Chapter 7
The Valkyrior, as a class, were empowered with a special relationship to Asgard's magic. They had a natural connection to the afterlife which made them prone to powerful and even prophetic dreams. The magic of Asgardian-trained sorcerers was particularly transparent to them. Moreover, they could sometimes wield a specific skill, or spell, made over to them by a sorcerer of sufficient power.
This, Valkyrie explained to Loki when she successfully collared him on the third day after the attack. He'd been hiding, more successfully than usual, and she had gathered from Thor's guilty-faced theorizing that this was likely due to Odin, that one-eyed shit, having seen fit to allow prejudice - against Jotuns, Terrans, and apparently everyone else in the known universe - flower in the years after Hela's fall. What a marvelous legacy.
Thus, when she'd pulled Loki, complaining, from the empty-looking chair he'd been sitting in, she'd first had to explain why his spells of concealment didn't work on her.
Then, she'd demanded that he start teaching her.
"Why?" he gawked. He looked like his male Asgardian self at the moment, and she wondered briefly if it was coincidence, or if he'd wrapped himself in this form like a security blanket. Damn Odin, anyway.
"Well, I didn't know you could do cool shit," she said. "I thought it was all privacy spells and brainless doubles. If I can learn how to blast ships out of the sky with my bare hands, I want to."
His face couldn't decide if it wanted to be embarrassed or offended. Being a simple sort of fellow, he settled on offended, like she'd known he would. "Fine. We'll start tomorrow morning." He glared in the face of her sunny thumbs-up. "But you're learning doubles first."
*
Thor returned from his watch to find Loki in his quarters, sitting in Thor's chair with his feet propped on Thor's desk, drinking his wine and scrolling through the repair logs on his tablet. He hadn't seen him in almost four days. He took a breath, indulging the great crashing wave of relief that moved through him, then stepped in and let the door slide closed behind him.
"Make yourself comfortable," he said cheerfully, knocking Loki's feet off his desk as he passed.
"I was, thank you," Loki said, swiveling in the chair to watch Thor as he poured himself a drink, then sat on the narrow bed to pull his boots off. "Repairs are going well?"
"Say what you will about the Grandmaster," Thor said, "but the man kept a well-supplied ship."
"And I could say plenty," Loki said, like the punchline to an old and not very funny joke.
Thor immediately regretted bringing up the Grandmaster, but Loki had already turned his attention back to the tablet. He read on for a few minutes as Thor drank his wine and tried to plot out a conversation where he said nothing at all that he regretted. Perhaps he just shouldn't speak. He could confine himself to nodding or shaking his head.
"Thor," Loki said. Thor jerked his gaze up, realizing that Loki had said his name at least twice already. "Whatever it is, you're overcomplicating it."
Thor hesitated, then furrowed his brow thoughtfully, and nodded.
Loki's face creased in genuine amusement. He leaned over to place the tablet and his glass both on the desk, then slid his chair over toward Thor, until their knees almost touched. "Do you know what Odin's original sin was, brother?" Loki's voice was low, almost conspiratorial. "The one fundamental flaw from which all the others emanated?"
There was more than one, in Thor's opinion. But if he had to choose: "Control."
"Yes," Loki said. "Control was what he desired above all things. Control not just over his own realm, but over all realms. Control over his children. Over his legacy. Over the truth itself. And that obsessive need to control - it starts small."
Thor narrowed his eyes. "I sense that you're working up to a specific example."
"Oh," Loki said airly, "for instance, it can start with not talking about things. Because soon enough they can't be talked about, at all. They become forbidden, and then dangerous."
Thor looked at him, and Loki looked back at him calmly. His eyes were very green, this close, and so dearly familiar. "I'm desperately afraid," Thor said, "that I will say the wrong thing."
"You might," Loki allowed. "Still it's better than not speaking at all."
"No," Thor said, softly and with certainty. "Not if it makes you leave."
And how easy it was to read Loki, this close, even when he turned his face away to hide what emotions played there. After a moment, Loki said, just as softly, "And I'm afraid of silence once again building a wall between us. Summon your courage, brother, and tell me I can trust you to speak freely."
"You can trust me to speak," Thor said, "if I can trust you to stay."
"Yes," Loki said, breathing out. "Yes, you can trust me to stay." Then he looked down, quirking a smile, to where Thor's hand was locked around his wrist. "So, you can let go of me now."
Thor did, and Loki leaned back, with an expectant look. "You're all right?" Thor asked, after a moment, failing to find any more elegant way to broach the subject. "I know - I mean, I doubt you had planned to - "
"I'm fine," Loki said, not pretending not to know what he was talking about. "Although, I thought you might be startled."
"Not at all. Only grateful."
"Well," Loki shrugged, a picture of indifference, "these last few years have put the small matter of my birth rather in perspective, don't you think?"
"You wrote a whole play about it," Thor scoffed, and Loki's eyebrows rose. "You did tell me to speak freely."
"And I'm gratified," Loki said flatly, "that you should have taken my advice with such alacrity." He leaned back and took up his wine glass again. He looked at Thor darkly over the rim before draining it one long swallow, and then said, "Anyway, the whole play wasn't about that. You only saw the end."
Thor laughed, and stood to refill their glasses. That done, he sat back down, raised his glass, and said, "To honesty."
"To honesty," Loki said, and clinked his own glass against Thor's.
"So, tell me what the whole play was about," Thor said, leaning back comfortably against his pillows, "and then we can talk about the ending."
*
"What does it feel like?" Loki asked the next morning, eyes wide, as Valkyrie concentrated on creating one, two, then three shades of herself.
"Like someone handing you a blazing torch." She frowned and focused harder on the copies, trying to make them move. One of them blinked out of existence immediately. The others wavered, then held, but still only stood and stared. "What does it feel like for you?"
"Like being ablaze," Loki said, and pushed.
Valkyrie felt the energy leap through her, then out into the imaginative space between her and the copies. Another disappeared in a shimmer of green light, but the last blinked, looked around, and took a step forward.
"Holy shit," Valkyrie said, surprised into laughter, and the third copy burst into nothing with her smile on its face.
*
"Angry girl," Hulk said when Thor walked into the sparring room, pointing to the Valkyrie on the left. Then, helpfully, "Mean girl," pointing to the Valkyrie on the right.
The Valkyrie on the right glared and sent a sharp little icicle at him with a twist of her fingers. Hulk only swatted it away with a chuckle, and went back to throwing his enormous ball against the wall, catching it over and over on the rebound. Close to the door, the sound was tremendous, but as Thor moved farther into the room it faded abruptly.
"Sound dampening," Valkyrie said, not looking away from Loki, who was meeting her gaze with equal intensity. "Couldn't hear ourselves think otherwise."
"You can feel what I'm doing?" Loki asked. Valkyrie nodded. "Good," he said. "Now turn it around."
Valkyrie's own features wavered, then settled back into themselves. She gritted her teeth, adjusted her stance, and tried again. This time they wavered, then changed, until one Loki and one Valkyrie stood before him, reversed. They both turned to beam at Thor.
"Oh, no," said Thor, with feeling.