Chapter 22
The morning after Loki’s visit, I sullenly vegetate alone on my couch. Naturally, he was gone by morning, though I wasn’t really expecting much more than that. Zombie ex-boyfriends probably don’t make great morning-after callers, even if they are a bit… enthusiastic the night in question.
It was surprise enough that he’d shown up at all, that he hadn’t killed me, and even more that we…
We actually…
Ugh. I throw my head back over the armrest, and close my eyes for a moment while a sitcom flickers on the TV screen. Meanwhile, the hot tea in my hands nearly spills, and I jerk back upright to catch it—creating only more movement, and subsequently spilling it.
“Shit,” I hiss as I wave my burnt hand in the air a bit, and set the mug down on the table. A knock comes at the door, and I merely yell in turn that it’s open as I clean myself up—knowing exactly who it is.
“Hey,” Pepper saunters in, carrying a small plastic bag with the breakfast takeout she’d offered to pick up. “Happy Saturday.”
“Happy, happy…” I murmur absently, my mind trailing off to thoughts about how I’m going to tell Pepper about what transpired last night. “How was your night?”
“Well, you know…” She sighs as she plops down on the armchair, and starts de-packaging the food. Omelet for her, eggs benedict for me. “Uncomfortable heels, fancy post-schmoozing dinner on the water, engagement ring in the champagne…”
“Wait, what!?” I gawk at her, arms shooting up into the air with shock. “What the hell!?”
“Yup, he finally did it!” She smiles, holding her left hand out to me. My eyes widen at the gargantuan rock on her ring finger.
“Holy crap Pep, that thing is something else…” Warmth floods into my chest. “You’re about to start your lives together, I just—I couldn’t be more happy for you.”
“And this ring is literally something else,” she pulls her hand back, observing the room. “Have you ever heard of benitoite?”
“Uh…” I laugh. “No?”
“Neither have I,” she giggles excitedly. “And I mean, I probably could’ve guessed it when I walked in and the entire restaurant was empty, but I thought it was just Tony being Tony until we got our drinks… And then he was on his knee in front of me!”
I look up at my best friend, sitting across from me and staring happily at the ring on her finger. The warmth explodes into tearful joy, and I smile broadly at the sight of the bliss and contentment brimming in the corners of her eyes.
“Pep, I’m so happy for you,” I say softly, standing up to hug her with a film of wetness over my eyes. “Come here.”
After a lengthy, somewhat emotional hug, she pulls away and says, “I’d like you to be my maid of honor. You’re the closest thing I have to a sister, to scapegoat it to from all my other girlfriends.”
“Oh I accept wholeheartedly—and if they try to fight you for it, they can come fight me instead,” I say, sitting back down on the couch.
“I’m making sure that that gets listed in all the engagement announcements,” she smirks. “And all the invitations, everything—I don’t know how long Tony’s planning on keeping this out of the media, so Nat and Clint might hear about it from you before us.”
“Well I went out with those two last night, so we might just be moving toward the ‘gossiping’ phase of our friendships.”
Pepper arches a brow. “You went out with Hawkeye and Black Widow?”
“Yeaaah, and it went about as good as it sounds.”
“Your fault for trying to get them to have lives,” she says, reaching out for her omelet. “How late were you guys out for?”
“Well we weren’t out long as a group, but I was up pretty late here… like, in my apartment…”
With a forkful of egg shoveled into her mouth, Pepper furrows a brow at my tone. “Yeah I don’t know if you’re trying to be suggestive or something,” she says, speech muffled. “‘But I really don’t need to know what you do here in the middle of the night—”
“Oh my God, ew,” I shake my head. “No—no that’s not what I meant. Loki actually came by.”
I flinch as bits of egg go flying out of Pepper’s mouth. Slowly but she surely, she doubles over in a coughing fit, careful not to let her food go flying. “Wait, what? What the hell!?” she chokes out. “What do you mean he ‘came by? For a night cap, or what!?”
