Warrior Concerto

March 24th, 2010

When she finally stood before Loki in the throne room she felt swallowed up into the belly of the leviathan and already wanting to make her escape. As with the rest of the unpronounceable palace, the throne room was vast yet eerily empty, gleaming gold yet entirely devoid of warmth. Did everyone usually hide away during the Odinsleep, the whole of the realm drifting into a sort of hibernation while their true king slept? Loki must feel bitter presiding over an abandoned hall. The alternative was that the crowning palace of Asgard was usually this dead, that Loki had spent his entire life in such bleakness. Either way, she couldn't imagine living here.

Things would have to change.

She wiggled her fingers experimentally, reveling in the simple ripple of tendons.

She had changed, after all.

There was probably some elaborate protocol to follow, but she neither knew nor care what it might be, a sort of crazed calm crashing through her veins. She wasn't about to start kneeling to anyone now. Even Loki. Especially Loki. She didn't care what the custom was for kings.

From where she stood at the base of the throne, she had to crane her neck a bit to look into his face. She could see a flitting warmth in his eyes, his face softening almost imperceptibly, but mostly he kept his face regal and still. He certainly seemed very intent on looking kingly, for someone who had said that he had never wanted to be king. "The golden apples of the sun shine in your eyes and lighten your step; I'm so glad you've finally accepted my offer."

Hermione wasn't sure what to say. She felt giddily strong and every little sensory input still seemed too exquisite for expression: really, she wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his arms and babble about how beautiful the world was to her now but... she couldn't bring herself to do it. It wasn't the armor or the helmet or the spear, she didn't think, or even really the fact that he was on a giant golden throne, but rather in how he was holding himself. She could scarcely even reconcile this creature with the one who had pressed her down into his bed barely a few hours ago.

Something was wrong with Loki and she couldn't quite put her finger on it; that frightened her somewhat. There were too many things she didn't understand about this place, and that the thing she was the most familiar with was also the very thing that scared her most did not sit comfortably on her shoulders. Her whole stomach was tangled up on itself, the giddiness turning over into a vague malaise, almost nausea; still, she did her best to stay aware, looking over his visage for a hint of what was going on. "Thank you," she managed after a moment. "It's... very eye-opening, to say the least." A smile tugged on her face. "Maybe a little too eye-opening; truth be told, I'm having a hard time focusing."

She figured it out even as the words slipped out of her mouth: his eyes were unfocused, his mind literally was miles away while sitting on the Allfather's throne, Hliðskjálf, the high seat. Loki had told her about it some starstruck evening years ago when she was younger: from the throne, one could see everything in the Nine Realms—at least in theory. He had smirked a bit at this and hinted rather strongly that he had figured out ways around this, even if he hadn't figured exactly how the throne itself worked, but as usual wouldn't tell her any details. Figure it out for yourself, he had goaded her, in a way that made her wonder whether he had any answers at all.

Sitting with him in the library wide-eyed with wonder at his stories of Asgard seemed like a lifetime ago, but all the same Hermione suddenly felt childlike again, ignorant and naïve. Nothing had been wrong with Loki at all, she just hadn't understood what was going on in this strange new world. She flushed a bit, embarrassed; Loki smiled down at her, understandably condescending. "It's not godhood," he said, his tone patronizing but proud, "what you've been granted, not properly, but it's the only step I could have you take until the Allfather awakens." He paused, looking into her, his eyes suddenly focusing intently on her for the first time since she had entered the throne room. "We have a long ways yet to go."

Something of her more certain self ghosted back and she found herself smiling. "I've always been up for a challenge," she quipped, thinking of how Loki was still calling Odin Father despite everything this place had done to him—thinking of how terribly brave life required you to be if you weren't going to crumble at the injustice of it all—thinking of how terribly wonderful it all somehow managed to be anyway.

Loki's eyes grew a little darker; from ten feet away she could see the subtle dilation of his pupils, the blue-green-gray iridescence to his eyes. She held herself straighter and took in the shimmer of his magical aura, here with the throne and the great spear Gungnir he seemed ablaze with a kaleidoscope of furious power, the whole of the Nine Realms tied in great pulsing arterial veins to the throne upon which he was seated. A thick cord of it stretched out above their heads, soaring into the distant heights of the hall, probably eventually leading to the Allfather himself. She felt the sense of wonder renew in her chest, fierce curiosity kindling, and her smile broadened. "Times may grow difficult," he said quietly, calmly, kingly. "Are you ready?"

