The angel’s eyes immediately light up with wonder and joy. He puts aside his mending — how Thea is harder on jeans than Davie he’ll never know— and gives his beloved his full attention.
“Do you truly? Darling, it would be my deepest honor and greatest delight to have a child with you.”
“Goodness. I expected you to be hesitant … even argumentative. You already have two babies of your own, and I … well look at my brood.”
Loki averts her eyes to the hands folded in her lap, turning back to the bonfire: the first of autumn, and she already feels her blood coursing fresher, crisper, with the cooling of the Scottish air.
“ … Balth. You are my safe haven. I wish to create life there.”
Kayla had only just arrived in this world and she was already invested in this world. She almost seemed like a tourist with how she was acting. Looking astonished at every little archeatural marvel she stumbled upon, but what most interested her was that she could sense magic in this place. Little did she know that she wasn’t exactly in a public area. Not that her portals could ever stick her anywhere convenient nowadays.
Loki travels between realms as an avid camper does forests. He feels no particular fondness for any one place, but rather, for the act of moving itself; for traveling, and for the constant flux of relative environments.
Nevertheless: for Asgard, he feels peculiar pride and protectiveness, even as one among its misfits.
So it’s with disengaged amusement that he watches the young brunette bumbling around the royal square of Asgard’s citadel.
“However did you slip past the guards?” he queries, a laugh caught in his throat. “I’ve half a mind not to slay you for your insolence, simply because you amuse me.”
she isn’t sure how much more of this she can take.
asgard is in chaos – what’s left of it. thor and loki have been gone for far too long and it’s taken every ounce of her not to go and find them. but she cannot; they are rebuilding and somehow she has been seen as their defacto leader, wife of one prince and good sister to the other – there is no one left to lead, and sigyn is left with the duty of trying to rebuild in the midst of her own worries of the war waging on planets she cannot think to name. her worries for loki. her worries for the babe she had yet to tell him of, it’s thrum of a heartbeat in tune with it’s mothers.
asgard is in chaos, yes, so it must take a goddess of chaos to restore it to some balance.
but in the times when she is not needed, she waits. she sits atop loki’s own favorite steed, black as the night, flanked by two guards. she waits at the end of the bridge to the other worlds, a sentry until exhaustion wins out. she is loyal, without fault. and she will not rest until loki comes across the bridge – walking or not. alive or not. the latter pains her to consider, so she envisions the former. envisions it so much it pains her, as well. until the tears well up in her eyes with the force she is staring at the bridge, waiting. praying. begging.
He appears beyond the Bridge, what splinters remain of it, drawn vividly back to his first senseless battle with his brother, his empty threats of doing Jane Foster harm, when his hair was still the length of a boy’s and his heart only freshly cloven in two.
But he comes to Asgard’s ruins, eyes wet with windburn and sorrow, with longing for the beautiful woman atop his horse, from behind. He slips through the viscous slimy vaguely womb-like membrane between realms, stepping from on board the refugee ship destined for slaughter, with his new and secretmost quest imparted, into the recent past, to protect what parts of the universe are soon to literally disintegrate.
“My love,” he calls, voice trembling only slightly, and steps toward the royal party. “Please, have patience, just a little longer. Dismount and join me.”
He bows–the prince and once-king–to his bride, deeply, raven curls tumbling across his shoulder.
“I beg of you. This is of grave importance. Beyond that which any of our ancient prophecies have foretold.”
“You could say that,” Tony sighs, dropping onto the sofa next to him.
He leans back, resting his head against the back of the sofa, tilted enough to look at the god beside him. “Do me a favour? If you suddenly decide you want to make another go at world domination? Let me know so I can join you. It’d probably be less frustrating than these ‘team building’ exercises upstate.”
This elicits a rare laugh: not a few breaths of mirth but an actual merry cackle. Loki tosses a smattering of some nebulous cloudy concoction into the cauldron by his laptop. Hilariously, said cauldron, for its antiquated purpose, is a perfectly beveled sphere composed of vibranium (a joint gift from Tony and Princess Shuri).
The act conjures a cloud of anthropomorphic forms in eerie green-gold. From the morass appears a beaver constructing a dam; the dam metamorphoses into a suit of armor distinctly reminiscent of Tony’s latest upgrade.
Loki still hasn’t responded to Tony’s quips when the lime-hued miasma floats over to precisely that suit of armor and encases it, then dissolves.
