Refuge

Her arrival in the Princess’s lab was met with hostility for the briefest moment. Then the Dora Milaje rushed in, and the Great Gorilla was swept from her arms, orders were shouted, and chaos descended.

One of the Dora attempted to take Idunn into custody. She resisted for only a second before realizing that would only make her situation worse, knowing she could easily fight off the tight hold on her dense muscled wrists.

“Let her go!” The sharp voice of the General came, Xhosan, and the grip on her wrists was dropped. “You think she did this? She brought him here.”

“Yes, General.” The Dora behind her responded, replacing the twist in her arms with a small, warm hand on the small of Idunn's back, ushering her in, albeit none too gently. They started down the spiral ramp, and far below, Idunn saw flashes of physicians swarming and barking orders at one another. The Princess was in the thick of it all, and even from this distance, Idunn could see the personal touch to the distress on her face. She briefly recalled their banter when they’d first arrived, and realized she'd never figured out exactly what their playfully antagonistic relationship was about.

Her attention was pulled back to her own surroundings as the bald warrior behind her abruptly led her off the ramp and into another room on a higher level of the lab. The General waited for Idunn there.

“Tell me what happened.” The accent of her words were heavy, weighted with seriousness.

Idunn, still trembling and now hating that she was aware of it, recounted the story the best she could, as briefly as possible. “Lord M’Baku took me to a spot in the mountains he wanted to show me. Not long after we arrived, we were attacked. I was attacked, and he stepped in to defend me and Wakanda. He did not let me fight. He was stabbed. Possibly poisoned. When M’Baku fell, I stepped in and finished him off.” She recited dully.

“Him?” General Okoye raised an eyebrow.

“He called himself W’Kabi.”

The Dora behind her drew in a sharp gasp, and General Okoye looked as though she’d swallowed a sword without the hilt. “W’Kabi? You’re certain?” She demanded.

“That’s what he said…” Idunn trailed off, glancing between the hairless warriors. She was starting to feel that she was missing something; that she had killed someone important, and in doing so, that she had made a mistake.

“And you killed him?” General Okoye asked, her words like splintered glass shattering from her throat.

“Yes.”

The General turned away, pressing a hand briefly to her mouth as though to compose herself, before spinning back to face Idunn. “You speak nothing of this unless I am present and command you to. Tell no one. Do you understand?”

Idunn had a feeling she’d be on the receiving side of the silver and gold spear if she did not agree, and she was weary of battle, at least for now. Something she never thought she would admit to herself. Still, it seemed the best course of action either way; she wasn’t eager to go around bragging of a Midgardian kill.

Even if he was a traitorous speck of scum who had tried to murder someone she loved.

“I understand.” She spoke quickly. “Will Lord M’Baku be okay?”

The General tapped at the beads on her wrist that everyone in this odd country wore. A holographic projection appeared, lines of text that you didn’t bother to read. “Princess Shuri has stabilized his condition, but the poison was made with vibranium. She has not yet found an antidote. Lord M’Baku has not yet awoken.” She looked back up at you, her dark eyes flashing. “Where is his body?”

A much bigger deal than she’d originally thought. Idunn almost regretting killing the worm.

Almost.

“I killed him with my sword.” She said carefully, both hands raised above the hilt at her waist. She wanted to come off as little as a threat as possible. “The forge magic I wield turned him to dust and ash. There is no body.”

The General took a deep breath and seemed to steel herself against a wall of mixed emotion. “Very well. Is there no one else who may vouch for your story?”

The words strung like a slap in the face. Yes, she was Asgardian, but untrustworthy? “Why would I pick a fight with a Midgardian man? If that is, in fact, what you are implying.” A short exhale huffed through her nose, an annoyed tick that Kari always called her “dragon’s breath”.

“Answer the question.”

Idunn fought the urge to roll her eyes as if she were only 250 years old. “No one was there but us.”

“I see. Until Lord M’Baku awakens and can give us his tale of the events, you are to remain in the Palace under guard. Kuhle, escort Idunn to a room. I must speak with the king.” The General spoke quickly, and Idunn could have sworn she’d seen the slightest tremble in the spear she carried. Okoye was gone before she could tell.

The Dora Milaje placed her hand back on the small of Idunn’s back to guide her once more, but now that the shock had worn off, she jumped at the touch, and away from it. “Just… lead the way.” Idunn sighed.