"Always," she breathed and she looked into his eyes and let him see in. Loki could remain behind his Occlumancy barriers. She didn't care. He would come out, eventually. He was just scared up on that big golden throne of his, like a cornered cat that had found itself a perch in a tree. She would have always waited, but now, she could wait for forever if that was what he needed. Loki-as-king was her Loki too, just like all the others she had been privileged to glimpse; she could be patient for them all.

Loki looked down at her as she was thinking these thoughts; he smiled, and his face seemed to soften even more. "My lady," he murmured, the whisper somehow a roar in the throne room, "I find myself wishing that—" He stopped abruptly, his eyes sliding out of focus again.

"Wishing what?" Hermione asked, breathless.

"Jotens!" Loki exclaimed, standing abruptly from the throne, Gungnir gripped tightly in one hand. "Guards, to the Allfather's chambers, Laufey is there—Hermione, to me—"

Confused as she was, she needed no further coaxing. Feeling sudden adrenaline singing in her veins she ran up the steps to the throne, not caring a whit for whatever etiquette there was. Loki held one arm out and she tucked herself into his now-familiar embrace, his vivid green cape swirling around her as Loki teleported them both to Odin's bedchamber.

Hermione knew how to fight. Perhaps she didn't have Harry's reflexes, but she was smart: between Loki and subsequent training at the Ministry she had learned to think through combat in a way that turned it into a fiercely intellectual art. She had never stopped loving the feeling of striving, even if she didn't like to cause harm.

But here someone was trying to do harm, and Hermione simply would not put up with such things, not when she didn't have to. As soon as they arrived she fell into a low crouch, easy as a cat, pulling out the Elder Wand from its pocket dimension as she did so. The jotens were easy enough to identify: their bright blue skin and bloody red eyes were entirely out of place amidst the gleaming golds and bronzes of Asgard. One joten was towering above the Allfather in his bed—Laufey, judging by his appropriately melodramatic tagline about who was killing who—and two others were advancing with knives of ice at Frigga, who appeared to have fallen to the floor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Loki raising Gungnir to the one threatening Odin, so she aimed for the ones threatening the queen, coldly selecting the hottest spells she knew.

It was over in seconds; she doubted any of the jotens had even properly registered their presence before they were killed, not even able to scream as her tightly controlled Fiendfyre consumed them.

Hermione watched, dazed by the adrenaline still pulsing through her like a strobe, as Loki planted Gungnir down at his side. "And your death," he said quietly, addressing a spray of ashes that had once been Laufey, "came at the son of Odin."

Frigga lifted herself from the floor and threw herself into Loki's arms, who returned the embrace. Their family didn't seem all that good with the whole physical affection or positive feedback thing; how long had it been since he had last been so wholeheartedly thanked?

Hermione slipped the Elder Wand back into its pocket dimension. Other questions. What had just happened? She tried to force her thoughts into something vaguely linear. This had all started when the jotens came to take the Casket of Winters back to Jotenheim but had been caught. Thor subsequently had gone to Jotunheim to confront them, only to cause an interplanetary diplomatic incident. For his insubordination he had been exiled to Midgard; Loki had reported that the continuation of this exile had been the basis for a peace treaty between the two Realms.

Then... why this? Wouldn't this have then been the first failed act of open war, an assassination attempt in which the wrong king happened to get killed? Did they honestly think that Odin would be entirely unguarded in the very heart of his realm?-why would they have reason to even think such a thing? There must have been something that made them think it worth the risk, some imagined edge that slipped out from under them.

She looked at Loki and the slow smile curving his lips as he held his adopted mother tightly. And did this not make him king of two realms, now?

She took in a deep breath.

Clever.

After long eternal moments of the whole room breathing Frigga pulled herself loose of her son, though she still held him by the hands. "Odin would be proud of your choice," she said, her voice warm, almost inane. "Odin, and all of Asgard."

