.
Whatever conversation had taken place between the three that led them to this point, Heimdall had missed it.
Since he was not the sort to guess blindly, he waited for them to reach him, and more information to come from there.
When finally they came within reach of the observatory Nanna ceased walking and fell back, hands folded together within her sleeves, a composed look on her face. Loki stopped as well, mouth set, face wan. He gazed at the glittering crystals beneath his feet.
Did he remember every time the destructive battle he’d had here with his brother? Or did he do his best not to think on it? Heimdall could not say; Loki was well-versed in concealing emotions, and Heimdall could no more gaze inside someone’s heart or mind than he could see what was yet to come.
Leaving the other two at her back Freya kept walking. She came until there was a respectful distance between her and the watchman, and looked him eye to eye.
“Lady Freya,” he greeted her. “As always it is an honor for our paths to meet. Though I did not expect you to come again this way so soon.”
“It is business that brings me out here, noble Heimdall,” she returned, voice purposeful but detached. Her gaze drifted aside for a moment, not as if she had trouble holding the gatekeeper’s eyes but like her thoughts moved too fast to allow her own to hold still. When she looked again at him she was resolute.
“You swore to me once that I was indebted by you a favor. One that I had but to name.”
“Yes,” Heimdall assured, close to perplexed as his nature would allow to show. “For how you stood by me in defense of my watch when all others fell, I will do for you once anything you can ask of me. So long as it is not contrary to my duty or any of my other oaths.”
Freya gave a stiff nod after he confirmed these details. “Then on this day I wish to invoke that debt,” she stated.
“That is your right,” Heimdall breathed, steady.
For those inclined such as them that type of debt was usually intended to be ceremonial. Though he did not hold it against Freya for calling upon it, when he had made that promise he honestly never expected her to use it. There was nothing she would ever desire it for.
Without actually moving his eyes Heimdall glanced over at Nanna.
Unless, it was on the behalf of someone else, someone who she was honor-bound to follow, that she did it.
“Here is what I ask of you,” Freya said. Her voice was precise, words she had obviously weighed over, and rang clearly with the experienced act of command. “The next person who crosses through the Bifrost, you shall make yourself symbolically blind to their passing. You shall not tell anyone they were here or where they went after. No matter who asks you did not see them then, and you shall not see them wherever they are.”
Heimdall’s expression grew solemn and darkened. There was mischief afoot in this request; that much he could see clearly. But it did not break any of his oaths to obey.
“That is within my power to grant,” he told her. “I cannot ignore what is there, but I will hold my tongue.”
“Good,” said Freya, a fraction softer. “Then now and forevermore, we are even.”
Quickly she stepped aside, as if expecting him to speak in response and wanting no part of it.
Nanna came forward, Loki trailing her with the greatest reluctance. He had listened as Freya spoke, and several times did Heimdall see his jaw clench with displeasure.
“As representative of Vanaheim, Heimdall,” Nanna said in her reedy voice, “I command you to open the Bifrost.”
Heimdall bowed his head to her respectfully. The pieces, he thought, were beginning to fall into place. “And where do you wish me to open it to, my lady?”
Nanna gave a tight mirthless smirk. There was no word for how her eyes looked save ‘cruel’.
“Jotunheim.”
Loki drew a breath, shallow, and looked as if he felt sick. Nanna turned to him unsympathetically.
“That’s right,” she sneered, “I’m sending you home. To the world you belong to, and should have always remained on.”
With steady golden eyes Heimdall gazed at Loki. He waited for the young sorcerer to speak. Travel to Jotunheim from Asgard was forbidden by the King’s treaty, but Nanna had the authority to overrule that on her own behalf. But then in turn Loki’s authority overruled hers. As prince he could tell Heimdall not to activate the Bifrost.
Likely knowing what Heimdall was thinking, Loki gave an unhappy shake of his head. “Go on,” he told him. “You may do as she asks.” Then he went forward beneath the great dome to take his place for the journey.
For long as he could he looked back over his shoulder, not at Nanna and Freya but past them, back at the skyline and the city he was leaving behind.
Heimdall gave one last hard look at the noblewomen, but he couldn’t pick out the signs of whatever it was they held over Loki. He turned his back on them and went inside.
On the column at the center he sheathed his sword inside the mechanism, feeling the power thrum through his hands as the energy crackled and the air came alive. The walls began to spin.
Loki stood on the far side of the outer transport ring, hands fisted and head up in a way that was stubborn and purposeful, his back to Heimdall. But despite that Heimdall could see all around him, and he saw Loki’s face quite clearly: the way his eyes glistened, the sobs swallowed back in his throat.
It was not Heimdall’s place to judge, or make an account of anyone. He knew what was and what was not and understood the thousand details that lay beneath any story, and that none of them changed what was right and what was wrong.
It was not his to care to what race Loki belonged. Not his to care what choices he made. When Loki was king it’d been his duty to obey him; when he was a traitor it’d been his duty to protect the realm from him. Now that Loki was returned and pardoned it was Heimdall’s duty to respect him and act as if he had never left. And so that was exactly what he did.
But within the confines of his duty, though he was not supposed to, Heimdall could pick a side.
