Chapter 5
It took only some moments before the Avengers were able to function again, when they decided they needed to check on the cause of the commotion that had occurred.
Led by Steve like a file of ducklings they filled into Loki's room and, perhaps unsurprisingly found Thor sitting a distance away from Loki who was still lying on the floor. But it was not the presence of Thor or the absence of Loki's shirt that had scared or surprised the group of mortals.
No, what stunned the team was the fact that Loki had turned blue! It was not the kind of blue that came with being too cold. Or the kind where a person was too pale and their thin skin showed their blue veins.
No, it looked like someone had dipped Loki in a pool of deep blue paint. It covered him entirely. From his face to his arms to his neck to his chest, down his stomach and disappeared into the waistband of his leggings. It even covered his feet, the bottom of his foot that Steve could see was a light lavender. He didn't know what to think.
Were it the only unusual thing about him, Steve might have recovered quickly? He was not entirely sure about even that. But, no, Loki was changed in more ways that just his colouring. His entire body, from his forehead and cheeks to his neck and shoulders to his arms that went down his wrists, his chest that ran along his flanks, and even his feet were covered in scars. Or what looked like scars. They were raised lines. And swirls, and circles.
As an artist he could instantly see that there was some consistency in all the patterns, symbols. They were all neat and detailed, a closer look revealed that they were not lines but what looked like some kind of letters, like the one letter he had seen of an Indian soldier he had seen during the war.
They were extremely small, detailed and delicate and looked like a language he had never seen before; he was sure he was looking at an alien language. 'Was this some kind of curse?'
It looked so beautiful that it caught him off guard to think it might be something that was hurting Loki. He knew that the lady who had appeared in Loki's room was his mother but that did not ease all of his worries. Even if he had seen the clear love that shone in her eyes for both Thor and Loki, he knew she was dead.
As a Christian, he had trouble not immediately associating the presence of a ghost, when he had got over the shock of it, as a manifestation of evil.
He was not sure how much it had helped to have a dead person, a ghost, perform magic on his Loki. Even if it had been beautiful magic.
It didn't register in his mind that he had claimed ownership of Loki in his thoughts, he had better things to worry about.
"When did Reindeer Games turn into the smurf?" Tony, it seemed, had regained the full functions of his mouth, again, in any other circumstance Steve might have found it amusing, now he just found it annoying.
"My brother has always been like this." Thor's voice was subdued, very much unlike his usual boisterous tone.
"So, you're a giant smurf too, Thunder Dome?" "Do all Asgardians secretly look like this?" Bruce and Tony exclaimed at the same time.
"My brother is not an Asgardian. He is a Frost Giant. He is from another realm." Thor sounded as if saying the words pained him. All this time, he had not once looked away from Loki's prone figure lying on the floor as he sat leaning against the glass window.
"When you said he was adopted, I didn't think it meant an inter- species thing." Tony was once again being insensitive but the thought had also occurred in Steve's mind, he just had not been able to ask him. Thor looked like he was deeply sad about something.
"A thousand years ago, at the end of the Asgard-Jotun war, my father took the two most important things on Jotunheim. The Casket of Ancient Winters that sustains their world." He paused, heaving a sigh. "And, the first-born child of King Laufey."
"That guy is royalty no matter where he goes." Steve didn't think anyone else heard Clint's grumbling.
"But he didn't look like that until now. I am sure if he was all blue blue and scarred you people would have found out he was adopted sooner." Steve desperately wanted to teach Tony some tact. It was so unlike Howard that he could never get used to it.
"Loki is a shape shifter; when father touched him, he took the form of an Asgardian. Upon his return to Asgard, he declared that Mother had given birth to another son." Steve wondered if Thor felt his brother would disappear if he took his eyes off him for even a moment.
But as he took another glance at Loki, he noticed how he seemed to be thinner than the time he had held him in his arms. Suddenly he couldn't find fault in Thor's thinking at all. He didn't know how he had not noticed it before that Loki was not eating enough.
The guilt that assaulted him, thinking about how he had been trying to avoid said man for months now. All because he was confused and scared.
He knelt down beside Loki to get as closer look at him when he noticed the small glowing marble- like ball; it was very much like the one Thor had picked up after his mother was gone. He picked it up and pocketed it. It wouldn't do for the last memorabilia from his Mother was lost when Loki woke up.
"Wow, that is a whole new meaning to Royal intrigue, Thorston. Reindeer Games is kidnapped royalty, also raised as royalty. We could make a Netflix series out of this stuff. I'm sure people would watch that."
"What do you mean by this Casket thing. If it sustains the planet, how come your father took it with him to Asgard?" Bruce was always level headed. Steve had forgotten all about anything that was not related to Loki. Very remiss of him as a team leader, but even the reprimand was faint in the back of his mind.
