Title: Laughing As I Pray
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Reconciliation is a slow road, with some surprises along the way.
Author's Notes: In this chapter I talk a lot about hypothetical metahuman genetics, in the process terribly mangling both real biology and the Marvel canon (probably) to produce something that makes some kind of internal sense.
The machine that Hank uses in this chapter is not real either in the real world or (as far as I know) in the comics, but it seemed to me to be the kind of machine they would have both the ability and the motivation to build. I figure if they can build Cerebro, and if they can build hand-held Mutant Detectors that can apparently sample your genes from halfway across the room (in the '70s!) then they can build a machine that shoots rays at you and then displays a coherent chart of your genome. And, given how many of the X-Men are geneticists and their very vested interest in tracking the progression of the X-Gene, it would be a machine they'd get a lot of use of.
He spent most of each day with Loki. By unspoken agreement, Loki chose each venue; most days he guided them to a place that was scenic but remote, or otherwise sparsely populated. Thor was unsure whether this was for Loki's sake, to limit the possibility of anyone recognizing him, or for the sake of any potential bystanders should they quarrel once more.
It was not exactly what Thor had expected, when Loki had agreed to teach him the workings of the mortal world. But then, perhaps that was to some extent the point: that Loki was no longer catering to Thor's expectations.
They also spent time in Jane and Darcy's house, once Thor had secured her permission to invite his brother in. Loki was on his best manners, distant and excruciatingly polite, a sentiment the mortal women warily returned. At least, Jane was warily polite until Loki managed to engage her in a discussion of Jane's micro-portal-generating device (which Loki had witnessed in use the year before, when Thor had called desperately to Midgard for aid against Malekith.)
The discussion soon became technical enough in nature that the words slid like glue past Thor's ears, but he gathered that Loki was interested and impressed by the innovation that allowed Jane to use it as a communications device; that this technology had never been used in that manner before. Jane was quite excited and heartened by the confirmation that she was doing something entirely new, even without Loki's suggestions for improving the range and quality of the signal.
Darcy, in turn, alternated between freezing Loki with wary disapproval and enthusing wildly over his 'honest-to-god real-life alien wizard' powers. Loki's initial attempts at charming her were rebuffed, but at some point between one day and the next Darcy appeared to have made up her mind about something, because she reacted warmly to Loki from then on. Thor was at a loss as to what could explain the change, but he decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth, as long as his friends and his brother were getting along.
With their permission, Thor managed to convince Loki to re-watch The Lion King with him, hoping that Loki would draw the same connection Thor had between the hyenas and Jotunheim. Instead, Loki went off on a half-hour long monologue throughout the movie about how Scar had actually been a better king than Mufasa, which resulted in Darcy swatting him and telling him not to get his information from, apparently, a crack in the internet.
Once the movie was done, Loki immediately responded by showing Thor tales of a Midgardian folk hero named Bugs Bunny, who was apparently greatly acclaimed for his clever wit. The storytelling conventions and much of the humor was strange to Thor, but he was able to grasp their meaning, and more readily to grasp Loki's purpose in showing them to him: the mortals had much more appreciation than the Aesir for tricks and cleverness over brute strength and violence. It seemed as though Loki's commitments to tricks over battle was more at home here than it ever was on Asgard. Thor did his best to commit the lesson to heart.
Darcy attempted to round out the entertainment by encouraging them to view a film called 'War of the Stars' ("Come on, it's a cultural touchstone here on Earth! You can't NOT watch it!") but although they dutifully watched to the end, neither of the brothers were particularly impressed. Loki declared their attempts at mimicking realism shallow and childish, and though Thor thought it polite to say so out loud, it was true that Midgardian 'effects' were rather dull compared to Asgard's theater, ruining any chance at immersion. He and Loki both agreed that the stylized art of the cartoons were much more engaging.
This was not to say, of course, that things were all wine and song between the brothers. They quarreled often, three times escalating near to blows, at which point Loki abruptly teleported himself away and was not heard from for the rest of the day. Inevitably he would turn up again the next day, acting like nothing had happened, but refusing any attempts to re-engage the topic.
Two of the quarrels had been about Odin, until Thor learned not to bring up the topic of their father to Loki or even to refer to him as 'their' father at all. The third had been about Sif and the Warriors Three; Loki still bore a grudge against them from their actions in the short period when he had been on the throne. He considered it a great injustice, and proof of their malice against him, that the Warriors had suspected him of treason, of being the one to allow the Frost Giants into the palace.
Thor had pointed out, quite logically he thought, that in this the Warriors had been correct: Loki was the one to allow the Frost Giants into the palace. Incensed, Loki replied that the Warriors had no way of knowing that. Thor asked why that mattered, when they had been right after all; Loki responded with some very ugly names for Thor's friends, which provoked Thor into a rage in turn. He was about to call Mjolnir to his hand when Loki abruptly translocated away.
It deeply annoyed Thor when Loki did this, vanishing and refusing to respond to any of Thor's attempts to call him back, but he had to admit it was probably preferable to their falling to blows again.
