Chapter Seven:
Bloody Aesir. They were bad luck. Not even a rabbit's foot was going to ward away the simply rotten luck having two of them around had brought the Doctor over the past month. He'd never had such troublesome companions!
Though The Doctor had only been too happy to get away from that blasted bunker. Nothing good ever came around in WW2. All WW2 eras were going to be banned from his TARDIS's destinations as quickly as the four of them could get away.
As per the agreement he'd let Thor choose this time. Never again. He was done letting the companions choose the destination. It wasn't truly the prince's fault that the Doctor had been off shooting the village by about fifty years. And no the Aesir couldn't have predicted that there would be a snow storm. That somehow they'd be separated in two opposite directions and that the Doctor hadn't put a homing device into Rose's flesh yet so that he'd know where exactly she was at all times. Should look into that.
Three days. Rose and Loki had been missing for three days. He'd never lost her before. Thor had joined with search parties that their hosts had been generous enough to supply them with but each day he came back more and more distressed looking and sans Rose and his brother.
She needed to be brought back, safe and sound. Loki better be taking good care of her.
His mind racing, The Doctor began to think back to the last time he'd seen them before they'd gotten seperated. He had almost been prepared in the dance club to tell Loki the truth about his heritage, to defy everything, all laws of the universe itself. The Jotun was becoming a friend and why should he lose more friends?
This past month had been like days long gone past, moments that reminded him of The Master as the young child he'd once been. Days spent bent over studies and running through pastures of red grass on Gallifrey, two friends not yet separated through guilt and anger. Watching the two brother, not yet broken apart with anger and regrets, with the weight of hundreds of years of betrayals and lost lives? It brought his mind spinning back to that day everything had been ripped apart.
The day he'd let his best friend become death's servant to save himself. For a brief moment he'd caved, he could not condemn another to a life of destruction.
Until he'd seen Loki holding Jack's vortex manipulator. It had brought reality flooding back, the feeling of guilt at condemning a man who was becoming a friend buried. For how could he condemn an entire universe, to save one man? To assuage his guilt over someone dead and gone with the rest of his people?
No, that was dangerously close to playing God.
Speaking of Gods, the tiny village that Thor and The Doctor had been lucky enough to stumble to had expanded somewhat since the last time the Doctor had been here. The people were much, well not exactly happy, life in the far reaches of the icy northern lands of Norway was hard, but much happier not to be besieged by angry, land hungry Jotuns who towered over them.
Thor was happy to be in a place in which he could boast of his true worth. The people flocked to him in droves, the son of Odin, the man whom they worshipped as a god. At night after a long days hunt for Loki and Rose, Thor would gather around the fire to tell young, awed looking warriors and haggard old men tales of Asgard. He'd even mentioned the story of the dwarves. The Doctor had grimaced at that but it had seemed to enrapture the men.
Thor spoke in great length about his life in Asgard, the lives of his brother and his family. He told the villagers about the deeds of the Gods, retold them the Aesir legends about beings such as Valkeyries and Valhalla. The Doctor watched light appear in in the villagers eyes as they listened to his tales, spoken like a Shapkespearean play being read aloud to an enraptured class.
This was how human myths got started. The Aesir, the Olympians, other so-called divine beings. Long lived aliens that came down (sometimes out of boredom, sometimes helping, sometimes just for sport) to an underdeveloped planet that was searching for guidance and telling the inhabitants their lives; human minds just beginning to grow, searching for the depths of answers to the mysteries of life. Generations passing these tales down, the truth becoming less as the years past, till only the bare bones of what had really occured in the lives of these 'Gods' remained.
Yet there is truth in the lies that humans told themselves to comfort their existence.
Even Time Lords were not immune to the binding web of belief.
He was lost without her. Somehow, sometime, she had become his anchor. He could feel himself drifting, dark thoughts emerging; he wanted to search himself for her. He needed her. He thought he would tear the world apart if it just brought her back to his arms.
Was she ready to leave him? They all left, one day. He had his own part in it, he pushed and he pulled until they could take no more. The danger became too much. The Doctor couldn't quite erase the devestated look on her face after he'd come upon Rose and Loki sitting on that bench outside the dance club as they'd been getting ready to leave. He also couldn't shake the image of her dancing with Steve Rogers just hours before, how wrong it had been to see her in the arms of another man, wondering just what would be the final push that made him lose her.
"You should not despair for your friends Doctor. Loge and the company shall find them. Your young intended is in the protection of a god, there is none safer," said the short, red headed woman who was tending to a pot of boiling fish stew, interrupting his thoughts. Her hair reminded the Doctor of fire. It was beautiful. Next time, shoot for the red hair. Always wanted to be a ginger.
