Aphelion 9 (8b) – Starve the Ego, Feed the Soul

March 23rd, 2010

Frankly, she probably should have been expecting something like this, but she was surprised all the same. Hermione whirled about. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm here for the show, of course," Loki replied, spreading his hands wide. He wore Muggle attire, a charcoal gray suit, tie and scarf that were certainly were not suited for the desert, let alone combat; clearly he wasn't thinking to get involved in what was quickly becoming a brawl down below as Thor burst out of one of the white plastic tunnels wrestling another guard. Instead, his eyes swept over her face as if in inspection years overdue, then smiled, seemingly satisfied. "Aren't you?"

Hermione didn't know whether to bristle at the nerve of him or to relieved at his concern, so she opted for a third route: asking questions. Old habits die hard, after all. "What show would this be?" Hermione's eyes went to the Muggle woman, whose hand was firmly clasped over her mouth as she watched—Thor—enter and reenter the complex, grappling with what Hermione presumed to be various guards.

Guards—guarding what? Were Loki and what must be his brother after something that the Muggles had found? Where did this put Loki—on guard duty, making sure his brother didn't hurt himself, what he had told her was his typical role in his brother's misadventures? Who was the Muggle woman, who Loki was apparently hiding from as well, and what was she doing with such uncareful company?

Loki, for his part, only tutted. "Spoilers," he murmured, lips curving up into a crescent of a smile. "Join me?"

Questions or no, Hermione could feel her heart stop for an excruciatingly sublime moment—that look on his face, it was like she had never left that library at all, as if she was fourteen years old once more and so sweetly besotted. Ugh. She was an Unspeakable, a scientist for Merlin's sake. Observations only. Do not intervene. Most importantly, do not act like some infatuated swot. "I'll come—if you explain what is going on."

"Such a stranger." His face was moon-pale by the artificial lighting and just as harsh, eyes glittering white stars. "One would think you weren't delighted to see an old friend." He reached out with one hand for her face, without any of the hesitation that had characterized their earlier physical interactions. She couldn't help it: she flinched a bit when he cupped her jaw, the tip of his forefinger just touching the pearl that dangled from her ear.

No one was supposed to be able to see that. Her eyes widened, then closed with a shuddering sigh. Of course he could see right through her tricks. He was a thousand years old and she was thirty. She felt too young to know a thing and too old act on it, tired and nervous all at the same time.

"I'm here on official business," she replied as evenly as she could, opening her eyes and meeting his. Her Occlumancy shields, at least, could hold a basic gaze, though she was suddenly uncertain of what would happen if he actively tried to penetrate her mind. How to describe the sense in which one knew a tiger could tear you limb to limb without having ever seen its teeth? Suddenly acutely self aware, she stepped back, out of his reach. "I'm not here for... for fun."

"Ah, but the fun has scarcely started." Loki smiled wryly in return and dropped his hand to his side, unabashedly condescending. "You're referring to that little strand of magic I spy connecting your wand to somewhere a long ways away. Tethered, are you? It's good that you manage to escape your own cage from time to time. A clever bit of magic; whoever you've given yourself to—they don't deserve it." He waved a hand and the thread snapped, the connection she had back to home base in London breaking like a bit of brittle twine.

This was about when Bill would start to go crazy. Maybe he went home to a storybook family every night, but he kept a damn close eye on the people he was responsible for—and probably especially her, given the lectures she had gotten earlier today. "They'll be coming for me," she said, her voice flat. She felt queerly numb, unsure of how she felt about... anything of what was going on. There were muffled shouts from below as the blonde man—Thor—continued to knock men over like bowling pins, each after another. The woman, still laying on the ground and oblivious to Loki and Hermione's presence, looked on in mixed horror and fascination.

Gods make the best first impressions; Hermione hoped, if this woman was being dragged along on whatever adventure this would turn out to be, that she had a smoother time with her particular son of Odin than Hermione ever had with Loki.

