Into the Endless Night
Then
“This is the old way,” the Valkyrie had said when she was telling Natasha that the humans could watch the coronation but they had better stay the hell out of the way. “Bor and Odin prettied the public parts of it up when they decided that there was no reason that Asgard shouldn’t rule the Nine, but this is what all that gilding covers up. It’s what our ancestors have done since before the Aesir split from the Vanir. Odin did it, Bor did it, Buri did it before him – Thor never got the chance.”
There was pain briefly on her face at the mention of Thor, but by now Natasha knew that the Valkyrie hadn’t known him for very long before the attack on the Statesman. Maybe it was the potential she mourned, not the man, but it was hard to tell. Maybe to the Valkyrie it didn’t really matter; maybe for her the two had been one and the same.
The old way, she thought now, watching the intent faces of the Asgardians in the flickering firelight of the bonfires set up at the top of the cliff face where New Asgard would be built. It was the dark of the moon, the night sky so clear that the stars looked like gems spilled out on dark velvet. She didn’t know if Asgard was up there somewhere, still shining, still visible from Earth because the light of its destruction hadn’t reached them yet.
Most of the time it was easy to pretend that the Asgardians were human, or at least close enough to it not to matter. They looked human unless you were close enough to note the handful of minute differences visible to the naked eye – a certain sharpness to their features, a heavier tread, a slightly lower center of gravity. Natasha suspected that there were more that even she just hadn’t noticed yet; it was easier to see when there were more Asgardians around than just Thor or Loki, where discrepancies could just be written off as individual quirks rather than characteristics of the whole species. Even after two months – nearer three now – she was still finding out all the numerous other ways in which Asgardians differed from humans in ways other than their lifespan and physical strength. It went beyond enhanced senses – it had been a shock to realize that they really could see in the dark, something she had vaguely been aware of when Thor had been with the Avengers but written off only as good night vision.
Their eyes flashed now in the reflection of the bonfires – fewer than two hundred and fifty people, from the oldest grandmother to the two infants in arms (one with its father, one with an older sister), less the handful of Asgardians who had been cloistered in the purpose-built little hof for the past twelve hours. Natasha was uncomfortably aware of how small and human she was compared to them and was glad to have Steve and Bruce with her, the three Avengers standing at the back of the gathered crowd. Since they were allies, they hadn’t come armed – Natasha wasn’t even wearing her widow’s bites – but it left her feeling vulnerable in a way she disliked. It wasn’t that she thought she was in any danger, since the Asgardians seemed barely aware of the humans watching them. But she didn’t belong here. None of them did, never mind that it was their planet in the first place.
“The king comes!”
She didn’t see who had called out. It was a woman’s voice, but that didn’t mean much; three out of every four Asgardian survivors were women. Others took up the cry until Natasha could feel it pulsing in her bones.
“The king comes! The king comes! The king comes!”
In the glittering firelight that punctuated the lambent darkness, Loki’s eyes gleamed with reflected brilliance.
He was in white – undyed wool, rather – and it was pale against the darkness as he came up the marked path from the hof, accompanied by the Valkyrie and one of the other Asgardian survivors. He looked very little like the would-be conqueror Natasha remembered from six years earlier, his hair loose around his shoulders and his hands empty at his sides. She couldn’t see his expression from here.
An Asgardian man stepped out of the crowd before Loki and the two women could enter the circle of firelight and set the butt of his spear against the ground, blocking their way. “Who comes?”
“The King of Asgard,” the Valkyrie said. “The Allfather of the Aesir.”
“Who claims this?”
“I do.” Loki’s voice was hoarse. “I am Loki, son of Odin, son of Bor, son of Buri. I am Loki, son of Frigga, daughter of Fjörgynn, son of Nörvi. I am Loki, brother of Thor, son of Odin; I am Loki, brother of Hela, daughter of Odin. I am Loki, blood-son of Laufey, son of Bergelmir, son of Þrudgelmir, son of Ymir. I do not know my blood-mother.”
“Will any vouch for you?”
“I do,” said the Valkyrie. “I am Brunnhilde, daughter of Viðrir, last of the Valkyrie. My oath is to the throne of Asgard; I have sworn my sword to Loki Odinson.”
“I do,” said the other Asgardian, a handsome older woman whose dark hair was shot through with threads of silver. “I am Eir, daughter of Hjukí, healer of the house of Odin. I have seen Loki Odinson grow from babyhood to manhood: he is the son of Odin.”
The Asgardian man stood aside. “Pass, then, King of Asgard.”
The trio proceeded nearly a double handful of steps until another Asgardian stepped out of the crowd. She held a battered shield in one hand and brought it up before her. “Who comes?”
“The King of Asgard,” the Valkyrie repeated. “The Allfather of the Aesir.”
“By what right does he claim this?”
“By kin-right; I am the son of Odin, King of Asgard, who has passed the great gates and feasts now in Valhalla; I am the brother of Thor, King of Asgard, who has passed the great gates and drinks now in Valhalla with all the rest of our kin.” Loki’s voice broke slightly on his brother’s name, but he didn’t hesitate. “By acclaim of the Althing, who are the voice of Asgard and speak for all the Aesir.”
“Will any vouch for you?”
“Of those among the living I alone saw my father and my brother die,” Loki said. “It is my word alone you must trust in this. My brother –” He stumbled over the words, but managed to push on. “My brother died for me, and I will carry the burden of that all the days of my life.”
Natasha had the sudden visceral memory of Loki screaming in Wakanda after Thanos had snapped his fingers and left them all behind – that awful, barely comprehending grief of someone pushed to their breaking point. He had screamed until his voice gave out, the only real sound that Natasha could remember from that first awful hour. Everything else she remembered only in flashes of sensation – the breeze on her face, the ruined metal of the War Machine suit under her hands as they had pried Rhodey out of it, Steve’s bruising grip on her as he had wept. All of it overlaid by the memory of Loki screaming.
A woman stepped out of the crowd of Asgardians – barely more than a girl, at least by human standards; Natasha still wasn’t certain what that meant for an Asgardian. She was visibly pregnant, her hands resting on the curve of her belly. “I speak for the Althing,” she said. “I am the voice of Asgard and the tongue of the Aesir. By our choice Loki Odinson is King of Asgard and Allfather of the Aesir.”
The other woman lowered her shield and stood aside. “Pass, then, King of Asgard.”
Natasha counted the number of steps Loki took before his path was blocked again – nine steps, carefully measured. The gray-haired man who stopped him this time had a sword in each hand, bringing them up before him in an X. “Who comes?”
“The King of Asgard,” said the Valkyrie. “The Allfather of the Aesir.”
“Loki Jotun-born, by his own admission,” said the man, who was muscled like a blacksmith and might well have been one. “Laufeyson, not Odinson. What right has he to Asgard? What claim does he have on the Aesir? Go back to Jotunheim, frost giant.”
From the way Loki flinched back, Natasha guessed he hadn’t expected this, though neither Eir nor the Valkyrie looked surprised. His mouth worked silently for a moment, then he said, “Jotunheim has no – no claim on me, nor I on Jotunheim. By our laws and Jotunheim’s there is nothing between us, neither by kin-right or law-right.”