Not that all of their conversations were pleasant, even on the occasions they did not quarrel. One of the locations Loki brought Thor to was a winter lodge far up in the mountains of Pennsylvania. In this warm summer season it was all but deserted, yet Loki seemed to have a strong fondness for the place all the same. There Loki introduced Thor to a warm, pleasant beverage called gluhwein, and they shared a bottle of it while they watched the sunset from the roof of the lodge. Only once darkness fell, pierced only by the faint, wan illumination of Midgard's stars - there was no moon - did Loki begin to speak of their mother.
Thor thought that Loki must have charmed the bottle to be bottomless, for surely neither of them could have been affected by a mere half-bottle of any Midgardian alcohol; yet he lost track of both time and mead as the two of them shared their memories, and their grief, and their tears.
By the second week of their sojourn, when Thor had displayed no inclination either to go back to Asgard nor to push any agenda of his on their time together, Loki's attitude softened somewhat. He began to introduce Thor to his friends from the school, although Thor was still not permitted to return to the school itself; instead he invited Thor to meet at a local coffee-house in the small, sleepy village about half an hour up the road from the school. The mortal populace was either too preoccupied to notice the strange doings in their neighborhood, or simply too used to strange sights to care, as Thor's bearing and clothing garnered no comment from them.
Thor was eager to meet his brother's new shield - new companions, for many reasons. He was afire with curiosity to meet Midgard's newest and strangest warriors, interested to learn about the new people in his brother's life, and anxious to give of himself a better showing than he had in his first introduction to the mutants.
Despite all that he could not help but be taken aback, when he walked through the door at the time and place that Loki had appointed and saw Loki, in his Jotun skin, sitting at a table with two other figures cloaked in dark blue fur.
Only Thor's previous brief encounters with his brother's true form, together with the lessons his mortal friends had worked to impress on him in the past few weeks, enabled Thor to keep his reaction under control, and he greeted them with a friendly (though slightly strained) courtesy. Both of them blue men - one introducing himself as Hank and the other, a mere stripling, as Kurt - took his reaction in stride and were quite pleasant in return, but the glint in Loki's eye as he observed them told Thor that the setup had not at all been accidental.
Despite Loki's opinion of Thor's diplomatic skills, he had been trained by their father in diplomacy; he managed to stay on his best behavior until the strangeness of the situation began to wear off, and his natural interest in people began to reassert itself. Despite the fur and fangs, Hank turned out to be well-read and well-spoken, urbane and pleasant in manner. And Kurt, despite his almost demonic demeanor, was no more than a lad. Openhearted and garrulous, Thor thought he made a fine companion for Loki, with a sense of humor so similar to what Thor remembered of Loki's in their childhood that it made his chest twinge in nostalgic memory. It had been many long years indeed since Loki's mischief had been so innocent.
That was the first time he met with Loki's colleagues, but it was not the last. Loki arranged meetings at parks or taverns in nearby towns, out-of-the-way places that afforded some privacy. Thor met with the Lady Jean Grey and with Piotr Rasputin, a bluff young man whom Thor would have thought a good candidate to start training in Asgard. Kurt did not always come along, but Hank usually did, and after several evening spent in such pleasant company, he finally became comfortable enough to ask Thor for a favor.
"I do hope I'm not causing offense - furthest thing from my mind, really," Hank told him. "But honestly, I'm just beside myself with excitement at you being here - a real live alien! From another planet! And yet you're so like us. It would mean so much to me - as a scientist, I mean - if I could get the chance to study your DNA. It could revolutionize our understanding of how biology works!"
Thor was a bit bemused by the request, and by the almost childish excitement Hank displayed when expounding about his subject. It reminded him a little bit of Jane, and how she had waxed enthusiastic whenever she got a chance to talk about her beloved stars. Knowing how much she cared, it was hard not to sympathize with Hank's desire for knowledge in turn.
"I know little of your science," Thor warned him. "I do not know how much I can contribute. What would you need of me?"
"Nothing except your presence and your consent," Hank hurried to assure him. "Well - and maybe a very teeny blood and tissue sample. Nothing dire or intrusive in any way, I promise."
"Then I do not see why not," Thor said. It seemed a small enough favor, and a way to please Loki's friends - and Hank's unabashed joy at his assent made it seem like he had given much more.
But Loki himself, when Thor glanced over at him, did not seem pleased. In fact, he was glaring - not obviously to anyone who didn't know him, perhaps, but Thor had enough experience at feasts and other official occasions to readily decode the as-soon-as-we're-out-of-here-you'll-pay-for-this expression.
It left Thor honestly a little baffled. Why should Loki mind? Before he could make any headway unraveling Loki's reaction, Hank interrupted his thoughts. "Splendid! Just splendid!" he exclaimed happily. "Why, I've been trying to get Loki to agree to this for months, without any luck. And you said yes right away!"
Oh.