“I, uh…” I pause, thinking over everything. “Well I mean, yes and no. He came, and we talked, and then….”
Pepper’s expression falls as my voice trails off. “And then what?” she asks lowly. “What happened?”
I say nothing for a few moments, allowing my face to contort into a bit of an embarrassed cringe. Pepper stares blankly at first, and it takes a second for the realization to splatter across her expression. “Oh God, seriously?”
“It just happened, I swear!” I throw my hands up defensively—toeing the edge of amusement at her reaction. “Honestly, he showed up on my balcony, and then he seemed all confused, and then we were looking at old photos. Next thing I know, he plants one on me—what was I supposed to do?”
“Uhhh, maybe not sleep with the guy who tried to kill you two months ago?”
“It didn’t feel like I was sleeping with that guy,” I shift on the couch, curling up a bit more comfortably. “It was…emotional. The second time, anyway.”
“You slept with him twice!?”
“I mean, it was a few times,” I answer briskly as she blinks in shock. “but it’s not a big deal! And it felt familiar, you know? It was like…somewhere deep deep down, he was the same guy who knew me.”
“Because it was the same guy, Cerys. It was the same guy who put you in the hospital, the same guy who invaded New York, and the same guy who somehow magically got you to fall in love with him.”
“I know,” I shake my head. “All of that was there, but it just made me think about how the doctors said I got lucky—and how everyone else was saying that he must not have really wanted to kill me. I’m…I’m pretty sure he even had his knife at some point. I heard it fall against the floor when I woke up, and I knew the sound because I’ve dropped his daggers so many times.”
“So what happened, then?”
“Well, he…” I pause reluctantly. “I mean, he—he grabbed my chin, and…turned me back, and,” I murmur, gesturing around my body. “Y’know…”
Pepper’s face contorts. “Eugh, okay,” she mumbles as shakes her head. “Well, this complicates some things, then.”
“What things?”
“I had something I needed to talk to you about. I was going to wait, but since we’re on the subject,” she says, motioning her hand defeatedly. “I needed to ask how you’re doing with your voice. Whether you’re making any progress with that.”
In fact, I had been making progress. Especially after quitting my day job, it left entire evenings for me to practice. In that entire time, my voice never seemed to get tired. Though the magic was another story…a different one entirely.
“I have, yeah. It’s different from the way it was before, but I’ve got a pretty good handle on it.”
“Different how?”
“Well, it’s almost like it goes deeper than it did before, if that makes sense…like using it reaches deeper into me than it ever has before.”
Pepper nods slowly, a look of deep contemplation on her face. “And how does that relate to other people?” she asks reluctantly. “Would you be able to use it, if we asked you to?”
I shrug. “I mean, I could try… I’ve got sort of a vague idea of what it’d be like, but I haven’t really done that trial by fire bit. Why, what’s going on?”
“We’ve got some intel that Yuriko’s organized to have one of our execs kidnapped.”
My eyes widen. “And by ‘our’ exec, you mean…?”
“S.H.I.E.L.D.”
Silence hardens around us for a moment. “That’s a little balsy of them, isn’t it?”
“It is,” she says. “It means they’re planning something big. They want uninterrupted access to our intelligence. That’s why I got dispatched to ask you for help, if you’ve got it…especially since Nisha’s set to make an appearance too. It’ll be the whole humanoid crew.”
“Do you think it’d put a period to everything, once and for all?” I ask earnestly.
“Put an end to it? No. Not permanently, maybe just in the country,” she says. “—and I’m glad it sounds like you’re willing to try, but that’s also why I’m doubtful. Loki’s going to be there.”
I furrow a brow. “If Nisha’s going to be around, I still want to go. I owe that bitch a favor—my relationship with Loki doesn’t change that.”