“Kin-right, law-right.” The man made a scoffing sound. “No child of the Aesir are you, sly-skinned false godling. No Ás fathered you, no Ásynja bore you. Even the rime-cursed Jotnar cast you out.”
Loki’s eyes were shocked and huge with hurt, but there was more resignation on his face than anything else – the shock, Natasha thought, came from the fact that the accusation had come so publicly, not that it had come at all. His gaze flickered to either side very quickly; whatever he saw on Eir’s and the Valkyrie’s faces seemed to reassure him. What had come as a surprise to him had clearly been planned by the two women.
It still took him a moment to answer, his tongue darting out to moisten his lips. “Jotun-born am I, yes,” he said haltingly. “No Ás fathered me, no Ásynja bore me. But never have I known any father but Odin Borson, nor any mother but Frigga Fjörgynndottir, nor any brother but Thor Odinson. In all the years of my life I have called no realm home but Asgard, no house such but the great palace of Valaskjalf. Sly-skinned am I, yes, but this skin is my own by choice; I know no people but the Aesir, nor would I have any were they offered me.” He took another breath. “I was offered that choice. I denied it. The Aesir are my people by my choice, not by raising alone. I have no claim on Jotunheim; Jotunheim has no claim on me.”
“Will you go to the gates of Valhalla and ask those whom you claim as your kin if they see it so?”
A muscle jumped in Loki’s jaw, the flickering firelight illuminating the sharp planes of his face. He was very pale. “Yes.”
The Valkyrie stepped forward. “Even the divine Aesir may pass the great gates but once,” she said, grasping the hilt of her sheathed sword. “My oath is to the throne of Asgard. I can let no harm come to Odin’s kin while I yet draw breath.”
A woman stepped onto the pathway behind the man with the swords – Forseti, the goddess of justice. Her voice rang out clearly as she said, “If he is worthy, then he may go to the great gates and no further.”
“Not even the divine Aesir may go that far without dying themselves,” said Eir.
“Every living thing must die, even the gods,” Loki said; there was a heavy ritual note to the words, as there had been to everything that had happened since the sun had gone down. “Even stars burn out.” He shut his eyes briefly before he went on, his breath coming out in short, sharp pants; he was afraid. “I have faced death before. Death is an old friend. One way or another I will see my kin again.”
The man looked at him for what felt like a long time, though was in reality only a few seconds, then lowered his swords and stepped aside. “Pass then, King of Asgard.”
Loki moved past him to stand before Forseti; the other Asgardian moved back into his former position before Eir and the Valkyrie could follow him. “This path can be walked only by one. Your oath has no place here, last of the Valkyrie.”
“I will guard his body, then, while his spirit goes seeking,” the Valkyrie said, and sat cross-legged, drawing her sword as she did so and resting it across her knees. Eir sat beside her in the same position, her hands resting palm-up on her knees.
Loki stood looking at Forseti – a tall, dark-skinned woman with her hair dressed in elaborate braids. A girl stepped out of the crowd and offered Forseti a wide-bowled cup, flicking a fascinated glance at Loki as she did so. Forseti took the cup, careful not to spill a drop – firelight gleamed off the surface of the golden liquid that filled it to the brim – and passed it to Loki.
He raised it in salute. “I drink to our glorious dead!” he cried, then raised it to his lips, his throat working as he drank. He didn’t pause for breath, just tipped it back; when he was done, he turned the cup over to show it was empty before passing it back to Forseti.
He was breathing hard as he went to his knees with what Natasha thought was exaggerated care. Even in the flickering firelight that she could see that his normally-pale eyes were dark, the pupils blown wide; she guessed that whatever had been in that cup hadn’t just been alcohol. He put one hand to the ground in front of him, then touched a clod of soil and grass to his lips. “Earth must be fed.”
There was an echoing murmur from the watching Asgardians, like a swift flurry of wind through cornstalks. Beside her, Steve shifted uneasily, one hand twitching like he was thinking of crossing himself with his old childhood instincts. The back of Natasha’s neck prickled and she found herself feeling automatically for the widow’s bites she wasn’t wearing, as though they might have any place here.
It wasn’t the planet Earth the Asgardians meant, she knew. It was primordial earth, where the Asgardians believed that the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil were watered by the three wells that ran through all the realms.
Forseti touched her fingers to her lips in the same gesture, then drew a knife out from inside the loose sleeve of her gown. As Loki raised his gaze to her, she stooped and in one quick, liquid motion cut his throat.
Steve jerked forward as the knife flashed. Natasha and Bruce both grabbed his arms, Natasha hissing, “Remember the Valkyrie said not to interrupt, no matter what happened.”
Loki hadn’t even flinched as the knife opened his throat, sending a spray of blood across Forseti’s face and gown. He was gasping now, his blood a dark waterfall across his chest as he raised his empty hands over his head, turning his face upwards towards the stars – absurdly bright out here, far from Oslo or any other city. His voice was hoarse as he spoke, barely audible from having his throat laid open nearly to the bone, and his eyes were glowing gold.
“I stand at the gates of Valhalla and they are open for me!” he cried, his pale face ecstatic in the firelight. “There beyond them do I see my father and my mother. There beyond them do I see my father’s father and my mother’s mother. There beyond them do I see my father’s father’s father and my mother’s mother’s mother and all the line of our people back to the beginning of time.”
There were tears running down his face, shining in the firelight as he rocked back and forth on his knees. The wound in his throat was still streaming blood, but Natasha could see it already beginning to close. His voice rose again, stronger now.
“Even now my kin are pouring out the grave-ale in the great hall where the brave will live forever! They are calling to me! They bid me take my place among them beyond the great gates which even the divine Aesir may pass but once!”
There was a low rising murmur from the watching Asgardians. They seemed to eddy like a tide, leaning towards Loki as though they could see what he saw, into the afterlife where all of Asgard but them now dwelt.
Loki threw his head back suddenly, voice raised in a wordless hawk-screech of triumph as he spread his arms to the stars above him. “Allfather Odin!” he shouted. “Your son calls you! God to god, king to king, Allfather to Allfather! My people, who were once yours, send me now to stand at the gates of Valhalla to look upon the faces of the Æsir and the Ásynjur; I may come this far but no further, for they are calling me back to them.”
He paused to take a breath, his face gilded with tears as he cried out again. “Allmother Frigga! Your son calls you! God to goddess, king to queen, Allfather to Allmother! My people, who were once yours, send me now to stand at the gates of Valhalla where all the line of our kin have passed before; I may come this far but no further, for they are calling me back to them.”
The wound across his throat was little more than a thin red line now.
“I bid you pour a cup for your son in Valhalla and think of me kindly until I come to dine with you again, for even the gods must die. Hail Æsir! Hail Ásynjur!”
Whatever Loki had been about to say next died on his lips as his eyes went wide. “Thor!”
He jerked forward with his hand outstretched, reaching for something – someone – no one else could see. There was a sudden stillness in the air, all of the Asgardians staring fixedly at Loki with somehow even more intensity than they had before. By now there was no question that Loki loved his brother beyond all reason, despite what Natasha thought were several determined attempts to kill him; every Asgardian there had to be terrified that given the chance he would follow Thor into death.