Then Loki spoke. "Well, as long as Thor agrees, then I suppose I also can contribute," he said smoothly. Somehow making it sound as though all his previous refusals had been Thor's fault, even before Thor had set foot on the planet. "Your study would be meaningless with only one sample, wouldn't it?"
If anything, Hank's joy redoubled, and he thanked them both profusely before dashing off to make preparations, inviting them both to his lab the next day to take his scans.
Loki was distracted and irritable for the rest of the evening, and Thor suspected he might be regretting his decision to go along with Hank's request. His mood had not improved considerably by the next day, even as he led Thor along to the agreed-upon rendezvous point.
"You should not be in such a hurry to give away pieces of yourself, Brother," Loki scolded him as they walked along a narrow, overgrown road. "Such careless generosity may one day be your downfall."
"It was but a small thing I offered," Thor said.
Loki snorted. "Small in size, but not in import," he said. "You know little of magic, so you know little of how the secrets of your blood could be studied and warped by one of ill intent to divine your weaknesses, or adapt a poison strong enough to overcome even the mighty Thor."
Thor considered the matter, then shrugged. It was not that he disbelieved his brother's warning - he had no doubt that if anyone knew of such malefic magics, it would be Loki. But he had been on many battlefields in his lifetime, and not all the blood shed there had been that of his enemies. If anyone really wanted to get their hands on his blood, it would not be too hard to find a way. "I am not worried," he said.
"You should be!" Loki snapped. "It is not only your own flesh and blood that you risk; it is all of Asgard's, when you give the keys of your gates to potential enemies!"
Thor's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Surely we have nothing to fear from Midgard," he protested.
"From the mortals? Perhaps not," Loki said with a shrug. "But the mutants are in quite a different class. Haven't you learned by now not to underestimate them?"
"But the mutants are your allies," Thor protested. "And thus mine, and thus Asgard's."
Loki paused with one hand upon the lever of a gate, choked with ivy and the latch near rusted shut. The look he shot Thor was indecipherable. "The two are not always the same," was what he finally said. "There must be a layer of separation between what Thor likes, and what the King decides."
This seemed not quite right to Thor, especially after the lengths Fury had gone to impress on Thor's mind that his actions were the actions of a King, regardless of his personal feelings - and even more so given how potently Loki had argued in favor of Asgard and the mutants of Midgard forging an understanding. Thor got the impression that Loki was knowingly arguing in circles - either for the sake of contrariness, or to avoid some other underlying grievance.
"Besides," Loki went on with a hint of spite in his voice, "Just because we are at peace with each other now, does not mean that we always will be in the future. Don't assume that the mutants would come to your call in that case, King of Asgard or not!"
Thor sighed. "It may be that in some future time we will be foes," he said. "But for now, we are friends, and allies share with each other knowledge and resources." After a moment he added, "To do otherwise would ensure that we would not have allies for long."
Loki scowled at him, but ceased to argue. For the time being, at least. He pushed open the gate with a groaning creak, and bowed Thor inside with a heavy irony.
"We shouldn't run across many people if we take this back route," Loki said as Thor fell into step beside him again, "but do try to keep your voice down all the same, and avoid notice. If you can."
Thor looked around, startled, and some of the details began to fall into place. "What - this is the school of mutants?" he said with astonishment.
"Of course," Loki said. "Where else would Hank's laboratory be? He lives and works at the school, you know."
"But - I thought I was forbidden to come onto the school grounds," Thor said. "Has that changed?"
"Of course not," Loki said scornfully, although he did not cease to walk along the leaf-shadowed walkway. Thor, perforce, followed.
"But if I am not allowed to be here, then is your bringing me to this place not violating the rules?" Thor asked.
Loki only looked back at him and raised one eyebrow in clear, amused challenge. "And?"
Thor's mouth shut with a snap. It should not have surprised him that even now, Loki flouted the rules and regulations as pleased him - even among these, his allies and friends. But Loki knew them far better than Thor, and was in a better position to say whether this truly constituted a breach of trust. He sighed, and followed along behind Loki. "Very well, but if we are caught, I hope you will do the explaining as to why I am where I should not be," he said.
Loki laughed. "As you wish, brother," he said, "although you may come to regret that hope. But come. We have arrived."
Dr. McCoy's laboratory turned out to be a shabby, somewhat dim space taking up an entire floor of the building, with few windows and many machines and cabinets cluttering the walls. The ceiling was low, the walls paneled with a dark soft wood that had darkened further with age, and boxes upon boxes of paper folders gave way to humming banks of computers stacked in sturdy bronze racks.
It was certainly nothing like Tony Stark's gleaming, steel and chrome workshops of Avengers tower, but it had an oddly homey feel - especially when Hank himself appeared, all energy and pleasant bustle. He offered them tea and cookies, but it was clear that despite his attempts at hospitality his mind was already busily at work. A dark-skinned woman with a formal-looking decoration upon her forehead introduced herself as Dr. Rao, but quietly went about her business without any further attempts at conversation; Loki did not interrupt her work, and so Thor did not either.
