Redemption Songs 04 - Harry/Loki (Avengers/HP Fic)
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Hey all. This chapter is for “Me the Mighty”, a guest at FFNet, because their review for chapter 3 was awesome. Also, to those who don’t know. I’m on tumblr, and occasionally post previews of chapters (you know, when I’m not procrastinating) :P AislingSiobhan at TUMBLR :D Feel free to follow me.
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Words: 8,837
Chapter 4
June 21st 2013. New York City.
“What the fuck?”
There was anger in Harry’s voice. If it had been anyone else hissing words like that at him, Loki would have reared back, waiting to be stuck or set upon by his guards caught in the throes of anger or lust. But it was Harry. This man who sounded so angry, who was angry for him, not at him, was the same stranger whose arms he had just been sobbing in. This man who could have attacked him like the other Midgardians had on that other street, but instead asked if he was ok, and had comforted him and held him in a way no one had for such a long time. Loki couldn’t even remember the last time he had felt as safe as he did then, for those scant moments held in Harry’s arms.
Loki snorted; amused at the way Harry was glaring at the stitches upon his mouth. He reminded Loki of a mother wolf protecting her young, growling and threatening, but never moving in case the danger came between them.
Harry’s hand was stretched out before him, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch the stitches, couldn’t bring himself to prove them real, because who would do something like this? Lord Voldemort was known to torture and degrade, but not like this. Punishment was for punishment sake in the case of his Death Eaters, but brief while painful, and never permanent. And for his enemies it was intended to send a warning, that none other should dare cross him for fear of meeting a worse fate, but it was done and over with and the person was put out of their misery with fairly little blood split, as the Dark Lord preferred to torture with magic instead. But Loki looked as if someone had taken him, blank and beautiful, and painted a masterpiece across him with his own blood. Pain and fear and grief blurred around the edges of the God’s gaunt face and burned in his green eyes, and Harry met them with his own, chin held high and jaw tense.
“What happened to you?” Harry questioned voice quieter now.
He finally touched upon the other man’s mouth, feeling the strange texture of the thread that wasn’t ordinary. Harry could remember feeling it before, remember touching something similar once before, on the day he had hunted down the rebels that had killed his first son, and he had laced up his battle robes, pulling tight at the dragon heartstrings that closed the gauntlets over his arms and kept his robes from slipping down his shoulders. That was what it was, Harry realised. Dragon heartstring. Like the length of black cord that had fallen from Draco Malfoy’s wand when a rebel had snapped it in half. Draco had kept it, Harry knew, and wore it around his wrist knotted together with the cores of the wands he had taken from all of the rebels he killed. Harry had asked after it once, asked why he did it, and Draco, who had always been such a coward in school and so childish and naive even as a Death Eater, had admitted it helped him to see them twisting against his flesh. The memories burned in his mind, he’d told Harry once, the sight of the cores reminded him of every one he’d killed in the Dark Lord’s name, if he remembered them all, if he never forgot, then he couldn’t lose himself the way Bellatrix and Barty Crouch Jr and the Carrows had: they reminded him to always be a man, not a monster. Harry had reached out to touch it, fingers brushing over the thick black like thread, but denser, and knew it was the same as what had laced his gauntlets and his robes and his trousers. He traced his fingers over Loki’s mouth, and knew again that it was the same as what sealed the God’s mouth shut.
“You are magical,” Harry whispered, just in case a Muggle happened to stumble passed the mouth of their alley. No one but a magical being would have access to a dragon, nor to the ingredients procured from one. It was fortunate, Harry supposed, because he didn’t think taking Loki to a Muggle hospital would do either of them any favours with the police or the press, especially considering Harry’s job.
Being magical meant that Harry could bring him to St. Cyprian’s. St. Cyprian’s was a few minutes’ walk away, back up Broadway and onto Broome Street, but it wouldn’t be too far to go, and Harry was planning on disillusioning Loki anyway.
Loki didn’t react to Harry’s statement. He blinked green eyes slowly, one eyebrow rising, as if asking Harry if he were being serious or particularly slow. Because of course everyone knew he was magical. He was Loki of Asgard, and he had come to this planet to subjugate them.
“Right, well, I’m Harry Potter. You can tell me your name when we get those stitches out of you, k?” Harry held out a hand, and Loki grasped it firmly, eyes wide at the thought of finally, finally having his lips free for good. “We better get you to a hospital, huh? Before you end up with any more scars.”
Loki jerked back as if burned. He wrenched his hand from Harry’s hold, using them to brace against the wall behind him so he wouldn’t fall back down onto his arse. His naked back scraped against the wall, and he hissed behind his cruel gag. Dark hair flopped limply around his face as Loki shook his head, no. He didn’t want to go to a hospital. Barton had told him about CCTV and how if Loki looked at certain machines called cameras important government people could find him instantly, no matter where he was. Barton had told him that lots of places had this CCTV, the building in Stuttgart, the SHIELD Helicarrier, Stark’s tower, banks, businesses… hospitals. If he went there, he would be found and captured. He couldn’t be, not again, never again; he wouldn’t survive it a second time, not after having a taste - the briefest of tastes, like sprinkles of water from a tap just turned off, struggling weakly to fall upon his tongue, but it had given him a thirst for it, for freedom - and he could not go back to being that tortured, trapped person Thanos had made him.
He wouldn’t survive it again.
“Hey, hey,” Harry tried placatingly, holding his hands warily out towards Loki, “it’s ok. No one is going to hurt you; no one will even see you I promise. I’m going to make you invisible ok? And it’s not like I need to go out of my way anyway, I’m heading there myself. I need a check-up for the baby, so we can go together, and I’ll sit with you and you can sit with me, deal? We’ll stick together, the whole time, I promise.” Harry smiled widely, calmly, and hoped Loki wouldn’t notice that he was lying.
Harry had gotten good at lying since marrying the Dark Lord, though they had made no secret as to why Harry looked like he was barely out of his twenties - dark magic, they had told all who asked, but never had they flaunted the Hallows, because Harry hadn’t understood and Voldemort had known all too well what happens to those who brag about the Elder Wand - but they had lied about many other things in their fifteen years together. ‘I’m fine’, was the biggest lie Harry had ever told his husband, followed by, ‘I’m not pregnant’ and ‘It didn’t work this time’. They were the only lies Voldemort had never called him up on, maybe because the man also believed the potion had failed, or maybe because he had hoped too that Harry was fine, that he himself was fine, and that all things would end well. But Harry had left shortly after, and though he was now six months pregnant, he hadn’t returned.
Loki either hadn’t noticed the lie, or was too busy freaking out to care, but he was shaking his head frantically, finger nails scraping against the wall at his back as if he were trying to claw his way up, up, up to freedom. Out of the alley, away from Harry, and the fear and the pain and the knowledge that soon he would be caged again, tortured and broken, and nothing this kind human said would be able to prevent it.
“Hey,” Harry whispered, reaching slowly to cup Loki’s face. The man shoved him back, a scream muffled by stitches tore from his throat, like an animal wounded and fearing death, and Harry landed with a groan on his backside. His own hands came quickly to grab at his stomach, and though he had lied about having a check-up (because St. Cyprian’s was actually where he was heading home from), he figured he’d better have another to be safe. Even if Loki didn’t go with him.
“Hmmmh,” Loki whimpered, one hand with its long fingers pointed at Harry’s belly.
“It’s fine. Good thing I was heading to the hospital anyway, huh?” Harry grinned wryly, one hand on his stomach and the other scrambling at the ground to help hoist himself to his feet. “Six months pregnant, so, yeah, a little help, please?” Loki reached for his outstretched hand and helped pull Harry to his feet. “I really need to get to the hospital.” Loki shook his head, pointing at the baby and the floor before wringing his hands anxiously in front of his own stomach. “Oh, I’m sure it’s fine.” It was, because Harry made sure to always cast as many protective wards around his stomach as his magic could sustain now, especially after what had happened during his last pregnancy, but if guilting Loki into the hospital was the way Harry had to get him there, then so be it.
“Ah!” He cried out, pretending at an unexpected pain shooting through his abdomen. His hands clutched over his bump frantically as he practically bent in half, panting loudly.
Loki was there suddenly, eyes wide, and hands clutching warily at Harry’s shoulders, pushing him towards the mouth of the alley as if demanding Harry go quicker.
“I don’t think I can walk alone, it really hurts!” Harry whimpered, sounding more pitiful than Loki felt.
Loki did not understand why Harry would keep this thing inside of him, which he obviously wanted to do if he were headed to the hospital now. Mortal hospitals, it appeared, could sometimes prevent miscarriage, and that was what Harry looked like he was having. Just like with Loki, hands to stomach, cries and whimpers in his throat, while his stomach rolled and his insides ached and parts of him that weren’t supposed to be there bled away cramp by cramp. This man, who had been kind to him, who had wanted to heal him and promised to get the stitches out, who had held him and stroked his back and hair and felt so good pressed against him when Loki had long ago stopped seeking out comfort or intimacy; Loki had harmed this man and his spawn, and the least he could do was see them healed.
Loki walked with him, one arm around Harry’s waist steadyingly, and the other held tightly by Harry’s own hand, squeezing with every gasp of the pain the man released. St. Cyprian’s was a small, squat building, shoved between a Laundromat and an Accountancy firm, but whose doorway shimmered and blurred before the eyes of any Muggle to look upon it. Harry led Loki towards it, into the wide sprawling foyer, filled with healers and medi-witches and -wizards and hard, plastic chairs, and white walls, and sick people. The moment the door closed behind them, blocking out the Muggle world, Harry’s healer, Mary, was before him, frowning worriedly.
“Hey, Mary. Someone tortured my friend and sewed his mouth shut with dragon heartstring, but he doesn’t like hospitals, so be careful with him ok? Thanks!” Harry grinned widely at her. He unwound Loki’s arm from around his waist, but held on to the handcuffed wrist that had already been seized firmly. Harry was standing straight again, no longer panting or whimpering, and he didn’t seem to be bleeding either, Loki noticed, leaning back to try and spot a dark stain on the seat of the other man’s pants.