“Thor,” he said, pleading. “Brother –” He was weeping now in earnest, tears spilling from his still-golden eyes and dripping off his chin to water the earth where he knelt.
There was agony on Loki’s face as he finally drew his hand back, curling briefly in on himself with his palms pressed to his stomach, as if holding in a mortal wound. “I cannot do it,” he whispered. “I cannot do it. There is no one else.” He raised his head again, golden eyes glowing in the firelight before they began to fade back to his normal blue-green. “Asgard is ashes and atoms and all of my kin are feasting now in Valhalla, save for she who rules in Hel. I will have no homecoming in this life, not until I come to the great gates once more.”
Loki stayed on his knees for a few moments more, then rose to his feet, a little unsteady as the Valkyrie came to help him – the man that had blocked her path had stepped aside. He took the knife that the Valkyrie handed him and breathed on it, raising it so that the mist of his breath could be seen on the metal, then drew the blade slowly and deliberately across his palm. The wound began to close up again nearly as soon as he took the blade away and held his hand up but the blood ran down his wrist to stain the sleeve of his white shirt. “I bleed! I breathe! I live! I have gone to the great gates but no further; I have looked upon that which is not to be looked upon by the eyes of the living and I will not see its like again in this life. I have spoken with the Allfathers and Allmothers who came before and returned to stand before you now.”
He flung the knife point-down into the ground before him, where it stood quivering like a giant bee, and let his gaze travel around the circle of watching Asgardians. “I am Loki, King of Asgard, God of Mischief, Allfather of the Aesir! Does any deny me? Speak now!”
The only sound was the crashing of the waves against the cliff below them.
“Speak now!” It was Eir.
Another long pause.
“Speak now!” Forseti cried out.
Silence, and then someone – Natasha couldn’t tell who – shouted out, “The king comes!”
Others took the cry up. “The king comes! The king comes! The king comes!”
As if it had been a signal, the Asgardians began to kneel – one by one at first, then in clumps and finally the stragglers in a great wave, until Loki and the three humans at the back were the only ones still standing. Steve twitched a little, uneasy – possibly at the same memory Natasha was having right now, but somehow she could feel the difference between this and Stuttgart. Maybe it was the expression on Loki’s face. Maybe it was the hum of magic in the air, something that raised the hair on the back of Natasha’s neck and made her feel painfully small and human. Like she was the alien here, not the Asgardians.
“I am King of Asgard,” Loki said again – for himself this time, the words falling like stones into a still pond. He shut his eyes, as if trying to hold onto the shining image of whatever it was he had seen when Forseti had cut his throat. “Farewell, brother,” he whispered into the firelit darkness, with the only other sound the pounding of the Skagerrak’s waves against the cliffs below. “Pour a cup for me and think of me kindly, little though I have deserved it at times. I will not see you again this side of the great gates. Wait for me a while longer, if you will.”
Now
Natasha jerked awake at the sound of a door opening and for a few disorienting seconds had absolutely no idea where she was. The sliver of flickering firelight revealed by the open door and the moonlight that came in through the uncovered windows only revealed smoothly-planed wooden planks and unfamiliar architecture. The quilted mat beneath her was identical to the one she had been sleeping on for the past few months, and the steady sound of Steve’s breathing against the back of her shoulder was comfortably familiar, as was the arm he had draped over her waist.
“Sire?” said a girl’s voice, uncertain.
“What is it?” Loki said from Steve’s other side, sounding more than half-asleep. Natasha went still as the memory of the previous night’s events caught up with her, then she pressed her face down against the pillow, hoping that Loki hadn’t realized she was awake.
“Auntie’s having a nightmare and won’t stop crying.”
“All right,” Loki said, a little more awake now. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Can’t you come now?”
“A minute,” Loki said gently, “because I have company and I’m not wearing any clothes.”
“Oh.” There was the sound of a bare foot scuffing against the wooden floor, then the newcomer said, “Hello, Lady Natasha.”
Natasha raised her burning face and said, “Hi.” She turned her head to see Loki make a shooing gesture with one hand. The kid – a girl, Natasha thought, in what she might have said was her mid-teens if she had been human – gave an awkward little bow and backed out of the room, shutting the door beside her.
Loki sat up and rubbed his hands across his face, the beam of moonlight turning his dark hair pale and illuminating the sharp planes of his not-quite human cheekbones. “Apologies,” he said after a moment, keeping his voice low so as not to wake Steve. Not that Natasha expected he could; as light a sleeper as he was normally, Steve post-coital could only be woken by an actual imminent threat and had the uncanny ability to distinguish real danger from Sam threatening to dump a bucket of water on him.
“It’s fine,” Natasha said as he slipped out from beneath the blankets and groped for his clothes. “Not the first time.” She was always a light sleeper, which meant that the nightmares that plagued the Asgardians sleeping in Iðavoll’s great hall tended to wake her up more often than not. She wasn’t immune to nightmares of her own, either, but hers were mostly silent. But it meant she was almost always awake to see Loki get up and soothe his people’s bad dreams away – going through the motions at first, Natasha was certain, the clumsy memory of what a good ruler should be doing, but if you did anything enough times it became habit.
“Usually I’m sleeping alone,” Loki pointed out, pulling on his pants and then a shirt. He shoved his tangled curls back from his face with an absent gesture and hesitated. “I don’t have to come back if you don’t – if you regret what happened last night.”
Natasha pushed herself upright as Steve grumbled in his sleep and rolled over to bury his face in his pillow, watching Loki’s gaze flick to her breasts for no longer than half a heartbeat and then up to her face. She smiled wryly, not bothering to pull the blanket up to cover herself, and said, “It’s your room.”
He shrugged. “I’ve slept elsewhere before.”
“It’s fine,” Natasha said, and turned her face up to him as he stepped over to her, looking briefly uncertain before he leaned down and kissed her lightly.
“Then I’ll be back,” he said. “Don’t stay up on my account.”
Natasha shook her head, and said, “Don’t flatter yourself,” just to see him grin, watching him pad barefooted out of the room and out into the great hall. She pulled her knees up to her chest, wincing a little at the ache in her thighs. It had been a while, since neither she nor Steve had been in the mood since the Snap and the crowded little Asgardian settlement – which finally boasted two completed buildings, a partially-finished but functional bathhouse, and a number of other buildings in various stages of construction, so only half the population was still sleeping in the great hall now – hadn’t offered much opportunity for privacy even if they had been. They had just finished building this addition to Iðavoll’s great hall, meaning that Loki, as king, had only had a room to himself for all of two days before – well.
The three of them had been dancing around it for months. Natasha wasn’t certain it was a surprise, but wasn’t certain it wasn’t, either.
Of the three of them, she was probably the worst bet anyway, since at least Loki had the whole King of Asgard thing going for him. Also the god part.
Then the rest of it caught up to her and Natasha pressed her hands to her face and said out loud, “Oh, god, you slept with a sexy alien shapeshifter.” And Captain America, but that was a couple years old at this point and not exactly news anymore.