Soon Hank's impatience outweighed his good manners, and he rushed the Asgardians through the last of their snack so that he could herd them over to a wide-open, marked-off area in front of a bulky metal construct. Most of the machine's construction was a mystery to Thor, but he eyed the centerpiece, a sort of inverted cone or dish formed of layer upon layer of concentric metal rings, with some trepidation.
"This is our genoscope," Hank announced with all the pride of a new father, as he positioned Thor in front of the metal dish. "It's the only one of its kind, custom-built for our use here at the school. Professor X helped greatly with the design, and Doctor Rao was invaluable with writing the computer program to process the results. No other laboratory in the world can scan an individual's DNA as quickly, precisely and meaningfully as our genoscope."
"A mighty boast," Loki said with a drawl, "and one which I've heard from you before; but perhaps you could explain to your new subject exactly what you plan to do to him with it?"
"Oh, yes! Of course, sorry," Hank said, hurrying over to one side of the device to fiddle with its settings. The machine buzzed and hummed, and Thor eyed it warily, but nothing else came out of the metal rings and so he relaxed. "Loki knows all about it, of course, but I'll try my best to explain. I apologize if I sound condescending - I'm told that happens a lot - but I really don't know how far back I need to go in order to make this make sense. You see, in terrestrial biology, every living creature controls the structure of its body and its growth according to a set of chemical patterns formed out of deoxyribonucleic acid…"
His explanation went on for quite a while from there, while he performed various adjustments and drank in readings from his device, and Thor listened with great interest. Midgardian soul-science was not so different from Asgard's as he had thought, although they had an almost obsessive focus on the chemical minutiae, and seemed to have no knowledge of spirit transference mechanisms at all. Still, he gathered the purpose of Dr. McCoy's study, and of the device of which he was so proud - a way to scan and read the secrets of the genetic code, even more quickly and elegantly than a soul-forge could. Truly, it was an impressive accomplishment, and he said as much. Hank seemed to almost puff up with pride, the blue fur ruff around his neck and face nearly standing on end.
"We scan all of the new students," Hank explained, "in order to track the progression of the X-gene, don't you know. But this is the first time we've ever had an actual extraterrestrial in our lab. Truth be told, I wasn't sure that our machine would register you boys at all - but the Professor said to go ahead and try it."
Boys? Thor wondered bemusedly, but there was no time to question it. Hank was turning on a large, flat display panel on the opposite wall, and colored lines and charts began to fill the space.
"To give you a bit of context, this is what you would see in the DNA of an ordinary human being," he explained, as an elongated construct of grey lines marched across the screen. There were two layers to it; the top was a lumpy landscape of gray tones, while along the bottom was an uneven line of yellow, with occasional spikes marked in gold.
"The gold bits," Hank indicated them, "represents active genes, DNA that actually does something in the human body. The rest of it, all that gray space, is non-coding DNA - protein sequences that are present in the chromosomes but don't actually do anything. Most laymen have a very wrong-headed idea of what exactly DNA is, you see. They think of it like a book of neatly written instructions, or a set of neat building blocks that click together perfectly. But in fact it's more like a collection of random sheets of paper, glued hastily together and scribbled on, then put through the washer and mauled by a dog. Huge sections of human DNA are garbled beyond hope of any function, or just nonsense proteins that don't do anything at all.
"What we have here is the gene scan of a typical Homo sapiens, a mundane human being with no metahuman gene expression at all. An, er," and for some reason Hank winced as he said this, "a flatscan, if you will. And just about any human being on earth will have a scan that looks essentially the same as this. Even among the most wide-flung members of the human race, the amount of DNA overlap is between ninety-eight to ninety-nine percent."
"So close?" Thor said, a little surprised.
Dr. Rao nodded in support of this. "The human race has gone through some very troubled times in its development," she explained. "At times, the entire population has been whittled down to a mere handful of tribes, perhaps two to three hundred individuals at the most. With that kind of bottleneck, it is no wonder there is so little variety."
"Ah, but then there are mutants," Hank said happily, and he pointed the remote at the screen. The display changed; the grey space shifted a bit, but not much, but the gold lines leapt up at several points to encompass more of it. "This is a genescan of a mutant - Homo superior. The media likes to talk about 'the X-gene,' but to be more accurate it's actually any number of genes, at a number of different places in the genome. The different placements," and Hank cycled through a few different scans; the shifting, leaping golden lines reminded Thor somewhat of flickering flames of a campfire, dancing and leaping up towards the dark sky. "Seem to make as much a difference as to how the gene will express itself as the different sequences themselves. Keeping track of all the different Homo sup. specimens that come through our school, and trying to sort out what genes make a difference and where, is a full time job for Dr. Rao and myself.
"And now we come to you." Hank made himself busy pushing more of the buttons on the remote, his claw-tipped nails careful and precise upon the plastic remote. "It took some wrestling with the program's parameters to get it to accept your input as valid, but once we did, we got some truly astonishing results. This, my friend, is Earth's very first gene-scan of an extraterrestrial sapient!"