“Hmm?” Bloody lips questioned, eyebrows furrowed.
“I’ll sit with you and then you sit with me, deal?” Harry asked with a wide smile on his pretty mouth.
Loki blinked, surprised that the Midgardian had managed to trick him for that was usually his forte. But then his lips turned up, skin pulling tight and painful as he smiled, and he pulled his hand from Harry’s so that he could clap, slowly and softly, before offering a half bow of acknowledgement.
“You’re not angry then?” Harry questioned, leading the way to another Healer, one who dealt with victims of Quidditch gone wrong because really, what could cause worse damage than smashing face first into the ground from a hundred feet in the air at 90 miles per hour? Not much, Harry knew from experience, and Loki certainly looked like he’d gone a few rounds with the Slytherin beaters from Harry’s school years. And lost. Repeatedly.
XXX
Harry lived in a modest flat near the corner of Delancey and Chrystie Streets. It wasn’t much, but the window at the front of the flat looked out over a small park, and occasionally Harry liked to stare out of the window and imagine his child playing there in a few years’ time, while he sat on a bench like the mothers he was watching, gossiping and reading trashy magazine while keeping a close eye. Harry had bought it for the view, because it was the first high rise he had come across with access to the roof and no pest infestations, but right now, all of the stairs were becoming a major thorn in his side. Loki had one arm around his waist again, and Harry led him gently up each staircase, floor by floor until the finally reached Harry’s door. He couldn’t apparate while pregnant, otherwise Merlin knew he’d already be inside with his feet up on the coffee table and the television playing something redundant and loud. But Loki was afraid of the elevator, and honestly, Harry was a little too, because the last time he’d used it (two months ago) it had broken down with him inside of it.
“Ok, last chance, Loki,” Harry said, still getting used to twisting his tongue around the strange name. It sounded exotic and dangerous, but just as odd as Remus or Fleur or Nymphandora so Harry hadn’t scrunched up his nose the way Ron had the first time they had met Draco when Loki introduced himself at last. “If you’re secretly a mass murdering nutcase who is planning on suffocating me in my sleep and then laying alien eggs in my bed you need to let me know, ok? Cause I watch a lot of sci-fi shows, and weird shit happens in them all of the time, and I need to know who I’m letting in my house!”
Harry was grinning when Loki glanced down at him. The taller man swayed slightly on his feet when Harry moved away from him to fumble with the door lock. But Harry held his eyes, and though he didn’t know who Loki was and didn’t know the horrors Loki had wrought upon his country and the evils he had committed and suffered through, this man had invited him to live at his home with him until he was healed and on his feet. This man deserved the truth more so than anyone Loki had ever encountered before, and so with a deep, unsteady breath, Loki told him:
“I am dangerous. I have killed many people and I have regretted very few.”
“Who hasn’t?” Harry asked, offering up a self-deprecating half smile as he nudged the door open with his shoulder. “But you’re not planning to lay alien eggs in my bed right, cause that’d be gross!” He grinned again, wide and lazy, with green eyes glinting to show that he was only half joking, but he held the door open anyway until Loki passed through it.
“No, I plan to lay no eggs,” the God promised, though he probably could if he shifted into his falcon form. Not that he planned to have anything like that within him again though, not if he could help it. But he couldn’t stop himself from offering a smirk of his own, teeth shining as he teased, “Though I may have to wait until you have birthed and lay alien eggs of my own within you.”
Harry paused, one hand on the remote and glanced back over his shoulder at Loki. Mouth dropping open, eyes narrowing; Harry looked like he was caught halfway between laughing and hissing at him, and Loki felt a laugh unlike one he’d experienced for many years bubbling up within him. Instead of holding it back as he might have done before others, he allowed it to fly free, loud and resonant and happy, and Harry laughed softly with him.
“Right, well at least you have the courtesy to wait until this baby is out of me. More living space for your alien eggs, though, I suppose?”
Harry flicked on the television, and Loki came to sit beside him on the couch for a moment, just for a moment, and he murmured, “that was my evil plan, yes, Harry,” just before his eyes slipped closed.
He was snoring softly moments later, and when he woke up he was in a bed, sheets bunched around his legs and hands pinning him down, holding and touching and confining, and though he couldn’t feel them yet, Loki knew they were there waiting, naked and hungry for him, and he screamed at the thoughts of their hands on his flesh, of their essence within him once more. He kicked as he screamed, eyes squeezed closed so that he wouldn’t have to look upon them as they brought him to ruin. He threw his arms up, knocking the hands off of his shoulders, trying to remember at least some of the dream he had had, of the man with green eyes who had cared for him, but the hands were back, pressing and a voice was shouting, and Loki lashed out with magic.
His eyes snapped open as green fire came from his fingers. His wrists were unadorned and his mouth had been able to open enough to scream, and a British accent was cursing in the corner of the room as the fear trickled slowly from Loki’s mind.
“Harry?” He whispered into the darkness. “Are you real?”
“Yes. Fuck. I’m real. Fuck, what the fuck!” A dark head poked up from behind what was left of the dresser-drawer in Harry’s spare room. It was a box, tiny, and filled to bursting with the bed and dresser and wardrobe (or, now, what was left of the dresser), and Loki glanced wildly around, sprawled in the middle of the single bed, huffing loudly as his heart raced.
“Did I hurt you?” He asked, eyes cast down at his hands, and the sparks of green that danced beneath his nails waiting to be utilized. But he was safe here, Loki reminded himself, trying to remember how to breathe while drowning, and he kept reminding himself until his hands were pale once again and no longer glowing.
“No,” Harry answered honestly. The first time Loki had kicked at him Harry had cast a Protego: he had made it so that he could shake Loki awake, but Loki couldn’t touch him. He brushed off dust and wood splinters from his clothes, shaking them out of his hair as well. Loki watched, eyes moving from Harry’s scowl to the man’s stomach, and he winced. “Don’t worry; you didn’t hurt the baby either.”
“I-” Loki began, before trailing off awkwardly. He licked his lips nervously, glancing up at Harry from beneath his fringe. “Would it not be better to lose it now? Before you become attached to it?” As Loki did Sleipnir, days after he was born, and the foal had become a continuous reminder of what he had endured and a shame he had to forever live with. Regardless of how much Loki loved him now, he couldn’t deny that there was a small part of himself who wanted to change all that had happened: to have not made the deal in the first place, nor led away Svadilfari or become impregnated. Or perhaps that someone might have found him sooner and removed the child painlessly before it could grow.
“How can you keep it inside of you and do nothing? How can you allow it to grow when you have the means to make it stop?” There were tears on Loki’s face now, fat and wet and painful to look at, but Harry stared at him and them, hands over his bump while Loki sobbed. “To allow them to do that to you? To fight back then but allow this now?” As Thanos’ men had done to him. Then left Loki bound without the means to abort it himself. “To allow them to win, to have claim over you and your body. How can you bear it, within you, how can-”
Harry’s arms were around his shoulders, and Loki pressed his face to Harry’s throat gratefully, glad to be able to hide the tears that kept falling. He felt weak and pathetic, but Harry didn’t scold him or tease him. He held him softly, hands ghosting lightly over the healed skin of his back, and then through his hair, still lank and greasy because he had fallen asleep before he could ask to bathe. But Harry stayed silent through it all, until Loki finished sobbing, and began to pull away slowly.
“This child is my husband’s. I don’t love him, but I’ve been married to him for a very long time and I care about him. He cares about me too, probably more like a child than a lover, but we were forced to marry by circumstance and politics. But we chose to have a baby together, our first son. I would have named him Orion, because he would have been the brightest star in our universe. Tom, that’s my husband’s name when he chooses to answer to it, was just as pleased as I was. When we announced the pregnancy, it was during a rebellion, and coincidence would have it that they attacked again the first time I left my home in almost a year. I lost my child.” Harry whispered the words slowly, his lips pressed to Loki’s cheek, because the man had stopped pulling away as Harry began to speak.
The dark haired God thought back to the dream he had shared with Hela. He remembered the small child with familiar green eyes, and his chest ached at the reminder.
“He was mourned.” Loki whispered, suddenly feeling guilty for not having cried over the loss of Thanos’ child the way Harry had obviously cried for his.
“Very much so. And when I realised I was pregnant again I was so afraid the same thing would happen, and so I ran away. I’ve been hiding here for about three months now. I work on Howard Street, and sometimes they send me over to Manhattan, and I live here in this crappy apartment beside a crappy park, and I’ll stay here until my baby is born and until I think it’s safe to go home. And no, Loki, it would not be better to lose this child now. Because now, or later, I love my child the exact same amount and I would mourn my child. But, I think,” and Harry leaned forward slowly then, to pull Loki back into his arms, blinking the tears from his owns eyes as Loki’s fell heavily against his throat, “the difference is that I decided to conceive my children and you were not given a choice.”
“I didn’t want-” Loki gasped softly, mouth moving wetly against Harry’s neck as he spoke. Tears mixed with saliva as Loki spoke rapidly, telling how he fought back, how he ran and was caught and pinned and taken, and of how he was caged and bound and gagged and taken, over and over again, because this time one sacrifice of his body had not been enough, and Harry could only make out every other word as Loki muffled them against skin.
“I wish to shower!” Loki demanded suddenly, wrenching himself out of Harry’s grasp roughly enough that his nails scrapped across Harry’s arms and made him bleed a little. Loki darted out of the room quickly, slamming the door behind him.
“Oh, um,” Harry was left sitting on the edge of the bed with little dots of blood along his arms, like someone had dug their nails in and held on for dear life, afraid that if they let go they’d fall and never stop, until their grip had been ripped forcefully away.
