Of all things, Loki never expected the first jötun that he encounters in this clandestine mission to say, “No, you lied, or at least concealed the important part of the truth. What is it?” when he puts forth his offer of bringing some of the brutes to Asgard to steal the Casket of Ancient Winters during Thor’s upcoming coronation.
Frowning, he reiterates his offer, hopefully in a more convincing manner, instead of responding to the jötun’s alarming perceptiveness.
And still, the jötun refuses to believe him, let alone acting on the information in any way.
And he cannot retreat or go past the pessky thing without being more suspicious to the latter’s eyes.
Even worse, his time here is quite finite, if he does not want Heimdall to be too suspicious of him – and he really does not want that on top of everything that has been going on in Asgard, indeed. He cannot afford to dilly-dally here and bandy empty words with this obstacle.
He cannot get rid of the jötun, however, or he will get more problems instead of a potential solution to his existing problems.
What a conundrum!
“What can I do to prove that I am telling you the truth?” he implores at last, in his most honest voice and mannerism. “We cannot test the way before that day, as the guards will know and have the crack sealed before the right time is upon us!”
The jötun narrows its eyes at him. “I cannot let a child swear on their life for the truth. Children lie so easily,” it scoffs. “Let us talk, then, and let me hear your full, unvarnished explanation.”
Loki is torn between indignation of being called a child and worry of what the “talk” might mean, given how ominously the jötun says it. But he truly cannot retreat, now, as he has come too far and foolishly pursued the matter.
He follows the jötun away from the corridor they met in, and braces himself the best that he can when three more jötnar amble towards them from other directions once they come upon an intersection and join them on their way to…
…A sitting room?
Definitely not an interrogation room, let alone a prison cell, given the cosy-looking giant cushions, mounds of thick, fluffy blankets and board games strewn about on the clean floor, but why? The first jötun definitely sounded displeased enough to not hesitate in torturing him for the omitted information!
Did the jötun just threaten him without even wanting to follow through with it? Because it somehow perceives him as a child? What a foolish creature! But, if so, can he pretend to be a child in truth, to avoid immediate hostility and to lure these jötnar into a sense of complacency? Or has it been too late by now, given how he said and acted earlier to the first one of them?
Stiffly, he seats himself on the edge of one of the cushions, set farthest from the doorway and perpendicular to it, when the first jötun silently points him to the admittedly soft, squishy, comfortable thing. Curses pour into his mind as an endless litany, and thoughts and wonderings run alongside them.
Both sets pick up tempo and fervour when the jötnar fill a few of the other seats positioned nearer the door and along the obvious escape route towards that only egress point, barring his way even more thoroughly, even though they seem relaxed both in posture and air, and–.
“What is your name, child?” the first jötun, seated nearest him, begins.
Loki gives it the dirtiest look he can muster. And he can muster a lot of that right now.
He is not going to retort that he is not a child, as the assertion alone sounds childish even in his mind, so he decides that he will just stay silent until either the jötun tires or his time runs out or–.
“I shall continue to call you ‘child’ if you do not tell me your name.”
It is not a threat. It is not supposed to be a threat. But it feels so to Loki, somehow, despite his earlier idea of pretending to be a child in truth. So, in a begrudging tone that he does not have to persevere to fake, he says, “Leif.”
If the jötun had eyebrows, it would have raised an eyebrow. But the unimpressed-pointed-querying-waiting expression on its oddly exotically beautiful face conveys the expression well despite the lack. Unfortunately.
Loki keeps his silence and composure with all his might, faced with that look.
Because that look is too knowing, too exasperating, too–.
“Why do you think we need the artefact you spoke of?”
He raises an eyebrow, and relishes – rather childishly, admittedly – in the fact that he can.
“Who knows?” he drawls, as offhandedly but uninsultingly as he can. He does not want to incite the beasts too early, after all! “Rumours say that you prize it the most above all things, and Asgard took it at the end of the war. I only sought to sharpen my skills, and this endeavour would be perfect for it. We will both benefit from this. You get the Casket, while I get the fun… and possibly future favours from you, as well.”
Something flickers deep in the jötun’s monstrously glowing red eyes on the claim that the Casket is the jötnar’s most prized possession, but Loki cannot decipher what it might be.
The jötun does not reveal it, either, as it chooses to taunt him further, “Try again, child. You were approaching the truth, just now, although we are yet to hear even your real name.”
He grits his teeth and fights not to look away, not to project any sullenness or alarm or readiness to fight his way out, not to react outwardly in any way at all.
Maybe, it would be far better if he sought different avenues for the upcoming sabotage, if one jötun is already like this. He has no wish whatsoever to see what the other beasts might say or do to him!
So he rises to his feet, excuses himself in his easiest, politest manner…
…And the jötun seated nearest the door pipes up quietly, “Where are you going, child?”
“Searching for another project to entertain myself,” he huffs, and, again, finds it so easy to inject real indignation into the retort.
“Let us check with your guardian or clan chief, first,” the creature continues, and Loki cannot help but stare incredulously at them.
“I am already of age, where I come from,” he rebuts in his most level tone, which unfortunately still comes out rather strained. But how not? Him, a child?!!
The jötun scrunches up its nose to that, displaying and radiating so many thoughts and emotions, all tangled and jumbled into one odd but undoubtably expressive look.
One alien to an unthinking beast, let alone a monster.
But not at all alien to an elder relative or a concerned stranger, especially with that glimpse of exasperation and long-suffering irritation and wry humour amidst the maelstrom.
Loki swallows discreetly and looks away. This finding – this realisation – is not why he came here, why he endures this.
But it is there, anyway. Unavoidable.
It is yet another reason for him to vacate the premises and in fact the realm as quickly as he can.