Not that she had ever actually seen Loki shift shapes, so maybe it didn’t count, but she was also pretty sure she had seen variations on this exact scenario on the cover of a couple dozen newspaper tabloids over the last six years, ever since the Avengers had gone public. Well, not with Loki per se, but it wasn’t as though the confirmed existence of aliens had slowed down the National Enquirer or Weekly World News at all. If anything, they had gotten worse.
At least the one thing that definitely wasn’t in New Asgard were paparazzi. The Snap hadn’t slowed them down any, but the Valkyrie throwing out the couple who had managed to sneak past New Asgard’s at first-tenuously patrolled borders had managed it. Natasha was expecting the first time Loki had to appear publicly to be a shitshow, though, since everyone had still been in shock by the time Loki finished fast-talking and strong-arming the UN – what was left of it, anyway – to create and sign the Asgardian Accords.
Steve made a barely coherent sound from beside her, quite clearly not even really on the verge of wakefulness. Natasha reached down and touched his hair gently, murmuring in Russian, “Go back to sleep, it’s fine.”
He turned enough to press a mostly-asleep kiss to her thigh, his beard scratching against her bare skin, then his breathing slowed again as he dropped the rest of the way back into sleep.
“I really hope you don’t freak out in the morning,” Natasha said, not sure if she was speaking to herself or to him. She knew Steve had been with men before, so if he did freak out at least it wasn’t likely to be about that.
She wasn’t certain how long she had been sitting there when the door opened again and Loki ghosted back into the room. He checked for an instant when he saw her, then eased the door closed behind himself and said, “I thought you said you weren’t waiting up.”
“I’m not,” Natasha said. “I was just thinking.”
He raised an eyebrow and said, “If you’re concerned about me –”
“I’m not,” Natasha said reflexively, then thought about that for a moment and realized it was the truth. “I’m not.”
Loki frowned at her, with a flash of incomprehension so familiar she almost smiled; she had seen it in the mirror a lot those first few years with SHIELD. It wasn’t fair to him that she still had to think about it three times out of every five, but it probably hadn’t been fair to her either back then, and she knew there had still been people wondering up to the Battle of New York. Probably after, too. Besides, they were down from five times out of every five, which she thought was an improvement. She suspected that Steve never considered it at all anymore, with his usual quicksilver instincts.
“Seriously, if you were going to take over the planet, I’m pretty sure you had your chance and decided against it.” She was certain she had actually seen him considering it, too, during a couple of those interminable UN sessions. He and the Valkyrie had carried on a whole conversation about it just with a couple of raised eyebrows and the eventual shake of Loki’s head, culminating in Loki saying out loud, “I don’t do that anymore,” just as Secretary Ross had come in. That hadn’t gone over well.
“Your planet was a mess even before the culling,” Loki said, like he hadn’t already tried to take over Earth once.
“Uh-huh,” Natasha said. “You’re telling me that?”
Loki snorted softly and stepped out of his pants, though he kept his shirt on as he sat back down on Steve’s other side.
“Everything all right out there?” Natasha asked.
Loki scrubbed his hands through his hair and said wearily, “Everything will never be all right again,” then glanced up at her. “But for the moment – yes, I suppose. Someone will come get me if there’s need.”
She didn’t think Loki had slept through the night once since he had come to Earth – knew he hadn’t in New Asgard, either because of his own nightmares or those of the other Asgardians. For that matter Natasha wasn’t certain the last time she had slept through the night.
“Hey,” she said, and when he glanced up at her, leaned over Steve to kiss him gently. “You’re doing okay.”
“Thanks,” he said, the words humming softly against her lips. “I’m trying.”
“That’s all any of us can do,” Natasha said. She kissed him again, then added, “And hey, Ross hates you, so you must be doing something right.”
“Doesn’t he also hate you?”
“Oh, so much,” Natasha said. “Not quite as much as he hates Steve, since that fiasco probably blew his 2020 election chances, though god knows what’s going to happen now.”
“I have no idea what you just said.”
“Yeah, I’ll explain U.S. politics to you later,” Natasha said. She reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. “We might as well get some sleep before the next disaster.”
He groaned. “Don’t tempt the Norns,” he said as she drew back. “There are always a few stray threads that can be woven into the tapestry of our wyrd.”
Natasha drew back to blink at him, reminded that Loki wasn’t just an alien, but an alien whose entire worldview was only barely comprehensible to her, and that was when he was trying; he usually wasn’t. Thor had done that too, occasionally, but it seemed to dwell on him less. Or he had been better at hiding it.
For a moment they just blinked at each other in mutual incomprehension; by now she knew that he didn’t entirely get humans, either, and didn’t normally see the point of trying to do so unless he wanted something.
“Right,” Loki said after a moment. He glanced at the window, calculating the advance of dawn, then he lay down and threw an arm up over his eyes. “Good night, Natasha.”
“Good night, Loki,” she said. She curled up against Steve’s side and pulled the blankets back up over her bare shoulders, listening to the sound of the two men breathing for a long time before she finally fell asleep again.
It was Steve who woke her up the following morning. Natasha felt him go tense where they were still curled up together and was automatically reaching for a weapon even before she woke the rest of the way up.
“’s fine,” Steve said, realizing she was awake.
Natasha rolled over to see him pressing his hands to his face; Loki, on his other side, was apparently still out cold, his face buried in his pillow. “You okay?”
He nodded without looking at her, his ears red and his blush spreading down his neck to his chest. “So…that happened.”
“Are you going to freak out?”
“No point.” After a moment he lowered his hands to look at her. “Are you going to freak out?”
“After everything we’ve seen and done, about this?”
He tipped his head in acknowledgment and sat up, scratching at his beard, then leaned down to press his lips lightly to hers. Natasha kissed him back, then pushed herself upright and started finger-combing out her tangled hair, which had grown down to her shoulders, leaving an awkward five or six inches of red roots to contrast with the dyed blonde. She and Steve both looked over at Loki. Steve’s blush deepened, which Natasha hadn’t thought was possible.
“Are you still asleep?” she said experimentally.
“Trying to be,” he mumbled into his pillow. “I had to get up in the middle of the night, if you recall.”
Steve glanced at Natasha, who tipped her head at the door leading into the great hall, and nodded in understanding. He knew as well as she did why Loki never slept through the night.
They both looked up at the sound of high-pitched feminine shouting from outside the door, then the sound of the great hall’s doors slamming open. Natasha reached hastily for a shirt and got it on just before the door swung open and the Valkyrie barged in.
“Absolutely not,” Loki said without even bothering to lift his head. “Go away.”
The Valkyrie’s gaze flickered over Natasha and Steve without blinking and she said, “Get up.”
“I’m sleeping.”
“I’m very happy you got laid,” the Valkyrie said, “or sorry it happened with them, whichever you want, I don’t care.”
“Thanks,” Steve said dryly.
“But I need you to put your pants on and get out here before these two kill each other over the damn beehives.”
Loki rolled over. “The beehives? I thought we’d already sorted this out.”
“Evidently not.”
There was another burst of yelling from outside.