There weren’t that many rooms in Harry’s flat, so he figured that Loki had found the bathroom, but it took ten minutes before the shower turned on but it was electric and Harry always left it set on a happy medium so at least it wouldn’t freeze or scald Loki when he managed to work it. Harry busied himself leaving out some of his own clean clothes. He used magic to enlarge the trousers, because Loki was taller than he was, but his maternity-style t-shirts would probably fall to the man’s thighs anyway, so Harry left him one pair of pants but a selection of tops and some underwear he had bought but never taken out of the packet.
Harry was asleep when Loki came out of the bathroom, skin red-raw from rubbing at it for almost two hours. The water had stayed warm, unlike on Asgard where it turned tepid after minutes of sitting in it, and Loki had lost track of time as he tried to scrap every reminder of his fourteen months in prison out from under his skin. Blood and semen and whatever else had coated him had washed down the sink, but Loki could see it still, on his thighs and his stomach and dotting his chin when there was too much for him to swallow, and so he had taken Harry’s toothbrush and brushed out his mouth till his gums were bleeding. There were clean, borrowed but unsoiled, clothes on the bed when Loki stepped back into the bedroom in nothing but a towel. He had heard Harry’s snores once the shower had switched off, and deemed it safe to walk back to the room. If Harry had still been awake, feelings of safety or otherwise, Loki would have chosen to sleep in the bath than face another man in such a state of undress again.
Loki stayed with Harry in relative peace. Harry went to work in the mornings, and came to find Loki cooking or cleaning or reading, anything to keep his mind away from the memories. They were friendly, watching TV or listening to the radio in mostly silence with a few sarcastic comments aimed at the host, and they ate together, though Loki never left the flat so it was always whatever he cooked or what Harry brought home. When Loki had a nightmare Harry woke him by singing, voice getting louder and louder progressively until Loki woke up because touching him when the God was like that just meant that more of Harry’s furniture would be blown up. They talked too: of Asgard, and Godhood, and magic and Hogwarts and Muggles. But they never spoke of Harry’s child, or any of Loki’s children, not for another month.
XXX
July 30th 2013. New York City.
He came awake to the feeling of fingers running through his hair.
It was an unusual way for Loki to wake up, because after a nightmare Harry had taken to singing him awake and during his confinement the guards had found many ways to startle him into wakefulness that were never as comforting as this was. There was no sense of fear now, just the pull of knots catching around Harry’s fingers and occasionally on the strange gold ring with the black stone he wore. Loki didn’t feel the urge to panic or run or struggle. There was something soothing about lying like this, across the sofa with his head pillowed in Harry’s lap; though the last position he could remember being in was leaning against the opposite arm of the couch with his legs tucked to his chest.
He must have fallen asleep, Loki realised, and fallen onto Harry. It felt too good, too new, for Loki to want to give up the feeling right then, but Harry didn’t seem to have noticed he was awake yet. So Loki laid still, eyes closed and breathing even, as Harry continued to pull his left hand through Loki’s hair. Every breath Loki took pressed his cheek against the swell of Harry’s stomach, and tiny feet kicked against his face, and Loki found his hand moving up without permission to cup the bump that suddenly didn’t seem so abominable.
“Sleipnir did that too,” Loki whispered, with his eyes still closed.
Harry chuckled softly. He reached forward over Loki to grab the remote and switch the television onto mute. “Yeah,” he replied, leaning back again, “this little guy likes to beat me up at least once a day. Mostly when you’re around though,” Harry admitted, shrugging his shoulders when Loki glanced up at him.
“Oh,” the God murmured. He looked back down, eyes on the green of Harry’s t-shirt and what was covered beneath it, and he pressed both hands forward eagerly, waiting to feel another kick. “I hated it when Sleipnir did it. It felt like, like someone had opened me up without permission and put something inside of me, had taken something out and made this big, dark hole, and filled it with something of theirs that didn’t belong. And I had to carry it, and feed it, and care for it, as it leeched off of me and kicked and twisted and hu-rt.” He choked off, before taking a deep, loud breath and clearing his throat. “And I couldn’t say anything or cry or scream, because horses didn’t do that; they don’t talk or…” Loki blinked his eyes rapidly, fighting the wetness that gathered at the corners.
“I went back with him, afterwards. Sleipnir. I waited a week in the woods with him, because it took me three days to want to touch him and look at him and see. When I looked at him, really looked at him he was so beautiful that I didn’t want to share him with anybody so I kept him to myself for a few more days. Father,” Loki spat the word out like it was poison, “told me I was too young, too immature to raise him alone, so he took Sleipnir away. A mare in the stables nursed him and I visited for a while until Odin forbid it. He told me I was growing too attached, told me that nothing good would come of it, because Sleipnir was unwanted, a mistake that simply couldn’t be rectified because I hadn’t come to him in time, and so I should forget about the horse. Odin called him a horse, Harry. A horse! As if he was not my son. And I know I hadn’t wanted to carry him, and I know I wished that I had lost the foetus early. But afterwards, after his birth, I wanted him, and I was not let to have him. Would it have been kinder to us both if I had lost him early?” Loki glanced up warily, unsure suddenly of why he was saying all of this, and how Harry would react to it, because Harry desperately wanted his son and Loki had talked about wishing to miscarry his own, and that seemed so wrong suddenly, so cruel, and Loki was afraid that it would make Harry hate him.
“Your father was wrong, Loki.” Harry’s voice was calm and soft, and Loki found his eyes slipping shut again as fingers began to wind anew through his hair. It was safe and comforting and Loki lost himself in the feel of it as he continued to talk.
“I had two children by a Frost Giantess. They were both born monsters, but they were mine. My children. I did not carry them, but I would have kept them also if I had been allowed.”
“Did you love them?” Harry asked genuinely curious. He had heard the stories of the swamp wolf and the world serpent in passing, and he wondered briefly what it was about them that made them so dangerous, so much so that Odin had cast them out of Asgard and out of Loki’s life.
“Of course I did!” The God reared back, eyes narrowed onto Harry’s smiling face.
“Then they can never be monsters if they are loved, Loki,” he whispered, still smiling.
Loki glanced warily at him, wanting for something though he didn’t know what, but when Harry simply remained silent he glanced away and began to speak again. His hands were pressed tight to Harry’s stomach, savouring every twist and kick the child made, and he thought back to Sigyn and Hela as she grew inside of his wife and how he had held his hands to that bump too.
“I did this with my wife too, you know,” Loki admitted after a long silence. “When Angrboða, my mistress, was pregnant, I wasn’t really around. She lived on Jötunheimr and I was of Asgard, and we were enemies, but I had seduced her and she had become with child. The children would have been killed on Jötunheimr if anyone realised I had sired them, but at the time I had thought Odin loved me as his own, and foolishly I had thought he would accept my children as his grandchildren, like he would have Thor’s should they have existed. He took in Fenrir, and all was well. For a while. I continued to visit Angrboða and she fell pregnant a second time, and it was when I was with her, to collect Jörmungandr and bring him to Asgard too, that everything changed. Mother had a vision, that Fenrir would rise up during Ragnarök and kill the All Father. Odin sent men to hunt him down, my son hunted through the trees as I was by Svadilfari and no one tried to save him as no one had tried to save me. And when they caught him, when they-” Loki took a deep breath, trying to force down the anger that churned in the back of his throat like bile and the hate in his stomach like lead weighing him down.
“They chained him away and I never found out where. I killed all those who had hunted him, each of them, though I tortured them for information first and killed them only when I realised they did not know where Odin had sent Fenrir. Afterwards, after I had done this, Odin called me to him, told me so calm and sure that it was not my fault the children were monsters and that he loved me but that he had sent Jörmungandr away as well.”
“Loki,” Harry breathed, his voice strained and shaking.
The God continued to talk as if he hadn’t heard Harry beginning to speak, and Harry let him, because he knew that if Loki stopped now he’d never talk about it again. It was like an old wound, left alone to fester, but the scab needed to be torn away so that the injury could heal for good, clean and uninfected, and talking about it had always helped Harry feel better any time his friends had managed to make him talk to them.
“Sigyn’s mother had become pregnant in Alfheimr. It is a land of elves and fey, nymphs and dryads, but Sigyn never found out what her father was. She looked completely Æsir. But our daughter,” Loki snorted, because comparing Sigyn to Hel was laughable. They were like night and day, two completely opposite ends of the spectrum, one normal and the other inheriting both her father’s Jötun heritage and her grandfather’s, whatever he might have been. “She did not love me, but the first time I meet her I was infatuated. She was so beautiful and kind and when she laughed it was like wind whistling through wind-chimes. She turned down Thor, you know, and I think that was what had me so intrigued. No one ever turned down Thor. It was so bad sometimes, the way he would always steal the attentions of maidens, that when I wanted sex I would take my female form and lie with men just to not have to worry about the men paying more attention to Thor than me too. I tricked her into marriage. She hated me for it, I think, but we have grown friendly since.”
Loki stopped for a moment. The child had stopped kicking, so he had pushed himself into a sitting position, rubbing at the lines on his face left by Harry’s clothing and his own fingers.
Harry’s hand was now resting lightly on Loki’s thigh. At first the man had cast it a startled glance, but when Harry made no further movements (just a warm press through denim, there, safe and sincere) Loki turned his eyes back to Harry’s.
“By Asgardian law, all marriages must be consummated and carried on for the period of a year. After that year has passed, the woman has the right to request an annulment from the All Father on the grounds of improper treatment to herself or her children, and though she had become pregnant on our wedding night I had never treated either of them badly and Odin refused. The husband, however, could be rid of his wife simply if he was bored of her. She had begged to be rid of me, and they had refused her, and so I asked instead, to keep Hel and leave Sigyn and it was granted. She loved me a little for that, for giving her freedom back. She loved Hela too, but they were so different, so wrong for one another, and I spent most of the child’s life raising her in place of her mother. She has her own world now; I conquered it for her the same week I overheard Odin talking to the Council of how Hela was too different to remain upon Asgard. She is safe at least, and I can visit her in my dreams and when she chooses to let me come to Helheimr in person. Sleipnir is Odin’s war horse, though it hurts to look at him, humiliated and debased, treated like an animal though he understands and feels as a human does. I have not seen Jörmungandr or Fenrir since they were cast out. I do not even know if they are alive.”