“Let me pass, please,” he sighs when, vacating the sadly nice seat altogether, his way is barred by the nose-scruncher’s outstretched leg.
“Tell us your real name, first, and the being responsible for your conduct,” the jötun stipulates.
“And how to contact them,” the first one adds. “Oh, and if we can contact them presently, as well, for we cannot in good conscience let a total stranger – even a child – traipse about in the home of the Monarch without any information, let alone forewarning. We need to verify things with a few people, first, or you will find your way barred again elsewhere, Not-Leif.”
“And next, you will demand that I fetch the Casket for you,” Loki grumbles acerbically, as he casts about for a way past this new obstacle without revealing the extent of his skills.
He freezes in the next half-a-moment, as all four jötnar stare at him, and the air is suddenly filled with incredulous bafflement.
He has to really fight not to shrink into himself in reflex. Because now he does feel like a child among adults, somehow.
And before he can truly wonder if any of all of the jötnar somehow have cast a subtle mind-altering spell upon him, the first jötun says slowly, with careful emphasis, “Why would we ever send a child into enemy land? To fetch the Anchor, even? We would lose both, if so! It would be better that the Anchor be there for a while yet, rather than letting a child try to take it back. We can replace homes, if necessary, but we cannot replace children.”
Loki swallows again.
His throat clicks shut, this time, just as his heart wrings itself in his chest.
“I am not one of you,” he points out, after a few discreet but deep inhales of breath. And somehow, somehow, he rather regrets it, now.
He does shrink into himself, and into his newly vacated cushion, when the incredulous bafflement still colouring the air in the room sharpens and thickens.
“Ah, we should fetch a healer, I think,” the second-nearest jötun offers after a long, long while of awkward silence – awkward in Loki’s part, that is, and flabbergasted in the jötnar’s.
“I am not wounded, I am not delirious, and I am not sick in any way,” Loki huffs, giving the jötun an unimpressed, displeased glare. He is also flabbergasted, now.
And, in response, the jötun… blinks… and says, “Uh, why does it feel familiar?”
“Last month, when triaging victims of that flood,” the only jötun who has not piped up yet now offers, cryptically.
And all four of the jötnar perk up at once.
And look – really look – at Loki, shrewdly, from head to toe, no doubt noting all his twitches and glances and minute expressions.
And get more and more furious by each moment that passes.
“Loptr or Loki?” the first jötun murmurs after an even longer pause than before, breaking the tense air into what feels like shards of sharp ice – not aimed at the lone disguised Asgardian there, but still.
Something pings true deep in Loki’s heart on the first name, and his breath hitches on the second one.
It really does not help that four separate tendrals of seiðr reach out to him, now, wrapping round him, tasting him, recognising him.
And, just so, all four jötnar shift on their seats, just enough to kneel to him, and bow deep from their waists, with their hands linked at their backs and their throats bared for him.
Loki gapes.
“No, no, you are mistaken, whatever it is,” he scrambles for an explanation – any explanation that is not insane, that will not choke him up further, that will get him out of here.
But, instead of calming them down or distracting them, it just pushes them into action.
The first jötun swoops in, picking him up as though he were truly a child, carrying him out of the room all through his struggles.
And he can see that two of the other jötnar have preceeded his captor, rapidly going down the halls and corridors, with the last one tailing behind.
He is surrounded.
Something invisible is even wrapped round him, not constricting but still preventing him from any attempt to use his seiðr, and he realises it only now.
His captor pinches his mouth shut, firm but strangely gentle, before he can scream and create a commotion, a distraction, and the invisible cocoon soon extends to his mind, for some reason.
One of the vanguards veers away somewhere, soon enough, while the other jogs ahead even faster, all without any word or hand-sign or readable body language, followed by Loki’s own captor and the one tailing behind, as if time is even more pressing now.
Loki cannot contemplate this oddity for long, however, for, all too soon, they burst into a hall that smells of herbs and various chemicals and sings of seiðr.
Healing-related seiðr.
He freezes.
His captor does not relax its – their? – hold on him, still, not until he is situated in a box that looks a little like the Soul Forge, not until a force field separates him from the outside world as he curls into himself and the contraption begins to work seemingly on automatic, analysing and diagnosing.
“I do not need this!” he tries once more to convince his captor, who now stands guard beside the Soul-Forge-like thing, but the jötun is for once silent.
Silent and still. Just looking deeply into his face, into his eyes, until he feels self-conscious and looks away.
And then, what feels like a furious storm of emotions and thoughts and seiðr… well… storms into the large room, which is most likely the healing hall, and speeds right to where he is held.
His yelp – no, it is not a squeak – jolts the captor-turned-guard into looking away, whipping round, facing the newcomer—
And dropping to their knees instead of trying to do something about the horrible storm-personified.
Loki is inside the eye of the storm before he can muster up something to defend himself, picked up as though a child just like before.
But now, he dares not struggle.
And, privately, he wonders if this is what a little rodent would feel as a hawk swooped in for the kill.
Only, without the claws. Or rather, without the claws that would grip him and tear him apart.
The storm cradles him, instead, like a baby, and something aside from terror is beginning to make itself known in his heart, sparked by this quite unexpected gesture from one so powerful and powerfully wrathful.
The something allows one huge hand to land on his chest, filling him with its presence but not replacing his own. `Safe,` it whispers to him, `familiar,` and, against his mind’s better judgement, he believes it.
Nothing in his mind remains in working order, in any case, when the storm whispers a somehow very, very familiar phrase into him, presence to presence, raw and visceral and unshakable.
`Loptr Laufey-childe.`
He does not even register what is said, not till long after, when the storm then continues in the same unguarded, implacable voice, `Asgard will pay.`