Title: Cover Up the Sun
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Discussion of suicide.
Author's Notes: Okay... *wince* This was not my best-composed chapter. I'm always trying to balance between keeping my chapters a consistent and reasonable length, and letting the breaks fall in natural places. I think this chapter kind of failed at that second one, since the last scene by rights belongs to the chapter to come, but the rest of THAT chapter won't be ready for some time. So... here you go.
It was late in the evening; once the sun had gone down and taken its slight warmth with it, the dropping temperatures had driven most of the warm-blooded students and teachers indoors. Kurt had gone back to his own dormitory, after earnestly promising that he would show Loki more secrets of the school some other day.
It had been... fun, spending the day with an unexpectedly kindred soul. As friendly and kindhearted as he was, Kurt had a very refreshing lack of interest in obeying arbitrary rules or social mores; he did what he wanted, when he wanted, and his only concern was that others would not actually be hurt in the process. Flustered perhaps, momentarily inconvenienced or embarrassed perhaps, but never truly hurt.
Kurt's cheerful demeanor covered a deep and old hurt, but there was nothing false or forced about it; he truly lived for the present, unclouded or poisoned by the pain in his past. It was a skill Loki wished he could learn to emulate. But then again, there was a great deal that Kurt could learn from him as well, especially in the realms of acting and dissimulation, plus bonus lock-picking. (Kurt had tried to argue that he had no need to learn to pick a lock when he could teleport. Loki had countered with the same logic he'd used on Kitty: what if his powers were taken away? It seemed the possibility had never occurred to the young mutant before.)
Now that he was alone, the feelings of happiness and exhilaration he'd gained from their evening of hide-and-seek had begun to fade, he felt again the strange calmness of emotion that he'd felt after his outburst of grief that morning. It was relieving and restful, a moment of... emptiness, almost numbness, after the black storm of depression that had clogged his mind and weighed his body for over a week. Or perhaps longer. Much, much longer. Loki was not even entirely sure when was the last time he had not felt it, lingering at the edges of his consciousness.
It truly did feel like the calm after the rain had passed; cold but also clean, all of the dust and debris in his mind settled. He felt lighter, as though a great weight had been shed - as though he could do anything. He was not sure how long the sensation would remain with him, but he intended to make the most of it while it lasted.
And so he found himself walking the familiar steps towards Charles' office; there was a trace of guilt for remaining away for so long, but it was mild. Throughout all the months they had known each other Charles had always been true with him, always been faithful, and so Loki believed the man when he said that he was not angry that Loki had stayed away. That these meetings were for Loki's peace of mind and not his own, and were not meant to be payment or obligation.
Even though it had been nearly two weeks since their last meeting, stepping into Charles' office felt as familiar as ever. Charles was waiting for him, his other work closed and filed away, hands folded over each other as he greeted Loki calmly. "Hello, Loki. It's good to see you again. I gather you are feeling better?"
"Yes, I am," Loki said, even though it hadn't really been a question; the answer still surprised himself, really. Charles cocked an eyebrow and tilted his head subtly in Loki's direction. Loki inhaled and braced himself as Charles' power swept over him; he held onto the lingering feeling of peace and lightness as Charles searched through his mind to see why he had come.
He had not ever discussed Frigga with Charles; he had not been able to bear it before, and still did not want to. The thought made him uncomfortable for reasons he could not name, but trusted Charles to respect; still, there was something else on his mind that he did want to talk to Charles about, something he thought that his mortal friend would be able to help him understand that no one else would.
The tingling feeling faded as Charles finished his sweep, and nodded as though Loki had answered another question entirely. "So," he said. "Are you ready to talk about your suicidal ideation now, Loki?"
Loki stood still, turning over Charles' words in his mind. Suicidal ideation. What a strange, clinical, even cold way to describe it: this feyness, this furious self-destruction, this wish-for-death that had lurked at the bottom of his soul for so long. "I think so," he said.
Loki crossed over to the old armchair and sat down slowly, turning over Charles' words in his mind. He didn't sound at all surprised, even though Loki had never spoken of it before - had not even thought of it before, not consciously at least. "Did you know that this was within me?" he asked.