Though for now, Loki seemed inclined to play the charmer. He held out his arm. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," he said, his smile dazzling beneath the dark sky. "That should mean something now that you've sacrificed such a sizable slice of it to the less generous gods of toil and trouble."

She wondered which star above them he had come from. She wondered why his world was so arbitrarily connected with hers. She wondered how it could be so very easy that she was being pulled into it all again. Just as an observer, she told herself sternly. And the best place to observe is right beside him. She took his arm and felt her stomach churn. Just a scientist. An Unspeakable. I live to learn secrets.

Oh, what a sense of wonder she had around him. Her blood was singing through her nervousness, her numbness, through every wall she had erected in her own mind over the last twelve years. They walked down into the crater and she felt his magic swallow her whole, overwhelming her own.

"Now," he began as they passed into the tunnels of the facility, groaning bodies stretching before them in a sort of untidy landscape, "this is how my brother prefers to deal with his problems. Note that many of them have perhaps permanent damage, no? Quite uncareful. I'm surprised he hasn't broken that woman already, but I suppose he always breaks his toys sooner or later."

Hermione winced. Not that Loki treated the things he toyed with any differently.

Not that she minded.

She felt distinctly sick at this realization. Self respect was one of those essential attributes for 21st-century feminists.

Loki continued on, oblivious to her discomfort as he stepped over another prone body. "Better that he be unleashed here on Midgard than elsewhere where his royal temper gets whole worlds riled up for war. Father exiled him for provoking the jotens." He turned towards her and there was a twist on his face that she couldn't place. "Do you remember what I told you about them?"

"They're... frost giants, yes?" She frowned as they passed deeper into the strange, brightly lit white tunnels. Hence the peculiar ley line readings that had preceded her visit: likely Thor had been cast here via the Bifrost, a sort of interplanetary transport system Loki had told her about once, long ago. "But why... why was Thor sent here, then? Why not to Jotunheim to... to apologize, for whatever it was that he did."

"Father would not suffer Thor to learn his lesson by the hand of monsters." His face turned into a sneer. "Father has a soft spot for Midgard; runs in the family, I suppose. As for this particular patch of unhallowed ground—" He smirked at her. "You might have a better idea as to that than do I. You always did hunger so very much to learn such arbitrary things. I doubt Father pays enough attention to what happens on this planet to really know the best place to send his son for a time out; he feels that humans do their gods good, but doesn't feel the need to differentiate between particular mortals all that much."

I certainlydidn't do you any good, Hermione thought bitterly to herself, watching the scarcely contained glee on Loki's face as they continued to walk through the wreckage Thor had left behind. A source of information was all she was to most people. At least Loki would admit it. "What's your brother after, then, if he's exiled? Something that'll redeem him in your father's eyes?"

They stepped into what must have been the center of the facility, the ceiling suddenly opening up into the sky. There was a crater of sorts embedded into the ground, muddy with mixed rain water and desert dirt, and in the center of that what looked to be a hammer. Thor was moving towards it, a hungry look in his eyes even as he moved with easy confidence and a smile.

And suddenly she knew what it was, even before Loki leaned in, intimately, as if to tell her a secret. "That," Loki murmured, "is Mjölnir. Starforged, back when Asgard took pride in its present and not just its past. We had craftsmen, once, dwarves or apprenticed to dwarves, who would also be trained in sorcery." His face twisted into that ugly, bitter sneer again, an expression that was coming more readily to his face now than she had ever seen before. What had happened to him? "That was, of course, before sorcery became something for party tricks. Once upon a time such magical creations were honored not merely as the tools of others but as great deeds in and of themselves, an honor to make as much as to wield..." He stepped back. He seemed manic in the clinical sense of the term rather than poetic, his movements sudden and lacking of their usual grace, his eyes hard, his voice now fast and unhindered. "Father stripped Thor of his power and then sent Mjölnir, his own weapon, as reminder of his unworthiness after him. A fitting punishment for an oafish fool, no? It is the only sort of lesson that Thor is capable of learning, but I hope it's not too subtle for him to grasp."