“Know this,” he said to Loki, aware the sound of the Bifrost would drown it out to those who still stood outside, “I may be forbidden to tell all where you have gone, but so long as you do not cloak yourself from my sight with your magic I will know where you are. And save few, all oaths are less than absolute.”
Loki flinched in surprise, but after a moment he gave a weak ironic smile.
“Oh believe me, Guardian,” he said, “I know.”
White lightning struck down and the Bifrost’s energy filled the room. And when it cleared, Loki was gone.
*
Despite their best efforts Jane and Darcy had managed to get on each other’s nerves after a few hours, though neither of them came out and actually said so.
Maybe it wasn’t that surprising. It could be annoying enough when they were working together. If they hadn’t met through Jane’s research they probably never would’ve been friends: theirs was a camaraderie that could only be forged by having gone through a weird, life-altering experience together, in spite of clashing personalities. Still, sometimes it was a bad thing when they felt somehow obligated to hang out.
Or maybe nowadays they were just making even more of an effort because both were aware of the possibility that one day they were going to be in-laws.
And wasn’t that a strange thought, Jane ruminated. Even the fact that she was going to have in-laws, actually. It almost didn’t sound like her.
In only a year, two at the most, she was going to be a married woman. That knowledge both scared and thrilled her.
If she dwelled on it too long she threatened to be overwhelmed.
Darcy had excused herself and gone off in search of her boyfriend. Jane once again pulled out her notebook, hoping this time she could make some progress before she got interrupted.
To her supreme frustration however she found she couldn’t focus. She stared and scribbled at her page but the answers wouldn’t come.
Eventually she set the notebook down in a huff.
Never mind that she’d only just gotten started. Clearly she needed a break.
She halfheartedly ran a brush through her hair, slipped on her shoes, and went out the door for a walk.
Leery of the crowds she stuck to the smaller back halls, the ones she was pretty sure were used exclusively by servants. Despite not knowing her way at all she wasn’t worried about getting lost. She’d just have to ask for directions from somebody.
Or, barring that, keep wandering until she ended up back in a main area. Once somebody recognized her she was sure Thor would come running.
That thought brought a fond smile to her lips.
As exasperating as he could be at times, she kind of liked having her own personal hero.
Jane was shaking her head with recollection and laughing to herself when all of a sudden she heard a voice.
“There you are.”
It was a sultry smug feminine tone, and one Jane definitely didn’t recognize. She whirled in alarm.
“I was wondering how long it would take before I was fortunate enough to find you alone.”
A woman stood there with flowing blond hair and a curvy figure made all the more noticeable by how her sleeveless white dress was cut to call attention to it. She watched Jane with piercing green eyes.
Taking a step forward, she moved with the lazy danger of a jungle cat. “So,” she mused, “you are the little mortal that Thor is so fond of.” The look she cast up and down was clearly unimpressed. “Well. I must say that I can’t really see what your appeal is, but I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.”
Jane backed up, uneasy. “Who are you?” She glanced around but there was no one else in sight.
“Oh, don’t trouble yourself, darling. In a minute it isn’t going to matter.”
Before Jane could even consider yelling for help the woman reached out with her slender but surprisingly strong arms and grabbed her.
She forcefully cupped Jane’s face in both hands, fingertips brushing her cheekbones. As Jane let out a shocked squeak of dismay she pressed a hard kiss fully covering her mouth.
Instantly her vision swam and faded. Her head felt dizzy and light. A mist seemed to settle over her: she could feel it, itching against her skin, tingling. At the same time her breath was being drawn hard, harder than should be possible, up out of her lungs. Like the woman was pulling something out of her, taking it for her own.
Where their lips met came a bruising heat. Jane couldn’t cry out as it was force-fed into her, scorching the back of her throat.
Abruptly the woman let go and shoved her away. Still seeing dancing spots Jane lost her balance, falling back to the floor, barely able to catch herself with her arms as she landed on her bottom.
She coughed, in pain and breathless, and lifted her head to stare upward with wide open eyes.
The woman tossed her hair, smiling, and before Jane’s very eyes she changed.
Her locks grew shorter, darker. Green eyes faded to brown. Her proportions became more petite. Her skin went from the unearthly pale of alabaster and cream to the more expected shade for a woman who worked in New Mexico but still never seemed to get enough sun. Even her clothes changed, from her filmy white dress with the golden accents to Jane’s button-down shirt and baggy jeans.
As Jane gaped at her, speechless, the woman who now looked exactly like her put one hand on her hip and stretched the other out in front of her, fingers curled back as she looked with a discerning eye.
“Hmmph,” she murmured - in Jane’s voice, at that, “it’s not much, is it?” She turned to where the nearby polished wall’s surface was slightly reflective, sticking her chest out and pouting and striking poses that were decidedly un-Jane-like. “If not for the crown, frankly, I think you’re getting the better end of this deal.”
“What do you mean?” Jane started to ask, but stopped in astonishment when her voice came out wrong.
She looked down and saw strands of blond hair and white lace and more cleavage than she’d ever had in her life.
“Oh,” she said in realization, voice tiny.
Looking back up she found the other woman grinning at her with her kidnapped face.
“That’s right. You get to keep my body. Enjoy it while you can.” Meaningfully she stretched out her left hand and wiggled her ring finger. “Because in the meanwhile, I’m going to marry Thor in your place.”
LINK TO PART FOUR