Wonderful. Back to being stuck somewhere she did not want to be, away from those she loved. She stole another glance down the ramp to find the chaos dispersed and M’Baku nowhere in sight. The panic began to set in and she forced it down deep in her gut. Now is not the time.

♤♤♤

Her quarters were plush and lavish, even more so than the relatively homey room during her brief stay with the Jabari. Still, that did not change the fact that, for all intents and purposes, it was a cell: two warrior women stood posted outside her door at all hours, and she was effectively cut off from communication to anyone she had left to speak to. She received no updates on M’Baku, not for lack of trying; the Dora Milaje guards were surely fed up with her questions on the hour, every hour, like clockwork.

Is he still stable?

Has the Princess developed and antidote yet?

Is he any worse?

May I see him?

The Dora stood, still and silent as statues, and barely batted an eye, much less spared Idunn a glance.

Her panic grew.

She couldn’t sit still for more than a handful of seconds at a time.

Her palms itched.

She thought she might go mad.

It had only been four and a half hours.

On top of it all, they had stripped her of Halvor. She knew why, logically. But now it felt as if she truly had nothing. It was just her and four walls, black and faintly patterned with the same type of graffiti that had decorated the Princess's lab.

The Wakandans weren’t cruel. There were books, slim digital readers by her bed, on the nightstand. Any number of mindless videos, games, and other small entertainment items were there at her disposal.

She touched none of them. Nothing could hold her attention for long, even this odd new Midgardian subculture.

She just wanted him. What had he been about to say in the meadow?

She realized she’d told him she loved him. He likely hadn’t heard her, but that didn’t change the fact.

Did he feel the same way she did?

Her body seemed to pulse hot and cold. Nothing made sense. Thoughts became fragments.

A knock at her door pulled her back. It swung open of its own accord, and Valkyrie— no, Brunnhilde entered.

“Well, aren’t you a sore sight for eyes. Is that the human’s phrase?” She remarked, taking in Idunn’s blood-stained armor and trembling hands. The Dora had offered Idunn new clothes; they filled the dressers and closet. She’d refused to change. The snug fit of metal and leather surrounding her was the only homegrown comfort she had left, his blood the only piece of M’Baku here with her, however disgusting that was.

“It’s sight for sore eyes.” Idunn meant it to come off snappy, but she was too exhausted. She realized she’d been pacing for the past hour or so, and sank down on the edge of the pillowy soft bedspread.

“Yeah, isn’t what I meant, love.” Hilde sat beside her and, surprisingly, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “The Princess thinks she may have found an antidote. She’s testing it now. Either way, Lord M’Baku is awake, and he’s asking for you. Change into something decent, and I can tell you the rest on the way.”

Idunn was dressed and ready within five minutes. Four guards flanked them, two leading, two following, as Brunnhilde filled her in. “He has already corroborated your story, and their General and King trust him. The last he remembers is being stabbed. He woke two hours ago.” She recited the facts dully, as if bored, but her sharp gaze tore into Idunn’s face.

“Where is my uncle?” Idunn asked. She’d have expected him to collect her before anyone else.

“Meeting with their elder council, trying to appease them.”

“Where is the Prince? Shouldn’t he be dealing with all this?”

“No one can find him.” Hilde admitted. 

“What?!”

“The snake has either slithered off or was never here in the first place.” She rolled her eyes. “Heimdall thinks he left the ship with Thor. I don’t believe he’s that selfless. But no one has seen him since we left the ship, and an illusion is just what he’d do.”

Idunn took a few moments to process this all. “What do you mean, Heimdall is trying to appease their elder council?”

“They aren’t happy with the Asgardians in their country any longer.” Brunnhilde rolled her eyes once more. “The whole thing is ridiculous.”

Idunn’s shoulders sagged. In just a few days, she’d ruined everything. The home she had found, that her people may have needed, was threatened. Endangered.

The steps she took quickened. “This is my fault.” She whispered, too low for anyone but Hilde to hear.

Brunnhilde stopped and grabbed her arm. “Stop. No. I’m not going to let you put that on yourself. Growth, remember? Moving past all that, love. No one’s fault but the idiot with the bad luck to cross your path.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Idunn snapped. “If I had just incapacitated him…”

“That wouldn’t change the status of the man who was poisoned and is waiting for you now.”