But... had Loki actually made a choice? Hermione wasn't so sure. Morbid curiosity tugged at her mind. "What about Jotenheim now?" Hermione found herself asking, tense.

Loki's eyes were cold, yet Hermione thought she could see the faintest sheen of red glimmering from within. "They burn," he said, drawing himself up and tugging entirely away from his mother's touch. "They thought they could kill the Allfather, that they could take on Asgard. They will all burn for that mistake."

"That's... that's genocide," she exclaimed, but her voice sounded distant even to herself. "You're heir of Jotunheim now, right? You can just go over there and make peace with—with yourself, since you're king of both realms. Can't you?" It was so simple. So easy. But suddenly she was aware that there was something else going on, something entirely too cold and calculated in Loki's eyes. She scrambled for something else to say. "Isn't that what Odin would want you to do? Make peace?"

She watched his reaction from far away. His face twisted up. "I would rather Asgard be lost to me than to have any hold on Jotenheim," he spat. "One cannot make a permanent peace with monsters."

Frigga moved protectively over to her husband, her gray eyes wide and unfocused. Hermione stared. She could see the hard seething existential knot that he had been trying so desperately to bury these past hours through any means necessary—through a kiss through a plot what's the difference?—rise to the surface and for a painful moment it was as if she was seeing Loki for the very first time, this ugly damaged creature that was suddenly snarling at her.

Painful, until she realized then for the thousandth time that this was just another facade of a fractured whole, another bit of porcelain picked up from that vase that had been dropped so uncarefully to the floor.

Yes. This had happened a thousand times before.

Nothing's changed.

She wanted to cup him in her hands, hold him, make it all better. But she couldn't. So she watched, numb, as he quivered in rage. "I'll stop you," she said simply, her voice neutral as she could make it, "if you try to kill them. Genocide is still genocide. We need to calm down."

Loki bared his teeth at her. Hermione felt the coldness in her chest harden, as if his joten form had reached out and squeezed the blood from her heart. "You won't stop me," he said, his voice ringing with a confidence that was recognizably cruel. "You never could deny me anything. You gave me your soul, Hermione." His hands tightened around Gungnir, his posture shifting into something about to strike. "Asgard requires the eradication of those vermin, and do not forget that they once tried to destroy your own world as well. They must be destroyed."

Hermione drew the knife he had given her all those years ago, the one that had so horrified Sif, and then the Elder Wand with her other hand, her body moving into the defensive stance Loki himself had taught her. "I'd think to deny you something that you'll regret very much later on," she said, a stammer threatening to start though she kept her voice strong. "Even if they've done wrong, you can't... can't just kill an entire race."

"You said you wouldn't care," Loki snarled, his whole face suddenly twisting up, "you aren't supposed to care," and he threw himself at her. She yanked the knife out of the way at the last moment; he was laughing madly as they both fell to the floor in a heavy flurry of green. She felt the furious cold heat of his body only for a moment before she gasped out Apparate and reappeared on the other side of the room—but just as quick he teleported right there besides her, already throwing curses towards her like rain.

Was this what he wanted all along? He had a broad wicked smile on his face that curved like a scimitar as they threw spells at each other, fast and desperate. Her blood was singing again, and she was moving faster than she ever had in her life, fighting better than she had ever thought possible, matching him blow for blow, hex by hex. She had had some Auror training at Bill's insistence, and plenty of practical application after the War whenever fieldwork got a little dodgy, but this...

Truth be told, she had never felt more alive; she had never indulged in such... catharsis before. Parry, ripost, reset, kaboom! as stone shattered and the walls cracked and they were breaking the world around them into a thousand pieces. I don't understand! part of her cried out, except the rest of her did, her body as it dodged and ducked and spat out vicious spells, her mind as it ran cool calculations and it all kept on coming. It felt inevitable. It felt like love and hate. It felt like life as she had only just tasted in that golden apple earlier, everything now hypersensitive as she moved with Loki, acutely tuned to his presence, his every twist and turn. This was not cleaning up after Harry and Ron, this was not research done in dusty libraries for the greater good: this was action and reaction, emotion and movement. He was wrong and she was right and she was going to prove it after she had him shut up long enough to listen and it felt good.

