Things That Were Put On A Bus Bonus
Fandral was still shielding his nose from Loki by the time their party of three was overtaken by Sif and Volstagg on horseback, just outside Heimdall’s observatory.
“My word!” Volstagg exclaimed as he dismounted, an all too predictable echo of Fandral’s greeting words. “So the rumours are true, then? Excellent!” He caught Loki up in a bear hug that lifted him clean off his feet. Miraculously, Loki did not expire from the pain. “My children have missed your tricks, as has my poor battle-bruised flesh. Welcome back!”
“Good,” said Sif, striding purposefully into the observatory. “If I’d had to kill you, I would have brought you back to life so I could kill you again as payback. I hate having to kill friends.”
“So much so that you’d do it twice. I always knew I held a special place in your heart, Sif.” Loki let Volstagg steer him after her with an arm around his shoulders, because it was the path of least resistance. Resistance meaning ouch. “Hullo, Heimdall. Long time no see.”
“Not really,” Heimdall replied mildly. “I watched you wash your hair.”
“You really need to stop reminding people you do that. It’s creepy. I love what you’ve done to this place, though.”
“Yes, there truly is a silver lining to everything.”
“Speaking of which.” Loki grinned and spread his arms to encompass all of them. “Asgard’s Yearly Well-Intentioned Treason Club, all together again. Once we’re all back from wherever we’re going, we should celebrate.”
“We’re not –” Fandral started with a frown.
“Where is everyone going, anyway?” Thor quickly cut him off.
Sif held up a black and red stone. “The Aether. The Allfather – Allmother – your parents, think it best not to keep it too near the Tesseract, so they tasked us with finding a safe place to hide it.”
“And you know of such a place?” Thor said.
“We were thinking of giving it to the Collector to safeguard,” Volstagg said.
“What?!” Loki exclaimed. “No. Keep it far, far away from the Collector. Don’t you know he’s got Chitauri connections?”
Sif and Volstagg exchanged horrified glances.
“Since when?” Volstagg asked.
“Ever since the being that recruited me to deliver the Tesseract started asking around about the Infinity Stones everywhere. You’d be better off planting that thing on a passing asteroid. You’d be better off flushing it down the toilet.”
“You couldn’t have warned us about this sooner?” Sif said indignantly.
“Nobody asked. I was in prison, supposedly not to see or speak to another living soul ever again. Funny how that works.”
“And I see that once again, nobody was planning to ask me either,” Heimdall sighed. “Well, no matter. I know just the place to send it.”
“And I’ll be headed to Earth, if you will,” Thor said.
“And I to Vanaheim,” said Fandral. “Because as I was trying to say, the club isn’t all back together yet.”
Loki looked around. “Well I’ll be, I forgot all about Hogun. He’s on Vanaheim? Why?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
Thor frowned. “I told him he should be where his heart lies, so he stayed to spend time with his people.”
Everyone turned to stare at him.
“But he’s as Asgardian as any of us,” Sif said.
“A lot more so than I am,” Loki said.
Thor frowned harder. “That’s odd. He said he’d barely seen his family since I was a child... and those villagers we saved at least looked like they might have been his kin...”
“So do plenty of folks on Earth,” Fandral said. “Red-blooded phenotypes show up all over the place. Even in some folks who bleed anti-freeze.”
“Not when I do bleed anti-freeze, they don’t,” Loki said, side-eying him.
“Well, you get the point.”
“I do. My brother’s been had by the most unlikely trickster of the lot of us. Good thing I was going to pick up Bjorn from Vanaheim anyway. I’ll accompany you.”
“Bjorn?” Thor asked.
“The Einherjar who found me on Svartalfheim and patched me up. He too seemed oddly happy to be going on holiday there, come to think of it. Dropping him off in exchange for his identity was the easiest bribe ever.”
Loki and Fandral arrived on Vanaheim to a village-wide party in full swing. Finding Hogun and Bjorn was easy; they were guests of honour in the newly rebuilt feasting hall.
They were also giggling like maniacs.
“Is that smell what I think it is?” Loki wondered aloud. Bjorn fell from his bean bag with a shriek.
“It would seem so,” Fandral answered, snatching a tobacco pipe from the low table and making Hogun look up.
“Damn,” Hogun said. And, clumsily grabbing his mace, “Which one of you turned coat this time?”
“I did,” Loki said, plopping down on Bjorn’s bean bag. “Back to your side, so no bludgeonings necessary.” He sized Hogun and Bjorn up for several long moments, then asked Bjorn point-blank: “You came here to renew your Vanir pipe weed trade agreements, didn’t you?”
“I thought you said no bludgeonings necessary,” Hogun said, eyeing him and Fandral both.
Bjorn, sprawled out on his back, opened and closed his mouth like a fish. “H – how – ?”
“Prison guards talk when they’re discontent, and by breaking the Bifrost and cutting off imports from Vanaheim I had made them quite discontent. Plus, you had guilt written all over your face.”
Hogun huffed and threw his mace down on the table. “You gonna turn him in? Just because Kvasir’s family bribes Odin into keeping Asgardian-made poetry mead the only legal non-alcoholic drug in the realm...”
Loki and Fandral exchanged glances.
“You know, I never liked poetry mead much,” Fandral said. “It gives me hangovers. Hangovers!”
“I don’t know what you’re afraid of, I couldn’t live with myself if I turned someone in for something like this,” Loki said, pulling up another bean bag for Bjorn. “And you, of all people! First you save my life, now you’re a benevolent criminal mastermind. Next you’ll be offering Fandral and I a pipe free of charge – for medicinal purposes, you understand. You did excellent work on the life-saving front, but I’m almost starting to regret choosing to keep your trip here a secret over seeing a proper healer for the pain...”
Bjorn immediately hailed a serving girl.