The shape of the gray space changed, smoothed out to become a seamless, gentle wave that more evenly covered the entire screen. The staticky, uneven gold bars of the active genes also smoothed out, covering a much more steady, even portion of the gray base. Thor studied it with interest; although he did not have much practice in deciphering the results, it was fascinating to see so fundamental a part of himself taken out of him like this, and displayed up for all the world to see.
"Anyway, we still don't know what your genes do - that would take an army of geneticists another fifty years to study - but here it is," Hank said proudly. "And we can learn a lot of really fascinating things just comparing the differences between our species and yours. For instance, this is a bit of a flattened view; it appears as though your people have four helices, arranged around a central axis, rather than two, as is found in humans."
"Yggdrasil's Trunk," Loki commented, and Thor nodded in agreement. He had only ever heard it described theoretically in his lessons, the sacred spiral that protected life and recorded its secrets; he'd never seen it laid out in a graphical form like this.
Hank kept talking. "Another thing that's really interesting is when we compare your gene scan to Loki's in his Aesir form," he said. Beside him, Thor sensed Loki stiffening up, but he managed to keep his expression blank, calm and attentive. The image on the screen shifted slightly, but not much; if Thor had looked away for a moment instead of watching it happen, he would not have known the difference between the first scan and the second.
"They are almost as one," Thor said, surprised. He immediately kicked himself for that, thinking it may have been insensitive to remind Loki that he was not, technically, Loki's brother by blood; but when he snuck a look at his brother out of the corner of his eye, Loki wasn't looking at him.
"That's not terribly surprising for individuals among the same species," Hank replied. "If you got down to the micro level you'd find plenty of variation, but the similarities tend to outweigh the differences. Now, where things get really wild -" he pressed his remote again, and the picture shifted one more time - "is when we compare either of those scans to this. "
The overall gray shape on the screen remained the same, but the golden band that represented 'active' genes had dramatically shifted position, shying away from the edge of the screen to cover a completely different position. "What is that?" Thor said, although he had a suspicion he already knew.
"That is a picture of Loki's gene scan in his Frost Giant form," Hank said proudly. "When he shapeshifts it's not just a cosmetic change - he changes his very DNA! You can sometimes see this on a lesser scale in embryonic development, but it shouldn't even be remotely possible for a full-grown organism to completely rewrite his own genetic code, let alone have it affect his form teratogenically - "
"Magic," Dr. Rao interrupted him, with a teasing sing-song tone.
"We're not using the word 'magic,' " Hank shot back, though with enough humor that this was obviously a well-practiced banter between them. He fiddled with his remote some more, and brought up the two images - both of Loki, Thor thought, but so different - side-by-side for comparison's sake. "But here's what I'm getting at - see what happens when you put these two side by side? Incredible!"
He paused for a moment in expectation, looking at the brothers. Thor wondered if the pictures were supposed to do something, but they remained just static images. Hank looked disappointed by their lack of reaction. "You don't see it?" he said incredulously.
"They are completely different," Thor said, bewildered. "There is no overlap at all."
"Of course not," Loki snapped. "Why would there be?"
Hank sighed. "No overlap of the active genes, no," he said patiently, "but both scans are showing the same inactive genome! The genes which exist in an active form in the Aesir still exist in the Frost Giants as inactive, and vice versa. You have the same genes in your body, Thor, that the Frost Giants do. This is incredible! You guys aren't even from the same planet! There's absolutely no reason why your bodies should even be formed of the same chemicals, let alone have the same quadruple-helix structure in your DNA, let alone share the same complement of genes!"
Thor felt his mouth drop open, stunned. Judging by his reaction, this was news Loki was hearing for the first time as well; his face, already pale, went milk-white. "Are you trying to say that - that the Aesir and the Jotunn are the same species?" Thor managed to choke out at last, voice strangled.
"What? Oh, no, no," Hank waved this away hastily. "You're far too different taxonomically for that. Just having the same genome doesn't make you the same species. Cousin species, at best. All Earth species share a certain common denominator of genes, everything from the vertebrate mammals down to plants and fungi. But it does imply a common ancestor, or at the very least a common planet of origin! Thor, how far back does Asgard's history go?"
The question caught Thor off-guard, and he sputtered for a few moments as he tried to get his thoughts following the new track. "The… the history of the Aesir is the history of Asgard," he said. "There are no records that go back beyond the founding of the city." He paused for a moment, searching through memories of his schooling, and then added "However, there are old songs... legends... myths. They say that Brimir, father of Blainn, came 'from over the sea' in a boat with one hundred sons and one hundred daughters. But the sea on Asgard bounds the end of the world. There is nothing outside it."
Hank nodded. "So that seems to imply that the Aesir originally came to Asgard from elsewhere, rather than evolving there," he said. "Okay. What about the Frost Giants?"
Thor shook his head. "I do not know," he said. "The Frost Giants have always been on Jotunheim; they were part of the land, like the rocks and the ice. They have no records, they keep no histories."
"They do, although they are not taught in Asgard," Loki interrupted unexpectedly, and Thor looked at him in surprise. "However, they are all oral tradition and thus cannot be considered reliable."
