The Remnant Prince
Ch. 13: A Series of Unexpected Events
"Naryu!" Hermione exclaimed in relative alarm.
"They were starved and beaten while they were imprisoned, and they may have been tortured-of that I know not."
"Torture!" Fárbauti exclaimed.
"They?" Hermione questioned sharply. "What they? And who are you? Why have you brought her?"
"His name is Alosa, and he's an old friend of hers and an acquaintance of mine."
The eyes of the hall turned toward the doorway where Rosalie stood. She threw the hood of her cloak back. Her left hand unconsciously went back to massaging her throat gingerly.
"And how do you know him?" Hermione asked as Rosalie strode closer, inclining her head to Alosa in acknowledgement.
"We met," she shrugged. She met Alosa's gaze. "The matter we discussed is resolved."
Hermione opened her mouth again, but Fárbauti cut in quietly.
"You have yet to answer her other questions. I suggest you do so now."
Alosa turned, drawing his hood off and bowing slightly. "Milady. I am Alosa, as stated before. I knew Naryu before she left our realm...torture, yes, though I think it wiser to discuss this elsewhere without idle ears, wandering eyes, and wagging tongues."
The Queen drew herself up regally out of habit due to the manner in which he addressed her. "Agreed," she nodded, "but first, my niece needs medical attention. If you'd follow us..."
She and Hermione took Naryu between them, using magic to ease her weight, levitating her on a summoned stretcher once the stairs had to be traversed. Alosa followed silently, looking around and pulling his cloak tighter about him. Hermione strained her ears to her what whispered conversation went on while Rosalie trailed behind a few steps with the mysterious arrival. She couldn't fathom Rosalie keeping secrets. She couldn't. Rosalie shared everything, hid nothing, was an open book...or so she thought, or had been led to believe.
Alosa was edgy. These other races and beings were alien to him, as well as helping them like Naryu would. He was not heartless. He simply thought that if something was a singular tragic incident, it was insignificant unless it involved himself or the Sylph.
He remembered the vision clearly, though. The visions of Naryu in Asgard's magnificent halls, older in each recollection of vision. He remembered when Hermione and Loki both had collided with her, and the first time he had glimpsed Rosalie. The four were perhaps four of the most important people in existence. They would keep a great darkness from consuming all, an evil with reaches into the crevices of dimensions and universes and all such in between and thereafter, one who reached from space. The Mad Titan. His heart had plummeted when he had seen the great hulking purple form approaching, standing in the doorway of that forsaken cell.
Alosa had seen his path in the stars. It was intertwined with the destinies of the other four. Their paths were blurry to him, but his was clear: he was to help them, even if it killed him. His only problem was whether to turn right or left. One direction led to a happy future. The other led to doom. He knew not which to take.
There was a crack, and a strange creature appeared.
"Dobby!" Hermione and Rosalie exclaimed. Naryu stirred.
"H-h-hello, Do-o-bby," she rasped.
"Miss Naryu!" the house elf squeaked in dismay.
"Dobby can get you there faster. Dobby can apparate in the castle!"
He quickly grabbed onto them all as best he could, and with a crack they stood in the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey, who had been rearranging the curtains, jumped away with a squeal, landing on her round, ample backside.
"Oh!" she, "Merlin, what the devil do you think you're do-" she caught sight of Naryu's condition, paling instantly. She immediately went into her command mode. "Lay her there," she directed, scrambling upright. "That's the ticket. Careful of her...wings? Blimey, are those really wings growing out of her shoulders? Merlin, Morgana, and Hecate..."
Soon, Naryu lay on her side, her wings folded gently behind her. Fárbauti, Hermione, Rosalie, Dobby, and Alosa helped the mediwitch of Hogwarts as much as they could. The air was ripe with magic. Once Naryu was considerably improved, they all sat down for a conference, with Poppy being dismissed to bother Professor Snape for some potions and things he could procure and she could not. Naryu sat up slowly, wincing, with the aid of the others and cushions.
"What happened?" Fárbauti asked kindly, placing her hand on her niece's knee.
"First you need to know," she croaked once she had a sip of water. "Your son is alive, and is currently being held by a madman...Thanos, as they call him. And I think he's going to be used to subjugate life as we know it. And no one, Dashta, will be spared."
Alosa looked up sharply. "You said he made a deal."
Naryu took another sip of water. "I hardly think a beast like Thanos would keep such a bargain. I think no matter what Loki does, The Mad Titan will kill us anyway."