“I lost control.” She whispered, ashamed. An Einherjar didn’t loose control. A master forger? Never. She attempted to hold tight to the notions of her old life carried over into her new one. Why couldn’t she get a grip on anything?

“Move on and do better next time. Come on.” Hilde huffed, impatient, and tugged Idunn down the hall. She offered little resistance.

None of this could prepare her for the man she saw in the lab, however. Within those few short hours, the ones that felt like they’d lasted a lifetime, he’d shrunk. Shriveled into himself. M’Baku was a large man, tall, but against the stark white of the sheet, he looked smaller, and grey around the edges. He pushed himself up to his elbows on the table when he saw her, wincing as he did so.

Idunn hesitated. Not out of fear, not directly. The apprehension she felt was worry, not only for him, but the trouble her presence would cause.

What did she say to him?

“Idunn.” His voice was rough with pain and emotion. “You came.”

“You called.” She whispered back, distantly aware of the former Valkyrie’s presence leaving her side. The Dora moved to give more privacy but did not go far. The table seemed to stretch in distance as she walked toward it. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? You did not do this.” He gestured at the dressed bandages on his chest, his uncovered torso, with a casual air that drew an angry lump to her throat.

“For listening to you, you stubborn gorilla.” The tears were already threatening to spill over. “I thought my pride was incorrigible, but you’ve taken yours to new heights.”

“You sound like you’re mad at me.” M’Baku said mildly, a frown starting to touch the corners of his mouth.

“I’ve been worried out of my mind!” Idunn exploded. Oh. There it was. “Are you kidding? You idiot! I would have handled the whole thing, but you had to go and butt your head in! I distracted you and you got hurt, do you have any idea how guilty I feel?”

“Idunn—”

“And on top of all that, you’re poisoned, and no one else was there to see us, and no one believes me, and I just,” the next step she took forward, she stumbled into his table, palms pressed against the smooth metal surface to steady herself. He reached for her, and she choked back a sob. “Don’t. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I feel fine, Idunn.” His voice was steadier than hers. “I have faith in their Princess to find a cure.”

Their— she recalled how he’d told her the Jabari tribe operated under their own rule, for the most part. She still did not understand their relationship, but now was not the time to ask. “I’m sorry,” she echoed her previous apology.

“For what? You saved my life.” His large hands closed over hers and rubbed slow circles on the backs of them, her skin tingling at his touch as it always did. “And I never did tell you why I brought you to the meadow, though I regret not just saying it in the first place. You deserved a better setting.”

“And here? Is this the place?” Idunn trembled, fighting her natural instinct to lean away, to draw back, to get away from whatever compelled her to feel this way for a man she’d just met. It was ridiculous. It was fatalistic.

It was undeniable.

“Isn’t it?” He murmured, wincing a bit as he shifted. His eyes had never looked more captivating. She’d never felt less in control.

But maybe that was okay.

“I’m afraid I can wait no longer, ifemi.” A small part of her brain, one she could not focus on, translated the word, and her heart skipped a beat. “Hanuman knows it’s ridiculous to wait at this point.”

“But you heard what he said. None of it was untrue. Asgard did colonize the Nine Realms. To bring peace, yes, but I was a part of that. I was on the front lines of some of the battles, M’Baku.” She said bitterly. “On Jotunheim, on Svartalfheim. I was here with the Norse in the time when they thought us all Gods; briefly, but here nonetheless.”

He took a moment to absorb that. “Truly?”

Idunn nodded. “And now eight Realms remain with no watchful eye, and chaos will reign soon enough. It’s—” her heart beat desperately, the words spilling before she could stop them. “a mess. It’s all a mess, and who knows what that ship will come for next?”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you are my soulmate.”

Her heart stuttered to a stop. Her breathing slowed, then sped again. She was frozen in place by his words, thrown out as casually as announcing the weather. “I am?”

“Do you deny it?” Warm brown eyes bore into her own, the color of the soil outside the Brenna Loga Smida.

She couldn’t, and shook her head slowly, not trusting her words.

The word she had been terrified to admit to herself all along. The reason for the odd pull she could not explain, the source of her fear.

Soulmate. Her threyja.

Such a simple word. Why did it scare her so much?

It was what it represented, the finality and the seriousness of it. That her soul was tied to his so intimately, that she was drawn to him by cosmic force as well as her own attraction to the beauty she saw in every inch of his being.