Frigga was still down besides Odin, wincing slightly whenever shards of stone flew their way. For a mother whose son was in (im)mortal peril by the apparently infamous godkiller gripped tightly in Hermione's hand, Frigga was oddly calm. Then again, for someone who could see snatches of the future and seemed certain that everything was going to turn out alright, she was strangely sad. Frigga and her prophetic insights still didn't make a whole lot of sense; Hermione decided that she was going to have a very long chat with her coworkers still rebuilding the Hall of Prophecy.

But for now, there was no room for such thoughts.

Only for Loki, looming before her with a furious intensity that left her gasping as she tried to hold her own.

"We don't have to do this," Loki shot out as he parried her improvised variation on Expelliarmus on Gungnir. "Weren't we supposed to talk?"

She was abruptly grateful for Sif's clothes; they seemed remarkably tear resistant in addition to retaining complete freedom of movement. Useful for when she had to throw herself to the ground with a distinct lack of grace to avoid what looked like a paralyzation jinx. "I'd love to," Hermione ground out, rolling away from something red and most unkind looking, "but I must insist on doing it before you exterminate a whole species to prove a point." She didn't feel like finding out whether the apples were the things responsible for the fast regeneration rate of Asgardians, just in case they weren't and she would heal just as slowly as any other mortal and very possibly bleed to death on this very floor.

How strange, that suddenly she wasn't sure whether she could trust Loki with her life. The thought itself hurt her more than anything he could have possibly thrown at her, more than Bellatrix's Crucio, more than a decade of could've-would've-should'ves.

"How impatient." He dodged another quasi-Expelliarmus. "How dull."

She was trying to keep her distance because she knew he'd have her beat at hand to hand but he made it hard, always pressing forward at her. "Genocide is one of those things that most people find worth getting riled up over." Still, boring Loki was probably a bad idea, when his idea of breaking up the monotony was to run off to destroy a planet—if he hadn't already set something in motion. She sent fire racing towards him, only to see it extinguished as the air around her suddenly became a vacuum, the fire flickering out of existence along with the lack of oxygen to burn. She heaved for nonexistent breath for just a moment before she put a Bubble-head charm around her head and dodged his next hex a beat later.

"What I don't understand," Loki said, twirling Gungnir as he parried another of her spells, "is how bringing peace to the Nine Realms seems so strangely irrelevant." The air came rushing back into the space around her in a gust that made Hermione stagger to her knees. "Really Hermione, I thought you a pragmatist; where is your utilitarian calculus when the math is so simple? The frost giants have had a thousand years to rebuild since the last war and Jotunheim still lies in ruins. You ask why Asgard has not expanded to fill the stars—it is because we won't take them from the monsters who can scarcely stir to scare us anymore."

Most of what he had just seemed to cut through her shields like butter; she resolved to try a few of her more experimental defense magics out. Field testing, she told herself. "I remember fighting against a monster who said something rather similar," she spat. Disappointment clenched at her. "Loki, I never thought it'd be you next."

Emotions rippled across his face, twisting so quickly she could scarcely identify them before she had to duck again. "I spoke with your Lord Voldemort once. I must confess my disappointment in him: one must always make sure extreme measures are warranted before implementing them." He paused, breaking up the rhythm of the battle to stare intently into her. "Voldemort sought to extinguish the likes of you, my dear, which I find... short-sighted; however there are no such bright-shiners in the jotens, and therefore their kind is of no great loss." His smile was almost smarmy. "Your analogy is, therefore, inadequate."

Hermione wasn't particularly surprised at this point that Loki had met up with Voldemort. Between their apparent mutual interest in the Hallows and his increasingly conspicuous sociopathic tendencies, she was almost surprised they hadn't gotten along. "What about you?" Bitterness flooded her and she spat out a furious entrail-expelling hex that he just as quickly batted away. "You are joten, are you not?"

His face twisted again. She could not see Loki, her Loki, only the monster that had lurked at the shadows of her vision for years without proper acknowledgment. "I am not joten!"

"Then what are you?"

"Loki!" he roared and leaped unexpectedly towards her. He left his front bare to blows but she couldn't bring herself to thrust forward with Æsahættr, not when his face was twisted in such pain. He does know me well, she thought dazedly as she let herself get tackled instead, stumbling backwards against the sudden press of his weight until she was pinned against the wall. He threw up some sort of anti-Apparition ward before she could teleport herself away, their bodies as close as his battle armor would allow, Loki's face inches from hers in a sick satire of intimacy. "I am Loki of Asgard and I answer only to myself!"