“Or don’t bother with your pants, because they’re not listening to me for shit,” the Valkyrie said, making a beckoning gesture. “Come on, your majesty, we’re Aesir, not Ljósálfar, you can’t laze around in bed all day with your harem feeding you grapes.”
“We don’t have any grapes since I haven’t managed to talk anyone into trading us real grapevines yet,” Loki pointed out as Natasha choked. He threw the blankets aside and scrambled to his feet to pull his pants on hastily, then grabbed his boots as he followed the Valkyrie out of the room. “We don’t have beds yet. And when was the last time you met a Light Elf, anyway? They find that kind of talk very insulting,” he added before they disappeared from sight. A moment later Natasha heard his voice raised in a shout of, “What is going on here?”
Steve covered his face with his hands again and muttered, “Oh my god.”
“You know, if you’d tried to tell me any of this was going to happen six years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Natasha said musingly.
“Just put me back in the ice until you can tell me that all of this is normal now with a straight face,” Steve said. “You know, the weirdest part isn’t even –” His gesture encompassed everything that had happened in Wakanda and afterwards. “It’s Thor’s homicidal baby brother who tried to take over Manhattan out there yelling at a bunch of aliens about alien bees because his planet blew up. Wait, can grapes even grow in Norway?”
Natasha made a gesture of agreement and got up to start finding where the rest of her clothes had gone last night – no, all of her clothes, the shirt she had grabbed was Steve’s. She pulled it off and handed it to him and had to grin at the appreciative onceover he gave her, mostly on reflex since he still seemed distracted.
“I’m assuming they’re also alien grapes,” Natasha said. “Talk about an invasive species.”
“Do not bring that up to the UN,” Steve said hastily.
“Yeah, I don’t think Loki cares. Maybe when the ‘humans are the disease’ people managed to stop gloating over the Snap –” Those types didn’t not care that the Snap had wiped out half of all endangered species and already driven a couple to extinction since they had been on the brink already, but they were pretty rabid in their delight about what it had done to humankind, even with their number halved as well. Natasha was pretty sure they would have gotten along fine with Thanos.
The newly-constructed room was empty except for the makeshift bed – New Asgard was still pretty short on furniture, since they had been prioritizing getting buildings erected – and a battered chest which held Loki’s few remaining possessions; the only decoration was his polearm and an elaborately figured round shield, both hung on the wall over the chest. There was something plaintive about its emptiness.
She finally found her bra and her own shirt and got them both on and was looking for her underwear when Steve handed them to her. She grinned up at him, touching the tip of her tongue to her lips, and got to see him blush again. Considering some of the things he’d been doing last night with her and Loki, she didn’t see where he got off being bashful, but she did find it pretty cute.
“How are you doing?” he asked her as they both finished getting dressed, after they had both ducked into the attached bathroom – despite having all the necessaries, otherwise absolutely nothing like its Earth equivalent. Eventually Iðavoll would have its own private bathhouse, but that was low priority compared to New Asgard’s other needs.
“I’m a little sore,” Natasha admitted. “Been a while, and it’s not like sleeping on the floor helps. You?”
“That’s not what I meant.” Steve went an even brighter red. “And you know exactly how long it’s been.”
Natasha smirked.
He ducked his head. “Don’t even start. And I’m – fine about –” He tilted his head towards the door, where Loki’s raised voice could be heard trying to arbitrate the bee problem, interspersed with those of the two women arguing and occasionally the Valkyrie’s. “In case you were wondering.”
“That’s good, because just think how awkward it would be to tell Ross that you couldn’t be here anymore, and why.”
“He’d probably take it as an excuse to get out, though,” Steve said dryly. “Getting too friendly with the Asgardians and all that.”
“Yeah, we might forget whose side we’re supposed to be on,” Natasha said dryly; Secretary Ross had said exactly that to them after he had found out that Loki was at the Avengers Compound and come to take him away – the only prize he thought he’d be able to get after the devastation of the Snap. He and the team he’d brought with him hadn’t made it past the front gates, where Natasha, Steve, and Rhodes had been waiting for him; Bruce had stayed in the compound, ostensibly to keep Loki from doing anything rash, but more likely because he was putting off facing Ross until absolutely necessary. Natasha was pretty sure Loki had no idea that Ross had been there at all, since after they had come back from killing Thanos Loki had spent most of the time drunk and weeping in Thor’s old bedroom until Carol had finally located the other Asgardians and brought the Valkyrie back to Earth to drag him out of his stupor. He’d certainly looked baffled when Ross had brought it up to him at the UN.
She was also pretty sure that Tony had been the one to tell Ross that Loki was on Earth, but knew better than to bring that possibility up to anyone until she was absolutely certain and preferably until enough time had passed that the sting of the betrayal was blunted. She didn’t know if Steve had guessed; she was almost certain Rhodes had.
She balanced on one foot, then the other as she got her boots on, then went out the door and through the great hall towards the sound of raised voices, Steve following her. There were a few people about, along with the ubiquitous large fluffy cats and a couple of long-legged hounds; the humans were involved in moving the long tables that had been set against the walls during the night back into place, while the animals were mostly getting in their way. Most of the other Asgardians who slept in the great hall had already cleared up their sleeping mats and blankets and decamped outside to watch the argument, except for the ones who were already busy in Iðavoll’s kitchen – another recent addition – to begin fixing breakfast for the settlement, though a few kept popping their heads out either the front doors or the side door to the kitchens to listen. There wasn’t exactly a whole lot of entertainment for them these days and Natasha supposed this counted.
Loki was still in shirtsleeves and bare feet, boots dropped to the ground beside him and his dark hair tousled. He’d very clearly been woken from sleep and by now Natasha understood him well enough to know that he had done it deliberately. The other Asgardians had to know that he could have glamoured himself to look put-together if he had wanted to do so; he was letting them know he had been disturbed in order to deal with this.
“If we’ve had this conversation once, we’ve had it a thousand times,” he snapped. “The Vanir and the Álfar bees aren’t cross-fertile and they’ll kill each other, which means they can’t be anywhere near each other. And we still don’t know how they’ll interact with Midgardian bees, which means they can’t be near those skeps either, at least until we know if they’re cross-fertile, if they want to kill each other, or if they can even fertilize the same plants. Why are we still having this argument?”
The two women he was trying to arbitrate between both started talking at once.
Bruce, who had been standing on the far side of the circle of watching Asgardians, sidled over to join Steve and Natasha. “I’m still not happy about the bees,” he admitted. “I tried to talk to Loki about it, but –”
“If you want to be the one to throw the words ‘potential ecological disaster’ in there, be my guest,” Steve said. “Didn’t you already try that?”
Bruce made an unhappy expression of agreement. “Val said something about bees being sacred, or having to do with their religion, or – I didn’t really get it but I don’t think she wanted me to, anyway.”