"I suspected it," Charles said calmly. "But you were very good at hiding it, even for yourself."
Loki let out a small, strained chuckled. "I suppose I am," he said. He took a deep breath and sat back in the chair, thinking back, searching for a place to begin.
"I should explain first," he said at last. "In Asgard, such things are not done... are not even talked about. A good death is one in the service of one's life: a warrior's death in battle, a woman's death in childbirth. Those are the ones that after their deaths go on to Valhalla, Folksvangr or Helgafjell. To take one's own life... there is no honor in it. Such an unlucky soul would be doomed to Nastrond, the shores of the dead. It would never be thought of for a son of Odin to go there."
"But you did think of it," Charles observed.
Loki shrugged. "Sometimes," he said. "When I was younger. Usually I thought of my death in some great battle, someday, defeating some terrible foe. I thought of how grand my funeral would be, how brightly my ship would burn. I thought of all my family crying for me, and how sorry all my friends would be that they'd been mean to me." I thought that it would be the only way I could ever really beat Thor - the only way that no one would ever be able to say that I hadn't done enough, hadn't tried hard enough.
"Such things are not uncommon fantasies in children," Charles said. "The fantasy of the funeral, getting to be there and see other people mourning for you."
"I suppose," Loki said. "But the daydreams stopped eventually, when I realized that nobody would."
Charles looked sad, and Loki could see a disagreement hovering on his lips. His shoulders hunched somewhat; he didn't want to hear it. After a moment, Charles sighed and chose another topic. "When was the first time you acted on these impulses, instead of merely thinking about them?"
Loki remembered a shattered bridge, a jagged rain of falling crystal, an endless fall - of Odin's face looming above him, blocking out the sky, and two simple words that cut out his heart. No... "That wasn't the first time," he said aloud, the realization coming to him suddenly. "It was before that. The day after Thor's banishment, after his trip to Jotunheim.
"A Frost Giant had grabbed me, here," he touched his arm, "and my skin changed to be like theirs. I couldn't stop thinking, wondering... There was only one way to be sure. I went to the weapons vault where the Casket of Ancient Winters was stored. I thought, people might lie to me, but magic never would."
"So you thought that touching the Casket might harm you?" Charles asked. "Did you hope that it would?"
"No... well... not exactly." Loki frowned, floundering over the words. He thought of the Destroyer, its imposing bulk looming behind the enchanted cage, its unchanging visage glaring out over the Casket. Its duty was to guard against Frost Giants and it performed that duty with mindless brutality. Loki had known, even as he approached the plinth, that if he was right in his guess... if he really was a Frost Giant... well, he'd seen the evidence of it in the charred and smoking corpses of the invaders, less than a day ago.
"Either I was a true son of Odin, and the Casket would reject me," Loki said quietly, "or else I was not, and the Destroyer would kill me. I would have preferred it - I would rather have been dead than Jotun. Either way, I would win."
"Dying isn't winning," Charles reminded him.
"Perhaps," Loki said with a small shrug. "But at least you're not around to feel the shame of defeat."
There was a short silence after that, and Loki could almost feel disapproval radiating off his mentor; but Charles' voice was quiet and uninflected when he asked, "And after that?"
"After my fall..." Loki licked his lips, thinking about it. Without that feeling of calm serenity, he could never have looked back so easily at the ugly, painful, measureless he'd spent, in the captivity of Thanos the Mad or upon Earth. Even now, it was hard.
"I never tried to kill myself, not in so many words," he said slowly, thoughtfully. "I think... my pride still wouldn't let me stoop to that level. I merely... arranged things such that there was a chance that they would end in my death. And if that chance never took, well then - I would arrange something else. And something else, and something else." He laughed bitterly. "But I suppose I am as much of a failure in this as anything else - even when I set all the heroes of Midgard and Asgard against me, I still didn't manage to die."
"Death by hero is not a very reliable strategy; they generally prefer to avoid killing their enemies, when they can," Charles observed.
"So I learned," Loki said acidly. "But the same was not true for the dark elves; there is nothing they like better than killing their enemies." Brief, nightmare visions of the Dark Elves' assault on Asgard flashed through his mind; watching his countrymen die in agony, listening to their screams and the crushing of armor on bone and flesh as they were swallowed by the infernal gravity grenades. It had given Loki great, vicious satisfaction to turn their own weapons on them, to watch Kursed be swallowed by that inexorable, agonizing death.