"And to prophecy," Frigga slipped in from Odin's side. Her voice was like a cloud, barely even there at all. "We answer us all to it, in the end."

"Do not speak to me of prophecy," Loki spat. He tried to snatch at Æsahættrwhere it was still clutched in Hermione's hand but she managed to worm the one arm out of his grasp and shove the knife back into its pocket dimension. He viciously slammed her against the wall again in response, the force leaving her dizzy. "Ragnorak would not happen if Thor had remained away, a mortal who could have simply died." He slammed Hermione against the wall again, and again, and again; she felt like a rag doll in the mouth of a dog. "Yet I feel him in Asgard yet again, and alive! I am a king betrayed. Asgard would have stood for forever, I'd have managed to fulfill the prophecies, Heimdall dead by my hand as the oracles said, I've led the enemy in to invade as they had foretold but then killed them all before real harm could come of it, all components of the prophecies would have been satisfied and things could have been good, Father—"

"No, Loki," Frigga interrupted, her voice gentle as she cut through Loki's rush of a rant. Hermione watched Loki's face breaking, fingering the Elder Wand in her remaining hand, trying to retain circulation despite Loki's bruising grasp. "Your understanding of the prophecies is incomplete. You have not been exiled, as will yet happen, and it will be that place of exile from which you were to lead our enemies to slay your brother." Her gray eyes didn't seem to see anything at all. "So much has yet to come to pass."

Hermione didn't quite grasp what was going on—she knew the basics of the Muggle myths about Ragnarok and though she couldn't immediately see how it applied she could certainly see how it cut Loki asunder, his pupils constricting and his whole body suddenly tensing like a bowstring about to break, shuddering against her. "No, no, no, no..."

Hermione wormed her way enough through his flickering anti-Apparition wards so that she could teleport herself away again, to the opposite side of the room where she promptly braced herself against the wall, heaving for breath. Loki staggered in her absence but didn't seem fit to resume combat: instead he crumpled, slumping as if he was the rag doll that had been flung about far too many times. He looked up at Frigga again, his eyes dead. "She told me I could stop it all," he whispered hoarsely, "she touched me, you have to believe me, I meant only the best—"

Hermione blinked."Wait, what?" Surely he wasn't talking about her...

Loki didn't seem to hear. "I don't understand," he babbled, "this isn't what was supposed to happen, I don't understand, I thought of everything, they had all only said exile from my place of birth and Laufey had abandoned me and it all fit, I—"

Loki cut himself off, for once: it was Hermione's only warning that Thor was about to come barging in. Sif's rather unsurprising disobedience had spectacular poor timing: Thor slammed what remained of the door open, his bright blue eyes widening in shock and rage at the scene before him. It took him only a few great strides to get to where his brother—his false brother—was still leaning heavily against the wall. Loki barely even flinched when Thor lifted him bodily by the neck and shook him like one might a bad cat, Gungnir falling from his hand "My brother!" Thor roared, his voice filled with anger, "the Destroyer, the Bifrost, what have you done!"

Loki met his brother's eyes for just a moment, his face carefully blank, before he simply—disappeared.

Hermione exhaled hoarsely, looking around for Loki to reappear, to engage his brother in furious self righteous battle, to kidnap Thor, to reclaim Gungnir, something, anything. But he didn't. And didn't. And didn't. "You idiot," she breathed, her mind whirling as pieces began to click into place. "You idiot!"

Thor turned, noticing her for the first time, his face dumb with furious shock. "What is your part in these ill doings, stranger who walks in our halls?" he demanded, clutching at Mjölnir as if the wrong answer would end with it planted in her skull. "Who are you?"

Hermione was only half listening, as what Thor said finally sunk in: she looked out one gaping wall to where she could see the Bifrost building, sparkling supernova-bright in the impossibly beautiful sky of Asgard. Such a spectacularly inefficient transportation device, capable of punching gaping holes in space time.

Almost like any of the dozens of devices that Odin had hidden away in his Armory.

