Part XVI

I seemed out of place, as I was accustomed to their previous attitude towards me. To be on a par with those who possess supernatural powers is too great a responsibility. I was led into a room where I had lived waiting for Loki. Frigga came in with me, while Odin and Heimdall watched me. I felt their stares. I was scared because I did not know an answer, though I expected thousands of questions.

In the room Frigga gestured me to sit down. I sat on a high wooden chair, in my world it could easily be taken for a throne. The chair stood at the table, there was another chair at the other side, and to the left there was a window and by looking out I could see my favorite garden.

Frigga sat down opposite me. "Lina, you're surprised, if you want, I'll tell you everything. Although I think you know. We just wait for him. "

"He will not come," I said quietly, "Why did you take me …or what verb you use to describe it… I don't know… from London? I have nothing, and if I had, you just needed to ask me, I would have given it to you, why should you send your son… " I felt lost.

Frigga smiled, but her eyes did not. "If he had listened to me, but unfortunately, he made this choice by himself. He's been looking for you for a long time, I learned about it only when he had found you, believe me it is very difficult to hide anything from me." She looked at me as if expecting a question. If I could choose one question among my millions of questions, I would ask it of course, but, well, I remained silent and listened.

"I do not know when he started looking for you, and why, and how in the end he found you. What I can tell you for sure is that you know each other longer than a century. Only that you do not remember. He made it so that you always come back. You die and are born again, it is always you, in different places of Midgard, but it has always been you – a dear favorite ... "

"Toy" - I finished the sentence.

Frigga gave me a long look as if deciding what else I deserved to know.

"You call this reincarnation: all atoms of your body come together, while your memory is erased without a trace. Perhaps it is this fact of your physical rebirth is the reason why Thanos needs you. In you lies the power that is not subjected to you, and so the ability to destroy the universe."

"You mean that I have never told him no?" I looked out of the window, I was ashamed to look into her eyes. Outside the window, as if nothing had happened the sun shone brightly. Everything was filled with light and seemed so serene and peaceful. And I still raged and stormed inside.

"No, it happened for the first time." I heard the answer. I looked into the Frigga's eyes. I thought I misheard. "And I'm afraid it will destroy you. Not the fact that you left him, but what's inside you." I listened carefully and felt that inside of me a hurricane was arisen, which is capable of destroying everything, but it will start with me. I was choking from the smoke of the fire, which had started inside of me at the moment when Loki had opened the door and I had seen Her in his arms. I blinked at the sudden bad vision. And whispered, "How many..." I mustered all my courage and finished my question: "How many of us, I mean, girls like me does he have?"

"Like you?" she asked. "He did not have anyone Like you."

It seemed my question was wrongly timed, she feared for herself, for her world, for him, there was no truth for me.

"When I saw them … all I wanted is to die, and you ..."

"You had to listen to him, you would know what you call truth. And now he is furious. You left him. You know, when he first met you, I was hoping that it would change him. As Odin says there is only me in his life, the rest is darkness and evil, and if there had been two of us, we would have destroyed the darkness. But you're not me, and I'm not you. We have too much in common, but we have different goals. And we have no time. "

"And where is Thor, your other son?"

Frigga smiled and looked me in the eye. But still she answered:

"He's looking for your protection and assistance for himself. Although, I suspect, you do not really need a help. "

"You won't let me go and you won't send me to Thanos ... You want to kill me. Loki has no interest in me, you've sent away Thor, I am quite helpless before you." I hung my head: "Kill me, why delay…"

"Lina", Frigga stood up and then there was a blow, the door swung open, banging against the wall, it seemed the door was shattered to pieces. Frigga turned instantly hiding me behind, so I could not see, who burst into the room. In a moment, I could only see green color. Immediately I felt that familiar feeling that filled my life for the last couple of weeks. I felt sick, not because of the fact that I was unceremoniously seized, but because it was the beginning of the end.

A few moments later I was in the house at Heath, it was nightfall. I was sitting in a chair by the window, which had frosted again. Frostwork was now alive and changing. Writhing ice snakes with gleaming eyes were creeping along the window-pane. The picture was even more ominous because their movements were accompanied by a rustle of ice on the glass.

Sideways at the window, as if not to hinder the window, Loki was standing. Profile of marble statue, hands clasped behind his back. The silence, the rustle and barely perceptible shadows outside the window created an unbearable attraction.

"Hello," I managed to say.