Of course, he would have found much more pleasure in it if he hadn't been bleeding out through the chest at the time. That had been unpleasant.
"So it was not your intention to fake your death?" Charles broke into his memories." You actually believed that Kursed would kill you?"
"It was always a possibility," Loki shrugged. "I was... a little disappointed, when even that failed." In some respects it was a perfect death; he was unlikely to find a better one.
"I am not," Charles said in a voice of steel.
Loki closed his eyes, feeling the burn of shame mixed with gratitude at that thought, that sentiment. Charles continued; "Listen, Loki, you are not alone in this. Other people have had the same thoughts, the same feelings of you, and survived them. Many times people feel like their death would be a favor to the world, that everyone would be happier if they were gone. But it's not true. It's never true. There was never anyone who took their own life whose loved ones would be happier for it."
"Mine might," Loki said with an effort, through a mouth that felt dry as dust. He managed a careless shrug. "I'm a bit of a special case."
"They all think they're a special case."
Loki's eyes snapped up to meet Charles', burning with anger and something more. "I'm a monster -" he started.
"Loki," Charles interrupted him. Unspoken in the air hung the promise he had extracted from Loki; you said you would not use that word for yourself again.
"Fine," Loki said with a roll of his eyes. "I'm a criminal, that much you can't deny. I'm the supervillain who destroyed New York. After all of that, who in this world would possibly miss me?"
"I would," his mentor said quietly. "Your students would. Your fellow teachers would. And Thor -" - oh, that was a low blow, dragging that oaf into this - "You told me that he cried for you, when he thought you were dying. You know that he would."
"...But Odin wouldn't," Loki said at last, the words feeling almost dragged out of him. "He didn't. He didn't care." He had returned under the guise of one of the Einharjar, bringing the news of his own 'death' on Svartalfheim; he'd had a front-row view of Odin's reaction. Or lack of it. He'd searched for grief, remorse, regret - but all he'd been able to see, in Odin's face, was a faint disappointment.
"So now that you know that, are you so eager to rush to embrace your own death?"," Charles said, his voice deliberately cruel. "Would you be willing to throw away everything you have and are, to abandon your students and coworkers, to devastate those who love you, for the sake of making Odin feel a faint disappointment? Is it really that valuable to you?"
"No!" Loki snapped, shocked out of his brooding.
"Of course it's not," Charles said, almost kind. "Because he's only a man, only one man out of many. He's not even the most important man in the universe, and his approval or disapproval just doesn't matter so much. You are loved and valued, Loki - by many men, not just one. Remember that, and don't be in a rush to throw all you have away." He waited for a moment, watching Loki carefully. "All right?"
Slowly, Loki nodded. "...All right," he said. He felt suddenly tired, worn down by the prospect of so much expectation; the cool clarity he'd felt when he came in was scattered. Charles made it sound so simple, but it wasn't, no matter what he said. Even if there were some people who would truly miss him, they didn't need him; they'd get over it. And there were still far more that he had wronged, that would celebrate to see him dead.
Still - he would try. He had to try, he'd promised he would. And he knew, even if Charles was careful not to say it, that it was what Frigga would have wanted of him. "All right," he repeated, a little stronger this time, and Charles smiled at him.
The day dawned bright and fair, if cold, near the end of January. Although it was Friday, the campus was clear of students trekking to and fro: classes had been cancelled for the day, as it was the first day of the winter training trip. Not all of the students were going, of course, but it would have seemed an injustice to force the ones who stayed behind to attend classes with half their peers missing, and so an unofficial holiday had been declared.
The teachers' quarters were not completely without activity, however. Loki listened in, fascinated, as a small party of teachers and retired X-Men approached his apartment door; they were apparently unaware of his superior hearing as they whispered to one another in what they no doubt thought was a secretively furtive volume.
"All right, when he opens the door, Bobby and I will keep him talking," Hank's gruff voice gave orders. "The important thing is not to let him get a word in edgewise, so he can't outright say no. Rogue, you slip by into his apartment while he's distracted and pack a quick bag for him; and Piotr, once we're ready to go, you can keep him moving until we're on the bus."