My eyes drop down to the coffee table momentarily, trailing over the food boxes and mugs, laptop and array of books I haven’t touched yet. I myself am donning the same pajamas shorts and tank top I wore last night, while my hair is much greasier and awful looking from rolling around all night. If I showed up like this, I doubt Nisha (or anyone, for that matter) would even want to touch me, but I’m better at this now than I was before.
Though it’s almost comical to think that someone like me would get enlisted. I’m probably the least intimidating-looking person in the whole damn world.
“Loki’s going to be a problem if you can’t keep your emotions under control,” Pepper says sternly. “I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but that’s the downfall of a soldier.”
“I know it better than you do, trust me,” I answer just as sternly. “I can control myself, and…” My thoughts trail off for a moment, toward all the practice I’ve gotten in the past month. To the scintillas of magical outbursts I’ve experienced while doing so. “I think I’ve got something I can try.”
“What do you mean?”
I frown at the initial thought that follows. “Nobody’s known this magic better than I have—neither before, nor now. And…I don’t think we can get Loki back to normal, Pep,” I say quietly. “Especially now, after everything that’s happened…I don’t think we can ‘undo’ what they did to him.”
“They had to have given him a pretty strong cocktail for it to take him down, of all people,” she nods sadly. “But what does that have to do with this?”
I grin, feeling my throat tighten just a bit. “Well, there might not be anything we can do for that, but…maybe there’s something else I can try. Honestly, I don’t even know if it would work, but it’d be something.”
“What is it?”
I shrug, creasing my brows thoughtfully. “It’s hard to explain—but I’d probably need your help.”
“How?”
I look at her. “I think…I’d need you to make sure everyone is in the room.”
Her eyes narrow contemplatively. “I can make that happen.”
***
Loki hadn’t returned to A.I.M in days. He’d spent the majority of the time traversing the streets of New York with a cloaking spell. After seeing all those images on that woman’s computer, he visited as many of them as he remembered. There was a studio for her birthday, the center where she’d had her very first performance, and the Central Park, where they’d celebrated Ostara…
He’d made his rounds through various human portals of information, learning that his people had indeed settled here years back. A kink in the chain of information he’d been fed by his associates… And to have thought that they’d abandoned Asgard, to learn that Asgard no longer existed—it was more devastating than he’d imagined it would be. The loss of the place he once called home…
Each visit to the locations also drew an uncomfortable blank, and each time, he’d decided that it was the last—until the impulse struck him again. His headache had also returned, though considerably less, and the wildness in his blood had doused a little. Perhaps the result of what he’d experienced in Cerys’ bed, perhaps from the questions and confusion that threaded through his thoughts—where were their people now, if not in New York?
He could at least walk through the park without wanting to tear someone’s head off. There were too many blank spaces in his memory for fury—only confusion. As though something had been scooped from his thoughts, and left nothing in its wake. In those moments, Loki thought of Cerys, of Thor, the Avengers, the Asgardians—all the things he’d seen in the photos that night. All the images. And the impressions of Cerys’ touch lingered on his skin, even when he sat alone one night on a bench in Central Park, face buried in his hands.
“Loki,” a quiet voice mused, and he recognized it immediately. He dragged his eyes to Nisha standing just down the cement path, and straightened up a bit. Wearing a deep green dress, she was bathed in the city lights streaming down between the trees. A bag was in her hands.
“Going somewhere nice?” Loki droned, noting the color choice of her dress. He’d lost count of how many innocent touches here and there that she’d offered him—her intentions made plain. She herself never wore green, but this night, her breasts were nearly bursting from that dress.
“You’ve been gone—and you didn’t finish the job.”
“Neither could you,” he murmured.
Nisha’s face remained taut. “Were you going to come back to us?”
“Would you have had me if I did?”
Nisha paused. “We may yet,” she finally mumbled. “The plan has to go forward. S.H.I.E.L.D knows where we’ll be tonight and why. Cerys will be there too.”
He remained expressionless, but something inexplicable dug at him, at the thought that his associates were tracking the woman’s whereabouts. “So?”
“So, you’re coming with me.”
“Why?”