Her name was Glut. Wife of Loge. They had two little daughters of their own. They'd kindly provided their home to him and Thor to stay with them.
They believed they were housing divine beings.
The Doctor could never tell them that there were no divine beings, only creatures, with flaws and darkness and compassion and arrogance and hope, just like them.
Beings that manipulate and prey on the weak. Take advantage of their naivety or their kindness. Their guilt.
Glut handed him a bowl of soup, smiling. She was a kind woman. A lot like Rose. Heart bigger than the whole of her body.
The Doctor remembered her grandmother Bestla well. They'd met during the Jotun war after he'd brought a wounded Odin towards her doorstep. For seven long days and nights Bestla had taken care of Odin, nursing him back to health. Many times she would coax him out of his slumber back to consciousness so that she could hear tales of the Aesir. In his gratitude Odin had told her many memories of his life and many secrets of his people.
Which she had later given to her people. Downtrodden, the villages destroyed, food all but gone, but with stories and practices from their saviors, she had helped pick her people back up. It had given them hope. The resilience of humanity continued to amaze him.
The Doctor looked up from his soup as Loge and Thor stepped through the opening of the hut. Frost clung to their thick animal furs and in their hair. The Norseman was strongly built, with a weathered face, hair gone to gray and a stern manner. Harsh, like wind.
He'd offered Thor the use of his own horse to ride out with to find his brother. His one treasure in this barren land.
"Nothing," The Doctor said.
"Nothing," Thor confirmed. "Where ever Loki and Lady Rose may have ended up, they have not yet made their way here. My brother, for all his ergi ways, knows how to survive in the wild Doctor. All our people are taught this skill from infancy. I have no fear that we will find them naught but alive."
The Doctor wished Loki's magic could send a bat signal to their exact location. Cause some smoke to rise up in the air, anything. Searching with a blindfold on was doing him nothing. He could call her, but that guaranteed nothing. Why had Loki not come to them? Was it simply because he could not find them?
Did he want to?
The next morning the Doctor followed Thor and Loge outside the hut to watch Thor saddle Loge's horse, little Einmyria following them to watch Thor. The Norseman was old now, with a lame leg and he could not easily ride out everyday with the young prince. He had elected to stay back on this day.
"You have a fine touch with horses my Lord," Loge remarked, admiring of the gentle, skilled way Thor placed the saddle upon the beast.
"She is a fine steed. Almost as worthy a steed as Sleiphnir, my father's steed. He possesses eight legs, the mightiest of horses," Thor boasted, "None but my father and Loki will he allow to touch him. Loki dotes on Slephnir. I have learned many of my calming tricks from him."
"An eight legged horse! A wonder," Loge said.
"Father! Father!" Eisa, the other of Loge and Glut's daughters, was running over to them. She'd wondered off early in the morning to fish from the stream by woods for the late day meal.
Behind her was a tall, red headed man. And someone very pink and yellow. The Doctor felt the steel vice that had been entrapping his heart for the past few days begin to unlock. He ran towards the pair.
"Look at you! Beautiful. Most beautiful sight I've ever seen," he cried.
"Well he is pretty," Rose was saying. The sound of her voice. Music. He hugged her, burying his face in her hair. He could see Thor embracing Loki from the gaps in the strands. Why was he ginger? Never matter, they were safe. She was alive.
The giant wolf growled and plopped itself down on the ground.
Rose had never felt so bloody cold in her life.
England could get cold and clammy with its rainy weather but up north here, it was pure ice. Snow mountains that were bigger than her as far as she could see, the wind bit at her cheeks and turned the skin red and irritated.
Loki had conjured her up some furs to wrap herself in. It kept out as much of the cold from seeping into her skin and turning her flesh black with frost rot. So far, he seemed unaffected from the icy bite of the wind.
The first night he'd conjured a fire almost taller than her to keep her warm. He'd helped to lull her off into a troubled sleep by telling her stories of his childhood.
Her dreams had been filled with images of blood and werewolves, like something straight out of a Hollywood horror flick. Loki had not slept at all, but had been loath to leave her on her own in case the fire served as a signal beacon to less than friendly locals.
She'd never been so far away from the Doctor. Or so hungry. Magic could do many things but create food where there was none was not one of its perks. They hadn't chanced upon anything that could be caught and killed, her mind shying away from the thought of hunting food itself, and anything green was buried and dead beneath the snow.
How could anyone survive out here?