Loki nearly laughed aloud as they rounded the corner; even without such sharp hearing as he possessed, the entire party of them - from the dark blue fur to the bright silver metal skin - could hardly be considered unobtrusive. He watched with amusement as two of them approached the door while two others stayed out of sight - or would have been, had the young woman Hank addressed as Rogue not carelessly positioned herself before a window.
After they had rung the doorbell twice without response, the would-be raiding party began to grow restless. "Is he even home?" Piotr asked in a loud whisper.
Hank scoffed slightly. "He's not left his apartment in two weeks, where would he go now?" he asked.
"But if he's not even answering his door..." Rogue peered nervously through the window. "Should we do something? I mean, is he even okay?"
The display of concern - unnecessary as it was - left Loki feeling warm in the chest and throat as though he had just taken a swig of glogg, and he decided that he'd waited long enough. Uncrossing his arms and pushing away from the tree against which he'd been leaning, Loki dropped the glamor which had cloaked him (though not entirely vanished him) from the naked eye. "Looking for something?" he asked mildly, and took a small malicious pleasure at how wide their eyes became when they whirled around.
"You're - Loki!" Rogue blurted out, then clapped her hand over her mouth.
"Last time I checked, yes," Loki agreed amiably. "Now, why are you lot skulking about? Aren't you supposed to be preparing for your journey?"
"Yes, well," Hank said with a hint of a stammer, righting the glasses that had been knocked askew in his startlement, "We, er, thought we'd drop by and..."
"It is a kidnapping!" Piotr chirped brightly from behind Hank's shoulder; the older mutant shoved his glasses back on his face and gave him a dark glare.
"You weren't supposed to say that," Rogue hissed.
"Is that so?" Loki said, amused by the idea that these mortals could presume to take him by surprise, or hope to force him anywhere against this will. Well, in all fairness, they probably couldn't have even if Kurt Wagner hadn't teleported on by earlier, giving him an early warning of his teammates' nefarious plans.
He reached down and picked up a canvas duffel bag that lain unobtrusively by his feet. It contained sturdy clothes for camping, as well as any other activities they might get up to, and a number of other miscellaneous supplies. Years of adventuring with his brother had taught him how to pack necessary and pack light. "Well, let us not dawdle, then," he said. "We certainly don't want to make everyone late simply because you got sidetracked. Coming?"
They gawped at him, and Loki grinned to himself at the expression on their faces as he turned down the path.
"Someone's in a good mood today," he heard Bobby mutter behind him, most likely to Hank, if the hum of agreement was any indication. It was true. He was in a good mood - inexplicably content, almost cheerful. There was an almost giddy feeling in his head, an expansive lightness in his chest, as though he had been underwater for months and could finally breathe.
It had not been only Kurt's visit that had convinced Loki to change his mind about this whole adventure, nor was it merely that he had grown thoroughly sick of the same four dull walls around him. (He had grown sick of that quite some time ago.) But the thought of fresh vistas was appealing now in a way it had not been for months - years, perhaps? A journey, even one to the rustic backwater countryside of Midgard, was an excellent idea.
Several large, bulky vehicles were already gathered along the wide avenue, with a wide disarray of students and teachers and their various luggage being maneuvered aboard. Loki recognized many of them from his classes - Kitty, Illyana, Allison, Doug, Tenko, Artie, Anne-Marie, and many more - and it seemed that just as many of them recognized him. Not only recognized him but, if the turning heads and dawning grins were any indication, were pleased to see him with a traveling bag over his shoulder. Kurt was grinning madly, his teeth a white sliver of mischief in his dark face, and Kitty was blushing in his general direction - small change there,
"Professor Loki!" Tenko called out, hurrying over to his side. "You're coming on this stupid trip, too?"
Loki raised an eyebrow at her. "Yes, I am."
A wide grin split her face. "Cool!" she exclaimed.
She really seemed to mean it. A look around the assembled beaming faces seemed to indicate that she was not the only one. Loki felt something in his chest crack, although there was no pain, as he might have expected. They all wanted him to come along. They wanted him to come along.