His throat hurt, and he cleared it loudly even as Harry conjured water into their empty glasses and held one out to him.
“You’ve been so brave.” Harry murmured, leaning forward to press a kiss to Loki’s forehead.
“How?” He asked incredulously. “I am a coward and a monster! I let him take my children and I failed them. And then I let those- them -use me, take me when I was not willing and I could not escape without Sigyn’s help! That would never have happened to Thor or the Warrior’s Three or Odin! I am weak and pathetic and useless. I always have been, Harry, even as a child I could not fight half as well as the others. All I was ever good for was my magic, and Odin took that away from me as part of my punishment. Without it I was defenceless and worthless, but I was never brave.”
“You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.”1 A hand was squeezing over his own, and Loki’s fingers shook in Harry’s grasp. It was warm and strong and Loki squeezed back desperately. “When I was a child I wasn’t very strong either. My uncle used to hit me a lot and my cousin and his friends would beat me up whenever they could catch me, so I got very good at running away. Some people might not call that bravery, but every night I had to go back and face being punished for running in the first place, and every morning I had to force myself out of bed knowing it would all happen again that day. But I did it, over and over again, and I felt weak and helpless and useless but I grew up to save the world, Loki. Being brave isn’t about saying stupid things to hide your fear, and it certainly isn’t about being strong or fearless, because only fools are never afraid. Being brave gives you strength to overcome your past so that you can dictate your future.”
Harry pressed another kiss to Loki’s face, smiling sadly. “I bet your brother has never been in a position where he has been made to feel true fear, has he? I knew a boy like him once, his name was Draco and he thought he was the best of the best and he used to bully me and some of my friends, but don’t get me wrong we gave it back to him. When the war started, he fell to pieces. I was used to it, the fear and the pain and the hatred, but he had lived nothing but days of comfort and love and safety and he spent a year living in the shadow of something, someone, so terrifying that he was afraid to breathe. And he called me brave afterwards for marrying that someone. Perhaps I was. Perhaps it was bravery that made me go through with it, to protect people I cared about, to end a war by marrying Tom, but I told Draco he was the braver one because he had had to live with the fear every day, like I used to as a child, and he kept living, kept facing it. Like you are, Loki. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.2 Do you think Thor would have had the strength to let me touch him if something like that had happened to him?”
“I don’t mind you touching me. You make me feel safe. It is your magic I think, it called to me the day you appeared at the mouth of that alley, sang to me.”
“I could feel yours as well,” Harry told him softly, squeezing his hand harder around Loki’s, before moving the other to cup Loki’s cheek. “Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.3 What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.4 So today it’s me. In a year’s time a stranger who hugs you on the street or a casual acquaintance at work perhaps. You flinch when I touch you sometimes too, you know, and in your sleep you tense up if I walk into the room to wake you. You could be in the middle of a nightmare, thrashing around screaming, but you fall still the second I open your bedroom door. But that’s fine. That’s normal. I sleep lightly too, because of other horrors, but no one expected me to get over them in day, Loki, and no one expects you to either. You try. That’s what bravery is all about.”
Loki was crying again, deep, heaving sobs that shook his whole body. But for once he wasn’t ashamed of that fact, because Harry was right. He had been through more than any one person deserved to be put through and no one he knew had ever experienced anything similar so they didn’t have the right to judge him. And so what if his skin still crawled sometimes, like maggots moving beneath the flesh until Loki showered and scratched at them until his flesh bled. And so what if he couldn’t sleep through the whole night without waking up screaming, because Harry had nightmares too sometimes and that was fine because Harry was the kindest, bravest person Loki had ever met, braver than Thor even because what had Thor done that could compare with Harry marrying the murderer of his parents to end a war? Nothing, that was what; Thor had caused wars and killed people, but he had never sacrificed himself so wholly, unlike Harry. So if Harry could be afraid and have bad dreams and cry himself to sleep sometimes, then why couldn’t Loki?
“Thank you,” the God whispered, ignoring the tears on his cheeks whereas before he would have been struggling to wipe them away faster than they were falling. “Thank you,” he breathed against the scar on Harry’s forehead as he pressed a soft kiss over the puckered skin.
Harry didn’t say anything, because honestly, Loki had nothing to thank him for. Instead, he brought his arms up to hug Loki around the shoulders, loosely though until Loki pushed forward into his embrace and then Harry held him tightly, separated only by the swell of his own stomach, and he rocked the God back and forth lightly, both of them feeling lighter than they had in a long time.
XXX
September 9th 2013. Miami, Florida.
Loki hadn’t felt comfortable staying in New York, especially after reports of ‘alien invasions’ started featuring on the nine-o-clock news and everyone started speculating that it might have been his fault. So they moved to Miami. It was too hot for Loki, but it was far enough away from New York for him to feel comfortable living there until after Harry’s child was born.
St. Mortimous of the Sickly was a better magical hospital than St. Cyprians anyway, and Loki hadn’t liked the sound of the hospital in Texas. So, Florida it was. They lived, now, in a nice but expensive condo on Biscayne Boulevard Way, but they had a nice view of the Bay though they had to travel over forty minutes to get to St. Mortimous’ on SW 3rd Avenue. Fortunately, Loki’s magical transportation method wasn’t the same as apparating, and he wasn’t above being used as a cosmic taxi when Harry started having contractions that morning.
It was fast and easy, much easier than Sigyn’s labour had been or the stories Frigga told over birthing Thor, or his own labour for that matter. They had numbed Harry’s pain and cut the child out of his stomach and then sewn him back up as they had the lashes upon Loki’s back, with a wave of a wand and a flash of light, and there was not even a scar left to prove it had ever happened.
The child was small, because Harry was small, but he was healthy with pale skin and dark blue eyes that would soon change colours, and Loki knew because he had dreamed that night of the child by Hela’s side disappearing that this child would have the very same green eyes his mother had. A tuft of dark hair on his head and pouty pink lips completed the picture, the little image of his mother in Harry’s arms, and Loki found himself huddled over the couple on the hospital bed, crouched over Harry’s legs and kneeling by his side, so that he could see down onto the child’s face and lean forward to accept every happy kiss that Harry pressed to his forehead in between kisses upon the child’s face.
“What are you naming him?” Loki asked. He watched the child with reverence, awed by its existence and the love he could feel coming off of Harry for it in waves.
“Well,” Harry said sounding resigned, “he’s definitely a Potter. Just look at that hair! So, he can have my surname. Tom can change it later, if he wants to, but I doubt it, because he usually just goes by Voldemort, or Duke Potter when he’s with me.” He glanced up at Loki, green eyes bright and mouth pulled into a wide smile. “You name him. You’re as much a part of this as I was, or Tom was, and you had no reason to be other than you chose to be. So you name him. It is my gift to you, to repay you for being here through all of this, no matter how uncomfortable it made you.”
Loki swallowed heavily, forcing his heart back down out of his throat, and he thought about it. Voldemort was, from what he understood of what Harry had told him over the last three months, a King of sorts for the magical world. Harry was his consort, a Prince in his own right, with money and titles and land to his name. This child was their heir, not Loki’s no matter how much he loved him too, and the child would inherit all that his parents had, all of his parents’ fame and glory and honour too, and he needed a name befitting that. A name that would, also, show how he was treasured by them.
“Rig, I think for a middle name. It means King, in my language. In Æsir,” Loki added, because he didn’t actually know what many Jötun names meant, nor did he consider it his language either, but he wanted Harry to be clear about that regardless. “And for his first?” Loki stayed silent for a moment more, considering what name would suit this child best. “Eileifer,” he decided on at last, speaking surely and directly at the child, “it means ever-heir, or always-descendant, in your language. And he is, isn’t he? Forever?”
“Always, Loki. No one will take this child away,” Harry promised. Not like they took yours, went unsaid, but Loki nodded his head in agreement to the silent promise and kissed Eileifer’s head gently. “Remember, how you told me of your annulment from Sigyn? The marriage could be ended after a year?” Loki nodded slowly. “We have something similar. I need to return to Tom before the second week of March or our marriage is automatically annulled. He has not come looking for me because he knows I am alive, and he probably thinks I’ll come back soon. And I would have gone back, Loki, I was planning to, but then I found you and I didn’t want to leave you alone. But if I don’t, the bond I share with him will break, and, I, I’m afraid he’ll think I’m dead. He might think me kidnapped these last six months, but at least he knew I was alive.”
“Could he find you through Eileifer?” Loki questioned, sounding concerned. He was worried that the Dark Lord would take the child from him, not Harry because Harry had a right to his son, but Loki had no rights, no reason to be involved, and he was terrified of being left behind and alone and forgotten, unwanted once more.
“There are ways I could hide him. But I don’t really want to. Tom deserves to know his son too.”
“I do not want you to leave me. Either of you.” It was little more than a whisper on the wind, so soft, so desperate that Harry had to strain to hear it and hearing it hurt his heart. He reached out for Loki, pulling the man down to sit beside him on the bed, and Loki laid his head on Harry’s shoulder and whispered, “Please.”
“Ok. We’ll wait until March. Just for a little while.”
That night, Harry had Loki help him cast the Fidelius Charm on Eileifer, and Voldemort was none the wiser for the time being. Harry and Loki took care of the child, their child as far as Loki was concerned, and for once the God felt like he was part of a family, that he belonged and was welcomed and not just a spare part. Though he knew it was cruel to deprive the other human of his son, to deprive Harry of his husband forever, Loki was a selfish creature at heart, though loyal to those he cared for. Unfortunately, sometimes those emotions came hand in hand, and loyalty to this child meant that he was selfish in keeping Eileifer close and Harry closer.
Mid-March came and went, but Harry stayed with Loki.
XXX
1 - Mary Tyler Moore: “You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.”
2 - Nelson Mandela: “Courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
3 - Lyndon B. Johnson: “Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.”
4 - C. S. Lewis: “What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.”