Almost like something that could destroy a planet.

Almost like a weapon.

Almost like the sort of thing that Loki would sneak off and start on his own accord while he had them all distracted with a simulacrum.

"I'm a friend of monsters," she said tiredly, a little disgusted with herself, and Apparated away to stop mass murder. Funny how good intentions get put off.

The interior of the building that directed the Bifrost—the one she had arrived in barely a day ago—was filled with that queer gold Asgardian halflight but now it was touched with pale blue: a great crystal tree now stood in the center of the chamber, bright and beautiful. A fractal, she theorized haphazardly: Yggdrasil, and the threads connecting not-so-arbitrary worlds.

She held back her nausea when she saw Heimdall's gutted and charred corpse. Fiendfyre. Capable of severing any soul from its material coils, mortal or no; one way to kill a god, amongst a few, the knife at her hip among them. The corpse had a delicate ice filigree over the top, perhaps placed to persuade others that it had been the work of jotens, but Hermione knew the taste of fiendfyre and of Loki's magic far too well.

Gods...

She pushed them all out of her head and went to the podium where Heimdall's sword stood impaled, a key to worlds in a simple lock. She pulled it out, staggering with its weight and letting it clatter to the ground. The chamber around her stilled, but she was beyond seeing it. She fell to her knees and began to sob, the full weight of the last day falling down and crushing her.

Loki was gone, and she couldn't even begin to think of what to do to fix it all.

She couldn't face the gods. Not yet. She forced herself to leave again as soon as the tears stopped. The path from Asgard to her own world had been trodden down deep enough that she could make the interstellar jump for herself alone, following the trail that the Bifrost made across the stars to the place where Loki had wrapped her up in his arms an eternity ago to take her home.

His home. Not hers.

The long range of the Apparition left her staggering, and suddenly underneath the hot sun of her homeworld she felt for an excruciating moment like she would pass out entirely. The brightness of the desert blinded her, the hot air suffocated her. Nothing was right and she wanted to curl up and cry in her own tiny little unloved flat and stay there until this all sorted itself out. Maybe Loki would conquer the world. She couldn't bring herself to care, not right now.

By the time she had recovered her bearings enough to look around, she was almost ready to pass out again. Harry and Bill were there, barely five feet away, out of breath and desperate as if they had come running to see her. Had they been nearby? "Hermione!" Harry cried out, already stepping forward to support her.. "Are you alright? I got your note but I couldn't make any sense of it, we were all so worried—"

Hermione stiffened in the sudden cage of his arms. Bill knew her well enough not to crowd her, standing apart with his arms crossed and his ginger hair matte with pale desert dust, but he looked—well. Worried wasn't even the half of it. "I'm fine," she said, looking around her and straightening herself best she could. The place was still crawling with Muggles waving all a manner of electronic equipment around, but now they were all staring at her expectantly. Not the usual reaction Wizarding kind got. "What's going on?"

"Well," Bill said, his voice calm but concern threading its way through it, "but we were rather hoping you could tell us exactly that."

"All of us," said a third man, stepping forward, older and a Muggle right down to his pressed pants. He held out his hand. "Agent Coulson of SHIELD. I believe we have much to discuss."

END OF PART II OF APHELION

A/N:

Revised 1/23/2013.

Does... what I've done so far generally make sense? Basically, one of the things that was happening in Thor in this theory was that Loki was trying to circumvent the prophecies of Ragnarok, having seen an opportunity to do so. Think about what he does in the film, and what he learned, and how sneakily well that slides into his part in starting it all. If you assume that the little colorful details in our Midgardian version of the prophecies (which I've been trying to point out are probably colored by literary fancy) are probably not applicable, than this interpretation of Loki's actions should mostly work. "I could have done it father, I could have done it!"... This will be explored in more detail later as Hermione sets herself to try and figure out what, exactly, Loki's game is, in Part III and an AU version of Avengers.

Writing from the perspective of someone who doesn't know everything of what's going on is... well, tricky. I'm trying to find that balance of revealing just enough to keep the story interesting and worth reading while also not spilling the entire mess of it quite yet. How's it going? And how was the action sequence and the back and forth? It's not something I've played around with much, so feedback and advice would be most excellent!