That was, Natasha had to admit quietly to herself, probably fair. There was no reason that the Asgardians shouldn’t keep some of their secrets, at least; they had already lost so much else. She knew that she had seen things that no other human had ever seen solely because Earth wouldn’t trust them without supervision. She didn’t know if Loki realized how lucky he and the other Asgardians were that she and Steve were the only observers that the UN had insisted on, instead of someone else who might have turned their secrets over to Secretary Ross or someone worse or even just posted them on YouTube. Ross had been more than happy to have Steve and Natasha out of sight and out of mind; it was obvious he considered this a punishment detail for them, since the new president had pardoned them. He had been less happy about Bruce staying here, but Bruce had already quietly decamped to New Asgard with the Asgardians and the surviving Sakaaran gladiators who had decided to stay with Loki instead of going somewhere else. The circumstances meant that Ross wasn’t yet in a position where he could claw Bruce out from New Asgard and the UN had told him to shut up when he tried to push his point; they had bigger problems.
They listened to the argument for a while longer, even though they all knew it was going to end with Loki getting his way. Sometimes Natasha thought that the Asgardians argued just for the sake of arguing; in her more serious moments she admitted that it was very likely a symptom of their situation, just as much as the nightmares Loki soothed away from his people every night. Of all the peoples Natasha had heard of so far – and between Rocket’s, Carol’s, and Loki’s offworld contacts the number was a lot larger than she could have dreamed of a year ago – the Asgardians’ situation was one of the worst. No wonder they grasped at any straw that let them feel a modicum of control, even if it meant picking fights over where to keep the alien space bees that Loki had illegally imported from other planets.
The two beekeepers finally allowed themselves to be coaxed into agreement by Loki, who just stood still after they had turned and stormed off in opposite directions. He looked like he was badly missing the sleep he hadn’t gotten the night before. After a moment he stooped to pick up the shoes he still hadn’t put on, then paused, his gaze turned upwards.
He came upright all at once, his green-gold magic glowing at his fingertips. Steve and Natasha started forwards to join him, wary, with Bruce just behind them; the Valkyrie was already at his side. The gathered Asgardians had started to disperse now that the argument was done with, but all of them had gone still with a kind of animal wariness at the sight of their king prepared to fight.
“What is it?” Steve asked, squinting upwards in the same direction Loki was looking. Whatever the two Asgardians saw wasn’t yet visible to human eyes, even Steve’s serum-enhanced ones.
“There’s something coming,” the Valkyrie said shortly. “Something – oh, it’s him.”
“Who?”
Loki didn’t answer, still looking upwards. As a tiny dark shape finally became visible in the clear blue sky above them, he closed his fists on the blaze of green fire in his palms and said calmly to the Asgardians watching him, “It’s all right.”
None of them moved.
Loki’s face did something complicated, like he was trying to decide what he could say to convince them of their safety. He still hadn’t come up with anything convincing by the time Rhodey slammed down beside them in a cloud of dust, making a number of Asgardians flinch back. Others made gestures towards the open doors of Iðavoll or in the directions of Gimlé or their spacecraft, where their weapons were stored, but stopped when Loki didn’t move. Natasha could hear more than one person crying; the Asgardians hadn’t had much interaction with Rhodes, since he was the only one of the Avengers more or less in Ross’s dubious good graces and spent most of his time hopping around the planet putting out fires where he could.
“Well done,” Loki told him dryly as Rhodey straightened upright and put back the faceplate of the War Machine’s helmet. “I’ve heard there’s a kind of technology you people have called a phone. You could have used one.”
“Nice to see you too,” Rhodey said, shooting an apologetic glance at the surrounding Asgardians. His gaze flickered back to Loki and then fixed on his bare feet. “Why aren’t you wearing any shoes?”
“I was woken up very abruptly,” Loki said. “What are you doing here?”
Rhodey looked at Steve and Natasha, and Bruce just behind them. “We all knew this was coming,” he said, not sounding particularly apologetic. “Vacation’s over. Time to saddle up.”
Natasha massaged a hand over her face, trying to shake the uneasy memory of their last Avengers mission. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Uh –” Bruce said, visions of Ross’s last attempt on him clearly dancing before his eyes.
“We’re going to need you on this one, buddy,” Rhodes told him. “You’re not actually the biggest problem we have.”
“Yeah, I think I know Ross a little better than you do –”
Loki scooped up his boots with one hand. “Well, you lot have fun, I’ll keep a candle lit in the window for you –”
“Not so fast,” Rhodey said, putting a hand out to stop him. “You’re an Avenger too, remember? Time to earn a living.”
“Literally, in my case,” Loki said shortly, looking down at Rhodey’s gauntleted hand like it was a personal insult before Rhodes let it fall. The Valkyrie shifted uneasily, clearly unhappy at Rhodey’s proximity to him. “Really, Colonel, are you sure you trust me that much?”
“Loki –” Steve began.
Loki put a hand up to stop him. Steve didn’t go on, but he did give Loki a look that suggested he knew very well what Loki was doing.
“I think it’s a fair enough question,” Loki said, dropping his boots to cross his arms over his chest. Despite his state of undress – Natasha was deeply glad that Asgardians healed so quickly that none of the hickeys she was fairly certain he had gotten last night remained – he suddenly looked exactly like what he was: a god, and dangerous, and the man who had led an alien army into Manhattan six years ago without any particular care for the havoc it would cause. By now Natasha had figured out that he could put it on and off as easily as she could slide between being Natasha Romanoff and the Black Widow or Steve could Steve Rogers and Captain America. “Are you sure you trust me that much?”
“You are such an asshole,” the Valkyrie murmured under her breath, hooking her hands behind her belt buckle. The apparently casual gesture belied her coiled watchfulness, like a predator primed to strike; Natasha had no doubt that War Machine suit or not she could have Rhodes on the ground in under half a minute if it came to it. Probably she wouldn’t need even that much time.
“Yeah, actually, I do,” Rhodes said – Natasha suspected he didn’t quite mean it, but wanted to annoy Loki more than anything else. “But I’m not the one you have to prove it to.”
Loki made an annoyed scoffing sound, but some of the tension went out of him. He tipped his head to one side and said, “Can I get dressed and eat breakfast or is this more on the order of ‘dragons are burning New York to the ground this very moment?”
“I’d like to know that too,” Steve said.
“We’ve got a minute,” Rhodes said. “Maybe a couple of days, actually, but Ross wants all of us back at the compound for now.”
“You’re taking him?” one of the Asgardians said, her voice strained.
It was the girl who had woken Loki the night before. Natasha recognized her now in the light of day – Signy, a tall girl with vaguely Asian features who looked like she should have been worrying about her SATs and applying for colleges, now holding one of the settlement’s ubiquitous large fluffy cats in her arms and looking like she was going to cry. She wasn’t the only one; every Asgardian there looked horrified at the prospect of Loki leaving, right down to the Valkyrie, who also looked annoyed at the fact she felt that way.
Loki’s face went through the same complicated series of expressions it had done a few minutes earlier waiting for Rhodes to land. Rhodey himself looked like he had just realized that removing Loki from New Asgard wasn’t an uncomplicated prospect, even if Loki knew very well what was at stake if he refused. No one had really thought through what that meant for the Asgardians themselves.
“We aren’t going to keep him,” Rhodey said after a too-long pause.
“You couldn’t keep me if you tried,” Loki said.
“God, don’t tell Ross that,” Rhodey said reflexively.