Loki’s thin Trickster lip quirks.
“Go on. You’re dying to ask what I did to it. Consider it a consolation prize for your hard work not punching people.”
Tony watches in smug satisfaction as Loki laughs, offering him a grin and wink for his success at eliciting such a response from the other, clearly pleased with himself.
As soon as the trickster starts working his magic, Tony sits up, watching in curious fascination. That curiosity only grows as the cloud settles over the armour, and instantly Tony’s on his feet, going to investigate, questions already at the tip of his tongue before the god can invite him to ask them.
“You know me so well, Lokes. Alright, talk to me. What did you do?” he asks, running a hand curiously over the armour to see if he can feel any noticeable difference. While others would probably be suspicious, there’s nothing but trust and obvious curious fascination from Tony in the action. “Must be something pretty significant if you’re thinking of it as a reward for such.”
He snorts, casting a wry grin the god’s way. “And believe me, I was sorely tempted a number of times. Or maybe to give them a good blast with the repulsors. It’s like I’m a glorified supes babysitter most days.”
Loki’s lip quirks. He averts his gaze to the cauldron. He sniffs, and turns, and walks to his steadily growing bookshelf, and leafs through the spines of the tomes like each is an old lover.
He bares his back to Tony intentionally. And most carefully, he modulates his tone, to be cool and wry and vaguely disdainful, yet the gesture itself, and the motives, cannot be mistaken, when he speaks again:
“It is a scrying spell. A permanent one. It will tell me when any suit of armor that you wear, a residue of which I have placed into the potion, is in peril.”
He conceals his smile well, while leafing through the text, for ideas on binding agents, to make good on his word that the spell is permanent.
“I thought it fitting. Creatures that I summoned on behalf of our mutual enemy have been the stuff of your nightmares for many years. Now I shall remedy that, and be cause for you to feel safer.”
He turns toward Tony, then, with a far darker expression.
“No one is ever going to reach into your chest and pull out your life force again. I made you a vow. You are my friend and I will extinguish those who threaten you.”
Loki, hunkered over as ever at a computer in the laboratory beneath the main floor, is inanimate as a statue. He remains thusly for the longest time.
When he comes to life, the glint in his eyes is uncharitable: hostile.
Beyond anything else, however, it is suspicious.
“Who put you up to this? Barton? Romanoff? Or someone with a less obvious agenda for cruelty? The Vision, perhaps? Tell me what I’ve done, to have this carrot dangled: heartfelt camaraderie from someone I respect? In my long life I have learned it is too good to be true. So why? WHY? Is it FUNNY, Stark?”
It’s been months, years, since Loki erupted in so volatile a fashion. His fair rice-paper thin skin goes blotchy-red with ungainly emotions.
“Is my lonelinessFUNNY?”
“Woah, woah!” Tony holds his up placatingly, and while he does flinch, he doesn’t step back. Instead, he steps forward, slowly. “Okay, so it wasn’t my finest choice of words, but… Look at me, Lokes. I’m not lying.”
He meets the god’s gaze steadily, warm brown eyes full of sincerity. “Please,” he murmurs, putting himself as close to the god as he can without outright invading the other’s personal space. “I’m serious – well, the meaning behind it was serious. Do you see anyone else besides the kid and Bruce who get to just wander in here whenever they please? Hell, do you even see anyone else allowed to stay in the tower at all besides them and you?”
“I trust you,” he admits, leaving himself vulnerable as he offers the heartfelt truth. “I’ve fought for you. Everyone else says I’m crazier now for letting you stay here than when I first took on the kid. I told them if they didn’t like it, they could leave entirely, that you were staying.”
He lowers his head, his exhaustion with everythingshowing through. He was so tired of losing the people he cares about, and he really didn’t want to lose the one of the few friends he has because of a couple of words in what was meant to be a lighthearted tease. “I’m sorry. I’m your friend, Lokes. I would never intentionally say or do anything to hurt you. Please, you have to know that, right? I’ll stick by your side, so long as you’ll have me.”
Loki stutters over the words he hears; stutters over the logic of being valued for something intrinsic, past what he can offer as a tool or asset (in that, how alike they are!); stutters over the words he, in turn, has to offer.
So stunned is he that tears flood his alarmed eyes.
I trust you. You. I TRUST you.
When was the last time
ANYONE… ?