The next morning they set out, walking what seemed like miles. She had asked why Loki could not simply teleport them back to the Doctor. He would not risk taking her with him. She could end up missing parts if the spell went wrong, bringing bodies along went wrong two times out of three. And he could not find that which he did not know. Finding her in the army base had been easy, he'd simply waited for one of the soldiers to tell where they were keeping her, but the Doctor and Thor could be anywhere.
They could be dead. Rose shied away from the nagging worry. The Doctor and Thor were not simply men, they would survive this. And so would she.
She was not on her own. She had him.
"A poor substitute for my brother Rose. I am no hunter, tests of physical skills has never been my strong suit," Loki muttered.
"Even if you're the lowest in your P.E. class, you're still miles ahead of me. You'll get us through this. I have faith in you," she gasped out. She could see her breath in the winter chill. The furs felt like ten pounds of weight on top of her and she moved slowly. Loki had to slow his own pace to make sure she didn't fall behind.
He held out his hand so they would not be separated.
Sometime later that afternoon, when the sun was at the highest peak in the sky and nearly blinding her with its glare they spotted what looked like two men. Rose's heart leapt. The Doctor and Thor.
The two men were old, significantly older, the closer they got. The fact that Rose could not understand them meant that she and Loki were far, far away from the TARDIS. Whichever way they were moving, it wasn't towards the boys.
"How come you could talk to them and I couldn't," she asked him later that night. He'd turned his hair the color of the fire after the men had watched them walk off, remarking that it may help him to blend in better. The Midgardians of this region were fair to look upon according to the Aesir warrior's tales. They'd managed to find a cave that could provide them shelter. The fire lit up shadows across the cave walls and though the floor was hard stone, Rose was grateful to be away from the snow. If she never saw the blasted stuff, again it would be too soon.
She'd be having the Doctor take them to a beach next. Hot weather, sand, oceans. No frost and bloody snow.
"The Alltongue. It is like the Doctor's TARDIS. It allows me to understand and be understood by many creatures through the realm. I speak English to your ears, but I have never actually spoken your tongue. I am conversing in my own," he told her.
"So... it's like some low level psychic brain wave thingy?" She'd never quite been able to grasp all the intricacies of the TARDIS; Loki's magic was a thing that would forever boggle her mind. He could do things straight out of a Harry Potter novel and much more badass.
"Of a type," he confirmed. Something had changed between them in the past few days. He was more open then he'd ever been. Loki had always been a master at talking without saying anything of value in the entire time she'd met him. The surface was like the calm stillness of a river, underneath was the mystery invisible to all but those allowed in.
She yawned. All this walking was taking a lot out of her. He managed to kill the fire some so that the light wasn't so bright behind her eyelids but would still serve to warm them.
( There was something inside her. It was consuming her. She could see everything.
All that was. All that could be. All that should be.
The universe was vast and they were tiny. They were not Gods. False. Liars. Tricksters.
She hated them. She had the power to burn the life from them.
It was too much, there was not enough space. This vessel was flawed. Insignificant.
"You are tiny. I see the whole of your existence. Every atom and I divide them."
The walls between the universes were so very thin. There was so much space. So much potential. She could feel power calling to her, she began to reach out to touch it.
Light flashed behind her eyes. )
Rose gasped, abruptly sitting upright. Loki was cradling her to his chest, stroking her hair. She was shaking.
"Rose, what is it? What did you see," he asked as she gasped into his chest, fighting to regain her breath. The images were fading.
"I...I don't...I don't know," she said. Why was she so scared? What was she forgetting?
His eyes were bright with concern. She drew herself tighter around him seeking warmth.
"Don't...don't leave. Just...stay. I don't want to be alone," she begged.
"I shall stay as long as you shall have me here," he promised solemnly. She sighed, shaken. She wanted The Doctor here. She wanted both of them out of this cold bloody cave.
He'd been in her dream. The last thing she could see was him. As he had been, when they'd first met.
"Tell me, tell me how you fell in love," she asked Loki. She needed to hear something, anything to chase the thought away. The nagging feeling that there was something she was missing. Something she should know. He sighed.
"You do not want to hear that tale Rose," he said. His eyes were closed and his face was shattered. What had Sif done to him? How empty was it to love someone who did not love you? Mickey had loved her and she'd taken him for granted.
And she loved the Doctor. Her doctor. Even if he never felt the same, she could not leave him. She wanted forever.
"I don't want to hear it? Or you don't want to tell it?"
It would not be so hard to lie. Lying was as easy as breathing. The truth...was hard. It exposed you and made you vulnerable, weak. The truth left you bare. The truth could cause more pain then any lie.