“Because she can’t use her magic on a god, just like I can’t. Which means you’re the only one who can get close enough to kill her,” Nisha murmured unhappily. “It’s your last chance. And your only assignment.”
Loki pursed his lips together, contemplating the implications. “You want me to go to where Cerys will be, and dispose of her?”
“Or distract her long enough for one of us to do it,” she said as she approached, and held out the bag to him. Her tone, her movements…everything was colder than it was before. Distant, and detached. “So get dressed.”
***
A gala—that’s what Nisha was dressed for. And the bag she’d handed him contained a suit. Their instructions were simple—they went in from the top of some fine hotel, and made their way down. The target would be lingering amidst the crowd, and a car would be waiting for them outside.
“Dysseus, Mark and Rager will keep the others distracted,” Yuriko had clarified on the roof, and presented them all with several small devices. “Once this is on him, he’ll just walk out. We won’t have to create a scene. And if anyone gives you trouble, use it on them too—the more people we have on our side when this goes down, the better.”
They dispersed after that, and Loki kept silent for the majority of the meeting—and after—while he followed them down the stairs. And it didn’t take long for them to reach the hall where the gala was being held. It was a vast space, and riddled with a myriad of sounds and smells as people crowded within it. They spoke, laughed, even yelled a bit as they furthered their intoxication.
There was still no sign of Cerys. Though when Thor’s face appeared amidst the crowd of people, Loki ducked away from it—it was easy to hide in the vastness of the building, and listen to his conversation with Stark.
“Several men dead on the seventh floor, and they’re not all ours…” Stark murmured to his brother. “They’re definitely here.”
“In such a large space, there’s no knowing what they’ll attempt—if we know they’re here, why not go up through the hotel ourselves?”
“We’ve got agents up there, already caught several of ‘em… We need to keep an eye on the president, and Pepper said to stay down here.”
A third, feminine voice appeared. “Cerys has a plan,” she said, and Loki paused mid-step. “She said everyone needs to be in the room.”
“And what does she hope to accomplish?” Thor asked.
“I don’t know,” the woman responded. “To be honest, the way she talked about it, I don’t really know if this’ll work.”
“She’s going to get herself killed one of these days—and us,” Tony muttered. “Why are we listening to her? We know their MO, we can fan out and do this ourselves…”
“Because Loki’s important,” the female voice said earnestly, and Loki stiffened, creasing his brows as his chest tightened painfully. “He gets caught up in this, they’ll kill him too. And if anyone’s got a shot at stopping that, it’s her…”
“I appreciate that,” his brother responded earnestly.
“—Loki,” Yuriko’s voice suddenly whispered beside him, drawing him back as she appeared at his side, covering her face aptly. “We’ve got him.”
He looked at her, and parted his lips reluctantly—as though coming out of a dream. Movements continued on around them, and they blended easily among them all. “The device?”
“Planted,” she said, giving the look on his face a double take. “Let’s go.”
“And what about Cerys?”
Yuriko’s expression remained flat—unfazed. “What about her?”
She turned and walked off briskly without another word, while Loki creased his brow confusedly at her nonchalant response. It only took a moment of watching her drift off before he started after her, ignoring the boisterous sounds of the crowd, turning and listening to some mundane introductions on the stage. It took moments for them to circle around the hall—either avoiding security, or disarming it with their little chips.
“New York’s Cerys Adelin…”
It wasn’t until Loki heard Cerys’ name, that his eyes darted around the room for the source. And when he found her, she was a vision in red—the same dress she’d worn in the gala they’d attended together. She filled it a bit more than she had before, though her face was solemn—nothing at all like it’d appeared in other photos, particularly ones that beheld her on stage. None of the light, none of the joy. As though she were there for a job, and nothing more.