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Thanks. Hope you enjoyed the chapter! :)
next chapter HERE :)
Hey all. This chapter is for “Me the Mighty”, a guest at FFNet, because their review for chapter 3 was awesome. Also, to those who don’t know. I’m on tumblr, and occasionally post previews of chapters (you know, when I’m not procrastinating) :P AislingSiobhan at TUMBLR :D Feel free to follow me.
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Words: 8,837
Chapter 4
June 21st 2013. New York City.
“What the fuck?”
There was anger in Harry’s voice. If it had been anyone else hissing words like that at him, Loki would have reared back, waiting to be stuck or set upon by his guards caught in the throes of anger or lust. But it was Harry. This man who sounded so angry, who was angry for him, not at him, was the same stranger whose arms he had just been sobbing in. This man who could have attacked him like the other Midgardians had on that other street, but instead asked if he was ok, and had comforted him and held him in a way no one had for such a long time. Loki couldn’t even remember the last time he had felt as safe as he did then, for those scant moments held in Harry’s arms.
Loki snorted; amused at the way Harry was glaring at the stitches upon his mouth. He reminded Loki of a mother wolf protecting her young, growling and threatening, but never moving in case the danger came between them.
Harry’s hand was stretched out before him, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch the stitches, couldn’t bring himself to prove them real, because who would do something like this? Lord Voldemort was known to torture and degrade, but not like this. Punishment was for punishment sake in the case of his Death Eaters, but brief while painful, and never permanent. And for his enemies it was intended to send a warning, that none other should dare cross him for fear of meeting a worse fate, but it was done and over with and the person was put out of their misery with fairly little blood split, as the Dark Lord preferred to torture with magic instead. But Loki looked as if someone had taken him, blank and beautiful, and painted a masterpiece across him with his own blood. Pain and fear and grief blurred around the edges of the God’s gaunt face and burned in his green eyes, and Harry met them with his own, chin held high and jaw tense.
“What happened to you?” Harry questioned voice quieter now.
He finally touched upon the other man’s mouth, feeling the strange texture of the thread that wasn’t ordinary. Harry could remember feeling it before, remember touching something similar once before, on the day he had hunted down the rebels that had killed his first son, and he had laced up his battle robes, pulling tight at the dragon heartstrings that closed the gauntlets over his arms and kept his robes from slipping down his shoulders. That was what it was, Harry realised. Dragon heartstring. Like the length of black cord that had fallen from Draco Malfoy’s wand when a rebel had snapped it in half. Draco had kept it, Harry knew, and wore it around his wrist knotted together with the cores of the wands he had taken from all of the rebels he killed. Harry had asked after it once, asked why he did it, and Draco, who had always been such a coward in school and so childish and naive even as a Death Eater, had admitted it helped him to see them twisting against his flesh. The memories burned in his mind, he’d told Harry once, the sight of the cores reminded him of every one he’d killed in the Dark Lord’s name, if he remembered them all, if he never forgot, then he couldn’t lose himself the way Bellatrix and Barty Crouch Jr and the Carrows had: they reminded him to always be a man, not a monster. Harry had reached out to touch it, fingers brushing over the thick black like thread, but denser, and knew it was the same as what had laced his gauntlets and his robes and his trousers. He traced his fingers over Loki’s mouth, and knew again that it was the same as what sealed the God’s mouth shut.
“You are magical,” Harry whispered, just in case a Muggle happened to stumble passed the mouth of their alley. No one but a magical being would have access to a dragon, nor to the ingredients procured from one. It was fortunate, Harry supposed, because he didn’t think taking Loki to a Muggle hospital would do either of them any favours with the police or the press, especially considering Harry’s job.
Being magical meant that Harry could bring him to St. Cyprian’s. St. Cyprian’s was a few minutes’ walk away, back up Broadway and onto Broome Street, but it wouldn’t be too far to go, and Harry was planning on disillusioning Loki anyway.
Loki didn’t react to Harry’s statement. He blinked green eyes slowly, one eyebrow rising, as if asking Harry if he were being serious or particularly slow. Because of course everyone knew he was magical. He was Loki of Asgard, and he had come to this planet to subjugate them.
“Right, well, I’m Harry Potter. You can tell me your name when we get those stitches out of you, k?” Harry held out a hand, and Loki grasped it firmly, eyes wide at the thought of finally, finally having his lips free for good. “We better get you to a hospital, huh? Before you end up with any more scars.”
Loki jerked back as if burned. He wrenched his hand from Harry’s hold, using them to brace against the wall behind him so he wouldn’t fall back down onto his arse. His naked back scraped against the wall, and he hissed behind his cruel gag. Dark hair flopped limply around his face as Loki shook his head, no. He didn’t want to go to a hospital. Barton had told him about CCTV and how if Loki looked at certain machines called cameras important government people could find him instantly, no matter where he was. Barton had told him that lots of places had this CCTV, the building in Stuttgart, the SHIELD Helicarrier, Stark’s tower, banks, businesses… hospitals. If he went there, he would be found and captured. He couldn’t be, not again, never again; he wouldn’t survive it a second time, not after having a taste - the briefest of tastes, like sprinkles of water from a tap just turned off, struggling weakly to fall upon his tongue, but it had given him a thirst for it, for freedom - and he could not go back to being that tortured, trapped person Thanos had made him.
He wouldn’t survive it again.
“Hey, hey,” Harry tried placatingly, holding his hands warily out towards Loki, “it’s ok. No one is going to hurt you; no one will even see you I promise. I’m going to make you invisible ok? And it’s not like I need to go out of my way anyway, I’m heading there myself. I need a check-up for the baby, so we can go together, and I’ll sit with you and you can sit with me, deal? We’ll stick together, the whole time, I promise.” Harry smiled widely, calmly, and hoped Loki wouldn’t notice that he was lying.
Harry had gotten good at lying since marrying the Dark Lord, though they had made no secret as to why Harry looked like he was barely out of his twenties - dark magic, they had told all who asked, but never had they flaunted the Hallows, because Harry hadn’t understood and Voldemort had known all too well what happens to those who brag about the Elder Wand - but they had lied about many other things in their fifteen years together. ‘I’m fine’, was the biggest lie Harry had ever told his husband, followed by, ‘I’m not pregnant’ and ‘It didn’t work this time’. They were the only lies Voldemort had never called him up on, maybe because the man also believed the potion had failed, or maybe because he had hoped too that Harry was fine, that he himself was fine, and that all things would end well. But Harry had left shortly after, and though he was now six months pregnant, he hadn’t returned.
Loki either hadn’t noticed the lie, or was too busy freaking out to care, but he was shaking his head frantically, finger nails scraping against the wall at his back as if he were trying to claw his way up, up, up to freedom. Out of the alley, away from Harry, and the fear and the pain and the knowledge that soon he would be caged again, tortured and broken, and nothing this kind human said would be able to prevent it.
“Hey,” Harry whispered, reaching slowly to cup Loki’s face. The man shoved him back, a scream muffled by stitches tore from his throat, like an animal wounded and fearing death, and Harry landed with a groan on his backside. His own hands came quickly to grab at his stomach, and though he had lied about having a check-up (because St. Cyprian’s was actually where he was heading home from), he figured he’d better have another to be safe. Even if Loki didn’t go with him.
“Hmmmh,” Loki whimpered, one hand with its long fingers pointed at Harry’s belly.
“It’s fine. Good thing I was heading to the hospital anyway, huh?” Harry grinned wryly, one hand on his stomach and the other scrambling at the ground to help hoist himself to his feet. “Six months pregnant, so, yeah, a little help, please?” Loki reached for his outstretched hand and helped pull Harry to his feet. “I really need to get to the hospital.” Loki shook his head, pointing at the baby and the floor before wringing his hands anxiously in front of his own stomach. “Oh, I’m sure it’s fine.” It was, because Harry made sure to always cast as many protective wards around his stomach as his magic could sustain now, especially after what had happened during his last pregnancy, but if guilting Loki into the hospital was the way Harry had to get him there, then so be it.
“Ah!” He cried out, pretending at an unexpected pain shooting through his abdomen. His hands clutched over his bump frantically as he practically bent in half, panting loudly.
Loki was there suddenly, eyes wide, and hands clutching warily at Harry’s shoulders, pushing him towards the mouth of the alley as if demanding Harry go quicker.
“I don’t think I can walk alone, it really hurts!” Harry whimpered, sounding more pitiful than Loki felt.
Loki did not understand why Harry would keep this thing inside of him, which he obviously wanted to do if he were headed to the hospital now. Mortal hospitals, it appeared, could sometimes prevent miscarriage, and that was what Harry looked like he was having. Just like with Loki, hands to stomach, cries and whimpers in his throat, while his stomach rolled and his insides ached and parts of him that weren’t supposed to be there bled away cramp by cramp. This man, who had been kind to him, who had wanted to heal him and promised to get the stitches out, who had held him and stroked his back and hair and felt so good pressed against him when Loki had long ago stopped seeking out comfort or intimacy; Loki had harmed this man and his spawn, and the least he could do was see them healed.
Loki walked with him, one arm around Harry’s waist steadyingly, and the other held tightly by Harry’s own hand, squeezing with every gasp of the pain the man released. St. Cyprian’s was a small, squat building, shoved between a Laundromat and an Accountancy firm, but whose doorway shimmered and blurred before the eyes of any Muggle to look upon it. Harry led Loki towards it, into the wide sprawling foyer, filled with healers and medi-witches and -wizards and hard, plastic chairs, and white walls, and sick people. The moment the door closed behind them, blocking out the Muggle world, Harry’s healer, Mary, was before him, frowning worriedly.
“Hey, Mary. Someone tortured my friend and sewed his mouth shut with dragon heartstring, but he doesn’t like hospitals, so be careful with him ok? Thanks!” Harry grinned widely at her. He unwound Loki’s arm from around his waist, but held on to the handcuffed wrist that had already been seized firmly. Harry was standing straight again, no longer panting or whimpering, and he didn’t seem to be bleeding either, Loki noticed, leaning back to try and spot a dark stain on the seat of the other man’s pants.