She would see him for the petty, spiteful creature he was. She, with all her compassion and kindness, her cheerfulness. How could she comprehend the act of jealousy had been committed if not out of the elusive veil of love?
Would she still care for him if she knew the truth? Or did she care for a mask?
Loki has exposed parts of himself to her that he had kept locked inside the boxes of his mind for centuries, even to himself. Parts he would never reveal to Thor, despite that he loved his brother more than anything in these realms. Thor was arrogant and casually cruel. Thor mocked his passions and belittled his talents like all the other warriors.
Could he face losing her? His only friend.
"I do not want to tell it. For there is no tale of how I feel in love, Rose," he sighed. The frown on her face cut through him like a knife. There was no turning back. He had made a decision here. The truth felt bitter on his tongue, like acid.
Ergi. Coward. You are nothing. A shadow cast from his light. You will never be the sun.
"I was jealous. There was no pure emotion to the act. I cut Sif's hair out of spite and jealousy. In Asgard, I am not loved. I am different. Thor, my brother, out of all, he is the only one who tries. Sif is everything my brother hopes that I would be. His companion, she loves what he loves. She is perfect for him."
"I cut her hair so that she would be less in his eyes."
He waited for the condemnation. The Aesir had laughed gleefully, watching with pleasured eyes as Thor had held him down for the dwarf's justice. Sif's gaze had been dark and filled with hatred. Her new hair covered by a veil, for even then, under the strict orders of his father, his jealousy did not relent.
The hair was as dark as his own. He would no longer be the only shadow among light.
Her hand felt like ice on the flesh of his cheek. He opened his eyes to meet her own. Her gaze held no pity, no scorn. There was...understanding? How? Why?
"I once almost destroyed the world because I didn't want to lose my dad. The Doctor took me back, to see him before he died. Told me not to interfere. Bad things happen. I knew that, but I didn't listen. I wanted my dad and I didn't care who suffered for it," she said, her voice soft, remembering.
"I'm no stranger to doing stupid things when you're afraid of losing someone."
Had he been afraid? Yes. He could admit that. Thor had been slipping away from him. His father did not see him. His mother had become cold and distant as time passed.
Asgard was his home but he was the outsider. The second son, not the heir. The one who used words in place of action. The sorcerer, the worker of women's skills. He did not care to seek out wars and glory. He did not care to hunt. Why use force when you could manipulate? Why beat an enemy to your side when you could use them for your advantage?
He chuckled, "Rose Tyler. You are truly a marvel. There shall never be another like you."
She smiled at him, "And don't you forget that."
This country had great big bloody wolfs! And not like the werewolf she had seen in the Victorian age, no this one was a regular old wolf. Standing almost as tall as her shoulders and pure white. She froze, standing still as she could when its red-eyed gaze fall on her.
It growled. Bloody hell she probably looked like dinner.
She felt her heart hammering in her chest as she started to inch back towards the cave she'd left Loki sleeping in. She'd just stepped out to pee, really, was it too much to ask not to be faced with a potential mauling this early in the morning?
Just a little closer. A few more steps. If she could just wake him up without making a sound.
Something snapped under her foot. The sound echoed across the landscape like a bullet leaving a gun.
Shit.
She felt a scream tear out of her throat as the wolf started to charge towards her. This was it, she was going to die. "LOKI!"
She waited for something. Anything. Waited for his arms to wrap around her waist and pull her to safety inside the cave. Waited to feel sharp teeth sinking into her flesh. She closed her eyes. She couldn't watch.
The wolf growled. It sounded close but she couldn't feel his hot breath on her skin. She cautiously began to open her eyes. Loki was blocking the wolf from her view, half dressed and standing still and protective. She moved her head to peer around him.
The giant creature had stopped charging. He was studying Loki, as if he knew him. Loki wasn't food to him, he was something...familiar. Astonished, she watched as the giant beast began to thump his tail back and forth across the snow. Like a puppy.
Loki appeared as perplexed as she was.
"What the..." Rose began to say. He moved back his hand to grip her own, silently making sure she was ok.
The wolf grinned at him. Literally. Grinned. Its mouth opened in a mockery of a human smile, showing every single one of those large, sharp teeth and grinned.
That was not normal.
"It is a Jotunheim direwolf. It must have been bred here after the great war," Loki said, his voice coming out in a whisper.
"Well, it seems to like you," she weakly joked. Her legs felt like jelly. She needed to sit down. Preferably, somewhere with a nice, hot cup of tea.
"Unusual. Such creatures are vicious. They harm all in their paths, barring their bonded. They can share the thoughts of their bonded. So I have read," he told her.
