Disclaimer: I own no part of the Marvel movie universe.


Chapter 8

Everything fell apart at the evening meal on the fifth day.

Frigga walked past the table Loki, Sif, and the Warriors Three were joking around at on her way out of the hall. "Your father and I are quite pleased with what you've done these past few days," she told Loki quietly. "You can stay until they start clearing everything from the tables, and whichever of your friends feels like escorting you home tonight may so that no one thinks you are wandering alone without permission when you come home for the night."

"My thanks to you and the Allfather," Loki responded in surprise. It wasn't an actual loosening of the restriction, but he'd felt that he needed to get back to his rooms as soon as he finished eating the past few nights just the same. Hanging around until the meal was over for the last stragglers had felt like a violation.


They had a grand time laughing and joking, with no lingering worry that Loki might outstay his father's limits on his behavior.

The raven Huginn even flew over for a visit, preening at Loki's hair and pecking at Volstagg until he admitted that yes, one of Odin's familiars did have the right to ask for that bit of ham and a bit of roll.

There was no risk to it. Nothing they were discussing was anything that Odin couldn't have already learned from Heimdall, and most of the talk was of long-ago events with Thor that they had already gotten disapproving looks for ages ago.

Their elders slowly filed out of the hall in groups as the evening drew on, until all that were left was the table on the far end of the room where Sif's father and his questing companions of old were laughing about their own long-ago exploits.

And then they must have either thought they were alone or been too deep in their mead to care, because Sif's father proclaimed, "Ah, things were good before the war ended. And now the rightful prince is banished while the ice runt remains. And has made play at being a king."

"It's a disgrace!" someone else declared.

Loki was dropping beneath the table even as he saw Sif's eyes widen. He grabbed her ankles in the manner of a man begging mercy from a warrior with the right by law to kill him.

A few seconds later, he felt someone slip beside him and place a firm hand over his mouth.

"I saw," Hogun breathed in his ear. "Stay quiet."

Loki nodded. Hogun lifted his hand.

Loki's mind swung back into a functional state. Of course. I can't hide alone, not and have it be believed. Now they can claim Hogun is walking me to my rooms.

Sif slipped a hand under the table and patted Loki's head, then wiggled her feet.

Loki let go, relaxing just a bit.

There was a sound of feet going off and out of the hall, boots ringing on stone accompanied by the clanking of armor.

Loki's blood chilled. He knew where they were going.

And if he had left the meal at the same time he had since his punishment had began, he might well now have been unknowingly moments from death.

"Loki?" Sif asked, as breathless as if she had run for an hour.

Hogun pressed a knife handle into Loki's hand, his fingers forced into closing over it. And then Loki processed what the warrior had done and said since their return from Jotunheim: he had known for as long as Loki had, and he had spoken of and to Loki as if nothing at all had changed. His suspicions had been based in and voiced from knowledge of Loki's skills with no mention of his blood.

And giving him a usable blade at this close a range, when they each knew very well what the other was capable of in battle, was a sign of trust nothing else in the world could ever match.

"One of the frost giants grabbed him during the battle," Hogun told them.
"His gauntlet fell apart, but he himself stood unharmed. He did not know. The giant did not know. It seems to me that the Casket was not the only thing the Allfather took away from Jotunheim."

"Friend?" Fandral asked.

It took a long moment for Loki to realize it was he who was being addressed.

"I did not know I was adopted until that day. I swear it. I was an abandoned newborn who had never had a meal. The father who sired me will kill me if ever I try to claim him. In all but blood, I am Odinson."

A heavy hand clapped him on the back, and if long training hadn't had him already holding the knife low to the ground the force could have easily stabbed Sif in the leg. "Well of course you are!" Volstagg assured him through half a leg of lamb. "Never doubted that about you, even when we thought... well..."

"That I was a threat to this realm?"

"You gave him back his throne without prompting, Loki," Sif reminded him, still trying to calm her breathing. "If anyone ever had any doubts about where your loyalties lie, that should have laid them to rest."

Loki looked down at the floor. "Volstagg, Fandral... you don't sound surprised."

"They aren't," Hogun told him.

Loki felt like running.

"He told us after you announced your intention to fix your reputation. You and Sif were spending so little time with us that my dear swordbrother here decided we could be told and react without you being any the wiser. And since you knew as well..."

"It would have been different if you didn't know," Volstagg assured him. He gestured with the now-stripped leg bone. "And of course we would have found a way to let you know if you hadn't."

"And why wasn't I informed," Sif demanded.

"My father's order," Loki guessed.

She shook her head. "Why wouldn't he want me to know when it now seems half of Asgard does?"

"No," Hogun corrected. "You are Loki's freedom of movement, on threat of punishment by the Allfather. If you had rejected Loki, it would have harmed both of you."

"We need to be moving," Fandral hissed. "They won't find Loki where they think he is, and when they don't..."

"We don't know where they would go next, or which corridors they are marching through," Loki told him. "We do know there are guards there and here..."

"And how many of the guards may know?" Volstagg asked him.

He had a point. A horrifically scary and flat-out terrifying point.

Any guard of Asgard could turn on Loki in an instant when told of his biological heritage.

Even including the chief cook and his parents, Loki had less than a dozen sure allies in all of Asgard.

And for the first time in all his years, he knew it.

Hogun had strong arms around him a moment later. "Wouldn't have thought you'd get cold here, of all people," he joked gruffly, covering for Loki's sudden onset of the shakes.

Sif put a hand on his shoulder. "If Huginn were still here, we could send him to get help."

Volstagg smiled. "There's a better way."

Sif's eyebrow arched.

"Simple, dear Lady," Fandral told her. "Heimdall, we have need of the Allfather's aid. There, that should do it. If he could hear us planning to go to Jotunheim, he can certainly hear that an Odinson needs the Allfather's attention."

A raven's cackle, and Muninn flew in.

"And what a fast response!"

"It means they already knew," Sif corrected him with an eyeroll.

The raven dove under the table and pecked at Loki's hair from a perch on Hogun's shoulder.

"Thanks for coming, feathered-lady," Loki told her as he ruffled her chest feathers with a finger.

She nipped the finger affectionately, then held out a foot.

There was a little multicolored string tied to it.

Loki's heart sank.

"What does that mean, I wonder?" Volstagg thought out loud.

Loki closed his eyes. Much as he had wanted to leave to help Thor, much as he actually enjoyed trips to other realms, he didn't want it to happen this way, for these reasons. "It means we need to get to the Bifrost.