Thor reached for the hammer. She knew that look of confidence. It was Ron leaning in for a kiss, Lockhart casting Obliviate with a broken wand, Voldemort dueling Harry before he had realized the Horcruxes were all destroyed. It was a fool's confidence, when one didn't stop to think of why something could ever be so easy.

She looked at Loki out of the corner of her eyes. There was that peculiar mixture of malice and fear, something that frightened her far more than the bustling of Muggles about them with their important looking devices. It was not a face she knew; every time she looked at him, it seemed that she saw a different side of a multifaceted god whose many faces winked at her each in turn as he shifted beneath her eyes over the years. This did not seem the Loki who had seemed so vulnerable to her when she had first touched him, any more than it seemed the Loki who had been so fierce in teaching her to fight.

Thor grasped the hammer but could not lift it. She watched the confusion ripple across his face, tensing with a sudden fear. He strained at it, tugging at Mjölnir with all the strength his considerable body had; he could have uprooted trees with that sort of force, yet the hammer would not move. She felt pity move in her, sluggish and heavy and sad. Loki's eyes were changing, hints of ruddy red within gray brown like dead cedar driftwood on a beach. She couldn't place any of the emotions that were on his face, changing too quickly to identify. She still didn't know this not-man, and the most terrifying part of it was that she wondered if she was the one who knew him best; he even seemed to hide from his own brother in his time of need.

Everyone had their breaking point, she supposed. The tragedy was in how they overlapped.

"I knew he wasn't worthy," Loki breathed, his face breaking out in what looked like relief. Thor collapsed to the ground. Hermione watched his face break in despair; Loki smiled wider and madder than she had ever seen before. "Father has finally recognized it."

The Muggles began to crowd forward; Hermione found herself shrinking back into Loki's side, invisible but unwilling to get in the way. His suit, wool, was cool to the touch but scratched at her skin. She watched with dispassionate eyes as the Muggle security guards pooled around Thor and bound him up like stunned prey, all the fight in him having been sunk into Mjölnir with nothing given back in return. Thor seemed to be a simple man, simply broken; pity curled cold and queasy around her gut.

She could tell Thor wasn't careful, but Loki had no need to hammer it in like she was the simpleton he mocked. She didn't doubt the stories that Loki had told her over the years; she didn't think even he had the heart to mislead her with the amount of bleakness that lay beneath his casual disregard of his brother. Perhaps he had been deliberate in showing her his fears and insecurities in an attempt to seem more vulnerable, more human, but that didn't make them not true: they were lures laid out by a lost little boy who didn't always need lies to get his way.

But while this wasn't right, it wasn't her place to intervene. She didn't get involved in things like this anymore. She had had her war, and that had hurt her enough. No more. No more.

"I'll say my goodbyes later, if you don't mind," Loki said abruptly after Thor had been taken out of sight. She tried to follow the emotions flickering across his face, but they moved too quick, twitching between love and loss and hate and triumph and too many other things to count. "I'm sure it'll take some time for him to compose his feelings into some semblance of language."

"What will happen to him?" she blurted out, surprising herself somewhat. She didn't care about too many things anymore.

Loki shrugged. Thor disappeared down one of the white plastic tunnels; the Muggles swirled around the two of them like eddying water as they started in on what sounded like a damage assessment. "He'll be found worthy," Loki replied, his voice cool, "or he'll die here a worthless madman. Your kind have asylums for those who delude themselves into thinking that they are something other than what they are, no? I've seen pictures of straightjackets: it'd be such charity, to protect him from himself." His lips curled into an ugly smile. "He can lord over a fine padded cell all he wants and no one but his wardens would have to suffer his idiocy ever again."

"That seems... harsh." Hermione's lips pursed. She could hear the Muggles babbling at each other, giving reports about the amount of damage Thor had rendered to their facility—and about the readings the hammer had been giving off as Thor had approached it. If the Muggles could detect the subtle differences in the EM signature Mjölnir radiated, then uncovering the Wizarding world overlaying their own wouldn't be too far away. SHIELD, their name badges said. Something to talk to Bill about.