Hank frowned in disappointment.
"And yet... in some of the oldest annals of Asgard's histories, they speak of a great war between the Frost Giants and the 'hill peoples who lived in that place,' " Loki went on, speaking carefully. "The hill people were wiped out, and nothing is known about them except that they were not Frost Giants themselves; the Jotnar took their world away from them and made it their own."
"So that's two great migrations," Hank nearly rubbed his furry hands together with glee. "And there's no record of either the Aesir or the Frost Giants before they arrived on those worlds?"
Loki and Thor both shook their head.
"All right. If the two migrations occurred at about the same time - and the fact that this war against the natives took place after Asgard was founded, but early on in its history, is some evidence that they did - plus the genetic evidence, points towards a diaspora," Hank concluded with satisfaction. "Whatever the starting point was, the Frost Giants and Aesir parted ways and left for their own worlds, which turned out to be drastically different from each other in climate. Each race adapted to its new surroundings - although I'm honestly not sure how, since it's almost impossible to think that random evolutionary selection could produce such a fast, thorough, and efficient transformation while still retaining such coherence in the genome -"
"Maaaagic," Rao interrupted him in a sing-song tone.
"We're not saaaaying thaaaat," Hank replied in an equal sing-song. "And here you both are."
"So..." Thor tried out the idea. "You're saying that the Jotnar are... kin... to us? To the Aesir?"
"In an extremely broad biological sense of the word, yes," Hank said with a nod.
"That is impossible," Loki said, his voice sharpened by strain. "There is no - no likeness between the two. The Aesir are an advanced species, superior in form and culture. The Jotnar are - savage. Degraded. I can see no kinship between them."
"Savage? Degraded?" Hank's eyebrows went up as he repeated the words. "I don't know, it sounds to me like they're pretty perfectly adapted for the environment they live in. They went from being newcomers in the biome to the top predator on the planet. In evolutionary terms, that's pretty much the textbook definition of a successful species. Maybe they don't wear togas or build crystal spires - but then again, maybe they don't feel the need to."
For a moment silence reigned in the shabby laboratory; then with a scrape of the chair over the concrete floor, Loki abruptly stood. Without saying a word to either Thor or the mutants, he walked out.
"Loki?" Doctor Rao called after him, consternation in her voice, but Loki ignored her. They heard booted footsteps echoing in the stairwell, and then the slam of a door.
"Oh, dear," Hank said, staring after him. "I hope I didn't offend him. I didn't intend…"
"It is no fault of yours, Hank McCoy," Thor hastened to tell him. "My brother's… emotions run very high on the topic of Frost Giants. When he learned of his true heritage - it drove him to such lengths -"
"The attack on Jotunheim," Hank interrupted him. "Yes, we've talked about it. It's quite… quite hard to reconcile with the Loki I know, for him to go to such appalling lengths."
Thor looked down. "To many of my kinsmen, it did not seem that appalling," he admitted. "The Aesir do not hold the Frost Giants in high regard. We were always taught that they were lesser."
Hank turned to face him, adjusting his spectacles; his expression was very hard to read beneath the dark fur. "We?" he asked.
Thor flushed. "We - we had the same upbringing," he mumbled. "But I do not think that way any more! When Loki turned the Bifrost upon Jotunheim, it was I who stopped him, even at the cost of shattering the bridge itself."
Hank nodded in acceptance. "That is good to hear," he said. "That the crown prince should look so favorably on your neighbors. So you have restored peace with Jotunheim, then?"
"Well…" Thor cleared his throat. "There was never really peace, only the cessation of war. There was never a treaty - only a cease-fire, and that has… not been re-negotiated."
"No peace treaty?" Hank looked surprised. "Whyever not? It seems like you could dictate your terms."
Thor shrugged. "There did not seem to be a need to secure a treaty, when they had no power to press their offensive," he said. "Our people and theirs have always been at war. We always will be. It is our way."
"Really?" There was a sarcastic, almost savage bite to Hank's words. "You will always be at war, forever, until one of you succeeds in destroying the other? If you refuse to build a peace between your peoples, you might as well have let Loki finish what he began!"
The kindly professor's words shocked Thor. "It is not like that," he objected. "Even if we wished to negotiate such a peace… there has been too much blood between us. How can we risk giving them any ground, when they would only use it to strike back against us?"
"Ah yes, I'm familiar with that argument," Hank said with a snort. " 'We can't stop oppressing them because if we do, they might do to us the same things we did to them!' It's a remarkably extensible condition, really."
"I know it sounds cold to you," Thor said, beginning to feel pressed by Hank's relentless criticism. "But it would be naïve to think that the Frost Giants would not seek revenge. They are a prideful, violent people - they would rather fight to the last than ever truly admit defeat."
"But you said yourself a moment ago that you know almost nothing about Frost Giants," Hank said. "How can you go so quickly from knowing nothing about them to knowing everything about every one of them?"
