Chapter 20
“Draw a monster,” Loki said, placing a blank sheet of paper in front of Steve as he ate lunch.
“Ok . . .” Steve gave him a strange look, and thought for a few moments. Finally, he pressed a charcoal pencil to the blank page and started sketching.
The creature he settled on looked not unlike something Loki imagined it would.
A monster, of course, with spiraled horns and claws. It looked arched in on itself, two of its four legs hovered above the ground.
“Now, what makes it a monster?”
“Well, it’s a creature with horns, claws,” Steve started to explain, “I imagine it would roar. It walks on two legs, but often hunts on four. Scary.”
Loki raised an eyebrow.
“I would be afraid of it,” Steve said, indignant at what he perceived as Loki’s unimpressed expression.
“You remind me so much of Thor,” Loki sneered suddenly, turning to leave, “He would’ve thought the same.”
Confused by his sudden change in attitude, Steve grabbed Loki’s retreating arm.
“What’s—“
Steve cut off as a cold sensation seized his body. Frost and ice spread from where he had touched Loki, creeping up his arm.
He drew away with a gasp of pain. The ice melted, leaving an angry mark on his palm.
Frostbite.
Suddenly, Loki’s eyes were wide with panic. Red eyes. Steve must have seen them. Loki’s pale ivory skin was quickly bleeding into a deep blue.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered sharply, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”
He fled, rushing through the hallways to his room. He shut the door and locked it before Steve could follow, then crumpled to the floor.
Steve—the Captain—was at the door in an instant.
“Loki?” he knocked softly at first.
When he got no response, he knocked again, louder, more urgent. “Loki?!”
He trembled at the sharp tone in the Captain’s voice.
What would they do to him now that they knew the truth? That he was a monster?
“Loki, please!”
The urgent concern in his voice struck him.
What would the Captain be worried about? Why would he care?
Loki closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and answered softly. “What do you want from me?”
“Could you open the door?”
“Why?”
“I want to know you’re okay.”
He wanted to make sure Loki was okay. Steve. The one he’d given frostbite with a mere touch moments ago.
He stood, unlocked the door, and opened it halfway, “I’m fine,” Loki said, wiping his hand across his teary face. He tried to close the door again, but Steve’s arm stopped it, just like it had when he’d had that panic attack coming back from the horseback ride. His face held the same concerned mother look, too.
With a sigh of resignation, Loki left the door and sat down on his bed, avoiding Steve’s gaze as best he could when the Captain followed him into the room. He waited for the interrogation, the demanding to know. What kind of monster are you? What have you done? Are you cursed?
“I’m sorry,” Steve said instead, sitting on the bed next to him, carefully leaving distance between them, “I shouldn’t have grabbed your arm like that.”
Loki grasped for some sort of response, but found he couldn’t speak. It felt like something was lodged in his throat.
It wasn’t his fault.
He looked away.
Steve didn’t leave, like Loki expected him to. Instead, he reached his hand out towards Loki’s.
“Is it okay if I touch you now?” he asked, his voice uncertain, but steady nonetheless, “Can I see your hand?”
Can I see the monster?
But Loki saw only concern for his teammate in Steve’s eyes, and something else he couldn’t quite pin. Something vaguely like . . . sympathy? Understanding? A flash of something else, too. A mix of grief, fear, and hope.
“No,” Loki whispered, “No, I’ll hurt you!”
“No you won’t,” Steve promised.
Loki looked down at his hands, clasped and tense. Still blue. Still lined with ancestral runes. Ancestors he wanted to forget. Hesitantly, he laid his hand in Steve’s open palm.
A visible shiver ran through Steve’s body, but despite that, he smiled softly, encouraging. His warm hand closed gently over Loki’s cool one.
“I’m not afraid of you, Loki,” Steve said, his thumb rubbing the other’s hand comfortingly, “You’re not a monster.”
“How could you possibly say that?” Loki whispered, and his voice cracked. “I’m a monster in every sense of the word!” He stood up, a sudden rage overcoming him, “I nearly killed an entire race! My own race! I hate them! I hate myself because of them!”
Tears streamed freely down his face now, but he couldn’t stop. What pride did he have left anyway?
“And Thor expects me to apologize to them! To live among them, to help them!”
When Thor announced that the Queen of Jotunheim wanted to meet with him, Loki had asked Thor to speak with him in another room. He’d listened to Loki, of course, but Thor had still insisted in the end that it was for the best. He told him he had two days.
No time to prepare, no time to even try to wrap his head around the Queen wanting to meet the man that had destroyed her realm. She’d rather want to kill him, surely!
Steve took Loki by the hand, and pulled him back to sit down again.
“Loki,” there was so much pity in his eyes, “I heard the story; Thor told me everything. You were practically raised to hate Jotuns.”
“I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like,” he continued, “To have everything you know turn upside down in an instant.”
“It will take time to undo that kind of damage,” he paused, no doubt picking his words carefully, “And yeah, what you did was awful, but that doesn’t mean you should write yourself off as a monster. I know you can do better than that. This is your second chance, a chance to prove you’ve changed.”
Loki nodded, too numb to protest.
“I . . . have something to tell you,” he said finally.
“Yeah?”
“I—the reason I’m,” Loki gestured to himself, “like this, I mean. This is my original form, but normally my fath—Odin’s glamour spell gives me the Asgardian appearance.”