Loki gave him a smug little grin, more out of habit than genuine feeling, and turned to Signy, pitching his voice to carry to all the Asgardians even though he was looking at her. “It’s the duty of the King of Asgard to defend the Nine Realms, of which he is also Lord Protector,” he said. “It’s my responsibility.”
“But Midgard already has defenders,” Signy said, small-voiced. She was clutching the cat so tightly that it meowed protest before she hastily loosened her grip. “We only have you.”
“What am I, chopped cow’s brains?” the Valkyrie muttered.
Loki shot a reproving look at her. “You don’t only have me. The Valkyrie will be here, and Eir and Forseti and Ullr –”
“Garmr’s teeth I’ll be!” the Valkyrie said, indignant.
“The Valkyrie will be here,” Loki repeated grimly without looking at her. “It’s my duty and my oath to defend Midgard against any threats, which are threats to us as well, since Asgard is here now. It will be well.”
Signy said something too soft for Natasha to catch, but which made Loki flinch briefly. “I know,” he said. “That’s why I’m not making any promises I don’t know that I’ll be able to keep.”
The girl’s face crumpled, but she managed to nod. “But you’ll come back?”
“I always come back,” Loki said. He reached out to touch the soft fur between the cat’s ears; Natasha heard it start to purr like a freight train, making Signy smile a little. She passed the cat to him and Loki smiled wryly, scooping it into his arms.
Rhodey looked like he was having to reevaluate his entire view of the universe.
The Valkyrie stepped close to Loki as he turned away from Signy, letting the cat put its front paws up on his shoulder and survey the watching Asgardians from this greater height. “You’re not going with them alone,” she said, low-voiced.
“I believe that’s the whole idea of going with them,” Loki said pointedly, his voice equally soft.
“Half of Midgard still wants your head on a silver platter.”
“Half of Midgard is no longer here.”
“Don’t be an ass. My oath is to protect the throne, and that’s you. If you’re going into a fight –”
“If I’m going into a fight, I can take care of myself,” Loki said. “And as you said, I am the throne, and I say you stay here and protect our people. Forseti and Eir aren’t fighters, and Ullr’s an ulfhedinn, not an einheri. One of the two of us has to be here and I can’t be.”
“Then I’ll go.”
“It’s my name and my oath on the Surtr-blasted Accords,” Loki said. “I am not giving them an excuse to say I broke my oath, because that will be trouble for all of us. That’s my final word, Brunnhilde.”
A muscle jumped in her jaw. “Yes, sire,” she said shortly.
“Good.” Loki loosened his hold on the cat so that it could climb up and drape itself around his neck and shoulders like a ruff, then crouched – careful not to disturb it – and picked up his boots again. He glanced around and made a beckoning gesture at Eir, who had been watching from the crowd, then said to the Valkyrie, “Can you go find Forseti and Ullr? I’ll break the news to them myself.”
“Good, maybe Forseti can find a way out of this.”
“She’s the goddess of justice, not the goddess of finding loopholes out of oaths,” Loki said, sounding annoyed. “That is, in fact, the exact opposite of what she does.”
“Worth a try,” the Valkyrie said, storming off with tension evident in every line of her body.
Loki shook his head, looking after her with sudden weariness before he reached up to offer the cat his fingers to sniff, then scratched the heavy ruff of fur around its neck. “This had better be good,” he said to Rhodes, who shrugged – always an awkward-looking gesture in the suit. “Now that you’ve terrified my people twice over.”
Rhodey’s expression was only vaguely apologetic. “It’s looking like it, yeah,” he said. “Or – bad, I guess I should say. Potentially.”
“What is it?” Steve asked, sounding annoyed.
“It’s a little complicated.”
“It can wait until after breakfast, then,” Loki said shortly. “Assuming you were telling the truth about that. Because I really did just wake up, moderate an argument, and then have to deal with you.” He flicked a glance at Steve and Natasha, visibly considering adding a crack about being busy the night before, before finishing with, “And I’ll very likely have to have an another argument before we leave. You’re welcome to join us for the meal, of course. I believe the last time you were here Iðavoll didn’t yet have walls.”
Rhodes glanced at Steve, Natasha, and Bruce, then said, “Yeah, I’d love to. Ross can cool his heels for a few more hours; it’s probably good for him.”
“Can’t be that serious, then,” Bruce observed, still looking nervous. Natasha suspected he was marshaling himself for another argument about not going back to the States where Ross would have an excuse to hang onto him, since Loki had distracted Rhodey from the first one.
“It had better be as serious as a heart attack,” Loki said grimly.
“Can Asgardians even have those?” Steve asked him.
“I’m considering having one right now.” He made a dismissive gesture at them and strode towards Iðavoll’s open doors, then had to put his free hand up to brace the cat when it started to slip and dug its claws into his shoulders and tangled curls.
Rhodey stared after him. “The cat’s a surprise,” he admitted. “I thought he’d still be crazy.”
“Oh, man,” Bruce said. “You haven’t been here. You don’t know the half of it.”
Then
The short summer nights meant that Natasha woke much earlier than she wanted to, aware of the warmth of the sun spilling in through the Quinjet’s viewport. She lay for a few minutes in the familiar circle of Steve’s arms, listening to the sound of his breathing against the back of her neck. She felt worn out and oddly attenuated, as if she had pushed herself to the breaking point in a fight she shouldn’t have been in, despite the fact that she hadn’t done anything last night except watch.
After a time she got up, murmuring Steve back to sleep when he stirred at the interruption. She went through her morning stretches in barefooted silence, thinking wistfully of having an actual bed to sleep in again instead of a foam mat on the floor of the Quinjet, but knew that most of the Asgardians were sleeping in even more cramped and uncomfortable circumstances. She and Steve were alone in the Quinjet; Bruce had a tent on the edge of the makeshift collection of tents and spacecraft, since he didn’t like sharing space with anyone if he could help it, even with the Hulk out of commission for the time being. Not to mention that Natasha knew he thought it would be awkward to try and put himself in the same small space as Steve and Natasha, given their history.
The wind was cool on her skin as she left the Quinjet, passing a hand over her eyes, which felt as gritty and sore as if she had been rubbing sand in them. The salt-smell of the sea was heavy on the breeze, along with the greenness of the season. Despite the campground aspect of the Asgardian settlement, the grass was still calf-high, as though the presence of the gods kept it growing in wild splendor despite how often it was trod upon. Someone had mentioned to her that there were a few harvest gods amongst the surviving Asgardians; Natasha wasn’t entirely certain what that meant when it was at home, but it seemed to be a source of relief to Loki and the others. One of the reasons he had bargained for so much land was because he had no intention of importing food any longer than he had to; the Asgardians had to be self-sufficient.
They had already managed to acquire a few animals; their caretakers were the only other people Natasha saw up and about at this hour. One girl waved to her; Natasha waved back before making her way up the gentle slope of the hill to the long flat area where the remnants of the previous night’s bonfires were still smoldering gently. One new fire sent a thin plume of smoke upwards to the cloudless sky.