Later. Later. Loki turned towards her. "Unsubtle folks need unsubtle lessons. Unfortunate, but... a firm hand is often needed." Suddenly his face smoothed into what looked to be the sly smile of a boy spilling a secret. "You will come with me to Asgard," he said, his voice clear and confident.

She blinked. His eyes danced with colors; her heart lurched and ached. "Nothing's changed," she whispered.

"Of course not," Loki replied, obviously unbelieving. She couldn't blame his flippancy; she didn't even believe herself. What was this? Twelve years, then...? He took her by the hand and felt his fingers warm beneath hers. He was reaching out to her. Her. His brother had been led away in disgrace and here he was, swelling with a sort of mad confidence that made her think of coup d'etats and master strokes. "Such happy drudgery you've undertaken, how it has dulled the bright shine of your eyes to mud."

She was staring, she knew. Everything felt like an echo from far away, his smile, his laugh, his eyes, the unfamiliar happiness so foreign as it emerged from the dusty rooms in the palace of her mind where it had been left long neglected. Hadn't he seemed mad a few moments ago? It didn't seem to matter. Nothing had really seemed to properly matter for quite some time. She had clung to her research like a scrap of wood in a stormy sea, but here was something from a time when life hadn't just seemed worth living but worth rejoicing, from the smallest detail in saying you're welcome to grand gestures of dedicating oneself to saving the world.

She may be older and colder, but something of that heat of youth tugged at her like a riptide, sweeping her off her feet and she squeezed his hand in return. "To Asgard," she found herself replying.

"To home."

Loki, smiling, made a gesture and suddenly colors, brighter and more beautiful than she had ever imagined colors could be, swirled about her, somehow through her. She had just enough awareness of her surroundings to see the men in black suddenly scatter like ants before everything became light, light, and the feel of Loki's hand holding hers.

So this is what interstellar travel feels like, she thought absently. Apparition was instantaneous, or near enough, with one moment being in one location and in the next in simply another; as she had hypothesized once upon a time, this felt more like a portkey, with the same sort of tugging sensation and the very physical sensation of impossible movement. She wondered if the Aurors had started to swarm over the edge of the hill by now, Harry and Bill frantic for her life. She wondered if they had figured out that her last location had been next to an artifact that even most Wizards had dismissed as myth. She wondered what they were going to do about the Muggles picking at it like an exceptionally interesting scab, SHIELD surely more than what a few Obliviates could handle. She wondered, absurdly, if allowing herself to get swept off her feet by a god of lies constituted a violation of the Statute of Secrecy or if it qualified as an act of god; in either case, she'd have quite a bit of paperwork to fill out when she returned to Earth.

When the mad swirling of colors all around them had stopped, she wasn't even granted a moment to collect herself. As she staggered forward, dizzy, she heard a deep voice from in front of her, deep and clear like old church bells: "What mortal is this that you have brought back?"

When she opened her eyes to regain equilibrium it was for perhaps the largest man—or whatever—she had ever seen, though his size was likely accentuated by his heavy golden armor. At her side, Loki was in the same garb he had worn so briefly at the Yule Ball, all black leather and silver and gold. Everything seemed like out of a picture book, or ancient Gringotts vaults, or old tombs: everything seemed to gleam.

"This is Hermione of Midgard," Loki declared before Hermione could find her voice, ringing with command from besides her. She glanced over and was startled at the difference in his composure. Here, he was a prince. She had forgotten that sometimes on Earth. "A friend."

The man in the golden armor frowned. Hermione raked her head for a name and found one: Heimdall, the gatekeeper, who saw all. Apparently he was black; the Poetic Edda had forgotten to mention that tidbit. Why aren't Asgardians racially homogenous? What is race to them? Ten thousand questions and no time to answer any of them, as her thoughts were interrupted once more: "I have not seen her," Heimdall intoned, his affect flat, "just as I have not seen you as you have walked on Midgard once more. Explain yourself."