“Hmm?” Bloody lips questioned, eyebrows furrowed.
“I’ll sit with you and then you sit with me, deal?” Harry asked with a wide smile on his pretty mouth.
Loki blinked, surprised that the Midgardian had managed to trick him for that was usually his forte. But then his lips turned up, skin pulling tight and painful as he smiled, and he pulled his hand from Harry’s so that he could clap, slowly and softly, before offering a half bow of acknowledgement.
“You’re not angry then?” Harry questioned, leading the way to another Healer, one who dealt with victims of Quidditch gone wrong because really, what could cause worse damage than smashing face first into the ground from a hundred feet in the air at 90 miles per hour? Not much, Harry knew from experience, and Loki certainly looked like he’d gone a few rounds with the Slytherin beaters from Harry’s school years. And lost. Repeatedly.
XXX
Harry lived in a modest flat near the corner of Delancey and Chrystie Streets. It wasn’t much, but the window at the front of the flat looked out over a small park, and occasionally Harry liked to stare out of the window and imagine his child playing there in a few years’ time, while he sat on a bench like the mothers he was watching, gossiping and reading trashy magazine while keeping a close eye. Harry had bought it for the view, because it was the first high rise he had come across with access to the roof and no pest infestations, but right now, all of the stairs were becoming a major thorn in his side. Loki had one arm around his waist again, and Harry led him gently up each staircase, floor by floor until the finally reached Harry’s door. He couldn’t apparate while pregnant, otherwise Merlin knew he’d already be inside with his feet up on the coffee table and the television playing something redundant and loud. But Loki was afraid of the elevator, and honestly, Harry was a little too, because the last time he’d used it (two months ago) it had broken down with him inside of it.
“Ok, last chance, Loki,” Harry said, still getting used to twisting his tongue around the strange name. It sounded exotic and dangerous, but just as odd as Remus or Fleur or Nymphandora so Harry hadn’t scrunched up his nose the way Ron had the first time they had met Draco when Loki introduced himself at last. “If you’re secretly a mass murdering nutcase who is planning on suffocating me in my sleep and then laying alien eggs in my bed you need to let me know, ok? Cause I watch a lot of sci-fi shows, and weird shit happens in them all of the time, and I need to know who I’m letting in my house!”
Harry was grinning when Loki glanced down at him. The taller man swayed slightly on his feet when Harry moved away from him to fumble with the door lock. But Harry held his eyes, and though he didn’t know who Loki was and didn’t know the horrors Loki had wrought upon his country and the evils he had committed and suffered through, this man had invited him to live at his home with him until he was healed and on his feet. This man deserved the truth more so than anyone Loki had ever encountered before, and so with a deep, unsteady breath, Loki told him:
“I am dangerous. I have killed many people and I have regretted very few.”
“Who hasn’t?” Harry asked, offering up a self-deprecating half smile as he nudged the door open with his shoulder. “But you’re not planning to lay alien eggs in my bed right, cause that’d be gross!” He grinned again, wide and lazy, with green eyes glinting to show that he was only half joking, but he held the door open anyway until Loki passed through it.
“No, I plan to lay no eggs,” the God promised, though he probably could if he shifted into his falcon form. Not that he planned to have anything like that within him again though, not if he could help it. But he couldn’t stop himself from offering a smirk of his own, teeth shining as he teased, “Though I may have to wait until you have birthed and lay alien eggs of my own within you.”
Harry paused, one hand on the remote and glanced back over his shoulder at Loki. Mouth dropping open, eyes narrowing; Harry looked like he was caught halfway between laughing and hissing at him, and Loki felt a laugh unlike one he’d experienced for many years bubbling up within him. Instead of holding it back as he might have done before others, he allowed it to fly free, loud and resonant and happy, and Harry laughed softly with him.
“Right, well at least you have the courtesy to wait until this baby is out of me. More living space for your alien eggs, though, I suppose?”
Harry flicked on the television, and Loki came to sit beside him on the couch for a moment, just for a moment, and he murmured, “that was my evil plan, yes, Harry,” just before his eyes slipped closed.
He was snoring softly moments later, and when he woke up he was in a bed, sheets bunched around his legs and hands pinning him down, holding and touching and confining, and though he couldn’t feel them yet, Loki knew they were there waiting, naked and hungry for him, and he screamed at the thoughts of their hands on his flesh, of their essence within him once more. He kicked as he screamed, eyes squeezed closed so that he wouldn’t have to look upon them as they brought him to ruin. He threw his arms up, knocking the hands off of his shoulders, trying to remember at least some of the dream he had had, of the man with green eyes who had cared for him, but the hands were back, pressing and a voice was shouting, and Loki lashed out with magic.
His eyes snapped open as green fire came from his fingers. His wrists were unadorned and his mouth had been able to open enough to scream, and a British accent was cursing in the corner of the room as the fear trickled slowly from Loki’s mind.
“Harry?” He whispered into the darkness. “Are you real?”
“Yes. Fuck. I’m real. Fuck, what the fuck!” A dark head poked up from behind what was left of the dresser-drawer in Harry’s spare room. It was a box, tiny, and filled to bursting with the bed and dresser and wardrobe (or, now, what was left of the dresser), and Loki glanced wildly around, sprawled in the middle of the single bed, huffing loudly as his heart raced.
“Did I hurt you?” He asked, eyes cast down at his hands, and the sparks of green that danced beneath his nails waiting to be utilized. But he was safe here, Loki reminded himself, trying to remember how to breathe while drowning, and he kept reminding himself until his hands were pale once again and no longer glowing.
“No,” Harry answered honestly. The first time Loki had kicked at him Harry had cast a Protego: he had made it so that he could shake Loki awake, but Loki couldn’t touch him. He brushed off dust and wood splinters from his clothes, shaking them out of his hair as well. Loki watched, eyes moving from Harry’s scowl to the man’s stomach, and he winced. “Don’t worry; you didn’t hurt the baby either.”
“I-” Loki began, before trailing off awkwardly. He licked his lips nervously, glancing up at Harry from beneath his fringe. “Would it not be better to lose it now? Before you become attached to it?” As Loki did Sleipnir, days after he was born, and the foal had become a continuous reminder of what he had endured and a shame he had to forever live with. Regardless of how much Loki loved him now, he couldn’t deny that there was a small part of himself who wanted to change all that had happened: to have not made the deal in the first place, nor led away Svadilfari or become impregnated. Or perhaps that someone might have found him sooner and removed the child painlessly before it could grow.
“How can you keep it inside of you and do nothing? How can you allow it to grow when you have the means to make it stop?” There were tears on Loki’s face now, fat and wet and painful to look at, but Harry stared at him and them, hands over his bump while Loki sobbed. “To allow them to do that to you? To fight back then but allow this now?” As Thanos’ men had done to him. Then left Loki bound without the means to abort it himself. “To allow them to win, to have claim over you and your body. How can you bear it, within you, how can-”
Harry’s arms were around his shoulders, and Loki pressed his face to Harry’s throat gratefully, glad to be able to hide the tears that kept falling. He felt weak and pathetic, but Harry didn’t scold him or tease him. He held him softly, hands ghosting lightly over the healed skin of his back, and then through his hair, still lank and greasy because he had fallen asleep before he could ask to bathe. But Harry stayed silent through it all, until Loki finished sobbing, and began to pull away slowly.
“This child is my husband’s. I don’t love him, but I’ve been married to him for a very long time and I care about him. He cares about me too, probably more like a child than a lover, but we were forced to marry by circumstance and politics. But we chose to have a baby together, our first son. I would have named him Orion, because he would have been the brightest star in our universe. Tom, that’s my husband’s name when he chooses to answer to it, was just as pleased as I was. When we announced the pregnancy, it was during a rebellion, and coincidence would have it that they attacked again the first time I left my home in almost a year. I lost my child.” Harry whispered the words slowly, his lips pressed to Loki’s cheek, because the man had stopped pulling away as Harry began to speak.
The dark haired God thought back to the dream he had shared with Hela. He remembered the small child with familiar green eyes, and his chest ached at the reminder.
“He was mourned.” Loki whispered, suddenly feeling guilty for not having cried over the loss of Thanos’ child the way Harry had obviously cried for his.
“Very much so. And when I realised I was pregnant again I was so afraid the same thing would happen, and so I ran away. I’ve been hiding here for about three months now. I work on Howard Street, and sometimes they send me over to Manhattan, and I live here in this crappy apartment beside a crappy park, and I’ll stay here until my baby is born and until I think it’s safe to go home. And no, Loki, it would not be better to lose this child now. Because now, or later, I love my child the exact same amount and I would mourn my child. But, I think,” and Harry leaned forward slowly then, to pull Loki back into his arms, blinking the tears from his owns eyes as Loki’s fell heavily against his throat, “the difference is that I decided to conceive my children and you were not given a choice.”
“I didn’t want-” Loki gasped softly, mouth moving wetly against Harry’s neck as he spoke. Tears mixed with saliva as Loki spoke rapidly, telling how he fought back, how he ran and was caught and pinned and taken, and of how he was caged and bound and gagged and taken, over and over again, because this time one sacrifice of his body had not been enough, and Harry could only make out every other word as Loki muffled them against skin.
“I wish to shower!” Loki demanded suddenly, wrenching himself out of Harry’s grasp roughly enough that his nails scrapped across Harry’s arms and made him bleed a little. Loki darted out of the room quickly, slamming the door behind him.
“Oh, um,” Harry was left sitting on the edge of the bed with little dots of blood along his arms, like someone had dug their nails in and held on for dear life, afraid that if they let go they’d fall and never stop, until their grip had been ripped forcefully away.
There weren’t that many rooms in Harry’s flat, so he figured that Loki had found the bathroom, but it took ten minutes before the shower turned on but it was electric and Harry always left it set on a happy medium so at least it wouldn’t freeze or scald Loki when he managed to work it. Harry busied himself leaving out some of his own clean clothes. He used magic to enlarge the trousers, because Loki was taller than he was, but his maternity-style t-shirts would probably fall to the man’s thighs anyway, so Harry left him one pair of pants but a selection of tops and some underwear he had bought but never taken out of the packet.
