Chapter 2
Despite Heimdall's prediction, it was a shock to Thor to find Loki spell-weaving. He stood quietly in the doorway of the cavernous cargo bay, watching. It had been ... no, he couldn't remember. Even at the time of Thor's banishment, it had been decades since Loki had welcomed Thor's presence as he performed the delicate works of power and intent.
The magic prickled against his senses, though he could not see the pattern of it. Protection? Privacy? No doubt Loki sensed his presence, but he did not acknowledge him until the last of the web fell from his fingers, shimmered momentarily across the dull gray of the floor, and disappeared. He waited a moment, as if listening, then touched his hands briefly together and stood. "Yes, Thor?"
Thor remembered how Frigga's eyes would shine just a little more brightly in the moments after she wove her own spells. How the air around her would seem just a little warmer. But Loki kept his face turned away. If Loki's eyes were brighter, he could not see it. If the stale cool air that circulated throughout the ship was warm against Loki's skin, Thor was too far away to feel it.
"We're about to dock. Valkyrie says it would be better for me and the remaining Asgardians to stay on the ship, out of sight, as it's to our advantage to suppress news of our situation as long as possible."
"She's right," Loki said, turning at last. "Would you like me to accompany her?"
"If you wouldn't mind? I can't think of a more formidable team." Thor smiled, watching the air around Loki shimmer as he took on an anonymous, forgettable face, with drab clothes to match.
Only later, when Loki and Valkyrie had returned with intelligence, and food, and fuel to keep them going another six months - after Valkyrie had broken off with Heimdall to ensure the safe storage of the supplies and Loki had gone down with Thor to speak with the people and assure them of their immediate prospects - did Thor realize with a start that Loki had never bothered to drop the glamour. Yet not a single Asgardian had failed to recognize him.
*
Valkyrie hadn't minded having Loki along. In fact she liked what sending him said about Thor. He wasn't suspicious of others working together; he wasn't jealous of credit. He did not hesitate to hide himself, when hiding was the best way to keep his people safe. Her bar for good leadership, she acknowledged, was set very fucking low. But he had cleared it.
Loki had not surprised her aboard the station, and she'd liked that, too. No one on Sakaar stumbled their way out of the arena and into the Grandmaster's bed. It took nerves of steel and a truly bloody mind, which, happily, was the same combination needed to negotiate with the traders aboard the only supply station within a hundred light years. Between the two of them, they'd charmed, wheedled, demanded, and threatened their way to a haul far richer than they had any right to expect in trade for the material they had stripped from the Statesman.
She kept an eye on his magic use. The glamour didn't seem to cost him much, but in the office of a particularly ungenerous fuel merchant the air had gradually gone thick with suggestion. The top note was sweet as wine, profit and success and the wonderful promise of having parted some fools from their money. Then, far beneath, a bass note of pure menace.
The push-and-pull effect was tremendous, though she could sense the strain of Loki's effort as the negotiation wore on. She doubted he knew how legible his magic was to her. Everything she knew of Odin told her he kept his secrets, and the unique relationship between the Valkyrior and Asgardian magic was a secret worth keeping indeed.
In any event, the merchant was no match for it, and ended up giving them dollars on the penny. They arranged for the fuel transfer and made their way back to the Statesman. And then Loki did surprise her.
Later that night, after what she assumed was a lot of glad-handing and back-patting from the temporarily relieved citizens of Asgard, he came to find her where she sat watching the stars go by and showing her second bottle of the night a good time.
"Looking for a fight?" she asked cheerfully. No better way to end the day, in her opinion. Though things were starting to get a little blurry.
"No, actually - " He cleared his throat and said, stiffly, "I owe you an apology."
She laughed out loud. "Have you ever said those words before, in that order, to a living person?"
"I'm being serious." He lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the floor beside her. "When we first met - "
"You're apologizing for me kicking your ass?"
"I'm apologizing for the memory I invoked."
The laugh died in her throat. She took another pull from her bottle and looked back at the stars for awhile. He waited.
"Did you know what it would be?"
He thought before answering. "I didn't know exactly, of course. But I had an idea."
"So are you apologizing for what happened, or for making me remember it?"
"Both, I suppose. Mostly the latter."
She looked sidelong at him, wondering if he was truly sorry, or just being pragmatic. Honestly, it didn't matter. They were stuck together, and things couldn't be water under the bridge until they'd built the damn bridge. "Apology accepted, Lackey," she said magnanimously, and clapped him on the back.
"Thank you?" He brushed at his shoulder, and she realized she had clapped him with the hand that still held the open bottle.
She laughed again, hiccuping at the end. "It was a hell of a good move, though. Took me five whole seconds to kick your ass instead of two."
"Thank you," he said again, annoyed and relieved, and sat with her a while longer in peace.
*
So Loki seemed on a path to friendship with many aboard the Statesman. Only Loki and Heimdall remained implacably at odds, as Thor came to realize in the weeks after the supply station. They were invariably civil to one another. Yet to Thor’s knowledge they never interacted outside of his presence, and sometimes between their words and their looks there seemed to be a darkness his intuition could not penetrate.
Thinking that Loki's prior attempts to take the throne lay at the heart of the issue, Thor sought first to assure Heimdall that Loki had no further ambitions in that direction. He found Heimdall remarkably circumspect about Loki's brief rules.
"His first regency was legitimate," he said, looking almost puzzled when Thor brought it up. "I objected to his actions as regent, yes, but not to his assumption of the throne."
"He's a partisan," Loki said, amused, when Thor sought to clarify the issue from Loki’s perspective. "And he’s firmly in your camp, which works to our advantage now. It enraged me at the time, but honestly it was Odin's fault, leading us to think he was an objective observer."
"But his second rule," Thor said, returning to Heimdall, "was obviously a source of outrage to you. Taking and keeping the throne by force as he did."
Heimdall looked at him thoughtfully. "Certainly he took advantage of your father's frailty. He used subterfuge and propaganda to maintain his position while you chose to remain absent.” Was that judgment? Thor thought it might be. “To say he took and kept the throne by force is more than I know."
"I did not try to have him killed," Loki said, astonished, when Thor suggested it as a cause of tension. "Just because I threatened to have him executed for treason? That was politics! Go and ask Heimdall, if he was in mortal terror of his demise by the likes of Skurge."
In response to which Heimdall, when Thor asked him about it, only laughed.
"So you shall be friends?" Thor asked hopefully, going to Loki with the matter one final time.
Loki looked at him for a long while, and started twice as if to speak, before finally sighing, and saying, "What is broken between us will not be mended, Thor. But I’ll serve alongside him peacefully."
"I am happy to serve Asgard at his side," Heimdall said, with a strange and sad look, the last time Thor asked him about it. "Beyond that I do not think what lies between us can be mended." He turned away then from Thor’s questioning look, and did not wish to speak on the matter again.