Rosalie and Alosa, who had sat down beside each other, cast a glance between them.
"I think, Alosa, that it's time to make another deal," she murmured.
"We gave nothing to offer," he muttered back.
"We have something else he would want."
"What might that be?" Alosa spat, "gold? He can make his own. Power? He has enough of that already. And you used your Belle ticket. What could you possibly have to offer the Dark One?"
Rosalie stared down at her hands, brought her eyes up to her sister, who was asking frantic questions of Naryu as Fárbauti listened to the responses intently and Dobby made tea. No one was paying them any mind. She took the locket from around her neck, opening it to show a beautiful young woman with blue eyes and curly brown hair. A baby girl lay in her arms. She had green eyes and wisps of auburn hair, and a nose Rosalie recognized.
"His daughter and granddaughters."
The nose could have been Hermione's. The green eyes staring up at her could have been her own.
**Approximate Present, or The Past**
It was bitterly cold even inside the tent. Hermione shivered. The Forest of Dean had seemed like a good idea before she was freezing her arse off. Her mind was numb and she hated it. She was usually the cleverest in the room, unless her sister, Naryu, or Loki were with her. Then it was merely an evenly matched battle. She wondered who was cleverer, Professor Snape or her friends of Asgard.
She couldn't bring herself to hate him. She was much shrewder than the boys, and had deduced that somehow, Snape had had to kill Dumbledore, and somehow it had ultimately ruined Snape's life and proven his utmost loyalty simultaneously. She glanced at the flowers spread out on the tiny coffee table. She had been receiving them and hiding them from Harry. She knee who they were from, she was sure. Who else would leave her flowers preserved by frost, alien flowers whose beauty was unparalleled?
She stood from the bed, walked over to the small table as she stared down at them, reached out to touch them, but a voice by her ear stopped her hand as it hovered over them.
"You shouldn't do that," it whispered quietly, "it warms them up, and when that happens, this bitter cold will kill them."
She didn't need to turn to see who stood just behind her shoulder, his breath tickling her cheek and neck.
"Better late than never," she said despondently.
"Well, dear, you know how I love my chase."
She felt his hand descend on her shoulder and squeeze it as if in reassurance. The other pulled her hair loose and moved it about, running long, dexterous fingers through the curls.
"You could make this so much easier," she said. His fingers brushed her shoulders and the collar of her shirt.
"I know," he replied. He turned her. She looked up at last. Loki's eyes held a sad playfulness in their mess of dark mossy green in the lamp light. He stretched his hand out to touch her face, tracing patterns around her eyes, lips, and cheeks.
"My, my," he whispered.
"That's still not funny," she smiled reluctantly, eliciting a soft chuckle from him. She had been seeing him less and less, and she missed him terribly. Her heart ached. She knew by then that she more than loved him. She was foolishly in love with him and she knew it.
The peasant and the prince, she had thought, how cliché it sounded in her mind. She almost believed he was in love with her as well, almost. She thought she knew what that Amethyst meant...she couldn't help but stare at his lips as he caressed her cheek as if he would never see her again. He might very well not. She bit her lip.
"Don't do that," he murmured.
"Like you care," she muttered. His hand stilled. Her eyes met his and his hand dropped. She was afraid he might leave and disappear forever. Sometimes she knew she still gazed at him as if he shouldn't exist. He shouldn't, in the logical "gods don't exist" sort of way. Yet he did, and the pull on her wrist that set her into his arms for a dance was very real.
No music played, but they danced. She let him whirl her around at first before she began leading earthly, Midgard dances, from a waltz to a fox trot to a tango. She couldn't help it. She smiled, and soon she was laughing.Who's Ron? she jokingly asked herself. She hadn't been paying attention to her surroundings. The next thing she knew, she had tripped over something strewn across the tent floor and fallen back onto the bottom bunk bed, pulling Loki with her.
Both of them froze.
"This is an interesting position," he commented slowly after a moment. Hermione's chest was still heaving while he remained the picture of cool, calm and collected.
"Do you love me?" she asked suddenly.
~"It depends on what you're giving me," he whispered, eyes twinkling.
"Prat," she muttered. "~Don't be such a man."
"Excuse me?" he scoffed, offended.
"My prat," she amended, laughing, and he smiled.
"You don't know how very much I...love you."
Hermione stared at him for a moment. "Prove it."