He took a deep breath - it helped steady him, a bit, so that his voice came out smooth and practiced and not wobbling or breaking. "Well then," he said. "Let's get going, shall we?"
Years of traveling between realms - even planets - had given Loki a somewhat disproportionate sense of distance, and the time needed to cross it. As it turned out, their destination was not at all far away, barely two hundred miles by the way the humans counted distance. Left to himself, he could have crossed that distance in an hour, even without use of the Bifrost to make the distance instantaneous.
It quickly became apparent that the challenge inherent in this journey was not in the sheer distance to be crossed, but in the management of the children under their care. The trundling caravans they loaded aboard were comfortable enough at the outset - for a short period of time, while standing still - but another animal entirely when in motion. The chaos generated by a busful of energetic, raucous, and variously powered mutant children could not be underestimated, nor could the overpowering smell of fumes from the primitive fossil fuels that drove it. Loki quickly took to riding on top of the bus rather than inside it, despite the protests of the other teachers that he was setting a poor example (again.)
Loki was accustomed to traveling alone, or with Thor and his friends - and however boisterous and irresponsible they could be at times, when invigorated by strong drink or the lust of battle, at least they were all grown men (and one woman) who could mostly govern and care for themselves. The same was not true for these students. They were forced to stop periodically for refueling, food, and bathroom breaks, or simply to allow the children to run around and expend some of their wild energy.
This was also the first time Loki learned first-hand that some mortals were so frail of constitution that even motion itself could sicken them. The disorder was rare, the teachers claimed - at least until one entire bus came down with it simultaneously. An emergency stop had to be made before all their efforts to keep the children fed over the course of the day could be violently undone, and yet the same strange malady started up again as soon as they began moving. Not only the children but even the teachers soon found themselves nauseated, despite their protests that such things never happened to them.
It was Loki who finally managed to narrow down the cause of it: this was the bus that had Artie, the green-tongued mutant child, aboard. It was Artie alone among the busful that was actually sick, but unconsciously managing to spread his misery to others. Loki had noticed earlier that while not as powerful as Jean Gray or Charles Xavier, Artie had a certain capacity for telepathic projection. And while the other humans on the bus were not sensitive enough to pick up on his thoughts or words, they picked up on his virulent seasickness quite readily.
Fortunately Loki had some of his medical supplies packed away in his duffle bag, and a quick teleport-assisted trip around local inns and way-stores provided some missing ingredients. He was soon able to whip up a potion of cloves, ginger, and athal spirits (he longed for Icelandic moss, but none was to be found in this area of the world) to ease the child's stomach, and they were able to resume their journey with no more messy interruptions.
Loki returned to his place at the top of the caravan; he enjoyed the fresh air and the unrestricted view, and the speed and motion were not enough to put him in any danger of falling off. Nor did the keen air bother him - and for the first time since he had discovered the truth of his heritage, it did not bother him that the cold did not bother him. It was merely convenient.
After an hour or so had passed, one of the older students - the one called Bobby, who had accompanied Hank to 'kidnap' him from his apartment - climbed up on top of the caravan with him. Somewhat surprised, Loki made room for him on the flat apex of the vehicle, and the boy flashed him a grateful grin as he settled down, apparently no more bothered by the cold than Loki himself. Thankfully, the roar of their passage precluded any attempts at small talk, but it was nice to have some company nonetheless.
The scenery unrolled around them as the caravan rattled on. Gradually the broad, winter-barren farmlands gave way to rolling hills covered with leafless trees, then to taller slopes turned a misty blue with evergreen foliage. In the distance, the stone ridges rose higher yet, capped with broken sheets of bright ice and snow. The highways became smaller, the small villages they passed along the way sparser, as the settled land gave way to hushed parkland. It was not true wilderness - nothing in this part of the country seemed to have escaped the taming hand of mankind - but still an enclave of the natural world, dreaming its timeless dreams.
The mountains had not the grandeur of Vanaheim; the forested slopes had not the fey beauty of the deep woods of Alfheim. But they were beautiful all the same; and beauty, however humble, was not to be scorned.
Loki sat on the roof of the rumbling caravan beneath him, breathed it in, and let himself smile.
~tbc...