Thor's temper flared. "And how quickly you go from knowing nothing about the Realms, to making yourself an expert in their politics?" he snapped. "Do not presume to lecture me on matters of which you know nothing!"
For a moment the silence stewed and simmered between them, and then Hank broke it with a heavy sigh. He took off his glasses to clean them, avoiding looking Thor in the eyes. "Look, Thor," he said quietly. "You're right that I've spent my whole life on Earth; I know nothing about Asgard, or Jotunheim, or the politics or the people of either of those places. You do. It may be that you're right, that the Frost Giants really are too devoted to war and violence to ever reach a real accord with. It may be that they're just fundamentally too dangerous to everyone else in the galaxy that they can't be let to their own devices. It may be that Asgard has no choice but to continue this policy of… of suppression. The only one who can decide that is you.
"But, you've got to find out for yourself. Before you decide your course of action you've got to interact with the Frost Giants, on their terms, to find out what kind of people they are and what kind of society they have. This is a decision that you can't base on hearsay, or 'everybody knows,' or distorted versions of passed-down history, or the comforting lies that your people tell themselves to make yourself feel better about your place in the universe."
Thor hung his head, feeling shame creep in around the edges of his anger. "Your words have wisdom," he said reluctantly. "But I am only the Prince, only a regent. I cannot discard the wisdom of my ancestors so easily."
"Why not?" Hank shrugged. Thor looked up at him, startled. "They were only men, as you are. You can't rely on the heroes past for guidance when those heroes aren't where you are, they don't know what you know. They did the best they could with the world they knew, and they did their part to shape it. But it's your world now."
For a long moment Thor considered these words, and then slowly nodded. "I… thank you for your advice, Hank McCoy," he said.
"I just hope I could be helpful," Hank said, and gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder. "But really now, don't you think you should talk to your brother? It's not good for him to brood by himself, you know. He gets these… moods. Better to head it off before it really gets started."
That, Thor thought, was probably the wisest thing Hank had said yet.
Thor didn't catch up to Loki until outside the walls of the mutant school; Loki was standing in the overgrown lane behind the wall, swallowed by shadows. His head was tilted back and he was staring upwards; but since the leaves overhead covered all sight of the stars, Thor did not know what he might be gazing at.
Loki made no sign of acknowledgement as Thor approached, though he must have heard; Thor was not trying to be stealthy, and his boots scuffed in the dried leaves underfoot. He stopped a few paces away and cleared his throat, breaking the silence. "Loki," he said, a little more gruffly than he would have liked. "Are you… all right?"
His brother laughed, a dark and painful little chuckle. "What do you think, Thor?" he asked.
Thor considered his answer carefully. "I think that this is good news, taken in measure," he said, and Loki's gaze whipped around to meet his, a shocked expression on his face. "Do you not think so? To know that there is a shared bond of kinship between… between the Aesir and the Jotnar; it is to know that we also share that kinship tie, however distant. You and I, perhaps not brothers in blood, but… cousins, as the doctor said."
"Is that what you chose to focus on? Out of everything?" Loki snorted, looking away. "Typical."
"What is the rest of 'everything,' Loki?" Thor asked carefully.
"You don't see it?" Loki crossed his arms over his chest, hugging himself defensively. "What this means… what I've done… if the Frost Giants truly are, in some distant way, kin to the house of Odin - then I am twice over a kinslayer, for what I've done to Jotunheim."
The implications of that hadn't occurred to him, and Thor's mouth went dry as they did now. He swallowed, and groped around for some words. "If you are, then I am too," he pointed out lamely. "Or had you forgotten that it was I who first opened hostilities with the Jotnar?"
Loki waved that away with one hand. "Hardly on the same scale," he said. His hand returned to grip his bicep, and his chin lowered as his shoulders hunched. "I believed… I truly believed… that I was doing the universe a great good, cleansing the Tree of their foul presence. Like Sigurn slaying the trolls at Gjalarbru; like Bor slaying the dark elves at Svartalfheim; like Buffy slaying the vampires at Sunnydale. I really believed it. I really thought I was killing the monsters… and instead… I was the monster, all along."
There was a dark tone in his voice, like the tolling of some final bell, that worried Thor. He ventured to speak again. "I know not the saga of Buffy of Sunnydale, but I truly understand what you say because I too once believed thus," he told Loki earnestly. "I too believed the other races - elves, giants, even mortals - existed only to bring me glory in their killing. But I was wrong, and it was Midgard that taught me that. Coming to this realm taught me the value of life - the right of all thinking beings to continue their lives peacefully and unmolested. Now I see that this realm has had the same effect on you, Brother, and I am glad; you too have learned the lessons that I once had to learn."
Loki buried his head in his hands, and for a moment Thor hovered helplessly, unsure what to do; should he reach out? Embrace his brother? Speak more? But before he could take action that might end up being violently rejected, Loki lifted his face and folded his hands tightly into each other. "I need you to leave," he said, his voice tightly controlled.
Of all the reactions Thor had anticipated, this was not even on the list. "What?" he gaped. "Leave? But - why?"