He extended his fingers and slowly caressed the side of her face a moment before leaning in and pressing his lips to hers. Hermione's breath stopped, hitching in the next second as Loki crawled onto the bunk, their mouths molding and his hand falling to her neck. It had been so cold, but she was only getting warmer in that second, with precious hot pearls of kisses being pressed to her neck and face, to her collarbone, and her hands helped other hands tug fabric away. He always said she had a passion in her. Ever since Dumbledore's death, she wore the necklace around her neck that would not permit children. The fabric the blanket was made out of was scratchy on her back, but she didn't care. Not about that or the biting wind outside or that fact that Ron, a best friend for years, had abandoned she and Harry. But Ron had not been her first friend besides her sister. The man whose hands couldn't stop touching her had been. Ron hadn't always been there for her, but the person pressing her into the rickety bottom bunk had been. Ron had never understood her that way, laughed or cried or studied with her the way he needed to. And he wouldn't share her the way she was sharing then that frigid blizzard's day in the Forest of Dean.
He would have proved his love to her longer, harder, with more passion, enough to wipe away all of her tears, but at that moment, Naryu appeared in the tent.
"Make haste," she hissed, and the reprieve dissolved and the two of the broke apart. It could have been a better time. But as Hermione sat dazed, shivering, and scrambling for her clothes in the cold, he stood.
"The two humans of hers return," Naryu explained. "You must leave now."
She disappeared. Loki and Hermione locked eyes. Hermione bit her lip and looked away. When she glanced up, he was gone, and so were his clothes, for the most part. He had left his scarf behind. She leaned forward, picking it up and pressing it to her nose, inhaling. It smelled of him, the bottom bunk smelled of him. Harry would not be getting that bunk back. He would have to sleep in the top. She wound the scarf around her neck, staring at the tent flaps until Harry's shaggy black head poked through. She had forgotten Naryu had spoken of "humans". Ron had returned. The boys were dripping wet, but she couldn't rouse herself to care. Instead, she wrapped up in the blanket she bad just been on top of and faced the tent wall.
"Is she sick?" she heard Ron ask Harry.
"I don't think so. Probably just asleep. She's been tired lately."
**The Present, for the Most Part**
CALCUTTA, INDIA,
THE OTHER MIDGARD
"Well this is...quaint," Rosalie remarked as she glanced around the packed Deli.
"Mmm," Bruce hummed.
"Is that...is that blood?" Rosalie squeaked, clutching his arm and eyeing the questionable spot on the floor.
"That wasn't there last week," he noted with a frown. He cleared his throat. "Would you like-"
"-to go?" Rosalie interjected, "Please, let's."
They squeezed out of a side door and back onto the street. Bruce ran a hand through his hair, puffed his cheeks, and exhaled wearily.
"Well, there goes my chance."
"Not necessarily," Rosalie said quietly. She peered at him from underneath her eyelashes and bangs.
"Can you keep a secret?"
He stared at her wistfully for a moment.
"Yes," he replied simply. Hesitantly, Rosalie said,"Then you lead me to where you're staying, and I'll fix us lunch."
Bruce scrutinized her from over the top rim of his glasses. "All right."
He led her through the streets to a rundown building with a winding staircase inside. Children played on the steps and a woman passed bearing a water jug. An old, skinny dog yawned lazily from an open doorway. Rosalie saw it all as she followed the Doctor-who was, in fact, a real Doctor- to his apartment. The building was poorly managed, but not as horrible as others they had passed on the way there.
Rosalind felt a twinge of extreme relief when they were safe behind closed doors. Banner walked to the window. Rosalie hovered by the door uncertainly. When Banner faced her, he had a slight, twisted, smile on his face.
"So, how many are outside waiting?" he asked casually.
"Outside...outside waiting where?" Rosalie queried confusedly. Bruce chuckled humorlessly.
"Don't play dumb. I know they trained you and hired those men."
"What are you rambling on about?" Rosalie pressed. Bruce exhaled forcefully. His hand shook as he raised it to run it through his hair again.
"I know they sent you!" he quavered, his voice rising in volume and emotion.
"Who? I don't know what the bloody hell you're talking about! Who the devil do you think sent me? I'm here alone, Bruce. I helped you on my own."
"Don't lie to me, damn it," he growled, forcing calm, "I know S.H.I E.L.D sent you."
Bewildered, Rosalie proclaimed, "The flying fuck is S.H.I.E.L.D?"