Chapter 4
"When you said better to be bound by common need," Thor said to Heimdall, having puzzled over the phrase with increasing concern, "what did you mean? For I don't know that Loki would consent to any binding at all."
"You will have noticed," said Heimdall, in the patient tone which meant he knew damn well Thor will not have noticed, "that mages of real power, having once opened themselves to the great river of magic, must strive always to channel it lest it overwhelm them."
Thor really only knew three mages of real power, and he'd grown up with them around the dinner table. Apart from brief flares of affection, or jealousy, or pride, when one of them exercised a skill he didn't have and couldn't understand, he had not thought at all about how they navigated the rough waters into which fate had cast them.
Heimdall was watching him closely, and when Thor looked up he found a knowing sympathy in his friend's eyes.
"I do not say that Loki is in immediate danger of such a fate," Heimdall said. "Only that it is better for a sorcerer of his quality to be encouraged in anything that strengthens the bonds of duty and affection." He thought for a moment, then added: "Strongly encouraged."
Thor went back to his quarters, then, with a new worry to gnaw at his sleep.
When he woke Loki was curled at his feet, small and sleek and warm. "Are you - " Thor choked on the words as Loki's ears twitched toward him. What was he to say? Are you to be bound to this hollow place, brother? This shattered kingdom? Am I to bind you? "Are you hungry?"
He rose to make breakfast, feeling Loki's wary feline gaze on his back all the time.
*
After she and Loki had finished their sparring session for the day, Valkyrie would often sprawl out - with a bottle, or not, depending on if she'd remembered to bring one or could get Loki to cough one up from his secret transdimensional stash - and watch Loki work.
Sometimes he'd be weaving spells of sound-proofing or energy-absorption to layer into the structure of the room itself. (It's not cheating, he said, absolutely outraged, it's to keep him from blowing up the damn ship, but winked at her when Thor's lightning went fizzing into harmless sparkles next time the brothers sparred.) Sometimes he'd be puzzling over a problem one of their people had given him. It was bad dreams, more often than not, and out of thin air he'd spin silken cords of gold for them to fasten around their brows before they went to bed.
"Will that work?" she asked. Not that she was tempted.
"Depends," he said, not looking away from the cord twisting itself slowly into existence between his hands.
She snorted and flipped over onto her belly. "Real helpful."
One of the copies wandered over and laid down on its belly, too, almost nose to nose with her. This was the real reason Loki labored here, instead of in his own quarters or wherever he liked to lurk while he was avoiding everyone else. He was working out how many copies he could sustain, and how hardy they were, and how little attention he could pay them before they became mere tricks of the light. It helped to have Valkyrie around - watching them, interacting with them, occasionally punching one hard in the face just to see what would happen.
This one was interesting, because it focused on her with some kind of intelligence behind its eyes, and also because it looked like a firstborn child of the royal house of Jotunheim. The lines of heritage scoring its vivid blue skin were unmistakable. "Hmm," she said.
"Hmm," it said back, mirroring her when she raised an eyebrow at it.
She reached out and flicked its nose, and it disappeared with a silent sneeze. "Loki?"
He wasn't paying attention to her. The cord kept twisting.
"Hmm," she said again, and took her leave.
*
"Wait, wait," Valkyrie said, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, "Odin stole a baby and took it back to Asgard? And nobody noticed?"
Not for the first time, Thor had the miserable feeling that this was one of those tales that seemed reasonable when Odin told it, then fell apart under scrutiny. Surely Loki's origin must have been - if not universally known - at least suspected by many in the high court of Asgard. Perhaps by many in court of Jotunheim, as well, and in other realms besides. What diplomatic and military machinations had Odin set into motion that day? To how many had Thor and Loki himself been unknowingly subject?
And, regardless, why should Odin have allowed the prejudice against frost giants to have run rampant as it did in the years following the war? Was he ignorant of the talk? Surely not. Blind to its dangers? Did he think it a useful deterrent - that no one would dare to suggest Loki's Jotun ancestry if the implication was, of itself, a monstrous insult? Thor's head began to ache.
"We were raised as brothers," he said, trying to stick to the facts as he knew them. "The truth behind Loki's adoption only came out later."
"How much later," Valkyrie said suspiciously.
"Er," said Thor, and recounted the story, as Valkyrie's jaw slowly sagged.
"What a fucking mess," she said in the end, and Thor could not help but agree. "And Frigga agreed to all of this?"
"I'm not sure - " It was another of a million deeper conversations he wished he had had with his mother. What had she thought, in that moment? How had she felt, living out the consequences of her husband's impetuous act? Thoughtfully, he ventured, "I don't know that she cared to agree, or disagree, once Loki was in her arms."
Valkyrie nodded slowly, as if Thor had confirmed something important. "He was hers. You both were. The rest - it didn't really matter to her."
"No," Thor said. "I don't think it did."
"Hmm," Valkyrie said, and seemed like she might speak again to the point.
But then she shook her head, and drew a bottle of something green and sour from under the table, and so they whiled away the evening.
*
Heimdall said that naming a sorcerer helped to anchor them, so for several days following their conversation Thor point to address his brother by name every time he spoke to him. Loki this, Loki that, until Loki began to sneer his own name back at him with equal frequency, and then to ignore him entirely.
"Perhaps leave the naming to me," Heimdall said, after Loki brought a council meeting to an cacophonous end by turning Thor's chair into a giant bird that hopped around the room shrieking Thor, Thor, Thor while Hulk pounded the table and roared with laughter.
The only problem, from Thor's perspective, was that Heimdall knew so many of Loki's names, and that Loki was apt to become strangely irritated when he used them. Honestly, to Thor's ears most of them sounded vaguely plauditory: Silvertongue. Gift-bringer. Just the sort of names a prince of Asgard would earn, over the long centuries. Still, over and over again, Loki bristled.
Sometimes, it was true, that if Loki's thoughts were far away when Heimdall spoke to him, his magic would snap reflexively when his attention was pulled back, knocking a cup off a table, or sending wall hangings aflutter. But surely that could not be a cause for concern? Thor could speak with some authority to Loki losing control, and it didn't look like a tapestry shivering in a light breeze.
One morning some weeks later - over coffee in Thor's quarters, which he took customarily with Loki and Heimdall in order to encourage further friendship between them - Loki went funny and pale, gazing past Heimdall's shoulder at the stars streaming by the window, and not heeding when Thor spoke to him. Heimdall looked directly at him and said, in a voice heavy with purpose, "Hail, Emissary."
Every light in the room flickered, and Loki jerked back as if he'd been burned. A moment later, he'd fled the room - but Thor had not missed, in that heartbeat when Loki came back to himself, that he had stared at Heimdall with murder in his eyes.