"Because…" Loki gritted his teeth, hands worrying each other in a heart-wrenchingly familiar gesture of upset. "Because it's hard to think when you're around, Thor. Or at least, hard to think my own thoughts and not your thoughts."
Thor frowned. "I do not understand," he protested. "Brother, I am only trying to help -"
"I know that, Thor," Loki said, and turned his back on him. "But right now, you can help me the most by… by giving me some space. I need time to think on this, to work this out in my own way, and I can't do it when you're around constantly… pressing on me like you do. I love you, Thor, but it's hard to be around you and I - I cannot cope with that right now."
Thor was taken aback, and more than a little hurt. After all that he had done to try to repair the bridges between them, and now Loki was just - treating him like a burden, dismissing him like a servant whose presence was no longer required. "But what about my vow, Brother, to learn from you -"
"Please, Thor," Loki said, and turned back to him with an expression of such raw vulnerability that Thor fell immediately into silence, feeling more than ever like a cur. "We both know that was just an excuse. This isn't about you right now. This is about me. I need some space now, and I need… I need you to respect my wishes."
Still Thor hesitated. "I… hear you," he said more quietly. "Loki, I do want to respect your wishes…"
"That had better not be a but I hear on the end of that sentence," Loki said through his teeth.
"But the last time you had such a terrible shock - to your identity, to yourself - you let yourself fall!" Thor blurted out. Too many, there had been too many of those mortal shocks, those empty losses where his brother once stood. He did not think he could stand it again. "Loki, please - I do not want you to be alone right now - I fear for you…"
Loki's eyes widened, and his expression softened. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and reached out to rest his hand against the side of Thor's neck, in imitation of the gesture Thor usually used on him. "I will not be alone," he said, more quietly now. "I have my friends here, and I will have the Professor - I imagine I will have much to say to the Professor, in the days to come. I have a life here that I do not intend to easily let go of, Brother. I will be all right."
Thor bit his lip, bringing a hand up to grip Loki's forearm, pressing his hand closer; then his head dipped down and he nodded.
"You should go," Loki said, and gave Thor a little shake before pulling back his hand. "Midgard has claimed enough of your time and attention as it is. Surely you have duties you should return to."
"Aye," Thor said, reluctantly allowing Loki to pull away. "And yet - with the streams of Asgard and Midgard so far apart now, even a short time on Asgard will be yet a longer time here."
"Oh? I fail to see how this is a problem," Loki said drily. "A few days, here and there - you won't even have time to miss me."
Thor frowned. "And yet the longer you remain here, and I there, the more our courses will diverge," he said quietly. A few days, a few weeks, even a few months were not such a loss, it was true; yet weeks on Asgard could turn to years on Earth, and years to centuries, and even the Aesir - and their cousins - did not live forever.
Loki blinked in surprise. "That has never been cause to concern you before," he said, with a chuckle that seemed slightly forced. "Really, Thor, where is this maudlin sentiment coming from?"
Thor shook his head, feeling helpless to explain. If someone had told him a month ago that Loki was alive, he would have thought all his hopes fulfilled. If someone had told him a fortnight ago that Loki was alive and yet not evil, he would have thought it a miracle. Even as late as the beginning of last week, if someone had told him that he and Loki could be reconciled, he would have thought he couldn't ask for anything more.
Yet now that all these things were true, to be asked to leave and leave his brother behind broke his heart, a little. "I suppose I have always been greedy," he said aloud. "Will you come to Asgard? Not now, I mean - but sometime? So long as I am regent, I command the Bifrost…"
Loki scoffed. "As though I need the Bifrost to get in and out of Asgard," he said. Then he looked Thor straight on, and his expression became sad. "But my home is here now, Brother."
"Can you have only one home?" Thor asked quietly, and Loki's expression wavered.
"Enough of this," Loki said, surreptitiously trying to wipe the moisture from his eyes without making it obvious to Thor that he was doing that. "It was a good visit, I suppose - at least in comparison to some of our past meetings. I'll see you around."
"Aye, Loki," Thor said quietly. "Fare you well."
Loki didn't seem to turn or move, but the shadows moved up to swallow him; and in a moment more, all sense of his brother's presence was gone.
Thor turned away slowly, his footsteps scraping through the fallen leaves. Lost in thought, he walked along the shadowed lane, listening to the night wind rustling through the branches and leaves until he came to an open clearing, where shone the sky full of stars.
He did not feel ready to leave Midgard; he did not feel that he was done, whatever nebulous goal it was that he had been trying to accomplish. Yet his time here was done; he knew better now than to impose himself where there was no room for him, in the expectation that those around him would neglect their own needs to cater to his own.
If there was one thing he had learned, it was that in order to truly help people he had to offer the aid that they needed, not the aid that he wanted to give. Loki did not need him now; other things, perhaps, but not him. But there were others - other people, other places - that did, and it was time enough to turn his hand to them.
"Heimdall!" Thor shouted to the sky. "Open the Bifrost!"
~to be continued…