Or perhaps he didn't see everything that went on everywhere, contrary to what the myths claimed. Hermione found her spine and stepped forward, loosing her hand from Loki's. If she was going to be fitting in on Asgard, it was time to stop using those contractions when she spoke. "If I may speak for myself," she cut in, keeping her tone liberally deferential; gods seemed like being spoken up to, even if they acted just as human as the next humanoid. "I have known Loki all of my life, but among a people well hidden from the eyes of all in order to not bring attention to ourselves." She didn't know the formal etiquette of the place, but thought that maybe inclining her head might be appropriate. "I am honored to be brought to this place, however, and I thank you."

Heimdall's eyes were exquisite to look into, a brilliant fiery gold Hermione had never seen before, but they were disconcertingly distant. He reminded her a bit of the few genuine seers she had stumbled into during her time as an Unspeakable, though in theory he saw a single crystal clear present that run truer than dozens of cloudy possible futures. "And we are honored to have you," he intoned in return, and also inclined his head. She wondered at his brain: to process audio-visual information from all of their Nine Realms at once! The sheer processing power, how did it it work!— "I would warn you to be careful during your visit here," he continued, interrupting her thoughts. "There is much that I have not been able see of late, and I may not be able to warn you of harm."

"She will be quite safe with me," Loki said, his voice confident. "A most honored guest, to be kept within our safest halls." He stepped forward, next to her, and offered her his arm once more. "Shall we? I am sure you have many questions. You have had—what, seventeen of your years to come up with them?"

"More than you have time to answer," she said, smiling and taking his arm. He felt cool, familiar. "How the Bifrost works, what that tree there is, what the runes are embedded in this dome, who built it, how, why... Loki, that is just this room..."

Loki laughed. She felt like a little girl again, the years slipping off her like ashes in the rain as they went walking down steps that glimmered a shade she had never seen before. "We will have all the time you could ever need," he said, "and more. Hermione, I am king now. Thor is gone, and Father in the Odinsleep. Yet we are so close to war with Jotunheim: Thor has provoked them mightily, but he's no longer here to break tables and treaties or any of that and so everything should go so much more smoothly." His smile was fierce and dazzling. "I will protect this place as I will protect you."

They stepped out onto an impossible causeway, a thing of shifting lights and half-shattered crystal over a glittering sea beneath stars brighter than she had ever seen before. Everything was beautiful. She felt her heart swell with childish wonder she hadn't had in quite some time.

"I can protect myself just fine," she said out of habit, but her voice was small in this vast space.

His lips curved into a lovely bow. "Perhaps. You may spar here, if you'd like—there are warriors here who have spent a thousand years perfecting their craft, though most regard our sort of magic as trickery. The libraries here are neglected, and small, but they will feel new to you and what few scholars we have will welcome such an inquisitive. And Hermione—" He stopped and turned and took her by the arms. His eyes were crystal bright. She could almost forget that half-madness that had possessed him before. "And I do not forget my promises. Immortality can still be yours, if you should so desire; we can speak of it again once Father wakens. Mother has always ached for a daughter, and though my parents may ache for Thor now that he is gone, I can serve them well enough..." He trailed off, his smile broadening. His enthusiasm was infectious. She felt in her heart, in his, in the space between them, something sweet and keening like a swallow's song.

He had wanted her here all along. He seemed so true, here, in this moment. She wondered a bit at why she had never gone back with him, the pearl dangling from her ear now mocking her pride instead of preserving it. She had dreamed of this place so many times, but it had always just been a promise, one amongst the ten thousand made to her in her life that were inevitably betrayed by their own impossibility. She had been drowning in the troubles of others before, but now almost with a manic clarity, she felt that she could breathe.

"Do not fear," Loki said softly, his eyes warm, "no, do not fear at all, for they will love you as their own." He pulled her into a tight hug. No dignity, not even a thought for comfort, only a crushing, fierce warmth though the metal of his armor bit into her skin and choked the breath from her lungs. "Do not fear for we are home and all can be made right."

She wanted to believe him more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.

A/N:

Revised 3/6/2013