She found them in the space marked out for what would be New Asgard’s king’s hall – Iðavoll, Loki had already named it. Carved stone pillars had been laid at each corner of what would someday be a single long room, with plenty of space left around it for additions after the hall itself had been built. The Valkyrie had kindled a fire at the center of the cleared space and was cooking bacon and oatcakes over it, with a kettle balanced on a tripod alongside the griddle. She glanced up as Natasha approached.
The familiar smells of bacon and coffee were oddly discordant against the memory of the previous night’s alien splendor. The Valkyrie looked at her for a long moment, not unfriendly, and said, “Get an eyeful last night?”
Natasha shrugged. “It was….unusual.”
“You won’t see it again.” After a moment, the Valkyrie poured coffee from the kettle into a chipped ceramic mug and offered it to Natasha.
She took it with a nod of thanks and blew on the liquid to cool it before sipping gingerly; despite the fact that the coffee beans were from Earth, the Asgardians brewed their coffee with enough honey to be sticky-sweet to her taste buds and usually with spices, too, making it taste like nothing on this planet. Natasha wasn’t certain she liked it – especially since it varied drastically from person to person – but the Valkyrie’s was at least usually drinkable. By some definition of the word.
“Was it – real?” she asked hesitantly after a few moments of silence.
The Valkyrie began to flip oatcakes onto a plate, covering them with a cloth before she added more dollops of batter to the griddle. “I wasn’t the one who saw it. I will tell you there were enough drugs in that mead to make a fjallvatte cry havoc, let alone an Ás hallucinate a little.”
Natasha had absolutely no idea what that meant.
The Valkyrie poured another mug full of coffee and handed it to her. “He’s mostly sober now, but that will help. Tell him there’s food when he’s ready for it.”
“I will.” Natasha took both mugs through the length of the unbuilt hall and stepped over the invisible boundary line that would someday soon be a wall, walking past the gently smoldering remnants of the bonfires. She gave the dark patch of dried blood on the ground a wide berth.
Loki was sitting cross-legged at the edge of the cliff, looking out over the Skagerrak. He had changed into a clean shirt, but there were reddish streaks on the knees of his pants. He didn’t look at Natasha as she sat down beside him, not even when she put the cup of coffee into his hand.
“The Valkyrie says breakfast’s ready.”
“Mmm.” He cupped his hands around the mug but didn’t drink.
“How are you?” Natasha asked gently after they had sat in silence for a few minutes.
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Do you feel – I don’t know, different?”
Loki finally looked at her. His eyes were red and swollen, as though he had been weeping, and there were still flecks of dried blood at the hollow of his throat. “I don’t know that either.”
He sipped tentatively at the coffee and then made a face. “I think living on Sakaar destroyed her taste buds; she puts too much cardamom in this.” But he drank half the mug anyway before setting it down beside him.
“Do you remember what happened last night?” Natasha asked him. “What you saw?”
Loki nodded. “Some of it. We’re not supposed to – it’s not meant for the eyes of the living. You can’t remember it clearly, or at least…at least that’s what I’ve read. And I can feel it fading even now – the memory, I mean. I think I’ll remember, but with a – a veil.”
He wiped a hand under his eyes very quickly. “I didn’t think I’d see it at all, not really, because I’m not Aesir. It’s…good to know that doesn’t matter.” He dropped his hands to his lap, staring out at the Skagerrak.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Natasha said hesitantly, and he flicked an ironic glance briefly towards her. She pressed on regardless. “But the Valkyrie said that you were on a lot of drugs.”
He waved that aside. “Eir explained it to me beforehand. It’s mostly a combination that speeds up our regeneration – our healing – at the same time it brings us closer to death, with something else that thins the veil between realms, the one we can’t normally see past.” He touched a finger to his throat briefly, then took it away quickly. “Otherwise, well – we heal fast, but not normally that fast.”
“Could getting your throat cut kill you?” Natasha asked, grotesquely fascinated.
“In the interest of not giving you an excuse to experiment,” Loki said dryly, “yes, certainly. Anything that doesn’t immediately kill an Asgardian we’ll very likely heal from, so it would have to be deep and it would have to be very fast because we start healing again immediately, unless we’re already very badly injured. Going for the head is much more certain, so I’d not mess around with throat-cutting if you’re ever in a position where it’s an option. Thor –” He stopped, pain flashing across his features.
“You can keep one of us alive for quite some time, if you know that,” he said eventually, his voice distant. “Because we’ll keep healing. But we do die. Every creature ever born must die, including the immortal gods.”
Natasha didn’t have to ask to know he was talking about Thor’s murder, and added it silently to the catalogue of scraps she had gathered about it. She knew Loki would never tell anyone exactly what had happened to his brother in the ruined abattoir of the Statesman.
After a moment, Loki went on, “If you’re asking if Forseti and Eir – and the Valkyrie – would have let me die last night, then the answer is also yes. The power of a sacrifice isn’t…it’s not the death itself, or the blood – though there’s power in that as well, just of a different sort. We believe –” He hesitated over the words, then repeated, “Every creature ever born must die, even the immortal gods. But – the past few months notwithstanding – it’s much harder to kill us than anyone else and we live for a very, very long time. We believe that it’s the – the willingness to let that go, to let all that possibility burn to embers and then cool to ashes – that’s power. Never having been mortal, I can’t say what it’s like for you, but when you have something to lose – even if it’s just your life – there’s power in offering it up. Not to bargain. Simply to offer.”
Something broke briefly in his face, and Natasha guessed that that was the gamble he must have made on the Statesman. Different circumstances, certainly, with a different goal, but still a sacrifice offered and not accepted.
Not to bargain, she thought, and then, with a flash of quicksilver memory, Your world in the balance and you bargain for one man?
Loki pressed a hand to his face, looking surprised when he took it away and saw wetness on his fingers. “It was different than I thought it would be,” he said eventually. “It wasn’t – this is the old way, as it was when our people first left Vanaheim countless millennia ago. We still do it, but –” He shook his head. “My grandfather Bor took responsibility for the Nine Realms, for good or ill, and Odin took the Protectorate from Bor’s dream to his reality. This – what happened last night – isn’t for Yggdrasil, for the Nine, the way the public coronations are. This is…it’s of Asgard, it’s for Asgard. I’ve only read of this, I’ve never seen it done; it doesn’t happen until the old king – or queen – dies. Thor never –” He broke off, agony on his features, and then finished quietly, “I don’t know what I thought it would be like. Not this.”
He glanced down at his hands, turning them back and forth as if he had never seen them before – as if they belonged to a stranger. “Maybe I do feel different,” Loki said. “But it’s not as though that’s never happened to me before.”
He took a deep breath and wiped at his eyes again, then picked up his mug and raised it briefly towards the sea in an echo of the salute he had made the previous night. “I drink to our glorious dead,” he said quietly, then drank the rest of his coffee before he got to his feet.
Natasha took the hand he offered her and let him pull her upright, feeling the dampness of his tears on his fingers before he released her. For a moment he looked back at the ocean, as if seeing something beyond it, then he shut his eyes briefly before turning to her again. “Come on,” Loki said, sounding like he felt every day of the thousand years he had lived. “There’s work to be done.”