When Tony steps forward, Loki steps backward.
“You must explain to me how I have been of use,” he counters, a dagger-edge in his voice. “One is either inherently worthy, or one is of use until he earns worthiness. This has been my lifelong truth.”
The very second Loki steps back away from him, Tony freezes in place. “Okay. I’ll stay right here, Loki,” he says gently. No nicknames, just genuine care and concern as he watches the other.
“You’re my friend,” he says, insistent on the truth of his words, as if that explained everything. To him, it does. He has precious few friends, and he clings desperately to keep them.
“You don’t have to be of any ‘use’, especiallyto me. That’s not what friends are. They’re family– family of your own choosing. Just like Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, Ruth, Bruce, and Peter. You, Loki, are myfamily.”
He looks at him pleadingly, just wanting to be understood. “I just… I just want you to be happy, and safe, and here with me. That’s all I ever want from any of my friends. Nothing more. And I’ll be here for you. Anything you need, consider it yours if it’s within my power to give it to you.”
Loki’s incredulity only grows, yet it’s transparently evident from the agony on his face that he’s violently torn between skepticism and grateful belief.
“It took me a matter of years to forgive my brother for lesser slights than I have exercised upon you, and you expect me to believe it has taken you mere months of cohabitation to go from loathing me to … . ?”
Another word beginning with “L” dangles on his tongue, but he doesn’t dare speak it. It is too tender, too crassly sentimental, a word for Loki to speak lightly. Indeed, only members of Loki’s own family have ever heard him utter it.
“I am NOT … ! I am NOT the one you WANT.”
You want gold hair, you want a baritone voice fit for commands on the field of battle; you want someone who defends underdogs against bullies the way you do; you want sweetness and patience; you want guileless sincerity; you want compassion.
I am the one they shuffled into side rooms and behind the adults; I am the peculiar, dark, slender one, the one not fully there, the mystery, the liminal, the thing that is laughed at and derided. I am the one who lies to hide, I am the one who holds still to be invisible, I am the one who shifts shape to be uncatchable.
I am afraid.
I have always been afraid.
Ever his own worst enemy, jaw jutting, teeth clenched, Loki waits, having uttered that one final plea. But Stark is twice as stubborn as anyone he’s ever known, and the God of Mischief buckles.
“Al-RIGHT. Alright. I am your friend. I have ever hoped to be, so here. Here I am, here I stay. I do not pledge my bonds lightly, Tony Stark. When I pledge it to you, you should know that death itself cannot get to you without going through my bare teeth first. And I am venomous.”
It is his way of saying, me too, me too. I care for you too.
“I found something I thought you would like,” he says, beaming proudly. When he brings his hand from behind his back, in his palm is a teeeeeeny tiny little green tree frog. He holds it out towards his brother, like a toddler might offer his favourite toy to a cherished friend.
“Ehm, oh, intriguing,” the Trickster chirps, carefully collecting the tiny amphibian onto his palm.
And then he throws it into the cauldron.
And then, just when Thor reacts in what Loki hopes will be outrage and horror, his wickedly amused little brother produces the unharmed frog once more in his other hand. His tongue probes between grinning teeth.
“I am joking! Tis a most noble little fellow.”
Oh, it is a reaction of outrage and horror for the AGES, and he’s even in the midst of reaching for the poor little frog when his brother produces it unharmed. In equal measure is the look of relief and joy when he sees his present has not been destroyed.
“I knew you would like it,” he says, clapping his brother on the shoulder. Then he finally peers into the cauldron. “What are you preparing?”
“A most noble little warrior. Shall we name him after one among the Einherjar?”
Loki’s question is playful, yet it carries a wistful note, for the home, and the many thousands of people, lost: first to Hela, and then to Thanos.
He lifts his eyes to his brother’s face, studying hastily shorn hair complete with scissor-hewn lightning; the grief is still so fresh for them both that Thor still sports his gladiatorial cut.
Loki knows the pain, for Thor, is greater; for Loki, Asgard died years ago with their mother. The rest was relatively inconsequential. For Thor, however, Odin was a true ancestor and moral compass, and Asgard reflected the Thunder God’s image, in every sword, breastplate, mead glass, and pillar.
Asgard WAS Thor.
“You have toiled unendingly, to avenge mother, father, Heimdall, me… when was the last time you were able to weep freely, brother? You must remember who stands before you. It is only me.”
icyxmischief 