Without even turning his head he nodded. Then he sat down on the sofa as if nothing happened, smiled at me and spoke in a very ordinary voice:

"They're here, they were here last night, but now they know how to come in, because you have escaped, I cannot lose, and I cannot protect you. Do you have any suggestions?"

"Loki, do you love me?" I blurted out in one breath.

"Lina, you should not care about it, because you do not care, I am aware that you can leave me at any time, I am convinced. And if you're asking whether it hurts me, then yes, you won. I was very hurt. He stood up and, rising from the couch, looked at me for the first time. I could not stand his stare; it burned through me with cold indifference.

He went to the cupboard and took a vase, then came up to me from behind, he bent down and whispered in my right ear:

"Do you want to see what you've done?"

I gathered the rest of my courage and asked, "Is she still here?"

All that happened after that happened in a fraction of a second. Vase noiselessly flew into the window, the glass was not shattered but it was cracked. After the hit the snakes on the pattern began to stir restlessly. Shadows behind the window got closer to the house. The ominous silhouettes loomed and they were even more frightening because it was impossible to make them out, and the brain was completing the fantasy images of monsters.

The next moment, Loki was on his knees in front of me.

"Fifty maximum seventy years from now you will not be, let's finish now. Tell me and I'll break the window and it will be over. "

"I do not trust you."

"But you love me" Loki did not hesitate to find the argument against which I could not argue. I looked down. "We'll be together forever." I could feel his breath.

"What happens if you break the window?"

"You know very well ..." He stood up and walked to the window. I looked him in the back, trying to find the words.

"Or haven't you understood yet?" He turned his head and looked me in the eye. "You and I, no more others, ever." I was hypnotized by his eyes and I could not but look at him. He gave me his trademark smile. "We've got ten minutes to eternity. We had a lot more time and we could spend it in more pleasant places, but you do not like simple ways. "

"I do not want the eternity," I whispered, "I'm afraid"

He walked over to me and knelt down again, taking my hands in his.

"You always answered like this. You're always afraid to be with me alone. You always need someone else, you need the world around then you are able to love me. You think I have never heard it? You have no idea how much I know about you. I can tell you, but it will not change anything. I'm resigned to the fact that in each of your rebirths you passionately love me as well as cowardly betray."

There was a loud crash and then I heard the sound of breaking glass. Thick oily darkness began to creep into the room. Ominous rustle and barely audible whisper filled the ears. I blinked. I was scared, as I had been as a child in a dark room. I had tried to hide under the blanket, naively believing that no one would touch me if I hid my head.

"Do not be afraid, it's your father, well, or as he likes to call himself the Creator," the last word Loki uttered derogatory solemnly. "You think you're running away from me, no, you're running away from him, but he just did not wish you to stop because of his care of you."

I heard every word, but hardly understand what he said. Too much of what he said I just did not understand, as if he was opening a new unknown world.

"Once upon a time I went to him and asked to help me, I was bored you have no idea how much. He gave me you, at the time I thought that he had done it in order to get rid of me so that I would leave him alone with a new toy. However, now I realize that his thoughts were different, tying me to you, he thereby got me into some kind of slavery. "

Meanwhile, the darkness surrounded us with a dense ring and only a dim flicker emanating from Loki's attire did not allow it to absorb us. I could not see the broken window or twinkling lights, I did not see the shadows, solid sticky darkness had covered everything. It seemed it was alive, absorbing everything, subjecting and transforming.

I glanced at Loki, he looked questioningly into my eyes, he obviously did not know answers to any of his questions. "You have changed a lot since that day, I had to abstain. I do not see you, I do not hear and do not understand. And your eyes, they have changed… I hope he will come alone, without his monsters. "

"Loki, what are you up to?" - I asked. He stood up and walked away vanishing in the dark. I jumped up and ran to where I thought Loki should be, but instead I bumped into a tall man, dressed almost like Thor; plate chainmail covered his chest and arms, there was a black velvet cape over his shoulders, and on his head there was a pretty unusual curved and rugged helmet. He looked at me with piercing blue eyes that twisted my soul with pain all over my body. And then I saw his ears, they resembled the ears of the Lord of the Rings Elf. As soon as I tried to step back, he grabbed me keeping on examining my "contents".

"Lina, meet Malekith" said Loki, I saw him standing behind a man that I called to myself an Elf.

"You're quite right, I am an Elf," I heard a mellow voice, "and at last you have found me."