"Well maybe he thinks you're his mommy," Rose said. The wolf wasn't as scary looking at Loki with those pleading puppy eyes. Actually, it was kind of adorable.
"His mother?" The wolf rubbed his head up against Loki's stomach, snuffling. He glared down at it.
"Well your hair is a bit girly," Rose told him. Seriously, hadn't he and his brother ever heard of a trim? Her panic had faded in the face of the wolf's calmness.
Her hand felt slimy and wet when the wolf reached out to lick it. She giggled. He sniffed at her, memorizing her scent.
Rose's eyes widened. Scent. But she had nothing on her of the Doctor's. Loki had reluctantly bent down to pet the top of the wolf's head, glaring at it for daring to bond to him.
"Loki! This is it! Do you have something of Thor's?"
Loki smirked, catching on quickly. Good thing she wasn't stuck out here with the Aesir Academy's class clown. He came back with a torn up piece of cloth from the pile of his armor inside the cave, a torn up bit of a shirt maybe? Whatever it was, thankfully it was his brother's.
The wolf happily shoved his nose inside the cloth, breathing deeply, instinctively knowing exactly what Loki wanted. He growled, his head jerking, indicating that they should follow.
"We may be several miles away Rose. It might take days to find them," Loki told her. She could take the walking, just as long as the wolf lead them back.
The walked all day, back exactly the way they had come. Or so it seemed to Rose. For all she knew they could be walking somewhere they hadn't been before. All this snow looked the same to her.
Finally, night started to fall and Loki called the wolf to a halt. They would start again in the morning. She felt dead on her feet.
The wolf went out to search for game. Loki started a fire, calling out to him to bring it back. Rose giggled.
"You should name him," she said, rubbing her icy hands in front of the fire. The conjured furs were wrapped tightly around her, keeping her as warm as they could as the snow melted and dried from the heat of the fire. She was so hungry she could eat a whole bloody horse if that was what he brought back.
"Name him?"
Rose nodded, "That's what you do right? With pets?"
Loki stared at her as if he'd suddenly realized that she was completely off her nut, "A direwolf? As a pet?"
"Why not," she shrugged, "I don't think he's going anywhere. I mean, he could have run off or killed us right? But he didn't. So...I figure, he's stuck to you for now. Might as well call him something instead of that great bloody beast."
That's what Loki had been referring to it as all day. He grumbled.
"I suppose. Fenrir. I am fond of that name. That shall be the beast's name until I can rid myself of his presence," Loki said. He whined so much. Always a right royal prat.
"Admit it, you're growing fond of him," she teased.
Loki laughed, "I admit to nothing. I am merely using him. The sooner we find Thor and The Doctor, the faster he shall be gone."
He looked at the ground, moving his leather boot around in the snow, drawing shapes. Rose wondered how long it would take for the wolf to bring back something to eat.
That sat in silence for what felt like hours but was probably mere minutes before Loki spoke again, voice soft.
"When I saw Fenrir running towards you, it was one of the most horrible moments of my life."
Rose felt her breath catch in her throat at the sound of his broken statement. She opened her mouth, lost on what to say. He looked vulnerable and young, younger then she had ever seen him. Not a slightly unapproachable Aesir with delusions of godhood but a child. For the first time since she'd met him, he looked all of those sixteen years he wasn't.
"The knowledge that within mere seconds you would be gone," he continued, refusing to look at her, "I did not think nor plan. I placed myself in front of you, prepared to meet my own end. You would have had time to run. I simply...reacted."
Rose felt humbled, awed. It suddenly hit her, how he'd been standing in front of her. A shield protecting her from her end.
How do you thank someone for that? Anything she could say would be inadequate.
"Isn't that what you boys do? Throw yourself into the fray, chasing glory and protecting maidens?"
That was what Loki had described to her about Aesir culture the night before. He'd told her many things, memories about his childhood with his brother, pranks he'd pulled on the citizens of Asgard, his feelings about being an outsider in a city that did not understand him.
He did not tell her everything. Rose was under no delusions that he would ever tell the full truth to anyone, let alone her. Yet here he was confessing something so deeply personal. Something so strange and alien to him.
The truth was not his friend. Lies were his safety net and he was casting it off little by little around her.
He looked up from the ground, his eyes blurred with unshed tears, wrecked and emotional. They reminded her of the Doctor's, the day he'd told her that he was the last of his kind, something so intimate that she felt like an intruder.
"Yes. So the ideal Aesir shall. I have never been that Rose. There is only one other I have ever performed such a senseless, instinctual act for. My brother."