Cerys barely gave the man a nod before sauntering to the center of the stage, and fanning her eyes over the crowd. A melancholy tune began, matching her solemn expression, but Loki was distracted by the sudden stuttering of a guard. It took all of a few seconds for him to react, and the music went on—with him distracted from it—while he watched the hints of life leave the man’s eyes. He was no longer himself, and would not be for as long as the device remained on his wrist.
When Loki turned back, he caught glance of Yuriko’s lips quirking upward at the sight of Cerys. Meanwhile, Cerys herself continued to look nothing like she did in the photos—no mirthful gaze, or hint of enjoyment at being looked upon from the stage. She appeared uncomfortable, as though she was trying hard to maintain confidence in what she was doing, and it took a bit longer for her to find him in the crowd.
When she did, her expression didn’t change. If nothing else, it only grew more determined, and it resonated in her voice—which was deeper, and more layered than he’d anticipated from her usual, feminine speech…or from the way it rose in pitch, during a moment of ecstasy.
Loki blinked the thought away—momentarily unsure of why he truly was still following Yuriko through the crowd. He saw that even his brother and the others had followed her heightened line of sight, and found him in the crowd. Stark stepped toward him, and mumbled something into his wrist, but Thor held him back, glancing at Cerys expectantly.
It was in that moment that Loki felt a shudder, matching the wordless vocalizations that Cerys had reached in the song. Another step, and he felt it again, and Yuriko’s harsh whispering seemed to fade as he dragged his gaze back toward the woman on the stage. Her face was taut and determined, but also knowing—proud, confident. The notes continued, growing in skill and intensity, and her arms rose with her to the steady, rising beat of the song’s climactic moment.
She looked off to the side, off toward her friends, who stared back at her intently—for a moment at least, until they looked between themselves with decidedly perturbed expressions. As though they’d all suddenly felt the same, invasive sensation at once. Loki followed her gaze as she trailed from that side of the room to the other, where his eyes widened at the most unexpected sight—that of Sif and Heimdall, also blending aptly in the crowd.
After the onslaught of questions and confusion the past week, it was almost cathartic to see a pair of familiar faces. The shudder in Loki’s chest grew—as though something was being carved out in his chest. It was both painful and sweet, and as he looked back at Cerys, her allure grew—the siren’s magic at work. At work from the very start, from the moment they met…
Cerys was still looking toward Heimdall and Sif, though her eyes tore into his core when they darted straight to him across the crowd. Her gaze tore past his confusion, his fury—even past the vision of the woman staring at him in that moment. Her power was there, pluming toward him in a wave of knowledge.
Knowledge of himself, as though drawn from the depths of someone else’s core, was branded into the depths of his mind. Images reeled as though they were part of the song itself—shared by the traveling wavelengths of the vibrant vibrato pouring powerfully from Cerys’ throat. He saw and felt it all; the events of his imprisonment, the destruction of Asgard, the meetings with S.H.I.E.L.D that decided his fate on Earth…
He saw the look he’d given the first time he heard Cerys’ voice, seeing the two of them through another’s eyes, and the first time that they truly spoke on Stark’s balcony. He saw the plane ride he’d endeavored beside her, saw when he shook the branches of a tree to cover her with snow, saw the moment he’d given her the little music box, the gifting of a diamond bracelet—which she wore now—and the moment he left. The look of hurt when he said his final goodbye in the airport, the way she’d turned and walked away, to be followed by her friend moments later.
Then came his brother’s memories, Heimdall’s, Sif’s—all the time he’d spent with their people in a place called Norway, the cloudy afternoon when Thor came to him with the proposal to return to the Americas… He saw them traversing the streets of New York, and the vision of Cerys beneath another’s man’s arm. A campground with innumerate trees, a skulking animal in the middle of the night, the touch they shared when he kissed her against a tree for the first time. And then, when they laid together in the same capacity, on her couch some months ago, he momentarily relived the closeness and relief—after she’d fallen from the roof with Nisha’s power roiling in her eyes…
It was everything. Every moment, every feeling—all the answers appeared there, nestled in a quiet corner of his heart. A place that the siren had created and marked as her own, so very long ago.