"Father took it so that the Jotuns could not get strong again. They had tried to invade Midgard which is why Asgard took action against them. They were setting up homes on your ice-covered land" Thor suddenly sounded so defensive it made Steve jerk his head up to look at him. His face had lost his sad look. Now he just looked angry.
"You went to war with a planet because they wanted to live in Antarctica?! Thor, except for weird government experiments, that land is useless to us!" Bruce was starting to get a little green around the corner of his eyes, but Steve didn't think he could mention it without causing a situation, with the Hulk. He wisely kept quiet.
"The All-Father had forbidden any kind of travel to Midgard. They were the only ones to break the rule and got what they deserved." The hate in his voice was something Steve had never heard before. Thor had always seemed like an accepting guy who could forgive great misdeeds. Suddenly, Steve wasn't so sure anymore.
"Why would your father control who comes to Earth?" Steve joined the conversation for the first time.
"Because he is the All-Father." Thor said it in a way that said it was all the reason anyone needed. "He did not think Midgard was ready for the interference of the other realms."
"WAIT! Does that mean, we could have had connections to other planets if your father didn't declare us the jar of forbidden cookies?!" Tony sounded so angry Steve could only guess what he was thinking about, probably all the advanced technology the aliens could have shared with us.
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Natasha Romanoff remembered Fury's words when years ago they had talked about the alien invasion. Earth was still hilariously out-gunned. But apparently someone had made it so.
Did this mean the other planets had been visitors on Earth and still wanted to come to Earth but King Odin was forbidding it?
She suddenly thought about all the mythologies that said how the gods had come from the sky. Every big religion was based on some different kind of god that had helped humans develop themselves. Maybe during those times, aliens had stroked their egos by playing God.
Would they come back to Earth if they got news that Earth was trying to reach out to other planets? But what would Odin do if some benevolent or probably big ego species who would help Earth if only for how much praise they would get for it came to Earth?
She did not think until Odin gave his green light, anyone friendly would come to Earth. The thought didn't please Natasha at all. It was time to call Fury again.
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"You have not answered my question yet, Thor. What will happen to those Jotun- people if your father has their planet sustaining Casket?" Bruce's voice was taking a deeper tone that Steve didn't think anyone else noticed, not even Natasha- she was staring at Thor as if she could dissect him with her eyes.
Thor seemed to think about it for a moment and it made Steve hope that whatever had caused the change of attitude in the alien would go away but he was proven wrong. "I do not know. And I do not care. But my guess would be that the realm might die. Perhaps in another thousand years. When I went to Jotunheim, there wasn't anything except for ice and snow. But the warriors in Father's army have told us tales about destroying their palace and homes. Can you believe that they built homes and grew crops with ice?"
"You did call them Frost people" Clint nervously said.
"Aren't they Loki's people? Does he know what is happening to them?" Bruce said the question sceptically, but after spending so much time with Loki even if they didn't talk most of that time, Steve knew that Loki was extremely possessive. Even if he didn't know his people, the fact that they were his people would make all the difference in his mind.
"Those are not his people. He has a home in Asgard." The way he said it made him think Thor did not care at all for the people of Jotunheim, which of course his previous words had indicated but Steve wanted to give his friend a chance to prove he didn't mean what he thought he had meant.
Thor did not seem to be in any kind of hurry to accept Loki. But he did not seem to be in any kind of way willing to let Loki go, either. This behaviour reminded Bruce of a child he had had as a patient who didn't want a toy but would not give it to another child, because it was his. It was horribly possessive. Objectified Loki in a way that not even the most backward of husbands spouting traditional warp about their wives could.
It made Bruce sick to his stomach. After his discussion about science and sexual preferences in the lab with Loki, Bruce had thought a lot. About what Loki had said. What he had implied. But it had made him go green around the gills so to say, and he had locked the thought away from his mind. "Thor, look at your brother. He is a Frost Giant no matter what you say."
"He is my brother! Not a filthy Jotun!" Thor's roar of words bounced off the walls of the room and made everyone still for a long moment where everyone was tense.
"That's pretty hardcore denial, huh." Tony sounded properly confused, it made things so much worse.
Steve didn't want to think about any of this. In a corner of his mind he would admit he wanted to sit on the couch in the movie room beside Loki and watch him as he watched some film or the other.
"Let us move him to somewhere comfortable first." He moved to grab Loki's unconscious form as he said those words, when suddenly Thor leapt from the other side of Loki to grab his hand with a hurried "Stop."
But he hadn't been fast enough, Steve had already taken hold of Loki's shoulder. It distressed Thor so much that he tugged his hand even harder. "Friend, you shouldn't touch Loki. You will get frostbite." His words rushed and his hand insistent in his pulling.
This time, he let Thor pull his hand away. He showed his hand to the Asgardian. It was perfectly fine. "How?" Thor's voice sounded strangled. He held up his own hand, black with terrible frostbite covering half of his palm.
He looked down at his hand. It really was fine. completely normal. But why?
"I don't know," his whispered words felt terribly loud in the room.
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