Harry was asleep when Loki came out of the bathroom, skin red-raw from rubbing at it for almost two hours. The water had stayed warm, unlike on Asgard where it turned tepid after minutes of sitting in it, and Loki had lost track of time as he tried to scrap every reminder of his fourteen months in prison out from under his skin. Blood and semen and whatever else had coated him had washed down the sink, but Loki could see it still, on his thighs and his stomach and dotting his chin when there was too much for him to swallow, and so he had taken Harry’s toothbrush and brushed out his mouth till his gums were bleeding. There were clean, borrowed but unsoiled, clothes on the bed when Loki stepped back into the bedroom in nothing but a towel. He had heard Harry’s snores once the shower had switched off, and deemed it safe to walk back to the room. If Harry had still been awake, feelings of safety or otherwise, Loki would have chosen to sleep in the bath than face another man in such a state of undress again.
Loki stayed with Harry in relative peace. Harry went to work in the mornings, and came to find Loki cooking or cleaning or reading, anything to keep his mind away from the memories. They were friendly, watching TV or listening to the radio in mostly silence with a few sarcastic comments aimed at the host, and they ate together, though Loki never left the flat so it was always whatever he cooked or what Harry brought home. When Loki had a nightmare Harry woke him by singing, voice getting louder and louder progressively until Loki woke up because touching him when the God was like that just meant that more of Harry’s furniture would be blown up. They talked too: of Asgard, and Godhood, and magic and Hogwarts and Muggles. But they never spoke of Harry’s child, or any of Loki’s children, not for another month.
XXX
July 30th 2013. New York City.
He came awake to the feeling of fingers running through his hair.
It was an unusual way for Loki to wake up, because after a nightmare Harry had taken to singing him awake and during his confinement the guards had found many ways to startle him into wakefulness that were never as comforting as this was. There was no sense of fear now, just the pull of knots catching around Harry’s fingers and occasionally on the strange gold ring with the black stone he wore. Loki didn’t feel the urge to panic or run or struggle. There was something soothing about lying like this, across the sofa with his head pillowed in Harry’s lap; though the last position he could remember being in was leaning against the opposite arm of the couch with his legs tucked to his chest.
He must have fallen asleep, Loki realised, and fallen onto Harry. It felt too good, too new, for Loki to want to give up the feeling right then, but Harry didn’t seem to have noticed he was awake yet. So Loki laid still, eyes closed and breathing even, as Harry continued to pull his left hand through Loki’s hair. Every breath Loki took pressed his cheek against the swell of Harry’s stomach, and tiny feet kicked against his face, and Loki found his hand moving up without permission to cup the bump that suddenly didn’t seem so abominable.
“Sleipnir did that too,” Loki whispered, with his eyes still closed.
Harry chuckled softly. He reached forward over Loki to grab the remote and switch the television onto mute. “Yeah,” he replied, leaning back again, “this little guy likes to beat me up at least once a day. Mostly when you’re around though,” Harry admitted, shrugging his shoulders when Loki glanced up at him.
“Oh,” the God murmured. He looked back down, eyes on the green of Harry’s t-shirt and what was covered beneath it, and he pressed both hands forward eagerly, waiting to feel another kick. “I hated it when Sleipnir did it. It felt like, like someone had opened me up without permission and put something inside of me, had taken something out and made this big, dark hole, and filled it with something of theirs that didn’t belong. And I had to carry it, and feed it, and care for it, as it leeched off of me and kicked and twisted and hu-rt.” He choked off, before taking a deep, loud breath and clearing his throat. “And I couldn’t say anything or cry or scream, because horses didn’t do that; they don’t talk or…” Loki blinked his eyes rapidly, fighting the wetness that gathered at the corners.
“I went back with him, afterwards. Sleipnir. I waited a week in the woods with him, because it took me three days to want to touch him and look at him and see. When I looked at him, really looked at him he was so beautiful that I didn’t want to share him with anybody so I kept him to myself for a few more days. Father,” Loki spat the word out like it was poison, “told me I was too young, too immature to raise him alone, so he took Sleipnir away. A mare in the stables nursed him and I visited for a while until Odin forbid it. He told me I was growing too attached, told me that nothing good would come of it, because Sleipnir was unwanted, a mistake that simply couldn’t be rectified because I hadn’t come to him in time, and so I should forget about the horse. Odin called him a horse, Harry. A horse! As if he was not my son. And I know I hadn’t wanted to carry him, and I know I wished that I had lost the foetus early. But afterwards, after his birth, I wanted him, and I was not let to have him. Would it have been kinder to us both if I had lost him early?” Loki glanced up warily, unsure suddenly of why he was saying all of this, and how Harry would react to it, because Harry desperately wanted his son and Loki had talked about wishing to miscarry his own, and that seemed so wrong suddenly, so cruel, and Loki was afraid that it would make Harry hate him.
“Your father was wrong, Loki.” Harry’s voice was calm and soft, and Loki found his eyes slipping shut again as fingers began to wind anew through his hair. It was safe and comforting and Loki lost himself in the feel of it as he continued to talk.
“I had two children by a Frost Giantess. They were both born monsters, but they were mine. My children. I did not carry them, but I would have kept them also if I had been allowed.”
“Did you love them?” Harry asked genuinely curious. He had heard the stories of the swamp wolf and the world serpent in passing, and he wondered briefly what it was about them that made them so dangerous, so much so that Odin had cast them out of Asgard and out of Loki’s life.
“Of course I did!” The God reared back, eyes narrowed onto Harry’s smiling face.
“Then they can never be monsters if they are loved, Loki,” he whispered, still smiling.
Loki glanced warily at him, wanting for something though he didn’t know what, but when Harry simply remained silent he glanced away and began to speak again. His hands were pressed tight to Harry’s stomach, savouring every twist and kick the child made, and he thought back to Sigyn and Hela as she grew inside of his wife and how he had held his hands to that bump too.
“I did this with my wife too, you know,” Loki admitted after a long silence. “When Angrboða, my mistress, was pregnant, I wasn’t really around. She lived on Jötunheimr and I was of Asgard, and we were enemies, but I had seduced her and she had become with child. The children would have been killed on Jötunheimr if anyone realised I had sired them, but at the time I had thought Odin loved me as his own, and foolishly I had thought he would accept my children as his grandchildren, like he would have Thor’s should they have existed. He took in Fenrir, and all was well. For a while. I continued to visit Angrboða and she fell pregnant a second time, and it was when I was with her, to collect Jörmungandr and bring him to Asgard too, that everything changed. Mother had a vision, that Fenrir would rise up during Ragnarök and kill the All Father. Odin sent men to hunt him down, my son hunted through the trees as I was by Svadilfari and no one tried to save him as no one had tried to save me. And when they caught him, when they-” Loki took a deep breath, trying to force down the anger that churned in the back of his throat like bile and the hate in his stomach like lead weighing him down.
“They chained him away and I never found out where. I killed all those who had hunted him, each of them, though I tortured them for information first and killed them only when I realised they did not know where Odin had sent Fenrir. Afterwards, after I had done this, Odin called me to him, told me so calm and sure that it was not my fault the children were monsters and that he loved me but that he had sent Jörmungandr away as well.”
“Loki,” Harry breathed, his voice strained and shaking.
The God continued to talk as if he hadn’t heard Harry beginning to speak, and Harry let him, because he knew that if Loki stopped now he’d never talk about it again. It was like an old wound, left alone to fester, but the scab needed to be torn away so that the injury could heal for good, clean and uninfected, and talking about it had always helped Harry feel better any time his friends had managed to make him talk to them.
“Sigyn’s mother had become pregnant in Alfheimr. It is a land of elves and fey, nymphs and dryads, but Sigyn never found out what her father was. She looked completely Æsir. But our daughter,” Loki snorted, because comparing Sigyn to Hel was laughable. They were like night and day, two completely opposite ends of the spectrum, one normal and the other inheriting both her father’s Jötun heritage and her grandfather’s, whatever he might have been. “She did not love me, but the first time I meet her I was infatuated. She was so beautiful and kind and when she laughed it was like wind whistling through wind-chimes. She turned down Thor, you know, and I think that was what had me so intrigued. No one ever turned down Thor. It was so bad sometimes, the way he would always steal the attentions of maidens, that when I wanted sex I would take my female form and lie with men just to not have to worry about the men paying more attention to Thor than me too. I tricked her into marriage. She hated me for it, I think, but we have grown friendly since.”
Loki stopped for a moment. The child had stopped kicking, so he had pushed himself into a sitting position, rubbing at the lines on his face left by Harry’s clothing and his own fingers.
Harry’s hand was now resting lightly on Loki’s thigh. At first the man had cast it a startled glance, but when Harry made no further movements (just a warm press through denim, there, safe and sincere) Loki turned his eyes back to Harry’s.
“By Asgardian law, all marriages must be consummated and carried on for the period of a year. After that year has passed, the woman has the right to request an annulment from the All Father on the grounds of improper treatment to herself or her children, and though she had become pregnant on our wedding night I had never treated either of them badly and Odin refused. The husband, however, could be rid of his wife simply if he was bored of her. She had begged to be rid of me, and they had refused her, and so I asked instead, to keep Hel and leave Sigyn and it was granted. She loved me a little for that, for giving her freedom back. She loved Hela too, but they were so different, so wrong for one another, and I spent most of the child’s life raising her in place of her mother. She has her own world now; I conquered it for her the same week I overheard Odin talking to the Council of how Hela was too different to remain upon Asgard. She is safe at least, and I can visit her in my dreams and when she chooses to let me come to Helheimr in person. Sleipnir is Odin’s war horse, though it hurts to look at him, humiliated and debased, treated like an animal though he understands and feels as a human does. I have not seen Jörmungandr or Fenrir since they were cast out. I do not even know if they are alive.”