He let out a sharp breath as he held her gaze from across the room, and she lowered her hands as the song began to finish—looking a little unsure of herself, and him.
“Loki,” Yuriko growled, tugging at his arm. Loki sliced to her, suddenly seeing—knowing—all that she had done. All that she had caused.
She made his woman cry.
With a flash of movement and anger, a dagger materialized in his hand, and Yuriko barely managed to cast her eyes down to it, before it was embedded in her skull.
Hell broke loose in the onslaught of gasps and screams that followed. His companions rose against the members of A.I.M that made themselves known—some Loki knew, and others he didn’t—and he turned alongside them. Devices were either torn from their necks, or they were disposed of for their alliance with the organization.
The violence was palpable, and in the corner of his eye, Loki caught sight of Cerys dodging the slash of Nisha’s blade—avoiding her touch as she cried out to the woman to stop. Which was neither an order, nor a plea. It was simply Cerys’ will.
Nisha’s movements came to a screeching halt, and the space trembled with the coarse vastness of Cerys’ voice, as she towered over the woman falling to her knees. An unequivocal darkness clouded her eyes. “Die.”
Nisha—who'd looked like she was being choked—suddenly grew taut, eyes filling with blood. Her features suddenly drooped crookedly, as though she had lost all control of her own movements, and she fell to the floor. Dead.
Loki darted instinctively across the room to Cerys, as she lifted her skirt and pulled a dagger out from a hoister wrapped around her leg. Attacks came from one side and the next, though he would protect her this time—if any one of these dullards made a move against her, he would snap their necks slowly, so they could fully appreciate their ensuing deaths.
He lost count of how many bodies he’d flipped, how many throats he’d slashed, before the fighting was over.
The room had settled to a state of post-panic panting and sweating, and Loki turned to face Cerys once more—mere feet from where he stood. She was tired, though not as tired as the other mortals in the room—she was much closer to his demeanor, than that of anyone else.
The uncertainty had hardly left her eyes, however. Her body remained taut as she hunched above a mutilated body, bloody dagger hanging at her side. Cerys’ eyes were hard and unsure as she stared up at him, and though Loki now understood the pull he felt toward her, the look on her face kept him from indulging it.
She parted and closed her lips several times, as though sifting from one potential remark to another. And when he stepped toward her, she stilled.
“Brother!” They both flinched at the familiar voice, breaking the momentary silence.
Thor appeared in the space between them, and threw his arms around Loki in a heartbeat. He stumbled back a bit, but the glimmer of anger was doused immediately by the infinite recall—there was too much between the two of them now. Too much had happened.
Thor’s face sank a little as he pulled back—gandering at Loki’s lack of enthusiasm. “D—Did it not work?”
His hands disappeared from Loki’s shoulders—while Stark and his woman, as well Sif and Heimdall approached the group. They all stared at him expectantly, but none more intently than Cerys. Their scrutiny felt a bit overwhelming at first, like he was some miniscule creature being eyed and evaluated beneath a microscope. If nothing else, his body betrayed no aggression—there was none to speak of. Not with all that he now knew—perhaps remembered, if it could be called that—about the concerned eyes staring at him from all over.
“Brother, what do you remember?” Thor asked him, and Cerys glanced toward the god momentarily before returning to Loki—encouraging the question and answer.
Loki shook his head slowly. “I—I don’t remember things,” he muttered reluctantly, carefully phrasing his words. Everyone but Cerys’ face fell a little. “But…I know much more than I did before.”
And yes, there it was—relief loosened the corners of her eyes a bit, and her lip quirked upward. “Yes,” she breathed out, and silence befell them once more. “That’s it…”
“That’s ‘it?’” Thor repeated, a bit more happily. “You mean it worked?”
A steady, comfortable warmth bloomed in Loki’s chest as he stared down at Cerys. She grinned broadly, summoning their rediscovered closeness. “Yeah, I think it did.”