“Has something happened to Odin? Thor didn’t—“
“No, Odin’s spell was meant to be permanent.” Loki bit his lip as he plucked at a thread at the edge of the blanket, “Something’s happened to me.”
For whatever reason, while he was, well, like this, sometimes Odin’s spell didn’t work as well. Loki had always just put up a spell of his own to replace it.
He should’ve cast it earlier.
Steve stayed silent, watching Loki intently, calm and patient. He’d been so good to him, so understanding. So . . . blissfully ignorant. What would happen when he told him the truth? Surely he would be confused, disgusted.
How could you let this happen? Aren’t you a god? Aren’t you invincible? Aren’t you a prince? Why would you let them control you like that? Why weren’t you stronger?
Why couldn’t you be more like Thor?
“I—Nevermind. I’ll be fine,” Loki said, waving a dismissive arm as he cast a new glamour over himself, “You can go back to whatever it was you were going to do before.”
“If you’re sure,” Steve said, though he looked more concerned than anything, “But I’ll listen if you need me, ok?”
Loki nodded, and let him leave.
Two hours later, he stood pacing in his room, miserably trying to pull himself together.
His knees were starting to tremble, and he wondered how long it would take for him to be reduced to lying on the ground in a fetal position.
Fetal . . .
A choked sob escaped him at the thought.
If he had been half the Asgardian he claimed to be, he wouldn’t be in this situation.
No one cares, A cruel voice in the back of his head hissed over and over, No one cares that your life feels like it’s crumbling around you.
He quickly wiped the tears away as he recognized Clint’s footsteps approaching. A second later, the door to his bedroom creaked open, and Clint poked his head in, “Supper’s ready.”
His expression showed concern, but Loki pointedly ignored that, instead remarking, “Thank God,” and trying to rush past him to the kitchen, where he could hopefully grab a plate and retreat back to his room fast enough to avoid Thor.
He never got past the door frame. Clint stopped him with his arm.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Loki lied, avoiding the archer’s searching gaze.
“If it was truly nothing, would you have been here for the past two hours?”
“Yes.”
“No you wouldn’t,” Clint said.
“Well, no,” he admitted, going back to sit on his bed, “but you don’t have to worry about me, Clint.”
“I do, though,” Clint said, leaning against the doorframe, “What’s going on?”
“My . . . ” Loki sighed, “My brother. He thinks that--that I need to go to Jotunheim. You know—to apologize.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“No—Nothing, but I . . . ” He hesitated for a moment, afraid his voice might crack with emotion, “I’m afraid that they might, or you might—“
“Hey, hey,” Clint strode into the room, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder, “We’re not going anywhere. We’ll protect you, and you’ll protect us.”
“I just don't want it to end in a fight. I’m not . . . ready.”
“Ok,” Clint said, surprising Loki. He stood up, “I’ll ask Thor to give you a little more time.”
Then he gestured with his head for Loki to follow, “Come on, we’re going to the park. We’ll tell Thor on the way, K?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Loki nodded.
Clint chose a bench under an old maple tree, just barely inside the park.
A cool breeze drifted through, carrying a few green leaves with it. Clint shivered in his light jacket as he sat down, opening the package of bread he’d bought at the corner deli. Cold, for a late afternoon in July. He broke off a piece of the bread, and tossed it to the ground.
He smiled when a group of pigeons promptly crowded around the bread, and threw another piece.
“Since when did you like pigeons?” Amused, Loki took some bread of his own and nibbled on it.
“Since, forever.”
“Huh, guess that makes sense. Hawkeye. Birds.”
“Ha, ha, sure,” Clint grumbled, and sighed, “So. What kind of things do you like, Mr. Cat Lady?”
Loki hummed, “A lot of things, I suppose.”
“Do you regret it?” Clint asked, blunt, not bothering to offer a smooth introduction to the question he’d clearly been wanting to ask all day long.
“What?”
“Becoming an Avenger? Do you?” Clint clarified, “I mean, all the attention, but no recognition.”
Nobody knowing his name, not being expected to be someone he’s not.
Loki shook his head.
“It’s . . . nice, actually.”
“It won’t be like that on Jotunheim, will it?”
“No,” Loki gazed across the park, watching as people walked by, “I feel the Jotuns would not be as . . . forgiving as you humans.”
“We were hardly forgiving at first.”
“But you were willing to listen.”
“And I imagine they will be, too,” Clint pointed out, “They wouldn’t have brought it up to Thor otherwise.”
“It’s probably a trap. They want me dead.” Loki’s expression was bitter, but it quickly saddened, “I don’t blame them.”
“Ah!” Clint pointed vaguely at him, “See, there it is.”
“What?”
“That’s why they won’t kill you,” Clint said, breaking off another piece of bread and tossing it to the ground, “They know you regret it, that you’re sorry, and you’re making efforts to fix your mistakes.”
“But that’s the thing,” Loki protested, “I can’t fix my mistakes. Not all of them. You can’t bring back the dead. Jotunheim is a dying realm because of me.”
“Jotunheim is a damaged realm because of you,” Clint corrected, “And it’s not dead yet, so the Jotuns will take all the help they can get. Even from you.”
“What if you’re wrong about them?”
“Then you can call for Thor, and we’ll come to help you.” Clint answered without hesitation, “But it won’t come to that.”
“. . . I hope you’re right.”