His throat hurt, and he cleared it loudly even as Harry conjured water into their empty glasses and held one out to him.
“You’ve been so brave.” Harry murmured, leaning forward to press a kiss to Loki’s forehead.
“How?” He asked incredulously. “I am a coward and a monster! I let him take my children and I failed them. And then I let those- them -use me, take me when I was not willing and I could not escape without Sigyn’s help! That would never have happened to Thor or the Warrior’s Three or Odin! I am weak and pathetic and useless. I always have been, Harry, even as a child I could not fight half as well as the others. All I was ever good for was my magic, and Odin took that away from me as part of my punishment. Without it I was defenceless and worthless, but I was never brave.”
“You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.”1 A hand was squeezing over his own, and Loki’s fingers shook in Harry’s grasp. It was warm and strong and Loki squeezed back desperately. “When I was a child I wasn’t very strong either. My uncle used to hit me a lot and my cousin and his friends would beat me up whenever they could catch me, so I got very good at running away. Some people might not call that bravery, but every night I had to go back and face being punished for running in the first place, and every morning I had to force myself out of bed knowing it would all happen again that day. But I did it, over and over again, and I felt weak and helpless and useless but I grew up to save the world, Loki. Being brave isn’t about saying stupid things to hide your fear, and it certainly isn’t about being strong or fearless, because only fools are never afraid. Being brave gives you strength to overcome your past so that you can dictate your future.”
Harry pressed another kiss to Loki’s face, smiling sadly. “I bet your brother has never been in a position where he has been made to feel true fear, has he? I knew a boy like him once, his name was Draco and he thought he was the best of the best and he used to bully me and some of my friends, but don’t get me wrong we gave it back to him. When the war started, he fell to pieces. I was used to it, the fear and the pain and the hatred, but he had lived nothing but days of comfort and love and safety and he spent a year living in the shadow of something, someone, so terrifying that he was afraid to breathe. And he called me brave afterwards for marrying that someone. Perhaps I was. Perhaps it was bravery that made me go through with it, to protect people I cared about, to end a war by marrying Tom, but I told Draco he was the braver one because he had had to live with the fear every day, like I used to as a child, and he kept living, kept facing it. Like you are, Loki. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.2 Do you think Thor would have had the strength to let me touch him if something like that had happened to him?”
“I don’t mind you touching me. You make me feel safe. It is your magic I think, it called to me the day you appeared at the mouth of that alley, sang to me.”
“I could feel yours as well,” Harry told him softly, squeezing his hand harder around Loki’s, before moving the other to cup Loki’s cheek. “Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.3 What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.4 So today it’s me. In a year’s time a stranger who hugs you on the street or a casual acquaintance at work perhaps. You flinch when I touch you sometimes too, you know, and in your sleep you tense up if I walk into the room to wake you. You could be in the middle of a nightmare, thrashing around screaming, but you fall still the second I open your bedroom door. But that’s fine. That’s normal. I sleep lightly too, because of other horrors, but no one expected me to get over them in day, Loki, and no one expects you to either. You try. That’s what bravery is all about.”
Loki was crying again, deep, heaving sobs that shook his whole body. But for once he wasn’t ashamed of that fact, because Harry was right. He had been through more than any one person deserved to be put through and no one he knew had ever experienced anything similar so they didn’t have the right to judge him. And so what if his skin still crawled sometimes, like maggots moving beneath the flesh until Loki showered and scratched at them until his flesh bled. And so what if he couldn’t sleep through the whole night without waking up screaming, because Harry had nightmares too sometimes and that was fine because Harry was the kindest, bravest person Loki had ever met, braver than Thor even because what had Thor done that could compare with Harry marrying the murderer of his parents to end a war? Nothing, that was what; Thor had caused wars and killed people, but he had never sacrificed himself so wholly, unlike Harry. So if Harry could be afraid and have bad dreams and cry himself to sleep sometimes, then why couldn’t Loki?
“Thank you,” the God whispered, ignoring the tears on his cheeks whereas before he would have been struggling to wipe them away faster than they were falling. “Thank you,” he breathed against the scar on Harry’s forehead as he pressed a soft kiss over the puckered skin.
Harry didn’t say anything, because honestly, Loki had nothing to thank him for. Instead, he brought his arms up to hug Loki around the shoulders, loosely though until Loki pushed forward into his embrace and then Harry held him tightly, separated only by the swell of his own stomach, and he rocked the God back and forth lightly, both of them feeling lighter than they had in a long time.
XXX
September 9th 2013. Miami, Florida.
Loki hadn’t felt comfortable staying in New York, especially after reports of ‘alien invasions’ started featuring on the nine-o-clock news and everyone started speculating that it might have been his fault. So they moved to Miami. It was too hot for Loki, but it was far enough away from New York for him to feel comfortable living there until after Harry’s child was born.
St. Mortimous of the Sickly was a better magical hospital than St. Cyprians anyway, and Loki hadn’t liked the sound of the hospital in Texas. So, Florida it was. They lived, now, in a nice but expensive condo on Biscayne Boulevard Way, but they had a nice view of the Bay though they had to travel over forty minutes to get to St. Mortimous’ on SW 3rd Avenue. Fortunately, Loki’s magical transportation method wasn’t the same as apparating, and he wasn’t above being used as a cosmic taxi when Harry started having contractions that morning.
It was fast and easy, much easier than Sigyn’s labour had been or the stories Frigga told over birthing Thor, or his own labour for that matter. They had numbed Harry’s pain and cut the child out of his stomach and then sewn him back up as they had the lashes upon Loki’s back, with a wave of a wand and a flash of light, and there was not even a scar left to prove it had ever happened.
The child was small, because Harry was small, but he was healthy with pale skin and dark blue eyes that would soon change colours, and Loki knew because he had dreamed that night of the child by Hela’s side disappearing that this child would have the very same green eyes his mother had. A tuft of dark hair on his head and pouty pink lips completed the picture, the little image of his mother in Harry’s arms, and Loki found himself huddled over the couple on the hospital bed, crouched over Harry’s legs and kneeling by his side, so that he could see down onto the child’s face and lean forward to accept every happy kiss that Harry pressed to his forehead in between kisses upon the child’s face.
“What are you naming him?” Loki asked. He watched the child with reverence, awed by its existence and the love he could feel coming off of Harry for it in waves.
“Well,” Harry said sounding resigned, “he’s definitely a Potter. Just look at that hair! So, he can have my surname. Tom can change it later, if he wants to, but I doubt it, because he usually just goes by Voldemort, or Duke Potter when he’s with me.” He glanced up at Loki, green eyes bright and mouth pulled into a wide smile. “You name him. You’re as much a part of this as I was, or Tom was, and you had no reason to be other than you chose to be. So you name him. It is my gift to you, to repay you for being here through all of this, no matter how uncomfortable it made you.”
Loki swallowed heavily, forcing his heart back down out of his throat, and he thought about it. Voldemort was, from what he understood of what Harry had told him over the last three months, a King of sorts for the magical world. Harry was his consort, a Prince in his own right, with money and titles and land to his name. This child was their heir, not Loki’s no matter how much he loved him too, and the child would inherit all that his parents had, all of his parents’ fame and glory and honour too, and he needed a name befitting that. A name that would, also, show how he was treasured by them.
“Rig, I think for a middle name. It means King, in my language. In Æsir,” Loki added, because he didn’t actually know what many Jötun names meant, nor did he consider it his language either, but he wanted Harry to be clear about that regardless. “And for his first?” Loki stayed silent for a moment more, considering what name would suit this child best. “Eileifer,” he decided on at last, speaking surely and directly at the child, “it means ever-heir, or always-descendant, in your language. And he is, isn’t he? Forever?”
“Always, Loki. No one will take this child away,” Harry promised. Not like they took yours, went unsaid, but Loki nodded his head in agreement to the silent promise and kissed Eileifer’s head gently. “Remember, how you told me of your annulment from Sigyn? The marriage could be ended after a year?” Loki nodded slowly. “We have something similar. I need to return to Tom before the second week of March or our marriage is automatically annulled. He has not come looking for me because he knows I am alive, and he probably thinks I’ll come back soon. And I would have gone back, Loki, I was planning to, but then I found you and I didn’t want to leave you alone. But if I don’t, the bond I share with him will break, and, I, I’m afraid he’ll think I’m dead. He might think me kidnapped these last six months, but at least he knew I was alive.”
“Could he find you through Eileifer?” Loki questioned, sounding concerned. He was worried that the Dark Lord would take the child from him, not Harry because Harry had a right to his son, but Loki had no rights, no reason to be involved, and he was terrified of being left behind and alone and forgotten, unwanted once more.
“There are ways I could hide him. But I don’t really want to. Tom deserves to know his son too.”
“I do not want you to leave me. Either of you.” It was little more than a whisper on the wind, so soft, so desperate that Harry had to strain to hear it and hearing it hurt his heart. He reached out for Loki, pulling the man down to sit beside him on the bed, and Loki laid his head on Harry’s shoulder and whispered, “Please.”
“Ok. We’ll wait until March. Just for a little while.”
That night, Harry had Loki help him cast the Fidelius Charm on Eileifer, and Voldemort was none the wiser for the time being. Harry and Loki took care of the child, their child as far as Loki was concerned, and for once the God felt like he was part of a family, that he belonged and was welcomed and not just a spare part. Though he knew it was cruel to deprive the other human of his son, to deprive Harry of his husband forever, Loki was a selfish creature at heart, though loyal to those he cared for. Unfortunately, sometimes those emotions came hand in hand, and loyalty to this child meant that he was selfish in keeping Eileifer close and Harry closer.
Mid-March came and went, but Harry stayed with Loki.
XXX
1 - Mary Tyler Moore: “You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.”
2 - Nelson Mandela: “Courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
3 - Lyndon B. Johnson: “Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.”
4 - C. S. Lewis: “What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.”
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Thanks. Hope you enjoyed the chapter! :)
next chapter HERE :)