“Then why do you run from it? From me?”

“Because I can’t lose you, too.” Her voice broke.

“You will not.” Even as he spoke, a wave of pain seemed to pass through his injuries; the face he made, she’d seen the same expression on Gyda, her apprentice, many times when he’d misjudged in the forges and burned himself. The face of fire hot pain. His painkillers must have been wearing off, and yet again Idunn was reminded of the fragility of Midgardians.

She didn’t have the heart to explain to him the inevitable, and simply shook her head sadly. “You’re incorrigible.”

“I will take that as a complement.”

“How are you still upright?” She demanded, half laughing through an emotion choked throat. “Lay down and rest.”

“Is this not resting?” He asked, still lounging, propped on his elbows. How did he manage to tease her so at a time like this?

“You’re ridiculous.” Her only defense? Naming every way he managed to excite her down to the bone marrow.

“The poison was, Princess Shuri believes, formulated for you— someone smaller than me, and slow enough acting to not kill instantly beside the fact, simply incapacitate until the attacker could finish you off.” Anger bled through his ever-calm voice, and she suddenly wondered why she needed to be the one comforted here; she hadn’t been maimed.

“Then that worm miscalculated on two fronts,” Idunn scoffed. “I doubt his blade would have even penetrated my skin, and had it, found something denser than your delicate human muscular system.”

“Interesting.” M’Baku murmured. “I am delicate, eh?”

His hands had not left hers yet, thumbs tracing slow circles over the soft skin, the veins that ran parallel to one another. Both sets of fingers were darkly colored, rough, calloused, made to build, to fight.

They felt right, touching her.

She drew closer, captivated, angling toward luscious lips, before recalling where she was. How disrespectful, to push her lips on his as he lay dying slowly, guards watching from the door, in the midst of the place she had fled without explanation less than twenty-four hours before. How arrogant. Idunn made a mental note to speak to the Princess as soon as she could and apologize.

“You’re miles away, ifemi. What are you thinking?” One of those hands came up to touch her cheek. She shivered.

Would it be so bad to let go of those inhibitions? Kari always did say, “what’s the point of doing what you’re told? Where’s the fun in that?” He had been the wildcard. She had been the control freak.

Before she could contemplate that further, the Princess entered the room, hailed by salutes from the Dora at the door. Idunn bowed her head. Speak of the Midgardian, and they shall appear.

“Idunn.” She sounded warm, and Idunn raised her eyes to meet the gaze of the young genius. “How are you feeling?”

“Apologetic.” Idunn muttered, her ears warming. “I am sorry for my behavior yesterday, I—”

“Your uncle explained.” Shuri waved her off. “I must apologize as well, for showing you those. I had no idea.”

M’Baku looked between the two, uncertain, but unwilling to ask for clarification.

The Princess held up a glass vial, with a small amount of silvery blue liquid swirling about inside. “This should work.” She told them, turning her attention to the prone man on the table.

“Should?”

“It will work.” She corrected herself, though the smallest flicker of doubt colored her rich accent, and handed the container to M’Baku. “Drink up.”

Idunn watched at it disappeared down his throat in a single gulp, the expression crossing his face informing them it could not have tasted very good. “It’s like blood.”

“That’s the metal; I counteracted the poison with a small mixture of other materials and nanites. Never thought I would be dabbling in alchemy, yet here we are, Great Gorilla.” Princess Shuri teased. “How do you feel?”

“I— ah.” He took a deep breath, then sat up fully, swinging long legs around to the floor, and stood. “That was fast.” He peeled away layers of gauze to reveal rapidly healing wounds, the flesh knitting itself back together, the yellow tinge of infection fading before their eyes. Within the minute, the injuries were gone with little more than a thin line of shiny flesh in its place. Idunn stared in surprise.

Princess Shuri grinned, clearly pleased. “Just call me Nicholas Flamel.”

They stared at her blankly.

“You know… the guy who— you know what? Never mind. I am glad you are feeling better, Great Gorilla. My brother needs to see both of you in the throne room.”

“I am just up out of bed and being sent on errands? This brother of yours needs to learn to respect the might of the Jabar—” M’Baku was cut off by Idunn stepping before him and nodding at the young woman.

“Lead the way, Princess.” She said, shooting a look behind her to let him know they would talk more later.